Well I am glad to be here. A lot of anticipation waiting for this day. I'm grateful to be with you
folks.
I just want to welcome those folks that are online. Thank you for being with us today. We're
grateful that you're joining online. I want to ask you to do something. In the YouTube Live,
would you just comment your name. Ben's on there waiting to give you an announcement. I've
got one for now, but don't go away. Some other people are going to need them. If you would like
one of these booklets online, just contact the office at GraceWay and we'll send one out to you so
that you can keep track of what we're doing in the study of Nehemiah.
How many of you are here today who are sixth grade up to twenty-five? Would you please raise
your hand. Sixth grade up to twenty-five. Okay. I want to make sure you get one of these
booklets. So if you didn't get one, then Fornell and the rest of the ushers, could you give those?
Hold up your hand. I want to make sure you get one. Because I want you and others to be able to
take notes in this journal. It's like a spiritual journal for you for the next twelve weeks. We're
going to study the book of Nehemiah. On the one side of the page is actual text of Nehemiah and
then the other side you can take notes and write notes. So you can draw on it. You’re going to see
the first word is Chislev. What is Chislev? You might circle it and say I'm going to look that up
later. Or the Susa, where is that? So you can kind of take notes. And then on the other side write
down the kinds of things you're learning and what God is saying to you. I want to tell you
something today. God is going to speak. I don't know whether He's going to say something big or
He’s going to say something small, but we want to listen.
I want to say a special welcome to my friend, Ed Miller. I just can't believe you're here, Ed. Ed
had a stroke last Sunday and he's been in ICU all week. Yesterday he was in ICU. Today he’s at
church. I'm just honored that you would come to church, Ed. So no excuses for not coming to
church now! Okay? Welcome, Ed. I'm glad that you're here.
Would you please stand with me as we read God's word? I'm going to read it to you. Nehemiah
1. The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev (that’s
the November/December timeframe), in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa (that’s the capital of
Persia), that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them
concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem (850
miles away). And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile
is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed
by fire.”
As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued
fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and
awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his
commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant
that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the
sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have
sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the
statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you
commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the
peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts
are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place
that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ They are your servants and your people,
whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be
attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear
your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this
man.” Now I was cupbearer to the king.
You may be seated
He was cupbearer to the king. Now Nehemiah had this nice job. He was in the palace. The
cupbearer wasn't just a glorified butler. His job was to taste the king's food and to drink the king's
wine before the king did in case somebody wanted to poison the king. That was part of his job.
But he was also a confidant of the king so that when the king had something to say, he really
trusted this guy, Nehemiah.
So as we look at this particular passage of scripture, we're going to see Nehemiah writing. And
you'll see there in the first verse that it's the words of Nehemiah. He's actually writing it down.
So if you take your journal, and you start writing in it, you'll be writing over his journal, because
he's writing these things of course under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Nehemiah had a comfortable job for the most part. As long as they didn't try to poison the king,
he had a very comfortable job. A lot of job security that he had. But God's going to do something
in his heart. He's going to develop a mission-oriented view of life. He's going to turn his heart
toward a mission that's very significant. He's going to see broken down walls and he's going to
go and he's going to try to help rebuild them. I just want to say, I hope that's the message you
receive today that there are broken down things all around us. God wants us to take on a
mission-oriented view of life. He wants us to come alongside other people, build up them, build
up the walls. We're going to see what happens. But I trust that God will do something in your
heart today just to stir up this mission-oriented view of life.
Well let's go on here. We see that this took place in the city of Susa. Now let me just bring you
up to speed on the history so we know where we are in the timeline. Looking back to Israel's
history, let's look at the first king of Israel. His name was Saul. He was a good king (at least he
started out good). But at some point in his life he decided he would start doing things his way
and not God's way. So God said, “Okay, I'm just going to have to take the kingdom away from
you.” And He did. He gave it to David, who was a man after God's own heart. Now we know
that David sinned. But he still kept coming back to the Lord. What a heart that he had. He wrote
a number of our psalms.
When David passed off the scene, his son took the throne. His name was Solomon. Now
Solomon was also a good king to start out with. He asked for wisdom. Anything that we could
get we would ask for wisdom, as Solomon did. But the Bible tells us that at the end of his life his
wives (and he had a lot of them) turned his heart away to serve other gods. Just a warning for us.
If you're a young person thinking about getting married, make sure the person is a Christian so
they're moving you in the right direction, not away from God.
When Solomon moved off the scene, the kingdom split into two parts. You know, the northern
kingdom is the kingdom of Israel and it has ten tribes, and the southern kingdom is the kingdom
of Judah and it has two tribes. The northern kingdom had nineteen kings. The Bible says all of
them did evil in the sight of the Lord. All of them. In 722 B.C., the Assyrians came in and
conquered the northern kingdom. Their policy was to take people away, but also to bring people
in to intermarry, and that's exactly what happened. So they intermarried with the Jews and they're
turned into what we call the Samaritans, the half-breeds, which we'll learn about more when we
look at the New Testament. In the southern kingdom, they lasted another 136 years. They had
twenty kings, six were said to be good and fourteen were said to do evil in the sight of the Lord.
So the Babylonian kingdom came in and they captured the Jerusalem and they took away people
like we know, Daniel and his three friends. They went to Babylon. And Daniel rose into the
leadership of the king over his time. In two different reigns of kings he moved himself all the
way up to the top. God had His hand on Daniel.
Well the Babylonian kingdom fell and the Persian kingdom took over. And now we're in the
Persian kingdom here. Susa is the capital of Persia, but you might know it as Shushan if you
study the book of Esther because Esther was the wife of King Xerxes in Persia. That's who she
was. That's how she came on the scene. We know about her because she's the one who rescued
the Jews.
Now here's the fascinating thing. Xerxes had a son whose name was Artaxerxes. That's our guy
here. That's the king that Nehemiah is working for, which means that Esther and Nehemiah
might have known each other. They're in the same time period. We don't know how long Esther
lived. But certainly Artaxerxes has heard stories from his father Xerxes about how his wife
rescued the Israelite people. So maybe that had something to do with his interest in answering
Nehemiah’s request in a positive way.
We're in the city of Susa. Now Nehemiah wanted to look at the news. He didn't have Google or
YouTube or CNN or Fox or whatever you like to look at to find out what the news was. So he
called his friends and one of these was Hanani. Hanani was his Jewish brother and he wants to
know what's going on in Jerusalem. Tell me the update. What's happening in Jerusalem.
Some more history here. There's already been two campaigns going to Israel. One was under the
leadership of Zerubbabel. He went there and rebuilt the temple. So now we have the temple
rebuilt. Then Ezra, he's the next excursion and he takes people there and he preaches and brings
revival (as you're learning under Pastor Don in the evening, the story of Ezra). Well Nehemiah
wants to know what's going on. Can you give me some update of how our family members, how
our Jewish people are doing in Judah? Can you give us an update. And so Hanani says these
things. He says in verse 3 – And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had
survived the exile is in great trouble and shame.” Underline that word shame. Because we tend
to think that the problem is the walls broke down, and they did. But there's also this inner
problem of shame.
If we look around in our world today, we see walls broken down in people's lives. He says in the
next statement – The wall of Jerusalem is broken down. It doesn't take much looking around in
our world to see brokenness. People discouraged, depressed, anxious. We see people with broken
marriages, a divorce, or a child who's going astray, or a physical problem, disease, or some kind
of a challenge with work. There's bad things that are going on in the lives of people. There's
those structures, but then there's the interior thing that's going on. It's the shame that people
experience also in their hearts. And we need a building to take place. Not just a building of walls;
we need a building of the people's hearts. The walls represented security and peace. People need
that today. And as we look around in our world today, we see brokenness at every turn. In fact,
we even can look inside and see the brokenness in our own hearts.
Nehemiah is going to hear this news and when he does, this mission-oriented view of life is
going to start to develop inside of his heart. In fact, there are three parts of this mission-oriented
view of life I want to share with you. The first one, I'm going to call this a godly burden. You can
write that on the side of your page near this verse, verse 4. It says – As soon as I heard these
words (just feel his pain here) I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting
and praying before the God of heaven. He just he has this godly burden.
We need that. Because our world is hurting. We need to have a godly burden. It can be very easy.
When you see brokenness here and problems here. The first thing many people do is they
complain. They complain about the leadership, they complain about the food, they complain
about the living conditions. Complaining, complaining, complaining. It's one thing to complain
and it's another thing to be part of the solution. Nehemiah says, “God, what are you doing here? I
want to be part of the solution.” There's brokenness all around us. We don't want to succumb to
the temptation of complaining. But then there's this other temptation we have of apathy. Oh,
there's another shooting? Oh well. Oh well, the war continues. You know, behind every one of
those disasters and traumas that take place in life, there are real people. Real people suffering,
real people hurting. Every time you pass a homeless person on the side of the road, “oh there's
another homeless person,” there is a real person there that's hurting. Every time we talk to other
people, whether it's at work, in our neighborhood, at home, wherever we are, we can look past
the facade that's there and we can see the brokenness, the broken walls, the feelings of shame
that exists. And when we do, our heart starts to weep. We pray and we fast before the Lord and
we say, “God, how can I be part of the solution?” That is so strategic for Nehemiah because the
compass changes in his life. He gives up the comfort zone of his cushy job and he does
something that's very difficult in his life.
I would say that sometimes we gravitate toward our comfort zones. Things start to be kind of
cushy in our life and maybe God wants to move us into what I call a godly discontent. I am not
happy with where I am right now. God wants to do something more in my life. And when He
does then the compass changes and we develop this mission-oriented view of life. You know,
young people, some of your friends have a mission. They believe their mission in life is to have
fun. They believe their mission in life is to get to the next level of the video game. But that's not
just for young people. There are a lot of adults who my next vision is to get the next $1,000 in
my bank account or the next billion dollars, wherever you are. Because there's a mirage there that
says if I pursue this, I'm going to have happiness.
So if I were to draw this out, we have this mission-oriented view of life and I'm going to show
you three things that are under it. But there's a something above that I'm not telling you about
yet. There's something above that. It has to do with fulfillment, and purpose, and meaning,
satisfaction, happiness in the sense of a real happiness. I'm going to talk about that in a minute,
but not yet. That's going to come at the end of the sermon because it comes in the end of our
passage. I'm going to tell you what that is. But right now, Nehemiah is developing this
mission-oriented view of life. I hope God is doing something, stirring you in that area that I just
can't be content where I am now. God is doing something in my heart saying I need to do
something more. And I don't know what that looks like for you. But the first thing we see under
this mission-oriented view of life is he gets his godly burden.
The second thing we see is that he develops this…I'm going to call it an honest prayer. An honest
prayer before the Lord. Because we know that we can't do anything without God's grace and
coming to Him. It's His grace that allows us to do anything so we don't just take a burden and run
with it. We ask for God's grace to work in our lives, to take us where we need to be. So he starts
the prayer this way: And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God. Oh I love
that word awesome there. It’s still used today. That was an awesome pizza. Or that was an
awesome show I watched. No, no, no. This is a different awesome. This is like God, you are so
awesome. So he first draws attention to the greatness of God. The great and awesome God, who
keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.
He goes on to talk about let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your
servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants,
confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. But notice he
makes it personal. Even I and my father's house have sinned.
I just think this is so helpful. It's an honest prayer. It's an honest prayer that says, “Lord, I'm
broken down. It's everybody else's fault.” That isn’t what he says. You know sometimes in a
marriage relationship a person will say, “Just change my spouse. If my spouse would change, I'd
be fine.” We call that a victim mentality. If everybody else would change, I'd be fine. You know
if you're in a struggling marriage, you want to do this. You want to draw a circle around yourself
and then fix everything in the circle. That's what Nehemiah is doing. He's saying, “Lord, we have
sinned.” It starts with God, you're so big. Secondly, we are so small. When we recognize that
God is big, and we are small, we're setting the stage for a mission-oriented view of life because
God wants to do something big.
And then notice down further he says I'm going to draw attention, Lord, to your commands. I
want to go to your word and I want to see your promises. So he says – If you return to me and
keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven,
from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name
dwell there. Wow. He draws on the attention of God.
And notice the last thing in verse 10. He says – They are your servants and your people, whom
you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. Now I want you to note strong
hand there because it is the strong hand of God that's guiding our lives and we want that in our
hearts. So he's talking about the strong hand of God presented there.
This is really interesting. Notice as Nehemiah is concluding his prayer, he uses the word today,
which brings me to the third thing. If we’re going to have a mission-oriented view of life,
number one, we're going to have this godly burden. Number two, we're going to have this honest
prayer. And thirdly, we're going to take advantage of opportunities. I’d write that down. Take
advantage of opportunities. Nehemiah says – O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of
your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success
to your servant today. You get the impression today means today, right? And grant him mercy in
the sight of this man (that's the king). Today. You get the impression it's going to happen right
away, but it doesn't.
Let me take you into chapter 2 because we want to see what the opportunity looks like. Because
now we go to another month. It says – In the month of Nisan. That's not a car; that's a month
here. And he says – In the month of Nissan, which happens to be March/April. That's four
months away. See, I think we need to get up every day and we say, “Lord, today would you use
me? Lord, I know there are people unsaved out there, their walls are broken down, they need the
grace of God to come into their lives, they need the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ to change
them so their walls can be built up. Lord, I pray today that you would give me an opportunity.”
And every day we pray, “Today, Lord, is this the day that you want me to share with my
coworker? Lord, would you give me an opportunity to share with my neighbor? Lord, would you
give me an opportunity to share with my child or my spouse? Lord, give me an opportunity to
rebuild the walls. I'm praying today, Lord.” But it doesn't happen for four months. Fascinating.
That's why I say need to take advantage of the opportunity. Watch the opportunity unfold here.
He says – In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before
him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. Because
he knew, you don't be sad in the presence of the king. Because he would just off you and get
another happy person in there. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are
not sick?” This doesn't look like a biological problem going on here. It doesn't look like you're
sick. There must be something going on deeper inside of your heart. So he says – “This is
nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. Isn't that how it happens? You
pray for opportunities. And when the opportunities come, we go, “Uh oh. Here we are.” So he
prays for this opportunity.
I was very much afraid. I said to the king, “Let the king live forever!” That’s always a good thing
to say when you don’t know what else to say. “Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the
place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the
king said to me, “What are you requesting? Or what can I do for you? Or what do you need?”
Oh my goodness. This is an opportunity of a lifetime for Nehemiah who has this godly burden,
he has this honest prayer, he’s waiting for an opportunity and here it is. Someone says to you,
“Aren't you one of those disciples of Jesus?” Are you ready? Or do you say like Peter did, “Oh,
no. I don't even know that guy.” This is the opportunity to share. And so when the opportunity
comes, you want to be ready.
So what does he do first? Do you see that. When that takes place, it says – So I prayed to the God
of heaven. This is what you call one of those arrow prayers. You know, young people, you can
study and study and while you're studying, you're saying, “Lord, help me remember all this stuff.
There's so much stuff here, Lord, I can’t do all this by myself. Please help me remember these
things.” So that's what you do in your study time. But you get to the test and you say, “God, here
it is. Help me out.” This is the arrow prayer that we send out to the Lord.
There are eleven prayers in the book of Nehemiah. We're going to look at each one of them as we
go through the thirteen chapters. He says – So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the
king (pretty bold guy here), “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your
sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers' graves, that I may rebuild it.” So first
thing is, would you give me a leave of absence because I want to go rebuild? Rebuild. I want to
be part of the solution. I want to go there and I want to help build these walls.
This idea of rebuilding is powerful here. The idea is taken into the New Testament. Jesus grew
up in the home of a carpenter, maybe he learned how to build something in that regard. But Jesus
uses the same terminology when He looks at Peter and He says – Upon this rock (speaking of
Peter’s faith), I will build my church. See the vehicle that God has chosen in this particular age to
reach people and to rebuild their lives is God's church. That's what He's chosen. It's the church.
Even all of us are imperfect people. God has chosen the church to be this place where people
grow and develop. And Jesus says, “I'm going to build my church.” Well Paul takes the same
idea as he's talking about leadership in the New Testament, he says, here's all these leaders; it's
their job to equip the saints for the work of ministry so that the body of Christ may be built up.
That means that the building up isn't just outside the walls. Sometimes the building up is inside
of our own hearts. We come to the Lord, we come to church, we come to the presence of God so
that He can do the rebuilding.
Maybe you're here today and you're saying, “Man, I do need some rebuilding. I got some real
struggles in my heart, some pain in my life that I don't know if I'll ever overcome this.” And God
wants to just rebuild in your life. Peter takes the idea up and he says that we're all like living
stones that when put together we create this edifice God calls the church. We're like living
stones. The idea is that God is building in each one of us. We're not perfect people, but we're
growing and God wants to pour His grace on each one of us and rebuild us in our lives so that we
can turn around and contribute to others. We can have this mission-oriented view of life.
So the first thing he asks is, hey, would you please let me go back and rebuild? And the king said
to me (the queen sitting beside him – that seems to be an important part of the decision-making
process; probably Nehemiah orchestrated that), “How long will you be gone, and when will you
return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. And I said to the king
(because he’s really bold he’s going to ask for two more things), “If it pleases the king, let letters
be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through
until I come to Judah.” He wants a security detail. He wants official papers so that he will be
able to go over there. That’s a pretty big thing to ask for. And then he asks for another thing. He
says – “And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make
beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house
that I shall occupy.” He's asking the king to finance this whole thing. Well that's a pretty bold
request that Nehemiah has.
But Nehemiah has this burden. And when he pours his heart out before the king, the king says,
“How can I help? What can I do?” Nehemiah says, “Let me tell you,” and he gives him these
three things that he can do. Now Nehemiah has this mission-oriented view of life. It changes the
compass. I'm not suggesting Nehemiah was just going after pleasure by living in the king’s
palace. But there can be a tendency for us to enter into a comfort zone of our lives and say, “Hey,
I'm fine,” and we become immune to the needs that are out there.
I believe God wants to change our focus. He wants to move the compass in every one of our
lives. Maybe you have a mission-oriented view of life, but maybe the mission has grown stale,
and it's time to reorient it. Maybe the mission that God has for you is to do something new in
your life than you've seen before. God wants to work in our hearts. He wants to do amazing
things. That's the mission. But you know why we do that? It's because we need the thing at the
top, the fulfillment. The things we look for in life are really there. The satisfaction, the
fulfillment all come in this because, well, let's just read the last verse. Because this is what we all
want in our lives. And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon
me. That's really what we want in our lives.
We want the good hand of God to be on us. As we're going through life – “Lord, I just want your
good hand.” Circle the word good and write the word tov. It's a Hebrew word. It's a beautiful
Hebrew word. It means goodness. It's such a rich word that we'll see it over and over again in our
Hebrew Bible. The word tov. Ah, it's just that's what we need at the top, the goodness of God.
And that comes as He rebuilds us with His grace, as we trust Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
I just want to invite you today, if you've never accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, I want to
encourage you to join the adventure. We’re on an adventure to allow God to rebuild our own
hearts. It starts with that commitment that says, “Yep, I need this. Yeah, I'm going to be honest
before God. I'm a sinner. I need a Savior. I want God's grace to come into my life. I want to do
the work inside of my heart. That's what I need. That's what I want in my life.” And then, hey,
join with us as we continue to build together.
I call this whole series “Building Together,” partly because it's the joining of our hands to build
and do the work, but God wants to build in each one of our lives together. So as we fellowship
together, as we work together, as we share, we have a mission. God is in the middle of that in our
lives, and we want Him to have His way in our lives and in our hearts. Amen? Amen.
[PRAYER] Heavenly Father, I ask for your grace to work in our lives. Lord, we need you. We
are so small, we are so weak. And you are awesome. Lord, we just ask that you’d show us how
we can be part of your plan. Reveal to us ways that we can contribute to what you're doing. Lord,
we thank you for the church, the vehicle through which you're working today. Give us wisdom, give us courage, and give us the ability to step out and trust you as we build together. We ask this
in Jesus’ name, amen.
