Nehemiah 1
Turn in your copy of God’s word
to the book of Nehemiah chapter one. Tonight we’ll look at one,
one through 11. And though it appears in your
copies of God’s word, we’re starting a new book. Remind you that Ezra
and Nehemiah back in the day, And the Hebrew Bible were one
book. They got separated somewhere
down the line, but it’s best to take them as one book. A period
of a little over 100 years. Remember in the year 538, Cyrus,
the king of Persia sent Israel or Judah and
Benjamin back to Jerusalem, back to Judea to rebuild the temple
and to rebuild the city. There was a second wave of exiles.
So 538, 458, that was the wave of exiles that came with Ezra. And now a third wave is going
to come with Nehemiah in about the year 445. So we’re pushing
a hundred years. Nehemiah is going to be the governor
of Jerusalem a couple times, and then he’ll go back to service
in Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. So let’s give our attention
to God’s Word. This is Nehemiah chapter 1, beginning
at verse 1. The words of Nehemiah, the son
of Hakaliah. Now it happened in the month
of Kislev in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the capital, 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 with those who 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 you’re dispersed be under the farthest skies,
I will gather them from there 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. 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 cupbearer to the king. Amen. The word of the living
God for us. We are his children and by his
grace, he’ll feed us. Well, Nehemiah was a man of two
courts. He was obviously the cup bearer
of Artaxerxes. Can you remember when the kids
were little and they would hand us things? They would hand us
their cups. and we felt honored to be their cup bearers, right?
The little sippy cups with the tops. I think his job was a little
bit more majestic. He would have carried the grand
royal chalice. Perhaps he would have tasted
the cup to make sure it wasn’t poisoned first. But in the court
of Artaxerxes, Nehemiah was the one who was probably physically
the closest to the king, the great king of Persia. And so
in this court he lived, in this court he worked, in this court
he followed protocol. And in this court, as we’ll see
in the coming weeks, he feared and reverenced the king, but
was also held in high esteem. And so Nehemiah was a man of
certainly the court of Susa, the court of Persia, but he was
also, and I think we would all agree, more importantly, he was
a man of the court of the heavenly places. He desired, his heart
leaned toward, his mind went to. In fact, his prayers went
up into the court of the heavenly places, the court of the king
of kings. He was a cup bearer to Artaxerxes,
but he was a burden bearer to the great God of the heavens
and the earth. And so while Nehemiah was living
in Susa and all the opulence and all the splendor of that
earthly kingdom, his heart hurt for home. As I said a few moments
ago, it’s about the year 445 BC. So it’s what, 93 years, 95
years since Israel first returned to the promised land. And he’s
going to end up leading the third wave of Israelites back. The
first wave under Zerubbabel, the second wave under Ezra. And
now this third wave that we’ll see in the coming chapters. Well,
his brother, I assume it’s his real brother, not just an ancestor
or a brother in Christ, as we might say, his brother returns
with a group that have made a pilgrimage 900 miles back to the promised
land. And he says, what’s the news?
And the news is of two things. It’s of the people and it’s of
the place. It’s of the people, the remnant.
It’s of the people, the ones who have escaped exile. It’s
of the people, those who have survived the exodus, the exile. But it’s also of the place, the
city of Zion. It’s the city that the Lord loves. It’s in our own language. It’s
the church. It’s the place where God dwells
and he is worshiped. So a couple of things pop up
in our passage tonight that I think have good lessons for us. We
don’t want to look at a passage like this and say, well, there’s
Nehemiah. What did he do? I should do it. But sometimes
that is helpful. I think a lot of people look
to the book of Nehemiah and they say, what are the lessons on
leadership? If you lead like Nehemiah, you’ll
build a wall. I heard that one a good number of times. Perhaps
it would be more important to look at Nehemiah and say, how
does he pray? And that’s what we want to think of tonight.
Well, first he has a concern for Zion verses one through four. Show us how greatly concerned
for the city of God, the city of David. Remember that in 586,
after about two or three series of deportations of the Southern
tribe of Judah, that would be Judah and Benjamin, the people
that lived in Jerusalem and its vicinity, they were exiled by
the Babylonians, deported out of Jerusalem. And as Jeremiah
reports in the book of Lamentations, they laid the city bare. They
vandalized it. They destroyed it. They broke
down the walls. They burned the wooden gates.
They took 500 years of wonderful construction and restoration.
They took David’s great city that Solomon really finished
off well. And they, they butchered it. They burned it. They destroyed
it. They chopped it up, hacked it up, bulldozed it, knocked
it over. And Jeremiah weeps. He writes his lamentations. They
have laid it bare. They have laid the city of God
bare. And so you read in these first
couple verses of Nehemiah, the report from Nehemiah’s brother
and those who’ve been there, the city is in trouble. The city
is a city of shame. It’s broken down. It’s destroyed
by fire. Now, you’ve got to be careful
not to talk bad about people’s towns. But in our day and age,
Motown, Detroit, used to be a great city. Well, it’s on the rise
again. But in recent years, it’s been
a place where even the jackals didn’t want to live. And so we’re
seeing a revival of places like Detroit, Motown. We’re seeing
downtown’s surge again. There’s investment and I guess
the dirty word gentrification and all that goes on. Well, Jerusalem
is the town you don’t want to go to. It’s the burnt out district. It’s the place people used to
go and enjoy. hundred years destroyed now.
And so not only the destruction is there, but the hundred years
of, of rot and over what, 50 years or so, 60 years, the people
of God have been back there trying to make a go of it. And they’ve
slowly built the temple. They slowly built their houses.
They’ve slowly gone out into the fields and say the 15 miles
surrounding Jerusalem. And they’ve made a go of life
there, but they haven’t completed the work. And so the word that
Nehemiah gets back from those who’ve made the pilgrimage is
that the city is a great shame. Who wants to say, I’m from Jerusalem? Who wants to say our God dwells
in the midst of this rubble? It’s not only a shame for the
people of God, it’s a shame for Yahweh. And so question comes
to mind. How often do we express our care
and concern for the church? How often do we express our care
and concern for the people and for the place? It really makes
me, I was gonna say smell with pride, swell with pride. I don’t
think you can smell with pride, swell with pride when we have
a work day and we get a good number show up. It’s really fun
to see the dust flying, the wheelbarrows mulching and rakes. And I remember
last September or so, A hurricane hovered over our state, and we
had every limb from every oak tree covering the place. And
I want to say 20 people, 25 people got out there with rakes, and
we had to clean up every square inch of the property. And we
heaped up piles and piles and piles of broken limbs and leaves. And it was a wonderful thing
to see people come take care of their church building. That’s
a wonderful thing. But more importantly, I think,
are the people. I hear little bits and pieces
of things you do. I don’t know everything that
goes on around here, but sometimes I’ll hear a good bit of it. And
I hear about the cards that get sent, the phone calls that are
made. I hear about your prayers for one another. I hear from
other people that they feel encouraged by being a part of this family.
Yesterday, I was speaking with Becky, who’s not been here in
many weeks now with her leg pain. And she says that there are people
in that church that love me. There’s people in that church.
I don’t even know really who they are, but they love me. They
call me. They write me. They let me know
that they’ve been praying. And perhaps another area of God’s
church we ought to be concerned with the people. Yes, the place.
Yes. But what about her purity and
her doctrine? Just six or so weeks ago, Wayne
and I went to the general synod meeting where generally in the
higher courts of the church, we’re concerned with keeping
the church pure. We’re concerned with keeping
the word of God front and center. We’re concerned to keep our confession
of faith in catechisms intact, not adding to the word or taking
away from the word, keeping our doctrine straight and pure, but
also keeping our order. Us Presbyterians are good at
that. And so it was it was a sweet thing this year to be there and
to see the church upheld in her doctrine when so many we know
are in denominations that seem to be falling apart, even self-destructing. So your care for the church,
the people, the place and her doctrine. This summer in my summer
reading, I picked up a biography of a man who He helped start
the seminary I attended. And a good bit of his life history
was, well, fighting the liberalism in the Southern church. And he
and a couple of guys were famous for meeting in a hotel in Jackson,
Mississippi, and saying the Southern church can’t be saved. This would
have been in the 1960s. The Southern church has turned
past the point of no return, maybe like the Northern church
had done a few decades earlier. And maybe some of you have picked
up the 100th anniversary edition of J. Gresham Machen’s Christianity
and Liberalism. It’s either or. You can’t have
liberal Christianity. There is no such thing. And so
this biography I read told about the faithfulness of several men.
Uh, and then more and more men who, who built up a new denomination,
they built up a new seminary. And we can say is ARPs from that
seminary. Our denomination has largely
been saved from doctrinal impurity and what, what a blessing it
is to have people love the church. And in various ways, some of
us love the place more or the people more or the doctrine more.
It takes all of us working hard to uphold Christ’s name and Christ
reputation. But notice Nehemiah’s concern
for the church. It led him to weep. It led him
to mourn. It led him to fast and it led
him to pray that Almighty God would intervene on behalf of
the beleaguered and beaten up people of God. And I wonder if
we think of the persecuted. I wonder if we think of those
who go to church week by week under duress. I wonder if we
think of those who may come to their building and it’s padlocked,
it’s chained, or perhaps it’s been bulldozed, or perhaps there’s
a guard there waiting for them saying, oh, no, you don’t. What
a blessing it is that we can have a Zion. Maybe we should
be a bit more concerned, especially as our culture encroaches on
her. Well, that’s the first thing,
the concern for Zion. The second is the prayer to God,
prayers to God. You see it in verses five, six,
and 11. And I wanna read each of those,
verse five. I said, oh Lord God of heaven,
the great and awesome God who keeps covenant, who keeps 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. And then jump over verse 11.
This is the end. These are the sort of the bookends
of his prayer. Oh Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer
of your servant. It’s kind of repetitive, isn’t it? To the
prayer of your servants. So other people praying who delight
to fear your name, give success to your servant today and grant
him mercy. in the sight of this man. You know, we like to sing
the little song, uh, take it to the Lord in prayer. Uh, but
sadly are taking things to the Lord in prayer is, well, it’s
one of the last things we do. We like to get busy. Oh, we got
a problem in Jerusalem. Let’s have a fundraiser. Oh,
we got a problem in Jerusalem. Let’s send a missions team. Oh,
we got a problem in Jerusalem. Let’s, well, let’s drum up some
support and do something about it. Why not go to your knees?
Why not seek the Lord’s face and see what he’s already doing
and get involved with that instead of perhaps coming up with our
own plans? You know, a lot of times when
we get to praying, we get to praying because well, all other,
systems that we have have failed, right? It’s come to that. We’ve
got to pray. And so we have the great joy
and the great privilege of doing what one of my favorite hymns
says, approach my soul, the mercy seat where Jesus answers prayer. And I think that hymn brings
to mind the truths of Nehemiah’s prayer. It says in verse five,
oh Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant.
And then it’s a bit repetitive. He keeps steadfast love. His
covenant is his steadfast love. His steadfast love is the love
that’s rooted in his covenant. You can go to God in prayer. Dear God, let it rain today.
Dear God, I ache, heal me. Dear God, so-and-so needs your
grace. Do something. You can pray that way. But one
of the great things you can do when you pray is say, God, you
got no reason to do what I ask. I’m a sinner. I profaned your
name. I’ve not kept your commandments.
I’m a sinner and deserve nothing but your wrath and curse. But
you God, you’re a God of covenant love. You’re a God of steadfast
love and faithfulness. And so on that basis, not the
basis of my unworthiness, but on the basis of who you are and
what you are, who you are and what you’ve promised to do, help,
bless, heal, give comfort, that sort of thing. And so we see
in Nehemiah’s prayer to God, we see his action on his knees. He’s approaching the mercy seat
of God and he’s appealing to his covenant. He’s appealing
to his blood sacrifice. And did you notice the body language
that he requests of God? He says in verse six, let your
ear be attentive. Let your eyes be open to hear
the prayers of your servant that I now pray before you day and
night. for the people, Israel, your servant. You watch body
language, don’t you? If you’re speaking to somebody,
it really ought to be eyeball to eyeball, shouldn’t it? And
maybe some of you who are a little hard of hearing, you turn your
good ear towards them, right? And if you want to let somebody
know you’re listening, you got to cock that eye and turn that
ear, right? That’s how we got to do it these days. But body
language is everything. And you can tell when somebody
is not listening to you. you know, all over the place
looking around. They got their phone out and they’re just not
giving you a lick of attention. Well, Nehemiah is appealing to
something God has already promised to do. You’ll get my ear, you’ll
get my eyes, and you’ll get my care for you. And so he asked
God, his great high priest, show me the body language, show me
that you care. Think of the Lord’s Prayer pretty
often these days. You know, our minds are so distracted,
aren’t they? And you can, well, for me, it’s
on my morning walk. I get down Davis Street, Our
Father Who Art in Heaven, and then the dog’s into something.
And it kind of stops there. And then I get up the next street,
Acock Avenue, where we’re going up the hill. I might get into
Hallowed Be Thy Name, and then the dog’s into something else.
And so I get a little distracted, and then there’s a neighbor to
speak to, or my thoughts wander, wander, wander, whichever. That
kingdom come, and well, something else goes on. A car passes by,
and it gets my, you know, I’m ADD, so it’s not too difficult
to get me off. But use the Lord’s Prayer. It’s very simple. It’s what God
gave us. You wanna pray to God? Pray back
to him. the words he’s already said, and you can’t go wrong
with the Lord’s prayer. And maybe look at the larger
catechism or the shorter catechism, or maybe the Heidelberg or one
of these confessions that explains the Lord’s prayer a little bit.
And it’ll give you some things to add onto it. Our father who
is in heaven. I thank you that you encouraged
me as a child to come to your throne of grace. I thank you
that as a child to a father, I have access to you. You’re the God in heaven, the
God of earth. There’s none like you. Where else do I have in
heaven and earth to go? Ad-lib is probably the wrong
thing, but you can fill in the gaps. It’s a skeleton, a prayer,
and you can add to it and embellish it. That’s probably the wrong
way to put it as well, but you get the idea. And so we can easily
pray to God using the words he’s already given us. Well, there’s
a third thing that Nehemiah teaches us, and it’s something really
important to this prayer. He has concern for Zion, yes.
He prays to God, that’s what we just looked at, but he confesses
sin. And you see it in verses six
through eight. He says at the end of verse six,
He says, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which
we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house
have sinned. Let me stop there for just a
moment. He’s identifying with Israel. Why do we have what we
call a corporate confession of sin every Sunday? It’s the corporate,
the body confession of sin. We confess together as a church
and then we have private confession in the silence of our own hearts
afterwards. But why do we confess our sins
as a body? Why does Nehemiah, confessed sins that happened
decades and centuries ago and he was not even alive. He was
not even a twinkle in his parents’ eyes, we might say. His father
wasn’t even alive. His father’s father wasn’t even
alive. But he says, if Israel sinned, I sinned too. Do we ever
think that way? If the church has sinned and
being faithless or unfaithful to the gospel or inventing new
ways of worship have we ever confess that we’ve been part
of it ourselves. And so confession of sin is very
important. He goes on to say, we have acted
corruptly against you very corruptly and have not kept the statutes,
the commandments, the rules you’ve commanded your servant Moses.
Uh, it’s good to confess our sins before the Lord. It’s good
to do it as a church. It’s good to do it as individuals.
And it’s good not to take a cue from our culture and say, well,
Lord, you put me in these hard circumstances. You know, the
woman you gave to me, she gave me the fruit and I ate of it. It’s not good to blame circumstances.
It’s not good to blame others. It’s not good to say, God, you
know, if you’re offended at my sins, well, really shortcomings,
mistakes, then I’m sorry that you’re offended. Isn’t that the
mess we hear today? We hear that. I’m sorry that
you are offended. That’s no apology. If you’re offended, I’m sorry.
And we just condition and legalese our apologies. And we need to
say it’s our fault. It’s our doing. It’s our responsibility. It’s the mess I’ve made. We do
it individually. We do it corporately. If you’re
a father, if you’re a husband, if you’re a pastor, if you’re
an elder, if you’re a boss, If you’re in a position of maybe
older age or superiority and people are under you, you need
to accept that it’s your fault and you need to confess it and
hate it and forsake it. And notice the language that
he uses about God. We confess the sins which we
have done against you. We have acted corruptly against
you. We have not kept the statutes,
the commandments, the rules that you commanded Moses. These are
against God and his holiness. They are against nothing else
and no one else. And we remember the cute, but
very appropriate words of Lucy, I believe from the lion, the
witch and the wardrobe. She asked about Aslan, is he
good? And the answer is God is good,
but he’s not safe. God is good if you’re covered
under the blood, but he is not safe if you are an unworthy,
unholy person flaunting your sin in front of you. We live in a day where we have
turned things upside down. God is about this big in our
world and disappearing. And we, us, me, I, my, we are
the big personalities. Just, just look at anybody under
about the age of 10 and look at them on a video. I mean, we’re
teaching them to do selfies. We’re teaching them to, you know,
have an audience at a very young age. And it’s I, me, my, it’s
the whole reflective pronoun sort of business. And that’s
what happened to Israel. They became turned in on themselves
and cycles of judges and cycles of prophets came to them and
said, look, God’s not happy with you. You’re worshiping yourselves,
you’re worshiping images, you’re worshiping other gods. And if
you don’t straighten up, you’re going to go into exile. If you
don’t straighten up, I’m going to wipe away your city. I’m going
to take away my presence and you’re going to be carted off,
carried off to a wicked land and to a place where I am not. And so that’s the confession
of sin that Nehemiah brings before God and before us. So he’s concerned
for Zion. He approaches God in prayer.
He confesses sin. The final thing he does is something
I think we could learn a great lesson from. You see it in verses
eight through 10. He pleads the promises of God
and it’s because he knows his Bible. Now, I’m not speaking
of y’all because everything we do here, we do perfectly, right?
We’re good boys and girls. But you know, you go to some
prayer meetings and it’s, dear God, I pray for Aunt Ethel’s
sister’s big toe. And Lord, you know, we’ve told
her a hundred times to wear her shoes in the house, but she just
won’t do it. And perhaps you can do something,
Lord. And we just ramble on and on endlessly about big toes and
Aunt Ethel and whatever. I’m not saying we do that here.
Why not ramble on about things that are in the scripture? Look
at Nehemiah’s prayer. Remember the word, verse eight
says, that you commanded your servant Moses saying, if you’re
unfaithful, I’ll scatter you. If you’re unfaithful, I’ll scatter
you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my
commandments and do them, though you’re dispersed to be under
the farthest skies, I’ll gather them from there and bring them
to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell. See, here
in this passage, Nehemiah is speaking of the time when the
exile is over. God promised through Jeremiah,
he also mentions in Leviticus, I believe it’s chapter 26, Lord,
if we come to our senses, you’ll bring us back. Now, this would
be the way the American would pray for it. Dear God, We’ve
been good boys and girls. We deserve to get to go back.
And you owe us a trip back. And since you’re being so good
and gracious to us, give us a bunch of gold and silver so that we
can have a really good time while we’re there. Isn’t that how we
pray it? And his prayers is different. He prays back to God. Lord, you
said, that if we repented, you would forgive us. Lord, you said
that you would remember your covenants. Lord, you said that
you would not count our sins against us. Lord, you said these
things now act. That’s a whole lot different,
isn’t it? We appeal to God on the basis of what he said. If
you were to read Daniel chapter nine, a prayer that happens somewhere
about the same time as now, perhaps a little earlier, Daniel chapter
nine, he’s on his face praying. He’s on his face confessing the
sins of Israel, but he says, God, you promised. You promised
that when 70 years was over, when the land lied fallow for
all the Sabbath years we broke, you would send us back. You would
take us back. One more example, perhaps. Little
Mary being told by the angel, Jesus is in your womb. And she
breaks out in a prayer, she breaks out in a song, and it’s full
of the scriptures. And so one of the things that
we ought to do is be people of the word so that when we pray,
we’re praying back to God what he’s already said to us. Now, the capstone of this prayer,
Lord, Jerusalem looks ratty. It’s not a fit place to live.
And your name is on its gate. And so if you want your reputation,
if you want your name to be glorious among all the nations, as in
the day when Solomon in all his splendor lived in the palace
and worshiped in the temple, then rebuild the city so that
your name is great and not a shame. Remember there’s a song, I can’t
remember which one it is, it’s probably several of them actually,
where the psalmist says, look, Lord, you can kill me if you
want to, but you don’t get praise from me when I’m dead. You get
more praise when I’m alive. That’s a thing to pray back to
God, Lord, heal me. I’m tired of being sick. I want
to get back to church and I want to be on the front row singing
all six verses as loud as I can or five. And notice what he speaks
of. He speaks of the temple. He speaks
of the place. He speaks of the temple, the
place where God is worshiped and where blood is shed. Excuse
me. He speaks of the atonement and
the mercy seat on earth. And I want to say to you, as
we end our thoughts in this, We have a better way, don’t we?
We have Christ, who is our high priest, who has shut down the
earthly tabernacle. He’s ceased all sacrifices. And
he has been ascended up into heaven and sits behind the torn
curtain. He shut down all these sacrifices. His once and for all sacrifice
has been accepted. And when we pray, we pray to
the high priest who has done the work of atonement. And it’s
because of that work of atonement, we can appeal to God saying,
because of your covenant, your oath, your blood, forgive me,
cleanse me, help me to walk, forgive and cleanse your church
and purifier. Let’s do go to God in prayer.
Lord, help us to see our need to know you, your character,
your actions, your promises, so that when we go to prayer,
Uh, we don’t heap up empty words. We don’t heap up empty phrases
or ramble on about things that are meaningless to you, but we
can, we can praise you because there’s things in the scripture
that tell us you’re praiseworthy. We can appeal to you because
there’s things in the scripture where you tell us because you
love us, you’ll do this or you will do that. So Lord, make us
to know the scriptures and to pray. rich prayers because you
delight to hear your children saying back to you what you’ve
already told us. We pray your blessings now as
we go in the world to serve you in Christ’s name. Amen.