If you will turn in your Bible to the Old Testament book of Nehemiah where we are going to look together at this Old Testament book that perhaps some of you have not looked at before, or maybe it's been a long time, it's on page 503 of your Pew Bible if you want to pull a Bible out from underneath your chair and find Nehemiah chapter 1. I'm going to read just chapter 1 before we, as we begin, but then in a little while, I'll also read chapter 2 verses 1 through 10. So it's kind of a long text this morning, but I hope that when you leave here today you'll have a better handle on Nehemiah. And I want you to leave your Bible open, if you will, because we're going to take some time today to go through chapter 1 and then the first part of chapter 2. Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 1, listen carefully as I read God's word, says the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hekaliah. Now it happened in the month of Kizlev in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the capital, or the citadel, rather, 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. 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, oh 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 utter most parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I've 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. Oh 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 cut bearer to the king, the word of the Lord. Let's pray together. Father, thank you for loving us so much as to give us the Bible, to read, to study, to learn more from you. We pray, Father, that your Holy Spirit will come, that he will speak through this portion of your word to us and that Lord you might change our hearts in cline us to know you, in cline us, Lord, to obey you, to follow you and we pray that your blessing would be upon our time together, that you'll equip us to go out from here to be more of the representatives of Christ that you've called us to be. We pray this in Jesus name. I'm in. It's good to be back. My wife and family and I and all of our grandchildren were on vacation last week. Had a great time. We went to St. Augustine Beach for a week or so and just enjoyed our time together there. So it's good to be back. Problem is when we got back, I was on my back porch and looking out on our backyard and noticed behind me water streaming out of the bathroom door that is our master bathroom. So in my wife's side at the same time she huddled out Mike and sure enough we had a flooded bathroom. Sometimes while we were gone the one of the faucets apparently broke the pipe broke and leaked out all over our bathroom floor into our bedroom into our bedroom closet and so we had to go through all that again. Once again a reminder that if something is going to go wrong it probably will. You've heard that principle right? Maybe you've not not ever heard this one. I guess I'm going to coin it. I think life is sort of like a really tight fitted sheet. You know what I mean? Just when you get one corner under the mattress, the opposite corner pops off. You know what I mean? Just when it seems like you have life figured out things fall apart. How many of you have experienced that lately? Probably a number of you. Think about what happened in Thailand last week. Boy that's a big example of that, right? In case you missed it a team of young soccer players decided to explore a cave after a practice game one day and they wound up getting trapped two and a half miles in by heavy rains that flooded the cave and made it impassable. Little did they guess that that would happen when their little short hike turned into an 18-day race for survival. Fortunately an international team of volunteers and Thai Navy SEALs got all 13 people out of the cave in the nick of time and other than a few light injuries and lung infections, the boys in their coach are happy and healthy today. Now that's an extreme example but you know what I'm talking about. Things fall apart in our lives every day in some way big or small. You get an unexpected bill from the hospital. Your dog dies. Your mom and dad unload on you for something you didn't do. Your boyfriend breaks up with you. It's 100 degrees outside and your AC breaks down. Your computer crashes. You get a flat tire while you're on vacation and on and on. These things don't begin to compare however with what some of you deal with every day in terms of grief, chronic illness, chronic pain, depression, loneliness, a prodigal child and things like that. What do you do when things fall apart? How do you react? Do you say praise God? I love to suffer. Probably not or do you say a few choice four letter words and kick the cat and wonder why you ever woke up in the morning or probably something in between those two extremes? Well today and next Sunday we're going to look at the Old Testament book of Nehemiah for wisdom about what to do when things fall apart. This is actually Nehemiah's memoir, his story about what he did when things were literally falling down all around him. It's an amazing story of what God can do through ordinary people in a time of crisis. But ultimately it's an amazing story of an amazing savior who comes to the aid of his helpless, distressed and broken people. So what I'd like to share with you this morning is four things that you'll see can put it on your outline, a bad report, a believing prayer, a bold plan and a benevolent savior. So the letter B today. Let's start with a bad report. Look with me again at verses one through three. It says that in verse one these are the words of Nehemiah and he says now it happened in the month of Kislev that corresponds to our November as I was in Susa the citadel, the capital city of Persia, that Hanani one of my brothers came with certain men from Judah and I asked him about the Jews who escaped. Now I'll tell you more about that in a little while, who had survived the exile and concerning Jerusalem. And here's the bad report, verse three. The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame Hanani told him. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. Now maybe you're confused about what's going on. So let me spend a moment or two to give you a little history. The date is 445 BC. The place as I said is Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. It's located in modern Iran. Nehemiah was a Jew. He worshiped the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, but he was born and raised in Persia because about a century and a half before this Nehemiah's ancestors, who were the people of Judah, had been invaded and they'd been deported to this area by the Babylonians. We call this event the exile. You've probably heard of that. Babylonian armies under King Nebuchadnezzar, entered Jerusalem in roughly 586 BC. They destroyed the city. They burned down the temple. They killed many of Judah's leaders and took about a third of Judah's population back to Babylonia with them. Tens of thousands of Jews were marched in chains to their new home in Mesopotamia. Nehemiah's relatives were among those exiles. Decades went by. Then in 539 BC, Cyrus the Great, King of Persia, conquered Babylonia and established the Persian Empire. Cyrus instituted some new policies and one of them was a decree that the expats should return to their homeland and rebuild their temple. And you can read about that in the previous book here in the Old Testament, the book of Ezra, chapter 1. So in several waves, thousands of Jews left Mesopotamia and returned to Jerusalem. And just as Cyrus had ordered, they rebuilt the temple. It was finished in 516 BC, 70 years after the Babylonian invasion. Happy days were here again, you might think, but not really. Because you see a lot had changed in Judah while the exiles were in Babylonia. Their country had shrunk to about 800 square miles, of which about a third was dry and sandy and nearly uninhabitable desert. And worse than that, they were now surrounded by unfriendly neighbors like to the north was Samaria and their governor was a man by the name of San Ballet who you're going to meet next week, so hold on to that name. Their governor, San Ballet, hated the Jewish people and so did all of the Samaritans. They saw them as a political threat and they wanted nothing more than to make their lives miserable. So Jerusalem had a temple, great, but not much else. Resources where minimal land was scarce, the economy was fragile, and worst of all the walls that had stood around Jerusalem were in ruins, leaving the city vulnerable to attack. The people of God went a state of malaise. Things had fallen apart. Enter Nehemiah. Who was Nehemiah? Well, according to verse 11, the last verse I read, he was cup bearer to the king. Now I'll tell you more about that in a moment. The king was art exerxes the first. He was the most powerful man on earth at that time. You see, Nehemiah's family had chosen to stay in Persia instead of return to Jerusalem with their fellow Israelites. Cup bearer. What kind of a job was that for Nehemiah? When you think of Cup bearer, don't think butler. Think head of homeland security. It was Nehemiah's job to make sure the king's food had not been poisoned by traders. But more than that, Nehemiah served as an advisor to the king. Some have even called Nehemiah the prime minister of Babylonia. He was a devout and trustworthy man in the court of art exerxes the first. Verse 3 says that one day, Hanani, who was one of Nehemiah's brothers, came to him and gave him this bad report about the state of things back home. The remnant who had survived the exile, he said, is in great trouble and shame. The wall is broken down, its gates have been destroyed by fire. So what's Nehemiah going to do? I had to put myself in his shoes and ask myself, what would I do if I were in a situation like that? Probably the same thing I do when I read about the latest crisis in Washington or wildfires out west or those soccer players trapped in the cave in Thailand. I figure I can't do anything about that. So I just sort of put it aside and I go on with my life. That's what I would do if I had been Nehemiah but Nehemiah didn't do that. Instead, his instant response to the distress back in Jerusalem was prayer. So let's move from a bad report to a believing prayer, verses 4 through 11. Look at verse 4. He says, as soon as I heard these words, that is the words from his brother, I sat down and wept and mourned for days and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. There's a saying you might have heard, if there's no burden on the heart, there's no prayer on the lips. Well, Nehemiah had a burden. He owned the desperation of his people. It was his burden, not just theirs. His heart broke over the plight of his countrymen. So prayers were on his lips. This prayer really deserves a sermon all by itself and perhaps one day we'll come back to it. But let me just highlight a few things that stick out to me in verses 4 through 11. He begins its prayer with adoration in verse 5. And then from there, he moves to intercession in verse 6. And then to confession, which is what I was talking to the children about, the dental floss of this passage in verse 7. We have acted, he says, very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments and statutes and rules that you command it. And then Nehemiah does something that I think is very instructive. He prays God's word back to him in verses 8 through 10. He says, remember, God, remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses. Such an important thing in prayer to take the very words of scripture and pray them back to God. Look, God, this is what you've said. And then finally, the prayer ends in verse 11 on a note of very specific supplication. Oh, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant. And he says, grant him mercy in the side of this man. Who is this man that he's talking about? None other than art exerxes the first. As you will soon find out. There's so much more I could say about Nehemiah's prayer, but the point is here that when things are falling apart inside you or around you, the first thing to do is pray. Seems so obvious, right? Seems like something we should do, but so often we don't. We should tell God all about it. Express your feelings to God. Let it out. Yell and scream and complain to God if you want to. It's all right. That's what Nehemiah did. And so did so many people throughout the whole Bible. You read about Jacob wrestling with God. You read about Moses pleading with God. You read about David and his songs. You read about the prophets who often pled with God and wrestled and prayed and shouted to God and Paul likewise. And so I might add did Jesus. Paul his heart out often to God in prayer, recognizing his great need. Listen, it might take a long time before you get an answer. Nehemiah prayed, according to verse 6, day and night for four months. The reason I know that is he started in Kislev, the month of November and apparently didn't finish until Nissan, which is the first verse of chapter 2, which corresponds to our month of March. So we prayed in day and night for months before anything started to move. And you may pray longer than that. You may never get quite the response that you're hoping your prayers get, but if you want to see things change, start with prayer. Why? Well, it's because Jesus said, apart from me, that is him, you can do nothing. Apart from his power, his work in your life, you can do nothing. And the way to access that power, his working, his spirit is prayer. Prayer is when you stop trusting in yourself and you put your problems in the hands of the one who can do things a whole lot better than you can. I know you know this, but so many times, prayer is the last thing we do, not the first. O Lord, let your ear be attentive, says Nehemiah, and let your eyes be open to hear my prayer that I pray before you day and night. May that be the constant refrain of our hearts. We've seen a bad report and a believing prayer, but Nehemiah's prayer led the way to a bold plan. And here's where I want to read chapter two, verses one through ten. So look at that with me, please, chapter two, verse one. In the month of Nissan, in the 20th year of King art exerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and I gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, why is your face sad seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart. Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad? When the city, the place of my father's graves lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire. And then the king said to me, what are you requesting? So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king, 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 father's graves, that I may rebuild it. And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, 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, 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. And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he may give me timber to make beams, 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. And the king granted me what I asked for the good hand of my God was upon me. And then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters. Now the king had sit with me, officers of the army and horsemen. But when San Ballet the Hora Knight and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.
Again, the word of the Lord. Nehemiah's plan is to go to Jerusalem and spearhead the rebuilding of the wall. But he needs certain things from King Art Exercise. So he brings a laundry list before the key. That's why I call this a bold plan. He wants the king to put his official stamp of approval on the rebuilding project. And he wants a leave of absence, and he wants safe passage on his journey, and he even wants the king to ask the powers that be in Judah to provide timber for the protection of the temple for a governor's mansion, and for the wall around the city of Jerusalem.
Hmm, asking foreigners to pay for the building of a wall. Where have I heard that before?
Just saying, so see this was not just a bold plan. This was a ridiculous plan. And that's why Nehemiah says at the end of verse two, I was very much afraid. Literally, the Hebrew says, it, a terrible fear came over me. Why? Why was Nehemiah so afraid? Three reasons. Number one, Nehemiah was asking something that was a huge risk. He was taking a huge risk approaching the king with any kind of request at all. In his culture, in that day, subjects had to approach their king with great caution and deference. Persian works of art that you can see in pictures and in museums show people with their hand over their mouth in the king's presence so that they wouldn't defile the king with their breath. Secondly, you were supposed to keep your feelings to yourself and always be cheerful in the presence of the king. But Nehemiah was not cheerful, was he? He was sad. And he says, why shouldn't I be sad, king? Because verse three, Jerusalem, the place of my father's graves, Zion, the city of God lies in ruins. And its gates destroyed by fire. And third reason that Nehemiah was so fearful, most significant of all, it was this same king art exerxes who had earlier heard about the Jews rebuilding their wall and ordered them to stop. Now you wouldn't know that from this passage, but reading if you find out in Ezra, look at chapter 4, verse 17 and following and you'll find out. So here comes Nehemiah basically asking king art exerxes to veto his previous decree and support the building of the wall. No wonder. No wonder Nehemiah shoots that arrow prayer up to heaven in verse 4. Probably says silently, Lord, change his heart. Change his heart. I need help, God. I'm imagining that opening scene in the last Jedi where Ray is on Oktu and she's standing before Luke Skywalker asking him to help the resistance. Or older movie, I'm thinking of Dorothy and the 10 men and the scarecrow and the cowardly lion standing in front of the great and the powerful eyes asking for Dorothy to get home to Kansas. But unlike Skywalker and the Wizard of Oz, king art exerxes says yes to Nehemiah. Verse 8 says that the king granted me what I asked for the good hand of my God was upon me. Four months of prayer had turned into four minutes of meeting with the king that could not have gone any better. All of Nehemiah's wishes were granted and then some. For the next 12 years then Nehemiah is the no longer the cup bearer of the king but he is the governor of Judah bringing revitalization to the city of Jerusalem.
Earlier I asked you how do you react when things go haywire, when things fall apart. Here is where we see what Nehemiah did. He risked his career. He risked a lot of his time and his very life for us suffering people. And I want to ask how he did that. What was his motivation? How in the world would Nehemiah do this? And the answer is in chapter 2, verse 10, the very last verse I read says that when sand ballad whom you will find out more about next week, when sand ballad and Tobiah heard this, that is Nehemiah is coming back to Judah, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. Listen to that again, someone had come to seek the welfare, the shalom, the bounty, the prosperity, the favor, the good of the Israelites. Nehemiah you see was compelled by love. He loved his people. He loved his God and he couldn't bear to think of the city that he loved lying in ruins. Someone once said through our greatest pains come our greatest passions. Nehemiah's pain over things falling apart in Jerusalem created a passion for the welfare of his people. That's why he mourned and fasted and prayed for four months for Israel. That's why he was sad in the presence of the king. That's why he asked for such big things from art exerxes. That's why he traded in the comforts of home for an uncertain future in a dry, dispirited place surrounded by enemies. So be like Nehemiah, right? Is he the hero of this story? I hope you know, no he's not. I hope you know that's not how we teach the Bible around here. Nehemiah is really not the main character. See, we're not supposed to read the Bible that way to read about stories in the Old Testament and say, now let's go be like, no, let's go be like David. Let's go be like Nehemiah. No, the Scriptures are a revelation of someone much much greater than Nehemiah. This passage is not just about a bad report and a believing prayer and a bold plan. It's about a benevolent savior. See, overarching this story is a bigger story about a God who has come to set his people free. This book, this book of Nehemiah is really not so much about Nehemiah as it is about Jesus. Nehemiah you see is a type or a picture or a preview of Jesus Christ. Now, why do I sell that? We'll think about it. weren't we like the people of Judah before Jesus came to our rescue? They were, it says in chapter 1, verse 3, in great trouble and shame. Their wall was broken down, they were defenseless, exposed to and harassed by enemies. They were discouraged and helpless and hopeless. But so were we. Ephesians 2 says that we were dead and our trespasses and sins separated from Christ, having no hope and without God in the world. Like the people for whom Nehemiah prayed in chapter 1, we acted very corruptly against God and did not keep the commandments, the statutes and the rules that God commanded through Moses. But unlike Nehemiah, Jesus Christ didn't need somebody to come tell him about our plight. Jesus saw our trouble and our shame. He was with his father in the royal courts of heaven and he saw us in our sin and misery exposed to our enemies and without hope in the world. And when he saw us, he was moved with compassion because we were harassed and helped us like sheep without a shepherd. Just like Nehemiah, Christ interceded for us. He prayed for us just as he's praying for us now in heaven. And in the good plan of God, Jesus left the glories of heaven and came to this world, was born as a baby, grew up as a boy, became a man suffered and died on the cross and rose again from the dead. He took our blame and covered our shame. Jesus traded his perfection for our defection, his righteousness for our rebellion. He took our punishment and gave us favor with God that we might have life and peace and joy and reconciliation with God. Just like Nehemiah, you see, Jesus came to seek our welfare, our shalom, our good, our blessing, our joy. We were redeemed by the power and the strong hand of the God who loved us and gave himself for us. As Paul said in Romans chapter 5, when we were still weak at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Jesus is our benevolent Savior and that's what Nehemiah is all about. He's the hero of this story and I trust he's your hero too. So for those of you who are suffering today, I come back to where we started. Those of you who are feeling light life is falling apart around you or you certainly know someone who feels that way. What do you do with this sermon? Let me leave you with two takeaways. Number one, I want you to believe something this morning. I want you to believe that God sees you in your pain right now. You might feel so very alone, so very forgotten, so very scared. I want you to believe that God sees you in your pain. You are not suffering something that the God of heaven himself does not know about and feel already. Let's go back in the Old Testament. Just you don't have to turn to it. But remember the story of Moses? Remember the Israelites 400 years of slavery in Egypt? God met Moses at the burning bush and he said to him these words right here that's on the screen. I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings and I've come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey. I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. See, the deliverance from Egypt began with God in heaven knowing and seeing the feeling, the pain that they had been experiencing. I don't know why God took 400 years to deliver the Israelites. Don't ask me to explain that. That seems hard. I don't know why he decided to wait 100 years after the decree of Cyrus to send the Amaya to Jerusalem and I don't know why God is waiting to answer your prayer, to heal your body, or mend your broken heart. I don't know. Sometimes God in his wisdom does the strangest things. But I know that it doesn't mean that he doesn't love you.
The cross of Jesus Christ is proof. It's proof that God is with you and your suffering, feels your sorrow, walks with you through your pain, and one day we'll deliver you. Do you know, by the way, do you know what the name Nehemiah means? In Hebrew, it's Nehemiah, God comforts. He wants to comfort you in this book by speaking to you in your pain and saying, I see. I know. I'm aware. So hang on dear friend. Hang on. Second, take away. I want you to do something. I want you to dare to get involved in the suffering of other people. This is a big ask, but it's coming not from me. It's from God. God is asking us this morning to get involved in the suffering of other people. Find somebody else who feels that life is falling apart and follow Nehemiah's example. Start with prayer and stay with prayer for a while until God begins to lay a burden on your heart. Consider fasting like Nehemiah did. Confess your sins and the sins of others and then ask God to show you what to do. There's got to be some broken down walls around you at work on your campus, in your neighborhood, in Orlando or some other part of the world. There's got to be somebody you know or a group of some ones who are to use the words in chapter 1 in great trouble and shame. There's poverty and homelessness and injustice. Broken families and struggling kids and lonely people and brand new college students all around you. How might God want to use you? Your family, your Bible study, your community group perhaps to be Nehemiah's for hurting people. Somewhere I think through this passage, God is calling us to make a difference. We can't do everything but we can do something. You don't have to have extraordinary gifts. You already have a great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments. That's the God Nehemiah believed in. He believed in a God of great power and great compassion. It moved Him to prayer, to repentance, to faith and to action. May it be so with you and me as well. Let's pray. Think about just for a moment before I pray while your eyes are closed. Think about where you were when Jesus found you. What was it like when you were lost? What was it like when the foundations of your life had fallen apart and the enemy was in control? Some of you have quite a story of that. Thank God for sending Jesus. Think about the people around you this morning. Who do you know who's suffering today? Who needs hope? Who needs help? Could God be speaking through this passage to move you to prayer and to faith and to action? Jesus, we want to thank you for coming to our rescue when we were without God and without hope in the world. You saw us and you came at the cost of your life. You pitied us and loved us. We want your love to compel us, Lord. So Holy Spirit, give us a burden for others who are suffering. Help us to pray. Help us to plan. Use us as a church, as a vessel through whom you love our neighborhoods, our campus, our city and our world, and we'll praise you for it in Jesus' name. Amen.