How have you handled crises in the past?
How do you deal with it?
How do you approach difficulties,
especially when change happens
and the status quo is disrupted?
And it's maybe not disrupted
in the kind of way that you want it to be disrupted.
It's not like things are getting better,
they might have gotten worse.
How do you deal with crises?
What do you do with the jarring news
that disrupts your day-to-day?
A loss, a betrayal, a breakup, an accident,
an injustice, a tragedy,
a misguided moment,
a lapse judgment, something like that.
Any situation that has the effect of paralyzing us
with fear, sadness, anger, a crisis.
What do you do?
How do you deal with it?
I think it's an important question to ask.
In a regular, often that we ask this question,
often because here in Canada and in the West,
by and large,
we have,
we're under an illusion that tragedy doesn't really befall us,
that we live a really good life.
And so we do.
Never, never in human history have we had such a good stretch.
I'll speak for the West, not the world over, but in the West.
Such a good stretch of bounty and affluence.
This idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
it's actually, generally speaking,
the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer as well.
We have, again, in the West,
the least amount of food insecurity.
People live longer, healthier lives.
It's a remarkable time that we live in.
And I'm not saying that those are the only or the best metrics of what it means to live the good life.
But what it ends up doing for us is, again, generally speaking,
it causes us to have a delusion that we are invincible,
or that tragedy might skip over us,
or that we won't experience a type of crises.
We know that, theoretically, that's not true,
but just on a gut reaction, a day-to-day experience,
we have, in a sense, blinders to the reality of life's frailty and fragility.
So, I'll ask the question again,
how do we deal with crises?
How do we deal with tragedy?
How do we deal with difficulties?
Life is full of them, is it not?
One sickness, one death, one lost job,
one compromise is all it takes for us to see the reality of this life.
And that's not to be like a Debbie Downer,
life is beautiful, there's wonderful aspects to life,
but it's fragile, it truly is.
So, as we continue our series in Ezra and Nehemiah,
remember, Old Testament, it's two separate books,
but traditionally, it is one book,
really three movements within that one book,
the first with Zerubbabel, and then with Ezra,
and now we're on to the third movement with Nehemiah.
We enter into Nehemiah chapter one,
and we see Nehemiah, he's an Israelite, but he's in exile, but born in Persia.
Israel was exiled about a hundred years before Nehemiah comes onto the scene,
and he is serving King Artaxerxes, that same king that we read in the book of Esther.
And he's the cupbearer.
And the cupbearer is no small duty, no small position.
Yes, he makes sure the wine isn't poisoned, very important,
but he is a confidant of the king.
And in some, in the ancient world,
some cupbearers were even so highly elevated that they were,
really, it's like the king, the prince is the cupbearer,
like really high authority.
We find Nehemiah, he's the cupbearer to the king,
he's high ranking, he enjoys great influence,
he enjoys a premium life of wealth,
he serves the greatest king that is existing in the world at the time,
his life is set, and yet,
he hears news of a crisis in Jerusalem.
Something is not right.
The rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem has grinded to a halt,
and so too has the life of Nehemiah.
It's grinded to a halt.
This news has taken him completely off his feet.
The promised land that God gave to Israel is in great trouble.
The inhabitants are in peril.
There's suffering, there's shame, there's enemies,
and Nehemiah is heartbroken with this news.
For Nehemiah, the remnant of God's people,
those that remained in Jerusalem, in Judea,
for the remnant, for Nehemiah,
there couldn't have been a worse situation that could have happened.
It is a massive problem.
So Nehemiah is going to deal with a serious crisis here.
And it's very instructive for us this morning to see how he deals with it.
Because he deals with it actually in a very, very incredible way.
Something that we can learn from.
But also it points us to who God is, once again, and what he has done.
So I've broken the text into really two parts.
Nehemiah's proper response, and that's going to be the whole of chapter one.
Jeff read just chapter one, but really we're going to be in chapter one and two this morning.
So the first part, chapter one,
Nehemiah's proper response to the crisis at hand.
The second is Nehemiah's courage to act.
So if you have a Bible, it would help me a great deal if you would follow along.
Don't take my word for it.
Read along with me.
At any point, you can get up and get a Bible.
Don't worry about interrupting me or others.
But follow along if you can.
So Nehemiah gets us really terrible news.
Verses one to three.
He is, it's like the worst case scenario.
If you would remember earlier in Ezra,
there was a contingent that went back to the land to rebuild the altar.
With Zerubbabel, Ezra went there to rebuild the temple.
And in Ezra chapter four, the chronology isn't exactly the same.
It's like a, in Ezra, it's like a look, like a look ahead in Ezra chapter four.
But we see that the temple rebuild gets halted for 20 years.
And then it goes, it gets resumed and they build the temple.
But we're kind of in that Ezra chapter four timeline right now.
Okay.
So there's a halting of the rebuild of the temple.
It's devastating news.
And look with me in verse four, just the first part of verse four.
As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.
I'll pause there.
You could easily skip this.
How, how is it that Nehemiah properly responds to the crisis?
We could easily skip over this, but I think it's very important.
He grieves.
He's sad.
He is, he is devastated and he doesn't move on very quickly.
He sits in it.
He sits in his pain and his suffering.
He weeps and he mourns.
And it's not for a couple minutes or an hour.
It says it's for days.
It's a very important thing to grieve well and to embrace sadness, not forever, but for a season.
It's, it's a sobering thing to do.
It helps us apart from it being cathartic.
It helps us to have a real perspective that life isn't as it ought to be.
The pain is real and it hurts.
It just, it really does.
Our temptation, by and large, isn't to avoid grieving by keeping a stiff upper lip, but rather to avoid grieving and sadness through distraction.
We drown out unwanted feelings with substances or entertainment or pleasure or a combination of all three.
Maybe I left something off the list, but we distract ourselves with things so that we don't feel as bad.
There's a time to be happy and to move on or to get a break or reprieve from our grief and sadness.
But when it's the initial instinct to push it away as quickly as possible, it's a bit problematic.
The truth is, God has made us with emotions.
I'll say this and I, believe me, I don't like using, especially my children as sermon illustrations.
So, they're their own people.
They're not props for the church.
So, that's why I say this.
But I'll just say this.
An unknown child to you, we have three of them, so maybe you can figure it out.
But the child will remain unknown, has very big emotions, like gargantuan emotions.
That are, she's, he or she are still learning how to figure out.
And our challenge as parents, and especially for me, is to encourage these God, these beautiful God-given emotions,
but to help her to be in control of the emotions and not the emotions in control of her.
And often I, you know, I come in and I go, why do you have big emotions?
And she goes, because you have big emotions.
And I say, yeah, that's right.
Let's learn together.
I bring that up just to say that emotions are not bad.
They are actually very good.
And we like to hide the maybe embarrassing emotions.
Big fat tears are, I don't know, make people feel uncomfortable.
And that's okay if you feel uncomfortable with it.
But we hide emotions as if they are bad, as if they are a chink in our armor.
When the reality is, is that God has given us emotions.
So much so that throughout the scriptures, it says that God, he actually grieves himself.
He is saddened himself when his people transgress the covenant.
That relationship with him grieves him.
Now, there's a whole topic of discussion to get into.
How does God feel?
Does he feel?
Is this just a way that he is communicating to us?
It's an important conversation.
It's not the conversation we're going to have this morning.
But our emotions are God-given.
In a very real way, they reflect us as image bearers of God.
So Nehemiah is sad.
And it's a very appropriate way to hear this news and how to respond to this news.
He is a broken man.
Sadness helps him to cope.
It helps him also to be empathetic.
It helps him and us to be vulnerable.
But more than anything else, it helps us to see reality for what it is.
That it's tough.
And there's a tough situation.
And that we ought not to move so quickly away from it.
It's okay to mourn.
It's okay to be sad.
Nehemiah's situations, it's difficult for him to comprehend.
Jerusalem is this, it's a promised city.
Jerusalem is this incredible place in the Israelite psyche.
And now it's under siege.
It's not being rebuilt.
Does this mean that God has abandoned his people forever?
The promises that he made are null and void.
How can this be?
So Nehemiah grieves, but he doesn't simply stay grieving and mourning.
He begins to pray.
And here is where we get to see another proper way Nehemiah responds.
So look with me, verse 4, but the second part of verse 4.
This is how he begins his prayer.
A few months back we were in a series on our midweek Bible study on the Lord's Prayer.
And we see something very similar with the Lord's Prayer here.
Nehemiah doesn't simply jump to, God, this is a bad situation.
You need to help me out.
We need to strategize, open up doors.
I'm going to talk to the king.
Let's get this done.
Right away he acknowledges who God is.
The God of heaven.
And to say that he prayed to the God of heaven isn't saying that God physically exists up there.
It's saying that God is above and beyond everything that we see.
He's the creator God.
He is all-powerful.
He has this recognition of who he is.
Completely other than, completely sovereign over, completely strong and perfect and all-knowing in every possible way.
The God of heaven.
That's how he opens it up.
Verse 5, he continues on.
He says this,
Here's the prayer.
The great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.
Let your ear be attentive, 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.
God, you are lifted high.
There is none like you.
You are the one who has made covenant with our people.
Remember our covenant.
Do not abandon us.
You are greater.
You are bigger.
Please hear my prayer.
Say, you know, oh, you're buttering God up.
Yeah, I mean, if you look at it that way, sure.
But really, it's giving him the honor and praise he deserves.
It's very important that there is a sequence to how we come before the Lord.
We lift his name up because he truly is, on one hand, our Father.
There's an intimacy.
But he is also our King.
We don't come into the presence of a King in kind of a haphazard, you know, a non-humble, non-respectful way.
I mean, the coronation happened a week ago last Saturday, eight days ago.
The King's a servant, but he's also the King.
Like, there's a level of respect that he has afforded.
How much more the King of Kings, the King of the Universe, the Creator of all things.
This is what Nehemiah is doing.
Recalling who God is and what he has done will always help us to have perspective in terms of life being frail and fragile
because it reminds us of our current state and how we have no true ability to fix things.
But it also reminds us that God is unchanging and nothing can cause him any sort of harm or pressure.
He cannot be at all messed with.
He is strong.
He is always constant.
God alone is unchanging.
God alone is all-powerful.
He is all-knowing, surprised, and never surprised at the infidelity of his people.
And yet, he still makes a covenant with them.
He, it's not like God somehow was surprised when Israel went off the rails, found themselves in exile.
That didn't surprise God or take him, you know, unawares when hundreds of years before he made a covenant with them.
He knew the frailty and the brokenness and the propensity of sin that people would experience.
The infidelity that they would have towards him.
So, recalling God's character and covenant, it's an important aspect for perspective, but it also results in soul searching.
And this is precisely what we see in this next portion of the prayer.
In verse 6, and in verse 6 to 8,
Let your ear be attentive, 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, the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.
Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying,
If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples.
I'll just pause really quickly there.
If we think of sin as merely missing the mark, which it is a definition of sin.
You know, you miss the mark, you aim for the target, you miss.
It's sin.
Then we're not going to feel the gravity of what sin truly is.
Sin is, it's an infidelity to God.
It's going after other faiths or philosophies or promises or desires.
Like a husband goes after mistresses.
There's something deeply grievous about that.
God has been this God that has initiated time and time and time again with Israel.
It's not like there's this cosmic dating app that Israel hooked up with God and then they got married and all of that.
It's God.
He fashions Israel.
He brings them into the land.
He brings them out of famine into Egypt.
He brings them out of slavery from Egypt.
He gives them a land.
He gives them a constitution.
He makes promises.
It's God, God, God, God, God, God, God.
And the relationship that he develops and he makes with his people,
it is like a husband and a bride.
And yet, in this case, the bride is constantly unfaithful.
God forbid this touches anyone in our congregation directly or indirectly,
but I'm sure we can know or we have known people,
I mean, this is a deeply personal thing to talk about,
that have suffered infidelity.
And it is devastating to the core.
This is what sin is described like in the scriptures.
And I think this is the way we ought to look at it.
Here it says, down in verse 7,
we have acted very corruptly against you.
There's also an injustice done towards God in sin.
It is a complete relational trust breakdown.
And here, Nehemiah is doing some soul searching.
So, I'm not suggesting that every crisis that we go through
is a result of our own sin.
It may be, I mean, if somebody dies suddenly,
it's not your fault because you've sinned,
like you've put a hex on them or something's, you know,
bizarre in the spirit world.
But, we should ask the question,
have I sinned towards this person?
Is this loss that I'm experiencing,
not just with a person, but any kind of loss,
is a result of sin?
What part have I played?
God, have I sinned against you?
Have I acted corruptly?
Have I trusted in other gods?
Please, please show me.
And it's an opportunity for us
to get right with God once again
and to come to him and look for mercy and forgiveness.
Our hearts drift, they do.
And in times of crisis,
when we come to God
and we're praying,
we are stripped down to nothing.
We trust nothing else but him.
Nehemiah's fasting,
and that's an aspect of fasting as well.
The things that we look to as comfort
are stripped bare.
And all we have
is us before God
and we're raw towards him.
It's an opportunity
to ask God
if our hearts have drifted,
and if so,
how far
and how can we get back to him?
God is not a vindictive God
so that every time we
do something against his laws,
he's just there,
ready to smite us.
But really,
God is the creator of all good things
and his good design is
for our life.
There's no substitute
that will somehow be better.
So after confession,
Nehemiah finally brings
the request to God.
Look with me in verse 8.
Remember the word
that you commanded
your servant Moses,
saying,
if you are unfaithful,
I will scatter you
among the peoples,
but if you return to me
and keep my commandments
and do them,
though your outcasts
are in the uttermost parts
of heaven.
It's another way of saying
to the ends of the earth.
From there,
I will gather them
and bring them
to the place
that I have chosen
to make my name dwell there.
They are your servants
and your people
whom you have redeemed
by your great power
and by your strong hand.
O Lord,
let your ear be attentive
to the prayer of your servant
and to the prayer
of your servants
who delight to fear your name
and give success
to your servant today
and grant him mercy
in the sight of this man.
He's talking about the king.
Now I was cupbearer
to the king.
O Lord,
will you please remember
your people?
His name is lifted high.
There is soul searching done
and now Nehemiah brings
the request to the Lord.
O Lord,
the crisis is too much.
Please stop it.
I'm the cupbearer
to the king.
Give me an opportunity
to speak to the king.
Maybe he can help us.
Friends,
I'm tempted to ask you
if you pray,
but the reality is
even the most ardent skeptics pray.
Whether you pray to the universe
or there's some kind of self-prayer,
whatever it may be,
the practice,
the practice of prayer
is an intrinsic thing for humanity
and it matters
how we come before the Lord
and the things we ask him.
It matters that we come to the God of scriptures,
to the God of scripture
and we ask him to fulfill his word
and his design.
And it's hard to pray
in a consistent way,
but we need to remember
that if we're not praying to the Lord,
we're praying to something else.
Hopefully not someone else.
Again, our hearts drift.
Nehemiah here reminds us
to pray to the Lord
and to be fervent in that prayer
and to bring our requests to him.
So the real question is,
who are we praying to
and how are we praying?
Prayer is a practice.
So eloquence isn't a prerequisite to prayer.
There's a way to pray,
but it's hard sometimes.
You know, one of the things that we do here
is we try our best to pray the Bible
because, I mean,
our words are fine,
the Bible's words are far better
and they ground us
in how God wants us to pray
and approach him.
So let us pray
in a very real, honest way,
remembering that God alone
heals, restores, and redeems.
So here it is.
He prays,
give me favor with the king.
Verse 11.
And then it says,
and I was a cupbearer to the king.
Okay?
Roll credits,
scene,
episode one of the mini-series.
You're thinking,
Nehemiah's next scene,
he's in front of the king.
It's going down.
Like, God has heard the prayer.
The problem is huge.
He's going to,
you know,
the next scene,
the next day,
the next moment,
he's going to be before the king.
But look with me
in chapter 2, verse 1.
And this moves us
soon to our second part
where Nehemiah,
his courage to act is incredible.
But look with me
in verse 1 of chapter 2.
In the month of Nisan,
in the 12th year
of King Artaxerxes,
when wine was before him,
I took up the wine
and gave it to the king.
Now I had been sad
in his presence.
And the king said to me,
Why is your face sad
seeing you are not sick?
This is nothing
but sadness of the heart.
Okay.
Just pause really quickly there.
This isn't the next day.
This is four months later
that this is happening.
If you look here
in chapter 1,
if you go back to chapter 1,
verses,
chapter 1, verse 1,
it says,
Now it happened
in the month of Kislev
in the 20th year.
chapter 2 starts
in the month of Nisan.
It's about 100 plus days
between Nehemiah's prayer
in chapter 1
and what actually goes down
in chapter 2.
Four months of living
with the fear
that your people
may be destroyed.
Four months of unanswered silence.
Nehemiah's praying
day and night, okay?
He is laboring in prayer.
God is not answering him.
At least it seems like
he's not answering him.
For four months.
Now, okay,
in a lifetime,
four months,
what's four months?
Pray for something now
that is urgent.
There is a calamity,
a crisis upon you.
Pray that the Lord
would intervene
and keep praying
for four months.
It's a long time.
It's a difficult
series of prayers.
Frustrations
surely mounted.
Four months.
Will Jerusalem
be a wasteland
in four months?
Four months of silence.
You know,
the wonderful thing
about prayer
is that God answers
in his own timing
and in his own way.
Sometimes it's with a no.
Sometimes it's with a yes.
But God hears
and he answers his prayers.
But again,
in his timing.
So,
in this period
of waiting,
what happens to Nehemiah?
Well,
we're not sure,
but what happens
with us
when we have to wait?
It helps us
to relinquish
our desire
and ability
to control the narrative.
To fix things
on our own.
Nehemiah is powerless
and he knows it.
For if he had the power
to remedy the situation,
he would have done
so immediately.
Because,
how does it end?
Chapter 1.
At the very end
of verse 15,
and grant him mercy
in the sight of this man.
Oh,
a bit before that,
sorry.
Give success
to your servant today.
Nehemiah wants
this solved ASAP
and he has to wait
four long months.
The temptation
of the Christian
to accuse God
of being absent
is ever present.
It is.
It is present
in our home.
It is present,
I'm sure,
amongst us
this morning.
We have prayed,
we have looked
to God
and he has not
come through.
At least from our perspective.
But again,
God's timing
is not our timing.
God knew
when it would be best
for Nehemiah
to be in front
of the king.
And it wasn't right away.
It was four months after.
And I'll just say this
before we get
into the next section.
If Nehemiah went
haphazardly in front
of the king
as the cupbearer,
very good possibility
that he'd be hanging
from the gallows.
You don't go into
the king's presence
with your own agenda
showing sadness,
especially as a cupbearer.
You're bringing wine,
you're bringing happiness,
you're bringing the party.
If Nehemiah went in
in his own timing
and his own strength
with his own strategy,
who knows what would have happened.
Jerusalem would have been
potentially laid waste forever.
But God in his timing knew.
God in his timing knew.
So look with me,
chapter 2, verses 1 to 6.
And let's see
Nehemiah's courage to act.
Number one,
there's courage right away
to wait for the Lord.
It takes a lot of courage.
It takes a lot of patience.
And we see that here.
Look with me now
to verse 1 to 6.
In the month of Nisan,
in the 20th year
of King Artaxerxes,
when wine was before him,
I took up the wine
and gave it to the king.
Now I had not been sad
in his presence.
And the king said to me,
Why is your face sad
seeing you are not sick?
This is nothing but
sadness of the heart.
Then I was very much afraid.
And that fear is a real fear.
His life hangs in the balance,
but also Jerusalem
hangs in the balance.
And I said to the king,
Let the king live forever.
Why should not my face be sad
when the city,
the place of my father's graves,
lies in ruins?
Its gates have been destroyed by fire.
Then the king said to me,
What are you requesting?
So I prayed to the God of heaven.
And I said to the king,
If it pleases the king,
and if your servant
has found favor in your sight,
that you send me to Judah,
to the city of my father's graves,
that I may rebuild it.
And the king said to me,
the queen sitting beside him,
How long will you be gone?
And when will you return?
So it pleased the king to send me
when I had given him a time.
Nehemiah is risking life and limb here.
And in God's timing,
he has favor.
God answers his prayers.
Four months later,
God answers his prayers.
I mean, if the king was having a bad day,
if there were bad news,
also Nehemiah is asking the king,
in a sense,
to undo the decree that he gave
to put a moratorium
on the building of Jerusalem.
It could have been very offensive to the king.
What you did was wrong.
Please reverse it.
No.
I mean, that's what gets you,
you know, to the chopping block.
But instead,
in God's timing,
in God's ways,
bathed in prayer,
looking to God
for salvation,
he says,
Long live the king.
And he appeals,
not to the rebuilding of Jerusalem
so much as he does
to the sense of honoring the dead
that the Persians would have.
What does he say
in verse 6?
He says,
Let the king live forever.
Why should not my face be sad
when the city,
the place of my father's graves,
lies in ruins?
To honor the dead
was big in Persia.
And the Lord,
in his wisdom
and in his timing,
helps Nehemiah
to appeal to the king
in the way
that the king would understand.
In his timing.
And what is the result?
Favor.
So,
look with me,
continue on
in verses 7 to 8.
And I said to the king,
If it pleases the king,
let letters be given me
to the governors of the province
beyond the river.
That's a trans-Euphrates,
not like modern-day Iraq,
that they may let me pass through
until I come to Judah.
And a letter to Asaph,
the keeper of the king's forest,
that he may give me timber
to make beams for the gates
and fortress of the temple
and for the wall of the city
and for the house
that I shall occupy.
And the king granted me
what I asked
for the good hand
of my God
was upon me.
The king hears him favorably,
grants him these
even greater requests
than just put an end
to the destruction,
help me to rebuild it.
But here's the big deciding factor
in all of this.
Verse 8,
the second part of verse 8.
And the king granted me
what I asked.
Why?
For the good hand of God
was upon me.
That was it.
We saw this a lot
in Ezra chapter 7.
The good hand of the Lord
was upon me.
God favored me.
God was directing
all of his steps.
It wasn't the king's decree
ultimately,
but the hand of the Lord
upon him.
There's more to say
on this subject,
but it's really important
that we understand
that the hand of the triune God
is guiding history.
And it's hard to think
about that,
especially when there is
mass killings
in multiple parts
of the world
happening right now
or genocides
or the ongoing culture
of death in Canada
with euthanasia
and abortion.
You think,
how on earth
is God guiding history?
Like,
is he guiding it
towards evil?
There's a lot to say
about that.
It's a tough question,
but we can trust
that God is working
all things out
for his glory
and for the good
of his people,
directing all of history
towards a triumphant end
where Jesus will come
and destroy
all that is evil
forever,
that there will be
no more tears
of sadness,
that light
and life
will be in abundance
forever and ever.
And here
is an example
of God
guiding
the
guiding history
by his good hand
directing the affairs
of even the king
of Persia.
You might never be
in the position
of Nehemiah
before a king
standing in the gap
for an entire nation,
but we are faced
with decisions
on the daily
that require courage
and God's good hand
upon us.
There are people
that look to us,
one person,
a dozen people,
whether it's
the employees
under us
or the children
that God has given us,
influence,
the neighbors
that we influence,
family members
that rely upon us,
whatever it may be,
we need God's good hand
upon us
on the daily
and Nehemiah
teaches us that
consistent,
real,
godly,
raw prayer
is at the core
of that.
Doing right
takes courage
and responding well
in times of crises
may require courage.
And here,
Nehemiah's act
of courage
in the presence
of a king
is directly connected
to his prayer life.
And it is hard
to pray,
but friends,
this is why
we gather together
and we pray
week after week
and we ask the Lord
to help us,
to cleanse us
from our sins,
to help us
to live for his glory,
to build up
our inner man.
This is why we pray.
But remember
that the courage
to act
in,
what is it,
the,
in the month
of Nisan,
it really began
at the,
at the first
of the month
of Kislev.
Don't despise
the daily habits
of praying.
But,
if this was just,
just pray more sermon,
I think we would be
improperly served.
Because ultimately,
we can't will ourselves
to pray
and to desire God.
God gives us
the gift
that draws us
to himself.
and ultimately,
we see that
Nehemiah stood
in the gap
for his people,
but really,
Nehemiah was a picture,
a shadow
of Christ
who was in
an even greater
position than Nehemiah.
The,
the,
the king of heaven.
And what does he do?
He empties himself,
he puts his
life on the line
to stand in the gap
for you and me
because of sin.
Not just to rebuild
walls of a city,
but to rebuild
the lives
of people.
And what does Jesus do?
He,
he,
he doesn't just
get favor
before a king
and travel to Jerusalem
and fix things.
He travels to Jerusalem
and dies.
He,
he dies completely
in,
in just way.
I mean,
the calamity of calamities
is Christ on the cross
and yet through that
what happens?
He rebuilds
a church,
rebuilds a people
into a church
so that you and I,
the scriptures describe
as living stones.
It's a remarkable thing.
Jesus is the greater
Nehemiah
who is rebuilding
the temple
that is called
the church
where his spirit resides
and he teaches us
to pray.
And not just that,
but when he dies
and rises again
and ascends to heaven,
he continues
to intercede
on our behalf
so that Jesus'
prayers help us
in our day to day.
His spirit
aids us
as we
do the things
that he has called us
to do
and helps us
to come back
when our hearts drift.
Jesus is the true
advisor to the king.
In fact,
he's the king himself.
He is at the right
hand of the father
and he is also
to all of us
who have put our faith
and trust in him,
has given his
strong hand,
his good hand.
He's given us his favor.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father,
we thank you
for this example
of what prayer
looks like
in a time of crisis.
Lord,
we thank you
what action looks like
in a time of crisis
and how it takes courage,
but really
it takes consistency
of consistency
in prayer
to be on our knees
seeking your face
and Lord,
in the times
where we do not
hear from you,
when you are silent,
would you please
reassure us
by your word,
by your church,
by people
that we call
brothers and sisters
to keep going
and that you do
hear us
and that you do
desire to answer
our prayers
and bless us
and Lord,
we just ask
for your patience
and wisdom
and perspective
to know
that your timing
is better than ours
and your answer
is always better
than ours.
So Lord,
we go our separate ways
soon,
Lord,
trusting that
you desire to bless
and not to curse
and to continue
to build up your church
as a temple
of the Holy Spirit.
We thank you
in Christ's name.
Amen.