Vision: Love, Burden, Petition

---

"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." Nehemiah1:6

Main Readings: Ephesians 3 & Nehemiah 1

Supporting Readings: Deuteronomy 30 & Psalm 103

Generally speaking, if you start a story in the middle, your listeners won’t understand what’s going on. If I say, ‘Andy completed it last week’. My wife would know who Andy is and what the ‘it’ is, but nobody else would. The significance to me that Andy, the builder, finished building our bathroom last week will be lost on you, unless I start the story at the beginning. And this story is no different. 

We’re starting the book of Nehemiah today. But Nehemiah itself is simply a chapter in the much bigger story of God’s people, Israel.

That story started after Joseph’s family came down to Egypt and settled in the land of Goshen, as we’ve seen in recent weeks. But not long after that, God raised up Moses to rescue his people from their slavery in Egypt. He redeemed them, exactly like Nehemiah says in verse 10 of our chapter.

And God gave his people covenant promises through his servant Moses to prosper them if they remained true to him. But even then, he knew that they would betray him. And so, he said that when they betrayed him in the future, he would scatter them among the nations – just like Nehemiah says in verse 8.

In the meantime, Solomon came along. And God had Solomon build a glorious temple as his dwelling place in the city of Jerusalem. The city was magnificent in that day. But as God predicted, Israel turned away from God’s covenant. And so, he sent them into exile, as promised.

The part of Israel, called Judah, was taken away by Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon, and there they were exiled for 70 years. And during the siege of Babylon on Jerusalem, the temple Solomon had built was destroyed; the walls of the city were torn down and the gates were burnt.

But after 70 years had passed, God was gracious to the people in exile. Babylon fell to the Persian empire, and the new king, Cyrus, showed favour to the exiles. Under his new reign, Zerubbabel and some of the people – about 50,000 - returned and rebuilt the temple, which took about 20 years.

But after that nothing much happened for another 60 years or so. Until, that is, God was gracious again. He led another group back to Jerusalem under the leadership of Ezra. And Ezra taught the people God’s law and encouraged them to return to covenant-faithfulness with their God.

And that brings us then to Nehemiah. We’re told at the end of this first chapter, that Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king of Persia – that is, in the capital city, Susa.

So that’s the context for this book. Nehemiah has never been to Jerusalem – he was: ‘Gen-Exile’ we’ll call him. He was born in exile. By road he’s about a thousand miles from Jerusalem, in Susa. And it’s all owing to Israel’s covenant unfaithfulness to God. That’s the picture.

Now you can see from the first three verses that, whilst the temple has been rebuilt under Zerubbabel, and the reforms have taken place under Ezra, yet there are still exiles in Persia – of which Nehemiah is one. 

The walls of the city of Jerusalem are still broken down. The gates are still burnt. And the exiles that had returned were in disgrace and in great trouble!

Nearly a hundred years that have passed now, since the first exiles returned and the condition of the people and the city is very poor! That’s not good! A hundred years is a long time! You can do a lot of building in a hundred years! And yet the walls remain rubble and gates are missing.

And you get this sense, from the first three verses, that Nehemiah – this man who we’re going to get to know well as we move through this book – you get this sense that he is eager to know what’s happening in Jerusalem.

So eager is he, that when one or two of those now living in Jerusalem returned to Susa for some reason – we’re not told why – he questioned them closely.

And there are really two great questions on his mind. The first is how are the people who have returned? And the second is, what state is the city in? And the answers he gets are dreadful. The people are disgraced and in trouble. And the city is broken down and ramshackle.

Now I want to stop here and ask the question, what is it that induced Nehemiah to ask these questions? Let’s consider for a moment his position. He’s got a cushy job in front of the king every day. It seems, based on his freedom to talk to the returning Jews, that he has scope to move around and engage with people at will. And in all likelihood, by now, he’s somewhere between 40 and 50 years old. Why then would he concern himself overly, with Jerusalem – a place he’d never been to? He could easily see out his time comfortably where he is.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m comfortable, I don’t overly like the idea of disruption. And usually, comfort comes in the form of settled patterns, predicable outcomes, and familiar settings. Nehemiah had all these.

And so, I want to alert you here to Christian character. Because it’s Christian character that is the driving force behind Nehemiah’s questions of verse 2.

Let me show you that Nehemiah had such a close walk with God that his own comfort and position were as nothing to him in comparison with his zeal for God’s glory to be displayed in both his people and the city that bore his name.

Drop down with me to verse 5 and observe the terms in which Nehemiah addresses God in his prayer as a sample of his zeal. ‘Lord’, he says, ‘the God of heaven. The great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him’. ‘The people you redeemed Lord, you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand’. And he sums his love up in these glowing terms: ‘your servant delights to revere your name’.

So, you can tell can’t you, Nehemiah is driven by deeper things than worldly ambition, or career progression, or comfortable conditions. Rather, he’s driven by a deep-seated love for his God.

His relationship with God is not superficial. He’s not going along for the peripheral benefits. He’s going along for the closest relationship he can get with the living God. His desire is that, his God be personally respected and personally honoured – that’s what the word ‘revere’ means in verse 11.

You see, Nehemiah’s God is not a small god, with a little ‘g’. He calls him a ‘great’ God and an ‘awesome’ God. A God who is in heaven. A God of strength. A God with a mighty hand who delivers and redeems his people.

In short, Nehemiah’s in awe of his God. And sometimes it makes me think am I in awe of my God like this. When we think of the deliverance that he worked for us. When we think of Jesus coming down from heaven and shaking the earth as he died. 

Rising powerfully from the dead. And redeeming all his people, so that not one single one of us has been lost. Do we marvel at him like Nehemiah marveled at him? In our prayers do we have such a massive view of God that we say to him, ‘you are a great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with us and who redeemed us by your mighty outstretched arm!’ Or has he become small in our estimation?

Not so for Nehemiah! He hadn’t forgotten what God had done for him and his people. And he is zealous for the glory of his God to be seen and known.

So, this is why he’s asking searching questions about God’s people and God’s place - Jerusalem. Unless God’s people and place be right, God cannot be seen in his glory! That’s the issue for Nehemiah. And if that’s the case, that won’t do for Nehemiah. 

God simply must be seen in his glory. And Nehemiah’s personal happiness is connected with God’s glory that closely because of his relationship with God.

It's that relationship between Nehemiah and God that creates the burden then, in his heart, about the condition of the city and the predicament of the people.

And just look with me at the strength of feeling the report creates in his heart in verse 4. He says, ‘when I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven’.

Now you may be thinking, ‘That’s a bit over the top Nehemiah. City walls get damaged all the time. People get disgraced and face opposition all the time. 

Maybe you need to get a grip of yourself Nehemiah!’ But the thing is, not every city wall is God’s city wall. And not every disgraced person, is God’s person. 

Mourning and fasting are appropriate responses when someone sees that the consequences are serious. And here I want to show you how serious they really are – echoed in the magnitude of Nehemiah’s feeling. 

Nehemiah, in his prayer, calls God a ‘covenant keeping God’. He says, ‘you are God who keeps his covenant of love’. And what ‘covenant’ means is broadly akin to what marriage vows are. It’s a solemn promise. 

And Nehemiah reminds God in his prayer, that he is always faithful. That is to say, God will never break his vows. People shouldn’t break their vows either – especially not Christian people. 

Faithfulness and commitment and steadfastness to the vows you’ve made is a mark of God’s grace in your life. And when you honour the vows you’ve made - even when those who have made vows to you break theirs - you reflect the character of God in your faithfulness, which is delightful to him. 

But people are rarely faithful to their vows, owing principally to our changeableness – something that God is not. And faithful to her vows is exactly what Israel had not been! Israel had repeatedly turned away from their God. Until, at last, God sent them into exile. 

And the reason, God could do that and be justified in doing it, is because the vows he had made to the people included a clause which said, ‘if you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations’. 

God can say that kind of thing because he is completely worthy to receive faithful devotion from his people. But, you know, God is so gracious and so kind and compassionate. He is so patient, not wanting any to perish but all to come to him. 

And that is clear from a further provision that God put in his vows. He said, ‘if, when you are scattered, you return to me and are faithful to me, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon’ – that’s beautiful language isn’t it? ‘Farthest horizon!’ That means there’s nowhere too far away for this promise to take hold. Beautiful, plentiful grace is found in his promises! ‘Even at the farthest horizon, I will gather you from there and bring you to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name’. 

So, there it is! A promise of restoration guaranteed in the unchanging word of God, by the unchanging God of Israel. And the hint that God’s promise was actually coming to pass, was recognised in the return of Zerubbabel, and in the rebuilding of the temple. Because the temple was where God had chosen to make a dwelling for his name. 

But! Now Nehemiah was looking on, nearly a hundred years later, and the signs had slowed. And now with this report he’d received, it must have felt like the signs of promise had disappeared altogether. 

God was going to bring all the exiles back from the farthest horizons to dwell with them in the city of Jerusalem. And there he would be exalted by his people. And there his city would bear his name amongst the nations forever. 

But the walls were broken down. The people were in disgrace. And the prospect of the exiles returning and reigning gloriously with their God looked extremely doubtful now.

That’s why mourning and fasting were appropriate responses for Nehemiah. And it’s why for ‘some days’ it says. And ‘night and day’ it says, Nehemiah prayed before the God of heaven.

You see, zeal for the Lord, flowing out of relationship with God, caused Nehemiah to want the same things God wanted. It caused him to want God’s promise to come to completion. And when it looked like it might be floundering it caused Nehemiah to do some soul-searching. Asking the question: Why might God have paused his resettlement plan? 

It was mourning and fasting that created a reflective spirit in Nehemiah such that he could pray the prayer that is recorded for us here.

Mourning and fasting are not adequate in themselves you see. No, prayer is the place where our concerns meet the gaze of Christ. 

Prayer then, is the acknowledgement on the part of the Christian, that the task is too great and too challenging for me to handle alone. Nehemiah had no way of reigniting God’s resettlement plan. Except, that is, to lay it all at his feet and pray.

And what a prayer it is!

Here we have a prayer that starts with praise, progresses to confession, recalls God’s promises, and finishes with request. And I put it to you that that kind of prayer pattern is a very good one for us to follow.

I know that sometimes we’re praying on the hoof so to speak, and time doesn’t permit for this pattern. In that case, we’re crying out for help. I don’t downplay that type of prayer whatsoever – there are lots of examples of it in the bible. And I use it often.

But if our prayers never have the shape of this kind of prayer, then some of the riches we could enjoy in prayer and some of the glories that God deserves in prayer are going to be lost.

It’s good then, when we have opportunity – and to make time for this, where possible, too – to come to God first in a posture of praise. Second in a posture of confession. Third with the promises of God. And then, and only then, finally with our request. 

And here’s why. If we only ever come with our request alone, over time, we become accustomed to the idea that God is like some sort of divine vending machine who doles out treats at our command. 

But when we come in the pattern set down here, we put God in his right place. We also get our own unworthiness in the right place. And that leaves us staring down the barrel of a huge gulf between us and the God we’re appealing to. 

And it’s then that we can tell God how the ground we are standing on, to come before him with any confidence, is this ground and this only: Christ Jesus our Lord! 

In other words, the first two postures we take up remind us that without Christ we have no audience with the living God. And that with Christ, we have every audience with him! What a privilege! All of God’s promises are yes and amen in Christ!

We can call on the covenant faithfulness of God to keep his promises to us when those promises are relied upon in Jesus. We have no other access to God except by him. 

And upon that foundation we can make our requests known to God. The riches of that kind of prayer have to be experienced in our lives, otherwise we run the risk of becoming rather cock-sure of ourselves and liable to forget the very basis of our confidence before God.

Now just a word about confession. Nehemiah could have thought to himself ‘God has started to regather the people. Clearly, he believes that we have returned to him, (verse 9). Therefore, how can there be need of further confession? All we need to do is ask him to complete the task he has already begun’. But no. Nehemiah continues to confess his own sin and the sin of his family and his people.

Ongoing confession you see, is the right acknowledgment that though we have been forgiven - and that forgiveness cannot be severed - yet sin is grievous to God. Yet this sinful heart of ours remains. ‘Prone to wander Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love’ the hymn writer says. 

Better things are coming in the future, but confession will remain as long as sin remains. And sin will remain until the end of this age and Christ returns. And so, prayer is the place that we make that good confession to God.

But now see what Nehemiah’s request is. And this really tells us something of how he understood the burden of his own heart. He says in verse 11, ‘Give your servant success today by granting him favour in the presence of this man’. And you ask, ‘which man?’ And the answer comes back, ‘I was cupbearer to the king’.

Nehemiah had a burden, and out of that burden, God formed a vision in his heart. Nehemiah is going to mourn and fast, but he is also going to be purpose driven. He’s saying to himself, ‘what can I do to honour God and put these things right?’

Now if he comes to that conclusion and seeks to act on it without praying, then even if he is successful in his plan, that’s not a Christian vision. In that case he’d be doing it in his own strength. And for any accomplishment, he would get the glory. But by taking it to the Lord and seeking his strength, his own vision is transformed into Godly vision. 

God will either confirm that vision and move it forward, or he will stop it altogether - according to his divine plans and purposes.

And it’s clear isn’t it: that any vision on Nehemiah’s part will require that he leave the king’s service in Susa and return to Jerusalem. And so, he’s in the king’s hands. He needs a favourable decision from the king to let him go. 

But Nehemiah knows more: the king is actually in the hands of the King of kings. And what he actually needs is a decision from the King of kings not first and foremost from the king. And so, he asks God to grant him favour in the presence of the king.

So let me close now, by saying something about vision because that’s why we’re in Nehemiah. Godly vision is birthed out of a close, relational walk with God – a desire to see him exalted at all costs. It’s birthed out of a recognition that all is not as it should be and that that condition of things impinges on God’s glory. And it’s birthed out of a deep-seated reliance on God to accomplish the vision through our weak endeavours.

And I don’t want to spoil anything, but Nehemiah’s vision is established by God. And God’s purposes are moved forward by that vision. Not least in the fact that, this chapter in Israel’s history, is essential to God’s plan for the appearing of our saviour, Jesus!

Earlier we read Paul’s vision for the church in Ephesians 3. I’ll remind you of it now. Paul prayed that the church might be strengthened with power through the Holy Spirit. That Christ might dwell in our hearts through faith. That we might be rooted and established in love. That we might have power to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ. And, that we might have this love so that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. An awesome vision! And his ultimate goal is that God be glorified in it all. The point is that even this side of the cross, there is a vision for the church.

Let me put it Peter terms for a minute. In 1 Peter 2 we find Peter talking in ongoing terms about the church. He talks about it being built up like living stones into a house. Nehemiah was concerned with material stones; Peter is concerned with living stones. Nehemiah’s stones belonged to God’s physical place - Jerusalem. Peter’s stones belong to God’s spiritual place – the church. 

Peter says we’re being built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices pleasing and acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

Now as we start to think about vision, it would be easy to progress through Nehemiah and make all kinds of applications to church programme. Nehemiah built walls; we build Sunday schools. That kind of thing. I don’t want to do that.

Churches need programmes for sure. And they need to set their sights on doing things for the kingdom of God or they will fossilise. I get that. But the vision starts with the spiritual house, as Peter puts it.

And so, as much as we’re only just managing to keep YP’s and Sunday Club going right now. As much as we we’re only just managing to reach out into the community right now. Nevertheless, the vision starts with the household of God.

The card you received at the door this morning spells out 5 things I want us to pray for, for the next 5 months. All five things are designed to strengthen Riverside, so that it might have a future and so that ultimately it might glorify and honour God.

I want to encourage us to pray hard for the next 5 months about these 5 things. And I want us to pray with hope and expectation that our vision for God’s glory to be seen in Riverside be realised through his mighty outstretched arm.

Our prayers along these lines will be as intense as the burden we feel, that God be glorified by them. 

So, I want us to be like Nehemiah here in chapter 1 first and foremost – increasingly mesmerised by the love of God in Christ Jesus. And increasingly desirous to see his glory magnified.