Nehemiah 1 - When Bad News Leads to a Great Work

Re:Building

Allen Snapp Grace Community Church Sept 1, 2013

When Bad News Leads to a Great Work

This morning we are beginning a series in the book of Nehemiah. Those of you who have been in the church a while might remember that we did a series in Nehemiah several years ago (summer of 2007 to be exact). I knew that some would remember but I was surprised the other day when my son Matthew came into my office and saw me working on the message and as he walked out of the room casually said, “we’re doing Nehemiah again?” I’m like, “what? Again? You remember us doing Nehemiah? That was six years ago – you weren’t even in the service then, you were in children’s ministry.” Somehow he remembered. So, for those of you who also remember, and might also be thinking, we’re doing Nehemiah again? let me take a minute to explain why we felt to return to this book.

We are entering an interesting season as a church, with a lot of change that has already happened and potentially a lot of change that will be happening. We continue to move forward a step at a time with the building purchase. On Friday we had the building inspected, and while we will get the full report on Tuesday, it looks like the interior work that will need to be done immediately will be more extensive than we were thinking. In the end it might be a good thing but we will need to recalculate based on what the report recommends. But if the Lord’s will is for us to have this building, the one thing that is certain is that with it will come change. In a few months we’ll be sending the Slack’s out with our love and prayers as they move to Sarasota, FL to plant a church. We will miss them very much and it will mean change – both for us and for them! Last February we made a significant change as a church by leaving SGM and because we don’t really want to be an independent church, over the next year we will be looking carefully and prayerfully at different associations like Acts 29 to see what network the Lord would have us link arms with. Change. Change can be uncomfortable and disorienting. It can also be refreshing and renewing. Some people hate change. Some people love change. But ultimately God uses change in our lives to do some really important things: 1) He reminds us of what never changes. The Christian’s life isn’t built on sand that moves and shifts with change. Our lives are built on the solid rock of Jesus Christ and his finished work on Calvary. In times of change – especially if we’re tempted to be anxious or fearful – we can cling with faith to the old rugged cross and know that we are eternally saved and settled through what Christ has done.

2) God often uses seasons of change to stir our hearts with a fresh faith and a renewed vision for the work He has called us to do. It can help us to remember that while we aren’t saved by good works, we are saved for a great work! And that work is to spread the gospel to a lost and dying world. So, as we walk through this season of change, it’s not change we want to focus on, but Christ, and his purposes for our lives individually, and for our lives corporately as a church – because God doesn’t just see us as a bunch of individuals – He sees us as a community, an assembly, a congregation, a people. And so Matt and I wanted to be in a book that connects with the season we are in and rallies us as a congregation in the great work that God has given us to do. And that’s where Nehemiah comes in. Nehemiah is all about God’s people rallying together to do a great work of rebuilding, and with the good hand of God upon them, they are able to overcome opposition, discouragement, fear, weariness, and corruption among their leaders to accomplish that great work in record time. The first half of Nehemiah is about building the wall and the second half is about building a community of faith as together they repent of their sins, return to God’s word, and experience spiritual revival. 

So we’ve titled this series Re:building as in “regarding building” because building is what Nehemiah is all about but also because building is what Jesus is all about. In Matt 16:18 Jesus says, on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Paul also used the imagery of the church being built in 1 Cor. 3 when he said, You are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care how he builds upon it. For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. 1 Cor. 3:9-11 There is paradox here: Jesus is the foundation, and he is the builder. And, as His church, we are both the building and the builders. We are the work God is doing, and the workers that God is doing it through.

We are the masons, and we are the bricks. God is doing a good work in us, and He’s called us to be a part of a great work and deep in our hearts, I think we all long to be about that great work. I heard one man say the Lord asked him a question: do you want to be a big part of a small work, or a small part of a great work? In this new season, and as we go through this amazing book, it is our prayer that God grows our faith and rallies our hearts to be a small part of His great work – together! That is a really long introduction, so let’s jump right in and read Neh. 1:1-11 I. Bad news comes to Nehemiah Nehemiah opens his book by telling us about some really bad news that got to him. The year is about 444 BC and he is living in the Persian capital of Susa. His brother and some other men arrive from having just been to Jerusalem and Nehemiah asks them how things are going in Jerusalem. The report they bring him is not good: the city is in a state of devastation. The walls are broken down, the gates are burned down, and the people living there are in great trouble and shame. The state of the walls and gates are a picture of the state of the people: they are broken and burned too. The enemies of Jerusalem have embraced the “scorched earth” policy, and it’s been effective. The city and the people are scorched to the ground. This wasn’t a new development. In 586BC (140 years before Nehemiah) Babylon, led by Nebuchadnezzar, conquered Jerusalem (and all of Judah) and took most of its inhabitants into captivity, leaving the city burned and devastated and only a remnant of people behind. 2 Chron 36 says: Therefore he [God] brought up against them the king of the Chaldeans, who killed their young men with the sword in the house of their sanctuary and had no compassion on young man or virgin, old man or aged. He gave them all into his hand...And they burned the house of God and broke down the wall of Jerusalem and burned all its palaces with fire and destroyed all its precious vessels... Later the Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, led by a king named Cyrus, who allowed the conquered peoples to remain in their countries and rebuild their temples. During his reign some Jews, led by Zarrubabel and Joshua went to Jerusalem to rebuild the temple and though there was opposition and some interruptions, in 519BC nearly seventy years after it had been destroyed, the temple was finally rebuilt. Since that time, there have been efforts to rebuild the city and its walls. 13 years before Nehemiah gets this news a man named Ezra traveled to Jerusalem and led an effort to rebuild the city, but enemies rose up and sent a letter slandering the Jews to King Artaxerxes and he decreed that all rebuilding of the city walls be brought to an end II. Bad news leads Nehemiah to a great work When Nehemiah hears about the broken walls and the broken people and he is broken himself. As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days... (vs 4) We might wonder, why is Nehemiah crying over broken walls? The answer is he isn’t crying for bricks and mortar. His heart is moved with compassion for the exiles living in Jerusalem and for the danger and disgrace they are living in. He doesn’t know them personally. He has never lived in Jerusalem. But he feels a solidarity with them and a compassion for them and he is undone... ...and then redone. In the bad news about Jerusalem Nehemiah also hears God’s call to him to do something about it. Bad news leads Nehemiah to a great work. This isn’t a book about introspection and empathy gone amok. It’s a book of action. Nehemiah weeps, but not in a way that paralyzes him with grief, but in a way that drives him to God in prayer, and then to action. And the church can learn from Nehemiah’s example and leadership, which can be summed up simply as, he weeps, he prays, he acts. 1. We should feel compassion for a world that is full of broken walls and burnt gates For Nehemiah the broken walls and gates represented the devastated state of God’s people. For us the gospel has expanded our building project beyond the people of God to a world that is shattered by sin. We live in a world of spiritually broken walls and burnt gates. It’s all around us. The image of walls broken down and gates burned is a vivid picture of the destructive force of sin both in those who don’t believe in Jesus and even among those who do believe. Jesus said the thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10)

Nehemiah heard about the need, and even though it would have been easy for him to shrug it off, he felt deep compassion for the exiles who were in danger and disgrace. He felt their brokenness like it was his own. We need that kind of brokenness for the broken in the church today. Have you ever been driving along, and all of a sudden there’s a big traffic jam and you’re waiting in bumper to bumper traffic and creeping along? Finally, you get to the reason for the traffic jam and you find it’s that there was an accident on the other side of the highway. In other words, the only reason your side of the highway was jammed up was because people were slowing down to look at the accident. It’s called rubber necking. God hasn’t called the church to be rubber neckers at the scene of an accident – examining the wreckage out of curiosity. He’s called us to be paramedics – coming in with the life-saving gospel out of compassion. Nehemiah wasn’t fascinated by their shame and vulnerability to their enemies, he took it to heart as if it was his own life in danger, and his own shame.

There can be a temptation for Christians to become tongue cluckers and watch train wrecks with a morbid curiousity, rather than press forward to help those who are in trouble and shame. Jesus came, not to watch the train wrecks of tax collectors and prostitutes and angry men, and swindlers, and immoral people, but to save them from their train wrecks by switching the rails so that the righteous hatred that God feels towards sin would be rerouted to hit him on the cross. That is the supreme example of compassion that feels our shame and danger and does something about it. Is there someone that God has placed in your life that you have been feeling is too far gone, or too hardened, or too proud, or too immoral, or too antagonistic, or too uneducated, or too educated, or too you-fill-in-the-blank for you to reach? I believe the Lord wants to begin by breaking our hearts with their brokenness. 2. We should take that burden to the Lord in prayer Nehemiah weeps. And then he prays. Nehemiah takes his burden for the broken and before he acts he prays -which is the most important action we can take.

A.J. Gordon wrote: “You can do more than pray after you have prayed; but you can never do more than pray until you have prayed.”

Nehemiah prays an amazing prayer and we could easily spend an hour on its contents, but time does not permit. But I do want us to consider briefly two components of his prayer. a. It was a confessional prayer Nehemiah identified with the sins of his people and confessed them to God. He didn’t see himself as better than the Jews, he recognized his own sinful participation. let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.(vv. 6-7) Jerusalem is in the state it is in because God has judged His people for their idolatry and rebellion. Nehemiah knows that – they are reaping what they’ve sown. But he also knows that this judgment has purged them of much of their idolatrous ways and that God is merciful and forgiving, and as he asks for God to forgive them he identifies with them. He sees himself as walking alongside the Jews, not in front of them or above them. I met a resident of the community by the building we’re looking at, and as I spoke to him – and I believe he is a Christian – I sensed some hurt and disillusionment with the church, particularly one church that seemed to elevate itself above others by blasting away at them. We aren’t above anyone. The ground is level at the cross – we all come as sinners saved by grace or we don’t come at all. We must identify with the sin and brokenness of this world and confess it and ask God for forgiveness. b. It was a confident prayer This prayer is a prayer that is brimming with faith in the “great and awesome God” (vs. 5). Nehemiah draws from God’s promises and power demonstrated on behalf of His people in the past. God is the one who “keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments” and who redeemed His people by His great power and strong hand. (vs. 10)

For Nehemiah, prayer wasn’t a substitute for action, but it was the support structure for that action. Over the several days that Nehemiah is praying and fasting, a plan is formulating in his mind. We’ll talk about who Nehemiah reveals himself to be, and what that plan was next week, but he knew he was going to risk his life, and yet with faith he asks God “give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” It’s not wrong to pray for success if what we’re about is God’s business! Our prayers should be informed by how great our God is – our eyes should be on His awesomeness and our confidence in His faithfulness, and then we can pray – and act – with great confidence. I am reading a book by Dick Snavely, the founder of FLM, and one thing I really appreciate in his story is how whenever challenges or disappointments came up, he sought to actively trust God and realize, God has a plan. God is doing something. Conclusion: One of the biggest gaps in the wall of the church today is that we’re not actively involved in God’s work. We’ve been lulled into a self-absorbed lifestyle that expects little from God and attempts little for God. I am guilty of that. I love comfort. I really do. But I don’t want to be comfortable – not if it means being sidelined in God’s work. May the Lord rally our hearts together as a church to pick up the hammer and trowel and be about His great work. There’s a lot of bad news all around us, but in God’s economy that bad news should lead us to a great work.