Prayers of Nehemiah – Chapter 6

11/1/15  Christ Fellowship

Prayers of Nehemiah – Chapter 6:8-13

A preacher’s son graduated from high school and the preacher kept asking his son what he was going to do. Go to college or maybe go on to the service. He kept asking his son, but he just could not make up his mind. One day while his son was out, he decided to perform a simple test. He went into his son’s room and put 3 items on his desk - a Bible, a silver dollar, and a fifth of whiskey.  The pastor thought if he picks up the Bible he will be a preacher like me. If he picks up the silver dollar he will be a business man if he picks up the fifth of whiskey he will be a drunk.

He heard his son coming, so he hid behind the door to see what his son would do. His son looked at the three items. He picked up the Bible and put it under his arm. Then he picked up the silver dollar and put it in his pocket. Then he picked up the fifth of whiskey and took a drink!

The preacher said “Oh no…my son is going to be a politician!”

If you are hoping that whoever replaces our current president is going to make everything all better, I’m afraid you’re going to be disappointed.  Politicians are going to be politicians and while I believe we all need to stay informed about the state of our country and know who to vote for that will be the best for us, our country has gone off the cliff morally and financially and I don’t believe it can ever recover unless God allows and provides for a mighty miracle and a great revival.

Do you want to know how far over the financial cliff we are?  I’ll give you a rough example.  You know what a $100 bill looks like.  Some of us have seen them.  Fewer of us have owned one but we all know what it looks like.  Well, if you stacked up $100 dollar bills into stack of $1,000,000 (1 million) you could put that in a grocery sack and walk around with it.

But if you stacked hundreds into a stack of 1 billion it would fill up this stage up to about waist high.  Can you picture that?  Now, how much room do you think a trillion dollars would need?  A trillion dollars is a 1 with 12 zeros behind it and if you started stacking pallets up to about six feet high the width of this building with one hundred dollar bills the stacks would reach to at least Highway 380 from here.

That’s one trillion dollars and according to the government’s own website, our government’s debt…is nearly 19 trillion dollars…and getting worse every day.  It’s not getting better.  It’s getting worse.  Nobody expects us to ever recover.  It’s just a matter of time before somebody wants more than an IOU and then our economy will start to collapse.  It may happen tomorrow or it may be 10 years.

Morally we have gone over the cliff as well and do I need to give you any example of that?  I think we can probably fit 6 Miley Cyruses, 4 Madonnas, and a Hillary on this stage.  Not that I want to.  This country and our world and even our county and community need a mighty miracle and a great revival.  It’s the only thing that will stop us from being that nation that, you know, used to be over there between Mexico and Canada.

We have the answer.  John 10:10 says that Jesus came that we might have an abundant life.  That rarely means financially abundant but it doesn’t mean 19 trillion in debt.  2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.”  People that come to have a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ don’t act like the rest of the world anymore and when people change, circumstances change.

So, what are we going to do about it?  Are we going to sit around and wait for them to wander into church?  How’s that working out so far?  Kinda slow, isn’t it?  Well, since we just happen to be going through the book of Nehemiah, let’s talk about how prayer will help us to rebuild the fallen walls of decency, democracy and doctrine in this country like it helped Nehemiah rebuild the physical walls around Jerusalem.

Turn to the Old Testament book of Nehemiah.  It’s between Ezra and Esther and is on page 346 of most of the Bibles in the pews.  Let’s look at a short little prayer that Nehemiah prayed in chapter 6, verses 8-13.  We have already seen that Nehemiah is a man of prayer.  He knew that the first thing you do when you have a problem of any size is you pray about it.

He knew that when you pray back to God God’s own Word and promises that God is anxious to answer those prayers.  He also knew that prayer was the answer, the only answer, when people – or Satan - try to hinder God’s people from doing God’s will.  For Nehemiah, though, he had a big job to do with few people and few resources and the people trying to hinder the work were getting more and more numerous, powerful and threatening.  So, what do you think Nehemiah did?  He prayed, of course.

In this passage we see that his adversaries have completely made up some negative criticism about Nehemiah hoping to at least distract him if they can’t get him to stop.  So, let’s see his prayer in Nehemiah 6:8-13.

I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”  ⁹ They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.”  But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.”  ¹⁰ One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.”  ¹¹ But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” ¹² I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. ¹³ He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

What a great response Nehemiah has to the people that were accusing him of doing all kinds of things that he was not doing.  They were just trying to stir up trouble for him by saying that he was doing this and saying that and that he was claiming to be king and a bunch of other nonsense and so Nehemiah just replies back, “Y’all are making that up.  Now be quiet!”  That is the perfect response.  He knew they were trying to keep him from doing what God had called him to do for whatever reason.

He knew they were hoping that he and the others would get all involved trying to clear their names and make themselves look good and the work of rebuilding the wall would suffer.  So Nehemiah prays those 4 words, “Now strengthen my hands.”  Why do you think he prayed that way?  Were his hands and fingers tired from all the work?  Well, they probably were but that’s not really what he is asking for here.  He is simply asking God for the ability to continue doing the work that God had called him to do.  “God, help me rebuild the wall.  God, give me what I need to continue being obedient to you.”

Do you think God wanted to answer that prayer?  God wanted to answer that prayer for Nehemiah just like He still wants to answer that prayer from us today when we sincerely pray that God will give us everything we need to continue doing His work here in Lake Bridgeport and around the world.  I know God wanted to answer that prayer because of the next few verses.  Some people might not see that it was God answering Nehemiah’s prayer but if you look close you will see that God didn’t just give him strong hands, He also gave Nehemiah wisdom, discernment and courage – things Nehemiah might not have even known he would need but God did.

Look at how God gave Nehemiah wisdom.  I think you can even see it in the answer he gave before he even prayed for it.  He had the wisdom to know how to answer his adversaries that would not make the problem worse.  He didn’t have to go anywhere or spend any time defending himself.  He didn’t have to argue his innocence or holler or scream.  Y’all are making that stuff up.  Now hush!  That’s all he had to say and it was a wise answer.

Doug Larson said, “Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you would have preferred to talk.”  J.I. Packer said, “Wisdom is the power to see and the inclination to choose the best and highest goal, together with the surest means of attaining it.”  I like the simple definition I heard one time that wisdom is making the choices that God would make. 


I heard the story about how an angel appears at a faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of infinite wealth, wisdom or beauty. Without hesitating, the dean selects infinite wisdom.


"Done!" says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a bolt of lightning. Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, "Say something."


The dean looks at them and says, "I should have taken the money." Betsy Devine and Joel E. Cohen, Absolute Zero Gravity, Simon & Schuster.


Nehemiah prayed that God would strengthen his hands and God answered by giving him wisdom.  Nehemiah was praying that God would give him what he needed to finish the job and God knew that Nehemiah needed wisdom more than he needed hands that were physically strong.  So many times we pray for the wrong thing to solve our problems.  We think we need more money or more time or for people to just listen to us since we know so much more than they do (J) but God knows we need wisdom to be able to use the time and the money that we have better.


Do you know that I never pray that God would give this church more money?  I don’t think I have ever prayed that.  I don’t see anywhere in scripture that somebody prayed for more money and God answered that prayer.  Even Jabez, who prayed for more territory was praying, not just for more stuff, but that his influence would be greater for the sake of God’s Kingdom.  So, I don’t pray for more money or more stuff or a bigger church with more people and a bigger budget.  Jesus told us to go and make disciples and so I pray, “Lord, give us what we need to do that job you have given us to do.  Strengthen our hands, Lord, whatever that looks like.”


God gave Nehemiah wisdom about how to answer and how to do what he was called to do.  He also gave Nehemiah discernment to be able to get the job done.  Look again at verse 10.  That whole story about people coming to kill Nehemiah turns out to be a lie.  I’m sure there were some people that wanted Nehemiah dead.  I’ve heard it said that if you don’t have any enemies by age 30 you’re not doing something right.


I don’t know if that’s true but Nehemiah was doing it right and he had enemies but this guy Shemaiah who was supposed to be a prophet and was supposed to be on Nehemiah’s side had been paid to say this so Nehemiah would do something wrong and they would have something bad to say about him.  Titus 2 says, “7in all things show yourself to be an example of good deeds, with purity in doctrine, dignified, 8sound in speech which is beyond reproach, so that the opponent will be put to shame, having nothing bad to say about us.”


These people couldn’t find anything really bad to say about Nehemiah so they tried making it up and that didn’t stick so they then tried to trick him into doing something wrong and that didn’t work because God gave him discernment to see that this guy Shemaiah was not a real prophet.  If Nehemiah had gone to the temple, being a layman and not a priest, that would have broken a law and Nehemiah would have gotten into trouble.


Discernment is the skill that enables us to differentiate. It is the ability to see issues clearly. We desperately need this spiritual skill that will enable us to know right from wrong. We must be able to distinguish light from darkness, truth from error, best from better, righteousness from unrighteousness, and purity from defilement.  J. Stowell, Fan The Flame, Moody, 1986, p. 44.


If Nehemiah had known that all this was going to happen, I’m sure he would have prayed for wisdom and discernment but all he prayed for was strong hands; to be able to finish what God had called him to do.  But God knew what he would need and so when he prayed for strong hands God also gave him wisdom and discernment.


He not only gave him wisdom and discernment but I want us to see and know that God also gave Nehemiah courage.  You need all three when you have a job to do.  You need wisdom, discernment and courage.  A friend of mine told me he got home from work the other day and found his wife staring at the full length mirror and she didn’t look happy.


He asked her what was wrong and she said she looked old, fat and ugly.  Wanting to cheer her up, he said, “Well, at least your eyesight is still good!”


See, he had courage but he definitely lacked wisdom and discernment.  He was probably praying for healing after that, too.  Nehemiah prayed that God would strengthen his hands and God gave him wisdom, discernment and now we see also that God gave him courage.


See, anytime anybody tries to do the right thing, there is somebody that is going to try to keep that from happening.  It’s human nature.  It’s what Paul described as “the old man” or “the flesh” and the old man doesn’t want there to be a new man.  You remember that verse in 2 Corinthians 5 that says, ““Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.” 


The old creation doesn’t want there to be a new creation and they will always fight so long as we are on this earth.  It’s why 2 Timothy 3:12 says, “In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.”  Maybe that saying about how if you haven’t made enemies by 30 you’re not doing it right is correct after all.  If you are not being persecuted maybe your life is not different enough from the old man that he should care.


But there are other things that one might be afraid of besides battling the old man that is within us, or the old man that is within somebody else.    When it comes to rebuilding our walls of decency, democracy and doctrine we know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ being born, his life, death, burial and resurrection has the power to do it.  The Gospel alone, by itself, has the power to change lives and circumstances. 


We also know that as believers we have been called to go and make disciples as Jesus said in Matthew 28 and the biggest hindrance to doing that is our fear.  Nehemiah probably had some fear but he didn’t let it affect him or the job he had to do.  He probably did have people who wanted to kill him but God gave him great courage.


Our fear today is not that somebody is going to kill us.  Our fear is based on not wanting to say something wrong or being asked a question we don’t know.  Sometimes we might be afraid of rejection and the awkwardness that will follow if somebody does reject us.  For whatever reason we have fear, God wants us to have courage.


The first thing God does to give us courage is to be right there with us.  Don’t you doubt it either.  Paul says in Philippians 4:6, "The Lord is near. Don't be anxious about anything."  The Lord told Gideon, "Go in the strength that you have." What strength did Gideon have? The Lord answered him: Your strength is the fact that "I am with you."


We were talking last Wednesday night at Bible study about the man who was blind but Jesus healed him in John chapter 9.  He had been born blind and after Jesus healed him the Pharisees kept badgering him about who it was that healed him.  “Where did He go?  What’s His name? How did He do it?” and all the man could say was, “I don’t know any of that.  All I know is I was blind but now I can see.  Praise Jesus!”


That should be our witness too.  We may not know everything there is to know about God or the Bible but you have your own testimony about what coming to know Jesus has meant in your own life.  Tell that.  You need to know how to back it up with scripture but until you do just have the courage to say, ““I don’t know any of that.  All I know is I was blind but now I can see.  Praise Jesus!”


Do you have that relationship with Him today?  You can.  You can have God-given wisdom to make the choices God would make.  You can have great biblical discernment to know right from wrong in whatever situation you are in.  You can also have the courage to tell others about those gifts you have been given as well as the greatest gift of all – eternity in Heaven as a child of the King!


All you have to do is believe that Jesus came from Heaven, died on the cross to pay for your sins and then resurrected and is alive today.  Repent of your sins and ask God to forgive you of those sins.  Jesus said in Matthew 10:32, "Whoever acknowledges me before others, I will also acknowledge before my Father in heaven.”  Don’t wait.  We are not guaranteed another day or even another breath.  Today is the day of salvation.