Prayers of Nehemiah – Ch. 4:1-6

I heard the story about a man who took his small son with him to town one day to run some errands. When lunch time arrived, the two of them went to a familiar diner for a sandwich. The father sat down on one of the stools at the counter and lifted the boy up to the seat beside him. They ordered lunch, and when the waiter brought the food, the father said, "Son, we'll just have a silent prayer." Dad got through praying first and waited for the boy to finish his prayer, but he just sat with his head bowed for an unusually long time. When he finally looked up, his father asked him, "What in the world were you praying about all that time?" With the innocence and honesty of a child, he replied, "How do I know? It was a silent prayer."   Our Daily Bread, December 12


We have talked several times lately about the best ways to pray.  Is there a wrong way to pray?  Is there some better ways to pray?  Why do we pray?  How does prayer work?  There are lots of questions about prayer.  How many of you have ever prayed just like the Bible tells you to and still never felt like you got a real answer from God?  It happens to people all the time.


Some people look at how somebody else prays and see that their prayers were answered and so they imitate what that person did and said and still no answer for them.  What’s the deal with that?  I have learned over the years that one of the first steps in forgiving someone is being able to pray for them.  But, oh, those prayers are hard, aren’t they?


“I’m supposed to actually pray for that person who hurt me so bad?  Ok.  Lord, I pray that you would help that person…get run over by a bus.  How’s that?”  Is there anything more difficult that trying to honestly and seriously pray for somebody that has hurt you?  Especially if they are not sorry?  I have found a good starter prayer for those situations.  It’s sort of like training wheels for your prayers for people that have hurt you.


I have learned that it doesn’t hurt too badly and you can honestly pray for most people that God would give them wisdom.  Try that the next time you know you have to pray for somebody you don’t like.  You don’t have to pray for grace or mercy for them just yet.  Just start with wisdom.  You can do that.  Then after a while you can take the training wheels off and really mean it when you ask God to give them other good things.  Pretty soon, you will find that you have started the process of forgiving that person.


“But Todd, what if that person doesn’t ask or even want forgiveness or maybe they don’t even think they did anything wrong?  Do I have to forgive them and pray for them when they have really hurt me?”  Ephesians 4:32 declares, “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” Similarly, Colossians 3:13 proclaims, “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”


I know you are looking for the clause or the loophole that talks about forgiving if they deserve it or want it but that loophole isn’t there.  As a disciple of Christ, you are to forgive just as in Christ God forgave you.  “Ok, ok, Todd, how about when somebody doesn’t just do something to hurt you but they actually do something that hurts the church or even the Kingdom of God?  Then do we have to forgive them and pray for them?”  Well, that’s a great question.  Let’s see what Nehemiah would do in this situation as we continue our focus on the prayers of Nehemiah.


Turn to Nehemiah 4:1-6.  The bulletin says it’s only 1-5 but since when do we pay attention to the bulletin?  As you know, Nehemiah was involved in a most ambitious program to rebuild the huge walls and gates around Jerusalem but it was turning into a bigger project than even he could imagine.  The rubble of the broken, burned and torn down walls was overwhelming.  They didn’t have near enough people and the people they did have weren’t builders.  They were businessmen, shopkeepers, priests and servants and the job they had undertaken was as important as it was overwhelming.


Not only that but the people around them were hurting the cause.  It started out as no big deal to these people.  I’m sure they thought Nehemiah didn’t stand a chance in rebuilding those big walls so at first they didn’t pay much attention.  But here we see that not only have they started making fun of the Jewish people but they are resorting to threats and intimidation.  We will see later that it gets even worse but let’s look at how Nehemiah handles people who are trying to do real harm to the plans and cause of the Lord Himself.

Nehemiah 4:1-6 says, “When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews, ² and in the presence of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, “What are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?”  ³ Tobiah the Ammonite, who was at his side, said, “What they are building—even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones!”  ⁴ Hear us, our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. ⁵ Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders.  ⁶ So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart.”

In verses 1-3 we see the problem.  Sanballat was governor of Samaria, just north of Jerusalem and I’m sure he was hoping to annex Jerusalem into his territory but Nehemiah is ruining that plan.  So Sanballat does what any mature adult would do.  He starts to make fun of the Jews.  But look closely and you see that he has the army of Samaria with him.  How’s that for intimidation?  He starts by calling them names.  “Feeble Jews”, he says.  “Will they offer sacrifices?”  That’s making fun of their religion and their faith and even God Himself since they knew sacrifices would be required when it was all over.

Then Sanballat even made fun of their materials when he says, “Can they bring the stones back to life?”  The building-stone of Jerusalem was limestone, which gets softened by fire, losing its durability and that’s honestly not a bad question by Sanballat and I’m sure the Jews recognized the truth of it just adding to their doubts and fears.  That’s the thing about all of these insults.  Just like the insults that hurt you today, the worst ones, even if they are said by some immature bonehead, have some truth to them and so they hurt the worst, right?

There were lots of foxes in that area and when Tobiah joins in with the insults and the mockery by saying that about how even a fox could knock down what they had done so far, don’t you know that image came into the minds of every Jew working on that wall and he wondered if that might not just be true.  How demoralizing that must have been!  How frustrated and humiliated they must have felt!  I’m sure the Israelites must have wanted to quit and just leave.  They probably wanted to call their enemies a few choice words themselves.

But then in verse 4 Nehemiah starts to pray.  Oh, yeah, now we get to the good stuff.  This is what I’m talking about.  How many of you want to pray for your enemies like Nehemiah prayed?  He basically says, “Ok, God, sic ‘em!  Kill ‘em, God!”  All the things that Sanballat and Tobiah and the others were saying to them, he was asking God to do to Sanballat and Tobiah and more.  Don’t forgive them, Lord.  Don’t overlook what they are doing.  Make them pay for what they are doing.

Now, Nehemiah had good reason to be mad.  Those guys weren’t just making fun of the Jews.  They were hindering God’s work.  They were keeping God’s people from doing God’s will.  They were doing real harm to the Kingdom of God so that’s it.  God, it’s your turn.  This is too much.  Make them pay, God.  Make ‘em pay!

This is called an imprecatory prayer.  King David, who had lots of enemies knew about imprecatory prayer.  The Psalms are full of David asking God to rip apart the bad guys.  In Psalm 40 David says, “Let them be ashamed and brought to mutual confusion Who seek to destroy my life; Let them be driven backward and brought to dishonor Who wish me evil. ¹⁵ Let them be confounded because of their shame.”

That’s nothing!  Listen to what he says in Psalm 63.  “They who seek my life will be destroyed;¹ they will go down to the depths of the earth.² ×

References for Psalms 63:9

Cross References

10 They will be given over to the sword³ and become food for jackals.”⁴

Then in Psalm 41:10 he even says, “But may you have mercy on me, LORD; raise me up, that I may repay them.”  In other words, “Give me strength, God, so I can get revenge.”  What do you think about that?  Sounds pretty good, right?  He called on God to rain down fire and brimstone on his enemies.  Who hasn’t wanted to do that before?  So, now we see how to pray.  We see that when somebody does you wrong and especially when they are hindering the will and purpose of God that we should just call on God to punt them off the [planet.

David did it.  Nehemiah did it.  So that means we can do it, right???  Wrong.  Wrong.  Very wrong.  I’m sorry to tell you this.  Actually I’m not sorry because honestly it’s good news.  But I have to tell you…again…that Jesus changed everything.  Jesus still changes everything.  He always has and He always will.  Even the way we pray.  Since the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus we no longer have to pray that way, nor should we.

Nehemiah had no example of how to pray.  He had no idea about WWJD or “What Would Jesus Do”.  He had no model prayer or Lord’s Prayer and he sure didn’t have Paul or Stephen to show him or tell him.  But we do and we know that Jesus modeled for us to pray, “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.”  (Matt. 6:12) and the ultimate forgiveness was when he was being crucified and said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing." (Luke 23:34)

It’s what Stephen knew in Acts 7:60 where it says, “59They went on stoning Stephen as he called on the Lord and said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!" 60Then falling on his knees, he cried out with a loud voice, "Lord, do not hold this sin against them!" Having said this, he fell asleep.”  Romans 12:19 says, “18If possible, so far as it depends on you, be at peace with all men. 19Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, "VENGEANCE IS MINE, I WILL REPAY," says the Lord. 20"BUT IF YOUR ENEMY IS HUNGRY, FEED HIM, AND IF HE IS THIRSTY, GIVE HIM A DRINK; FOR IN SO DOING YOU WILL HEAP BURNING COALS ON HIS HEAD.”

Even Abe Lincoln understood this.  He said, “Do I not destroy my enemy when I make him my friend?”  So I say all that to say that although there are some of Nehemiah’s prayers that are really good and really helpful for us to emulate, this one in chapter 4 is not one of them.  We have the power that raised Jesus living in us and we should use that power for bigger things than trying to be more comfortable.  We should use it for forgiveness.

But there is also something else in this passage that I want us as a church to get hold of.  We have talked lately as we entered this series in Nehemiah about how our walls of decency, democracy and doctrine have fallen down in this country and that we have the right tool for the job to repair it in the tool of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Good News and I believe with all my heart that the local church is the hope of the world and all we need is to be obedient to what God wants us to do and we can see real change in our community and the world.

The good thing about our situation as opposed to Nehemiah’s is that, while we both have walls to rebuild, at least the people in our community are not standing around watching us and making fun of us and trying to intimidate us into quitting…yet.  They will and it will get more difficult to do what we are called to do.

In Matthew 10 Jesus says, “You will be hated by everyone because of me.”   Paul told Timothy that “everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.” (2 Tim. 3:12)  That will happen but right now we don’t face that like Nehemiah did.  We will.  Don’t worry.  We will make more enemies as we go and make more friends and as we make more disciples.  The enemies will come out of the woodwork.  Our problem is that we don’t have that problem yet.

Our problem is that while our community likes us and we have a good name around here and people are even glad that we are here all that ridicule and mocking is coming…straight from the devil himself and right into our feeble ears and minds and into our hearts.

He says, “What are you going to do, Christ Fellowship?  Are you going to save the world?  Are you going to restore the walls of decency, democracy and doctrine all by yourselves?  You can’t even get 20 people to come to your little gatherings on Sunday morning.  You don’t have enough people and the people you have are not ministers.  Even your pastor is an uneducated fool.  What you are trying to do – if even a fox jumped on it it would fall down.”

Don’t you hear Satan saying that?  And it’s true!  That’s the worst part and that’s why it hurts so bad.  Even the father of lies will tell the truth every now and then if he can tear you down with it.  We don’t have enough people.  We can’t do it all by ourselves.  We are feeble and weak and I am an uneducated fool but I know enough to know that God can use even an uneducated fool and He can use feeble and weak disciples who are sold out to Him and ready to work, as it says in verse 6, with all their heart.

Do you know how they rebuilt the wall?  Every person rebuilt the part of the wall that was where they lived.  They would rebuild the section that was part of their house and then they would join it to the neighbor’s wall.  They got their house in order and then started working outward and when everybody did that, the wall got built in record time.  It took them just 52 days to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem in spite of them not being builders.

That’s not a credit to Nehemiah.  That’s not a credit to the people.  That is a God thing.  God chose to use a servant to the king of a far-away country to lead a small, untrained group of despised people to do His will and when they were obedient in the face of ridicule and frustration and humiliation, God stepped in and blessed that obedience for the sake of His people, for the sake of His land and for the sake of His Kingdom.

So, thousands of miles away and thousands of years later, your uneducated fool of a pastor can stand up and confidently say to this small group of weak disciples that God does not change and since God does not change I know that I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me.  I told you Jesus changes everything and He can use even us to get our own houses in order and then start working on out as He leads us for the sake of His people and His Kingdom.

So, just expect Satan to whisper some humiliating truth to you.  Expect for him to give you some reason why you can’t go to church.  You need to work.  You’re too tired.  The Cowboys are playing.  It’s all true.

Expect him to tell you why you can’t witness to your neighbor or your family member.  You don’t know how.  You don’t know scripture.  You don’t understand everything.  Yes, that’s all true too.

It may be true that you’re not a professional minister.  It may be true that you don’t have enough money or education or knowledge or talent but God doesn’t ask that of you.  What God wants is for you to work with all your heart and when you do that God blesses that obedience.

When you have nothing left but God, then you become aware that God is enough. Maude Royden.

 He who has God and many other things has no more than he who has God alone. C.S. Lewis

What excuses are you listening to that keep you from doing what God has called you to do?

Let’s pray.  Hear us, our God, for we are despised.  Satan has attacked us with everything he can and has taken out way too many.  So we pray like our Savior Jesus prayed and we ask that you would deliver us from the evil one.  Give us everything we need to rebuild our own walls and then to help others rebuild theirs for our sake and for the sake of our community and your Kingdom.  In Jesus name, Amen.

The first step in rebuilding our own walls is to make sure that we each have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus through Whom we can do all things.  Do that today.  Ask Him to be Lord of your life and to forgive you of your sin and then you need to repent or turn away from that sin and confess Him as Lord.  The Bible says we are saved and go to Heaven by grace and through faith.  That faith is all it takes.  Make that confession today.

“Rebuilding the Walls” Nehemiah 1:1-4

I can relate to the person who wrote something I read the other day.  Writing about themselves they said something to the effect that some people look at them and think their life is perfect; that they have it all together and that life is easy for them.  They wrote that although people may think that, somewhere, deep down, inside my boot…my sock has fallen down!  I can relate to that right now.  Yes, the struggle is real.

How many of you have any problems today?  Really?  That many?  I thought I was the only one.  How many of you don’t know what to do about some of those problems?  How many of you know what to do but it is hard to do it?  Do you wish you had some help?  I have some thoughts on that before we get to the real help we find in our passage today.  First, your church is here to help you.  Believe it or not we don’t just meet on Sundays and Wednesdays for worship.  This church is made up of individuals that love and care for each other and I know for a fact that they would enjoy helping you and that the hindrance to you getting help with a lot of things is your own pride and I, I mean we, need to get over that.

Secondly, James says in his book that we are to consider it pure joy when we have troubles because that means that God is giving us the opportunity to grow and to have everything we need.  That’s what it says:  everything we need.  That ought to encourage you.  We have seen lately that there are benefits to _____?  Obedience.  And consequences to ­­­______?  Disobedience.  BOOCOD.

Sometimes we have problems because we weren’t obedient in the first place.  Sometimes our problems continue because we are not obedient and sometimes no matter what we do we still have problems.  I read about the man who went to put some bricks on a house and wound up with some problems.  Here is his letter to his boss: 

  I went to the building after the storm, checked the building and saw that the top needed repairs.  I rigged a hoist and a boom, attached the rope to a barrel and pulled the bricks to the top.  When I pulled the barrel to the top, I secured the rope at the bottom.  After repairing the building I went back to fill the barrel with the leftover bricks.  I went down and released the rope to lower the barrel but it was heavier than I and jerked me off the ground.  Halfway up I met the barrel and received a blow to the shoulder.  I hung on and went to the top where I hit my head on the boom and caught my fingers in the pulley.  In the meantime, the barrel hit the ground and burst open, throwing the bricks all over.  This made the barrel lighter than I, and I started back down at high speed.  Halfway down, I met the barrel coming up and received a blow to my leg.  I continued down and fell on the bricks giving me cuts and bruises.  At this time I must have lost my presence of mind because I let go of the rope and the barrel came down and hit me on the head.  I respectfully request sick leave.

Sometimes no matter what you do you are going to have trouble.  Job said, “Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.”  (14:1) The question is, what do we do about it?  The book of Nehemiah is a fascinating book of the Bible that tells so much about the who, what, where and whys of Jewish history but if you only read it for the history you are missing out on some incredible insight into how to handle problems.  This is good to know for us as individuals, for our families, church and even country.  Turn to Nehemiah chapter 1.  Nehemiah is after Ezra and before Esther in the Old Testament.  One last thing before we read that chapter, this will be a short series on how to deal with our problems.  And you know me.  If I have a problem and say Jeremiah or Zechariah or Zephaniah, just bear with me.  Nehemiah is the only “iah” I should be talking about, just so you know.

Read Nehemiah chapter 1:1-4.  The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah:  In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, ² Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.  ³ They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”  ⁴ When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.

There are 4 quick things I want us to look at in this passage.  The first 3 are the walls that need to be rebuilt and the 4^th is where we start to solve those problems and start rebuilding the walls.

Nehemiah is an old book, obviously; written some 400-plus years before Jesus but it was written well after Jerusalem was destroyed.  If you remember, so much of the Old Testament was a warning to the children of Israel that if they didn’t repent and turn back to God then He would have them punished and their land destroyed.  He warned and warned and warned and finally He said, “Enough is enough. “  And when the army of Babylon walked out of the city of Jerusalem it had been reduced to rubble.

The vast majority of the people of Israel that weren’t killed were taken into slavery; dispersed to countries they probably had only heard of.  Their houses were destroyed.  Their families were broken up.  And even the walls around the city had been broken down and the gates burned.  No longer was this a land where God’s chosen people could live.    Without walls they had no protection from the enemy.  Without walls there was no use planting a field much less trying to raise a family.  Anything you had could easily be taken away from you.  There was no police, no army.  Even the wild animals had some protection but not the few left in Jerusalem.

It was also a great shame to the people and to God.  You see, everyone knew Israel was God’s chosen people and the city of Jerusalem was the absolute heart of God so now whenever somebody would walk past that city they had to wonder what kind of God would allow such a thing.  “Where’s your God now, Israel?!  He must not be very powerful to let such a thing happen!  What a bunch of fools.”

I starting looking at the book of Nehemiah wondering if there might be a few things we could learn from it.  What I didn’t realize at first was that it was practically a letter addressed to 1301 N. Main St. and should start with the words, “Dear Christ Fellowship, please study this closely so this never has to happen to you.”  I don’t know what is going on at the Bay Church.  I don’t know if FBC Bridgeport is being obedient.  I don’t have any responsibility for what Grace Fellowship does.  I pray that God would give them wisdom and guidance but unless we want to be haunted by the words of the Old Testament prophets just like the Israelites were, then change has to start right here with us!  I guarantee you that the US is headed for the same place and there are too many lives at stake for us to just sit back and let it happen.  Too many souls are headed for eternal Hell, damnation and separation from God for us to be apathetic.

While the walls around Jerusalem were real, physical walls, we have walls in our lives as well that are under attack just as sure as Jerusalem’s were.  I want you to see and know that our walls of democracy, decency, and doctrine being threatened and they have been neglected.  Yes, the very walls of our country’s democracy are being eroded, attacked and chipped away, little by little every day and if it doesn’t stop immediately we may not have anything to save.  We may wake up one day and find that our national language, our national currency and our national religion are now what someone else wants them to be.

You may not have enjoyed studying history when you were in school.  For some of you like Speedy there was considerably less history to study when you were a kid but no matter.  If we want to keep from going the way of the dispersed Israelites then a quick glance at history would be appropriate.  I understand that the average age of a civilized nation is about 200 years.  They also say that the life and death of a nation can be followed in 9 steps.  It starts with the people going from bondage to spiritual faith, then from spiritual faith to courage then to liberty, abundance and then selfishness.  From selfishness they go to complacency and then to apathy and then to dependence and from dependence they go back to bondage.

Look at how many people are dependent on the government today.  1 out of 4 people receive some sort of financial assistance from the government.  That’s the last of the 9 steps.  How much longer do we have? 

How much longer does this country have when God is taken out of school and the courts?  How would you like to be the one to tell a child in school or the criminal in the court that they should start to live right when you have no guide to tell you what is right and wrong?  Without the Bible, who is to say what is moral or immoral?  Without God’s wisdom our leaders are guaranteed failure.  When we try to appease the Muslims so we don’t hurt their feelings at the expense of Christian values, how long do you think God will let that go on?  I don’t hate the Muslims.  I just hate the lie of the devil that they have believed and that will contribute to the destruction of this nation.  The very walls of our democracy are definitely being threatened.

The walls of this country’s decency are also being chipped away and there is not much left.  I pray all the time as I drive down the road that God would not allow my mother to see a bumper sticker like the one I just saw.  I pray that my sweet, innocent niece never sees that billboard or that TV show or that magazine cover.  God please protect their precious eyes like only you can!  What used to be only for what we considered sick perverts is now available all over the internet.  Because the walls of our decency are being attacked and it starts with us.

The other wall that is in need of repair lest it fall is the wall of doctrine.  And by doctrine I don’t mean that this world would be better off if everybody was a Baptist.  I mean this world would be better off if men, in and out of the pulpit would say, “Thus says the Lord!”  If women would teach their children what the Bible says instead of what Dr. Phil says.  If preachers would get up and preach what God puts on their hearts from what the Bible says instead of what will tickle the ears of the congregation.  That hip, good-looking pastor in California who says there is no hell is going to be judged harshly for giving his opinion over what God says.  Don’t doubt it.  I just pray he doesn’t lead too many astray.

In the name of tolerance our walls of democracy, decency and doctrine are being torn down daily right before our eyes and we act like we don’t see.  We act like there is nothing we can do about it.  I want us to see from the life of Nehemiah that there is something we can do.  You see, Nehemiah was not a prophet or a priest or king.  He was not powerful or rich.  He was a slave.  His ancestors had been taken from Jerusalem and he had been born in Persia.  He had never even seen Jerusalem but when word got back to him that the walls had been torn down and that the city still lay in ruins all these years later, he was broken hearted. 

He saw the danger his people were in and he saw the shame it brought to them and to God.  It is time for us to realize the danger we are in and the great shame it brings to us and to God for our walls to be torn down.  You say you can’t do anything about what goes on in our nation and you are right if you try to do it alone but look at what Nehemiah does in verse 4.  He mourned and wept and fasted and prayed.  We saw in Ephesians last week the power we have in the weapon of prayer.  James 5:16 says that fervent prayer is powerful and effective.  The very first thing we should do to halt the attack on our walls is to pray.  Not just a casual prayer; something you real quick before you eat.  In the last chapter of Colossians Paul says that Epaphras sends his greeting and that he is always wrestling in prayer for you.

Have you ever done that?  Jacob wrestled with God and said he would not let him go until God blessed him.  I am going to challenge all of us to do that this week.  Instead of a quick prayer before you eat, how about praying instead of eating?  Just one meal.  Take the time you would have spent eating and spend that time wrestling with God and begging Him to restore our walls of democracy, decency and doctrine, before it’s too late.

But it all starts with a relationship with God through His son Jesus.  You can have that if you don’t already.  The Bible says there is a real hell and a real heaven and that we are all sinners and deserve to go to hell.  But we can have eternal life in heaven with God after we die if we decide in this life that we repent of our sins ask God to forgive our sins.  When we do that and decide to make Him Lord of our lives, the Bible says that He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

Then we can have a relationship with Him knowing that God is all-powerful and in control but also that He loves us very much.  That gives us joy and peace in this life even in the worst of times.  Have you made that decision today?  Do it now.

“The Prayers of Nehemiah” – 1

How many of you consider yourself to be pretty handy when it comes to working on cars?  Like most guys, I used to be pretty handy when it came to working on the older stuff but now, not so much.  When I was a senior in high school I bought a bright red ’67 Mustang fastback.  It was a beautiful car.  289, automatic, a/c, and it was fast and loud and I loved that car…and it hated me.  That car broke down every chance it got so I got pretty good at working on it.

I didn’t know much at first but pretty soon you learn or you don’t drive.  I learned by just popping the hood and getting after it but what I really learned from that method was just how much I didn’t know.  I quickly learned that just popping the hood and turning wrenches was not the way to make it run.  In fact, it often caused more problems. 

I had a bunch of tools but that didn’t make me a mechanic. This was before the internet so I couldn’t just google something to find out the problem.  I had to go to the library and check out some books.  Now, for you younger folks and for Speedy, a library is a big building with lots of books that you can borrow.  J  I also got to know some mechanics who were willing to talk to me about things without charging me.  So, that helped.

See, I wanted really badly for that car to run and not have problems but I learned that I needed to know how to use those tools and when and what exactly I could do and what I needed to leave to the professionals.  Just popping that hood and slapping wrenches on bolts didn’t help anything.  I needed a plan.  I needed to know what I was doing.

I know I’m not the first guy to be in that position.  There was a man who lived 2500 years ago who probably would have been a pretty good Mustang mechanic.  His first advice would probably have been for me to sell that red demon car and hopefully I would have listened to him because this guy knew what he was talking about.  Nehemiah was a very wise man and we are going to learn today where that wisdom came from.

See, Nehemiah knew that you didn’t just grab some tools and start twisting bolts.  You need to have a plan.  You need to know what to do and how to do it and he found that out by learning from the One Who was able to fix the problems.  So, open up your owner’s manuals to the Old Testament book of Nehemiah and let’s see how he learned to solve his great problem.

As you find Nehemiah in between Ezra and Esther on page 342 in most of the Bibles in the pew, let me tell you real quickly about this fascinating little book.  It goes right along with those two books on either side of it and gives us some insight about life after Israel was destroyed.  If you remember, God told them that as long as He was their God that He would keep them safe but if they disobeyed that he would finally raise up other countries to defeat them and carry them to other lands and the walls that protected Jerusalem would be torn down and burned and that is exactly what happened.

Gradually, though, the Israelites started to make their way back to Israel after many years and when they did word got back to Nehemiah about the state of destruction that the walls of the city were in.  It had been a long time and the people that had moved back to Jerusalem were just living amid all the rubble.  It was dangerous not to have walls but it was also embarrassing to have God’s holy city still in shambles after all this time but Nehemiah was not in position to really do anything about it.

Nehemiah was in Persia thousands of miles away working for the King of Persia as his cupbearer.  It’s not a bad job if you can get it but it had no real power or status or anything that might be able to help his people all the way over in Israel.  That was Nehemiah’s problem.  His country was in trouble and he had no way to help.  Sound familiar?  It does to me because that is how I feel about our country today.  We are living with the walls of democracy, decency, and doctrine in complete shambles and it is not getting better.  It is getting worse.  Christians today are losing our protection and it is embarrassing for us to be living this way.  We live in a country where Islam, a false religion that worships a false god is being given favored status while Christianity, the worship of the one, true God, is being persecuted at every level of society and government and I feel like there is nothing I can do sometimes.

I know what the answer is.  I know the answer to all of this is to lead people to have a life-changing relationship with God through His Son Jesus.  I have the greatest tool to work with that mankind has ever known, the Gospel of Jesus Christ and I know how to use it too and so do you.

What’s the bad news that Romans 3:23 and 6:23 talk about?  The bad news is that we are all sinners and what we deserve for that sin is eternal separation from God in hell.  Now, what is the good news that John 3:16 talks about?  The good news is that God loved us so much that He sent His only Son to die in our place and all we have to do is believe it.  Now, with that simple but great tool we can literally solve the greatest problems of this world but we need to have a plan.

I have said before that if we knew how great Heaven is going to be and how horrible hell is going to be that we would be stopping traffic to tell people the bad news then the good news.  We would be running up and down the streets and knocking on doors but that’s like popping the hood and turning every bolt you see.  That doesn’t work and may even cause more problems.  So, let’s look at what Nehemiah does first to get a plan of action going to solve his problem and maybe we can get some ideas about how to solve similar problems here in our country 2500 years later and 7000 miles away.

Nehemiah 1:4-11  When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. ⁵ Then I said:  “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, ⁶ let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. ⁷ We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. ⁸ “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, ⁹ but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’ ¹⁰ “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. ¹¹ Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.” I was cupbearer to the king.

 

Imagine going to New York City on September 12, 2001.  We have all seen the pictures but without actually being there we can never realize the extent of destruction and the amount of debris from the tragedy the day before.  Everybody wanted to help but can you imagine the chaos that was going on?  Just getting from point A to point B was impossible.  They had to have a plan or nothing would ever get done and it had to get done.  You can’t just live that way.

 

But the Israelites who had managed to get back to Jerusalem after being scattered to all points of the world had just lived that way for way too long.  The task of rebuilding the walls was so overwhelming that they pretty much just didn’t try and when word got back to Nehemiah, what was the first thing he did?  In verse 4 it says he mourned and fasted and prayed.

 

Every one of us here has heard that the first thing we should do in a crisis is pray, right?  But what do most of us do?  We take a mental inventory.  “Ok, I can do this and this but I don’t know how to do that and then what am I going to do if such and such happens?”  Then we get worried and then we get high blood pressure and then we go to the hospital when all we had to do is pray about it first and foremost.

 

Nehemiah knew when to pray and we are going to see how Nehemiah prayed in just a minute but first I want to tell you how his prayer turned out.  Nehemiah asked for something specific.  In verse 11 he asked God for special favor in the presence of the king and do you know what happened?  It says the king was sitting there next to the queen who, if I read it right, was the lovely Queen Esther and he asked Nehemiah why he was so sad-looking.

 

Nehemiah said his hometown was in ruins and he wanted to go rebuild it.  Now, how’s this for favor in the presence of the king?  King Artaxerxes asked him how long he needed to be away.  Then he asked what else he needed.  Do you need money?  Supplies?  Letters of recommendation?  Do you need an armed escort?  How about some extra help?  Nehemiah said, “Yea, that’ll do.  Thanks king.”

 

But look at how it came to this point.  Nehemiah prayed first and foremost.  He fasted.  He was sacrificial in his prayer.  He was persistent in his prayer but look at how he starts this prayer.  “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God…”

 

Why do you think he started that way?  Was he trying to butter God up so God would be lenient?  Turn over to the New Testament to Luke chapter 11 and read how Jesus taught His disciples how to pray.  Luke 11:2 says, “When you pray, say: "'Father, hallowed be your name…”

 

There is a time and place for bursting into God’s throne room and hollering, “God, I gotta have you now!  Help!”  But most of the time we need to realize that our Father, our Abba Daddy is also Almighty God and should be addressed as such.  When you realize who He is and who you are, you will approach the throne of grace with confidence but also with great reverence and Nehemiah understood who he was talking to.

 

The next characteristic of Nehemiah’s prayer was it was a repentant prayer.  In verse 6 he confesses his own sins and the sins of his country knowing that sin puts a barrier between the sinner and Holy God and when you go to God in reverence and confidence it makes you aware of the grace and mercy He shows and you don’t want that sin in your life and so you will repent of that sin.

 

Then look at verse 8.  There we see another characteristic of Nehemiah’s prayer.  It was biblical.  His prayer was based on what God had already said He would do so many years ago for Moses.  Have you ever been talking to somebody and they bring up something you said a long time ago?  Most of the time that’s bad news for us but God wants you to pray biblically.  He wants you to know what He has said because then you can pray in God’s will.

 

Go back to the Lord’s Prayer in Luke.  He says to pray, “Thy will be done…”  Well, how do we pray for the Lord’s will to be done unless we know what he says in scripture?  I heard that before George Mueller would pray for something specific he would search the scripture to find if there was some promise that covered it.  He might have to search for days but when he found it he could go to God and say, “Look!  You said this and that’s what I am praying for.”

 

Nehemiah went to God and repeated back to God what He had said years before and Nehemiah made his request based on that.  He was persistent, sacrificial, repentant, biblical, specific, and he was also urgent in his prayers.  Do you feel the urgency?  Can you sense the feeling of Nehemiah that if God doesn’t do something then it will not get done and lives are in the balance?

Dr. Helen Roseveare, missionary to Zaire, told the following story. "A mother at our mission station died after giving birth to a premature baby. We tried to improvise an incubator to keep the infant alive, but the only hot water bottle we had was beyond repair. So we asked the children to pray for the baby and for her sister. One of the girls responded, 'Dear God, please send a hot water bottle today. Tomorrow will be too late because by then the baby will be dead. And dear Lord, send a doll for the sister so she won't feel so lonely.' 

That afternoon a large package arrived from England. The children watched eagerly as we opened it. Much to their surprise, under some clothing was a hot water bottle! Immediately the girl who had prayed so earnestly started to dig deeper, exclaiming, 'If God sent that, I'm sure He also sent a doll!' And she was right! The heavenly Father knew in advance of that child's sincere requests, and 5 months earlier He had led a ladies' group to include both of those specific articles."  Our Daily Bread.

We talked last week real briefly during the Praise and prayer time about what the best position was to be in for God to answer your prayer.  Was it kneeling, standing, arms up or out?  Do we need to cry or say some fancy words?  Maybe we should do all of it.  I think we all know that position doesn’t matter much but if the Bible said to stand on your hand while praying I would be an upside down, hand stand-doing fool because our country is broken and getting more and more so every day.

Isaiah 5:20 says, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!”  Isn’t that exactly what is happening today in our country?  Well, how long are we as Christians going to sit here in this filth and rubble before we get serious about crying out to God and quoting back to Him His words in 2 Chronicles 7:14 that says, “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land?”

Do you mean that?  If you do I want you to bow your heads right where you are and say it again back to God in urgent prayer.  “if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”

Almighty, gracious God, our country is in ruins just as much as Israel was in the days of Nehemiah and we need your help.  We have the tools that you have given us.  We have opportunities that you give us and we are counting on you to use us to do what you have called us to do right where we are today and if we need to go somewhere else or do something different, please show us.  Give us wisdom about what to do and where to go and what to say and we will do it for glory of your holy and precious name.

We repent of all of our many sins and the sins of our country, our state and our church and we pray that even today you would give us favor in the eyes of this community and we know that if you don’t do a mighty work it will not be done.  We ask these things for your sake and for the sake of your Kingdom.  And all the people said amen.

“A New Life” – Romans 6:1-4

A funeral service is being held for a woman who just passed away. At the end of the service, the pallbearers are carrying the casket out when they accidentally bump into a wall, jarring the casket.

They hear a faint moan! They open the casket and find that the woman is actually alive! She lives for ten more years, and then dies. Once again, a ceremony is held, and at the end of it, the pallbearers are again carrying out the casket. As they carry the casket towards the door, the husband cries out: “Hey! Watch out for that wall!”

Some of you will get that on the way home today.  Anyway…last week I taught most of you at least one new big word.  We talked about how to be sanctified we have to be mortified and vivified.  Does anybody remember what “mortified” or “vivified” means?  It means we are to be dead to sin and alive to Christ.  Well, I stumbled onto another word this week obviously related to “vivified” and that word is “vivisepulture”.  Anybody smart enough to figure out what that word means? 

“Vivisepulture” means to be buried alive!  That has to be one of the absolute worst ways to die, right?  I researched it (googled it) and quickly read more than I wanted to know about such a thing but the Bible talks a lot about being dead to sin.  Again, we talked about that last week as being “mortification” and it just makes sense that you can’t be dead to sin and alive to Christ at the same time, right?  But that’s a problem for us because we all like to say that we are dead to sin but evidently we were buried alive because that sin keeps coming back and haunting us.

You know what I mean.  We all have our pet sins – those problem areas of our lives that we all struggle with.  We don’t want to do them and so we die to those sins by asking God for forgiveness and then repenting or turning away from those sins.  We have a big, dramatic funeral for ourselves to those sins but before the hearse leaves the parking lot we all too often go running right back after those old sins.  We have been buried alive to those sins and it keeps happening over and over again.

If you have ever felt like that, you are not alone.  We talked last week about this same problem and we found through Romans chapter 6, verses 15-23 that we are to be slaves to God and not slaves to sin.  That was how Paul describes it in those verses.  But he evidently knew this was a big problem and so he talks about it several times.  Let’s go back in Romans chapter 6 just a little bit and look at just the first 4 verses.  They look and sound similar but give us some different insight into how we can keep from living that same old life we used to live and start living…a new life!

Romans 6:1-4 says, “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? ² By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? ³ Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

We talked last week about how to be sanctified or holy and that it involved being mortified or dead to sin.  We should have a hostility toward sin because we no longer have anything to do with it.  The very temptation to sin ought to make hostile toward it and that thought really helped me because like all true believers in Jesus, I don’t want to sin.  That is actually a mark of a believer.  But I struggle with it and I know I’m not the only one.  I have a quote for you.  See if you can guess who said these words.

“Oh, what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?”  Any guesses who said that?  Paul said that.  The author of this book said it.  In fact, he wrote it in the VERY NEXT CHAPTER!  Yes, the guy who just wrote that we are dead to sin said practically in the next breath, “Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death?” 

Paul understands your struggle with sin but I found the secret right here in this little passage written by him.  In verse 1 he sarcastically asks if we should sin more because of grace and of course no true believer can really think that.  Then he goes on in verse 2 to say that because we are dead to sin; because we are mortified; then we can no longer live in sin.

Being dead to sin doesn’t mean we never sin but it means we can’t live in it.  We can’t camp out there and have a lovely day just living in sin because that is what unbelievers do.  Sometimes Christians can’t believe that non-Christians would sin like they do.  “Gasp!  Did you hear about what so and so did?  Terrible!”  Of course they did.  Sinners are gonna do what sinners do.  I’m surprised they don’t do worse or do it more often.  Unless they are going to get arrested for it, then what is stopping them?

What surprises me is when we as Christians can just live in sin and go about our day and nothing changes day in and day out.  Paul said we died to sin.  How can we live in it any longer?  Now, some are going to hear this and think how glad they are that Paul is being realistic.  He’s not saying we will never sin because we all know that we all sin every day, right?

I hear people say that pretty often and it’s just not true.  We don’t all sin every day, nor should we.  Sin should be an exception to the rule but too many people think that’s just how people – even Christians – live.  Gary Richmond, a former zoo keeper, had this to say: Raccoons go through a glandular change at about 24 months. After that they often attack their owners. Since a 30-pound raccoon can be equal to a 100-pound dog in a scrap, I felt compelled to mention the change coming to a pet raccoon owned by a young friend of mine, Julie. She listened politely as I explained the coming danger. I'll never forget her answer. "It will be different for me. . ." And she smiled as she added, "Bandit wouldn't hurt me. He just wouldn't." Three months later Julie underwent plastic surgery for facial lacerations sustained when her adult raccoon attacked her for no apparent reason. Bandit was released into the wild. Sin, too, often comes dressed in an adorable guise, and as we play with it, how easy it is to say, "It will be different for me." The results are predictable.  Gary Richmond, View From The Zoo.

So, how do we keep this wild, rabid raccoon of sin from ripping our faces off?  How do we keep from sinning and how do we, as Paul said here, live a new life?  Well, Paul also tells us that right here as well.  Look closely at the last half of verse 4.  “…just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.”

Do you want to live a new life?  Do you want to live dead to sin and alive to Christ?  We can and Paul says here that we live a new life the same way that Jesus did - through the glory of the Father.  Now, I first that that surely Paul meant “to” the glory of the Father.  I thought surely Paul had made a mistake, you know, since I’m so much smarter than he was.  J

But when I looked up the word “glory” as it is used here, it is the word “doxa” (not Dachshund) which means God’s honor and praise and worship like we know it to mean but it specifically includes His power and grace.  God’s power and grace are His glory.  Jesus was raised from the dead by God’s power and His grace.

It is the same use of the word in Romans 3:23 that says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”  When we sin, we fall short of God’s power and grace that keeps us from sinning.  Paul says here that we are baptized into Christ and into His death so that we may live a new life.  Do you want to live a new life?  If you could go back to when you were young and never take that first drink or smoke that first cigarette or do for the first time that thing that has become such a habit that you don’t want to do, wouldn’t you want to never do that for the first time?

I see people all the time who are addicted to one thing or another – alcohol, drugs, food, lying, sex; whatever it is and they very often have sought treatment for that problem…but they can’t shake it.  They go to rehab or something anonymous and sometimes that works.  I’m not knocking that at all.  But lots of times it doesn’t work.  They relapse.  They don’t want to but it feels like they just can’t help it.

I talked with a lady just this week who has been a meth addict for 35 years.  She started when she was 10 and has been doing it ever since.  She can’t quit.  She has tried.  She has been to rehab over and over but it doesn’t work for her and now she has nothing and is nothing and wants nothing except meth…and something to eat.  I told her I could help with one of those and so I came up here to the church and got her some food from our food pantry and was driving back to where she was and I was praying that God would show me how to help her.

We know as a church that we have been called to help the poor, the addicted and the incarcerated and this woman was affected by all three and we have been praying for a long while now that God would show us how to deal with these kinds of people without sending them away to somewhere else for help.  So, as I drove I asked God again for wisdom.  Am I supposed to go to school to be some kind of counselor?  That would be a whuppin for all involved but I’ll do it if that’s what I am supposed to do.  Are we to have a half-way house here at the church?  What, God?  What are we supposed to do?

Well, it’s no coincidence that I was working on this message for today and I was reminded of this verse that talks about the glory of God giving us a new life.  It doesn’t say counseling brings a new life or that therapy or medicine or anything else although sometimes those help.  But God said introduce her to me through my Son Jesus because that is the only thing that brings new life.  My job is just to introduce these dear people to the One who doesn’t just clean up a life and make a little better.

As my friend Scott says, Jesus didn’t die to make bad people good.  He died to make dead people alive and He does that through His power and His grace; through His glory!  When a caterpillar goes into his cocoon he doesn’t come as a really pretty caterpillar.  He comes out completely different.  He comes out as a beautiful butterfly.  Think about God’s glory involving His power and His grace.  If it was just His power without His grace then we would only get what we deserve.  Or if it was only His grace without His power then we don’t have the power to overcome sin.  But by God’s power and His grace we are able to live a completely new and beautiful life.

In John chapter 11 Jesus is told that His friend Lazarus was sick.  In Verse 4 it says, “When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God's glory so that God's Son may be glorified through it."  You know what happened.  Jesus spoke and Lazarus came walking out of the grave after being dead as a post for 4 days.  In that story, in verse 40, Jesus said, “Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?"

It was the glory of God – His power and His grace – that raised Lazarus.  It was the glory of God – His power and His grace – that raised Jesus and it was the glory of God – His power and His grace – that allows us to live a new life free from the bondage of sin; free from having to live in that sin and be controlled by that sin and living with the consequences and the guilt and shame.

In Exodus 33, Moses has been commanded by God to lead the Israelites but Moses says this in verse 15: “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. ¹⁶ How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?” ¹⁷ And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.” ¹⁸ Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.” ¹⁹ And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence.”

Moses asked to see God’s glory and I have always thought what a daring and gutsy – maybe even dumb - thing that was to ask of God but he is asking to see God’s glory by His grace and power and God wanted to show Moses and He wants to show us.  We should ask to see God’s glory revealed in His power and grace so that we and others may live a new life.

Did you see that in verse 16 where Moses said, “What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”  Moses knew that the very best a man could do would not be enough without God’s power and grace behind him and that the only thing that sets a believer apart from an unbeliever is God’s power and grace.  The only thing that keeps any of us from living in and dying in our sin is God’s power and grace.

God, we need your glory!  Not the kind of glory that makes us look good or that even points toward us but your glory that makes you look good; the kind of glory that has made you look good since the beginning of time and the kind of glory that helps us live a new life today and the kind of glory that will always make you look good and will make your name famous.  God, show us that glory of your power and grace.

If you are tired of living in that same old sin that, of course, comes with all that baggage of guilt, shame and consequences; if you are tired of living that old life that never lets you break free from that addiction or that bad habit then you need to see God’s glory for yourself.

You need to ask Jesus into your life to be Lord and Savior then ask Him for forgiveness of your sins.  The Bible says He is faithful and just to forgive us of all our sins – even the worst of them.  Then repent of those sins and turn away from them knowing that God will give you a new life through the power and grace of His glory.  Don’t wait.  Do it today.

Invitation - 3 guys are talking.  "When you are in your casket, and friends and family are mourning over you, what would you like them to say about you?"  The first guy said, "I would like to hear them say, 'I was a great  family man.'" The second guy said, "I would have liked to hear them say, 'I was a wonderful husband and school teacher who made a huge difference in many children's lives.'" The last guy said, "I would like to hear them say, ‘Look, he's moving!’”

We are not buried alive to sin.  We are dead to sin and it no longer has power over us.  Live like it today!