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; they will go down to the depths of the earth.
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment