Sermons

Well, good morning. This morning we are going to start a summer series through the book of Nehemiah. So, I'm glad that I've got a few friends who are pastors that are going to be able to come over the few of the weeks in the summer, our own elders here in the church. A number of them will be speaking. Steven Condy, who we'll talk about more this evening, I'll be here able to speak as well. And I'm just really looking forward to that particular study. I'm going to be heading for a few weeks here back to visit family and friends in Ireland. You can pray for us just that the Lord would look after us and undertake and that we would have a sweet time reconnecting and that the kids would still be excited and eager to get on the plane back again at the end of that. So, I'm very grateful for the opportunity to do that and excited as well for time in the book of Nehemiah.

Building projects are notoriously messy affairs. They go over time, they go over budget, they are overcomplicated, and we are about to embark on one. One preacher in a series on the book of Nehemiah called it, the series, "Hand Me Another Brick." This book is a building project sort of book. But actually, it's really the second part of a building project.

The book really should be held together with Ezra. Ezra, Nehemiah, the two really go hand in hand. And so, if we're going to understand all of the brickwork that takes place in the book of Nehemiah, we really need to appreciate that this building project has already been going on 70 years. Hopefully ours doesn't go on that long. But 70 years. First, under Zerubbabel. Then another 13 years, the previous 13 years, Ezra has been on the scene, and he's really been leading the work.

And now Nehemiah will come into a place of leadership and get mucked-in to this building project. Largely because the project has hit the messy stage. What a mess! That would be a good title for the sermon this morning. What a mess! And that's what we find at the beginning of the book and God raises up Nehemiah as a leader to try and address some of that mess.

I want us to study this book over the summer months because I think it's really good whenever we're spending a long time going through a book like Luke's Gospel, which we have been on Sunday mornings. I think it's helpful occasionally to take a break from that study to go and to remind ourselves of other parts of the Bible, and especially because we've been so long in the New Testament, it's good to spend a few months in the Old Testament. All of God's Word is so wonderful, useful, profitable, and I think it's good for us to remain acquainted with the Old Testament in the midst of such a long New Testament study. Also, we are about to launch a building project.

And Nehemiah, I think, in that regard, is particularly helpful because, like a building project, when you first read Nehemiah, you can end up focusing on the bricks. And if you do that, you miss the point. Because Nehemiah is not a story simply about building walls. In actual fact, what it seeks to expose, what it seeks to highlight is that this is not another building project of bricks and mortar, but there is a personal building project that is going on here.

The book stresses the need in the midst of the chaos of a building project to first make sure that our hearts are being built accordingly before God the right way. And I think for us, that's so important. You know, we are praying for God to give wisdom as we move forward with our own building project. There's a lot of time and finances and decision-making that will have to go on. And those moments have a tendency to put a lot of pressure on the church.

And if we end up getting too preoccupied with wood and nails and decorations and carpet colors and all the rest of it, we will be in a sorry mess ourselves. And what we need to focus on in this season as we are building a sanctuary for us to meet in and worship God together; it's far more importantly that we would be preparing our hearts, that we would make sure that we are right before the Lord. That we would make sure that we are sensitive to the commands He gives and eager to put these things into practice.

So can I ask you to stand, please, as we read the beginning of the book, Nehemiah chapter one, verses one to four. Nehemiah chapter one, verses one to four. Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 1.

(Scripture reading) "The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacalai. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven." (End)

Let's pray.

(Prayer) Heavenly Father, we thank You for just the honesty of Scripture and how it doesn't paint a picture of everything always being rosy and perfect for the people of God, but instead it honestly portrays the difficulties, the trials, the troubles, the hard situations that so often the faithful find themselves in. And so, as we approach the text today, we ask Lord that You would grant us insight. Lord, do You know the situation of our church. You know the situation of our own hearts. You know the needs that lie before us. And we do pray through the study of Nehemiah, Lord, that You would instruct us. We know that all Scripture is useful, all Scripture is profitable, but we pray that in this book we would find a word in season for our church and indeed for us as individuals. Speak to us, we pray. Shape the way we think. Cause us to walk in ways that would please You. And draw our affections to Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen. (End)

Have a seat.

Well, the first thing I want to highlight this morning is the history of a mess. The history of a mess. Sometimes when you jump into a book like Nehemiah in the Old Testament especially because the Old Testament covers so much history. It can be confusing. It can be hard to know where exactly are we. What specific moment are we talking about in the wide 4,000 years of Old Testament history? And the issues that come up in this book, they are in a context, a historical context. If we're going to gain and understand what we're going to study over the summer months, I think it's so important in the outset that we take some time to understand what has been going on in the past for the people of God, for the Israelites. And the Old Testament begins after it records creation and it records the fall, the entrance of sin into the world. It records that man and woman engaged in sin fully. In fact, the account of Genesis records that God declared every inclination of their heart was evil continually.

In other words, there was a rebellion against God that clearly marked humanity. And so, God stepped in and he punished with that global flood. But he preserved a people, Noah and his family. And yet the reality was that when Noah and his family came out of the ark, they were not pure. They were sinners like those who had gone before them.

Genesis takes time to show us that in the personal account of Noah's fall from grace, but also in the account of Babel. Where the people want to build a name for themselves rather than honor the name of God. And where the people want to live according to their own devices rather than live according to the way that God has called them to live. And so, rebellion still marks humanity.

Now God is a God, the Bible says, of salvation. And He has a plan to save a people onto Himself. And in order to enact that great plan of salvation God selected from the peoples of the earth one man, Abraham. And He made promises to Abraham, a covenant with Abraham to establish a new nation in the earth. A nation through whom He would reveal Himself. And they were meant to be a priesthood to the other nations. They were meant to pass on this message. They were meant to be a light. But like the generations before, they too were marked by sin.

Yet for every tribe, kindred, and tongue, God had a plan that through Abraham, He would bring the seed that would bless the nation. And part of that promise was not simply the seed, though that was the most important part, but it was the establishment of Abraham's descendants as a nation, the Israelites. And it was the establishment of them in what is sometimes called the promised land. At that time the land of Canaan. And so there really was a hope and aspiration of a specific people in a specific place.

Due to famine that embryo nation for a season had to migrate to Egypt. Eventually, they became enslaved and they would remain there 400 years, again according to the plan and indeed the prophecy of God. But in that time in Egypt, they would multiply. In Exodus chapter 1, that's the refrain, the people multiplied.

And they grew from a small family unit into an established nation into a people group that had a significant population. God brought them out of Egypt under the leadership of Moses with the plagues, the signs and wonders performed there in Egypt. He took them across the Red Sea.

He brought them into the wilderness and this redeemed nation, even before they got to the promised land, would manifest rebellion again. They would show a wondering, a grumbling against God and an outward rejection of his leadership. And so, God would have to punish the people by maintaining them, by keeping them in the wilderness for over 40 years, by causing them to wonder, allowing a generation to pass away before He would then bring the next generation into the promised land under the leadership of Joshua. Again, in Joshua's leadership, the people came into the land, they took possession of the land, they drove out many of, not all of, but many of the inhabitants of the land, and they were established as the people and the land, the land of Israel.

The tribes kind of loosely associated with each other during that time with different dramas and issues coming up in different providences among the different tribes, the time of the judges. It was a time where, again, the rebellion of the nation was on display because the refrain in the book of Judges was, everybody did what was right in their own eyes. And there's a pattern that we see in the book of Judges. A pattern where for a season the people obey God and their land is secure.

And then they start to rebel against God and chase after foreign gods and foreign ways. And God has to send in the foreigners, the foreign nations to possess and to enslave and to make the people subject to them, and then the people would cry out to God for mercy and He would deliver them.

And then the cycle would repeat all over again. The people rebel. God has to punish and the people cry out for mercy and God restores. And over and over and over again, that cycle continues as everybody does what is right in their own eyes. At the end of the book of Judges, the people are hungry for a king. Someone to unify them, someone to give them presence, someone to stand against these foreign nations.

And so they select Saul, and Saul's not a great king. He's quickly succeeded by King David, the great David of the Old Testament, the one who was used by God to kill Goliath, the one who penned so many of the Psalms and in Scripture, a man who was called a man after God's own heart. David, he establishes Jerusalem as the capital, and he unites the tribes together. And he encourages the worship of God, and under his son Solomon, Israel really is at its pinnacle. Solomon is wise, he is a strong leader, the nation is wealthy, the nation is powerful, and the nation enjoys security in a way it had never before. But that old pattern of rebellion of everybody doing ultimately what was right in their own eyes hasn't gone away.

And when Solomon dies, the kingdom rips in two. It becomes two nations. You have Solomon's, after Solomon's death, northern Israel, a separate nation comprising ten of the twelve tribes. Jeroboam becomes the king there and really that northern kingdom, northern Israel is marked by gross sin, increasing iniquity, chasing after foreign gods, chasing after Baal worship in particular, trying to be like the other nations around about and God sends prophet after prophet after prophet to warn them and eventually they are decimated by the Assyrian army during the time of the Assyrian empire coming in and squashing them in 722 BC. Southern, the southern kingdom is called Judah. That's where Jerusalem is.

A separate nation really comprised of two tribes, Benjamin and Judah. They do slightly, only slightly better. They have some kings that come back to the law of God that want to think and hear the challenge the prophets bring to them. But by and large, their story is exactly the same. Bad kings making bad decisions and leading the people towards foreign gods and away from the ways of the true gods.

And so, after warning time and time again through the prophets. God has warned specifically that He would send Babylon to squash them and that's exactly what happens. Nebuchadnezzar and the growing influence of the Babylonian empire comes to Judah and he destroys Jerusalem. He destroys and breaks down the first temple. He takes many of the populations in different exiles into different parts of the Babylonian empire.

You think of Daniel, that's what happens. Daniel's part of that first exile. So, what happens at that point is the Jewish people are no longer in, necessarily, the promised land. They're everywhere. They're scattered. You think of Daniel, there in the courts of Babylon. Speaking, influencing things, but in a foreign land, in a foreign court. The people are away from that land of promise, in a period of exile, with the future prospects, at least humanly speaking, seeming hopeless. Well, when a nation is broken down and scattered throughout the empire, what are the chances of them returning?

Well, actually, they're very good if God has made a promise. And that's exactly what took place. Humanly speaking, the whole thing seems so unusual, but 70 years after the people were exiled from Judah across the Babylonian Empire, God moved. Persia had come to the forefront, the Medo-Persian empire and had conquered the Babylonians and Cyrus was the king and Cyrus issued a decree. A decree that changed the landscape of the world that the Jews could now return to the promised land. It never had a nation been decimated and destroyed and then returned like the Jews of that time.

The whole thing seems so surreal. Psalm 126 verses 1 and 2, it speaks of that time. We were like men who dreamed. You know, whenever you dream you have to, or something surreal happens, you have to pinch yourself to make sure that it's real, that you're not dreaming. That's the way that people felt. Their fortunes had turned so dramatically. The whole thing seems so surreal.

Zerubbabel then comes in and he leads returning exiles and rebuilding the temple. Now, it's not glorious as the one of the past, but it is a temple. And then, after that small remnant, that small group had returned to the land and rebuilt the temple, they were struggling because they had come back, but they didn't really know what to do. They didn't know how to live. They were in the land, they had a temple, but they didn't know what to do with it.

And so, Ezra returns. And Ezra is sent by the king to go back and to instruct the people. Ezra is a priest and a scribe, and he comes to teach the people what the Torah, what the law of God says. To explain to them how the people ought to live if they want to obey God. And so, he comes back and really his work is rebuilding worship. Teaching the people the law of God, teaching them what it means to live before the Lord. And Ezra has been there leading the people for 13 years.

Meanwhile, Nehemiah, he's like many of the Jews still living in the empire, has formed his own life. He's successful in many regards, but he still sees himself as a Jew and is interested in the affairs of those who returned. He's actually the cupbearer for the Persian king, Artaxerxes. The most powerful man in the world at the time. Nehemiah is his cupbearer, really his bodyguard, his chief of security. It's an important and influential role. It was a role that got to speak regularly with the king. Had his ear, had his trust, had his confidence.

And Nehemiah, that important man, in that important place, hears that the rebuilding of the city has stopped. The city still has no gates and no walls and is so vulnerable. So, you see this history, and I know that's a lot. Thank you for your patience with me. You see in the history of the nation, there is a pattern. You see the pattern?

The people rebel, they live according to their own ways, and it doesn't go good. The security of the land, the security of the city is based on their faithfulness to God. When the people wonder from God, it's almost like His hand of protection is lifted off and the foreign oppressing nations come in. And it's a wake-up call that God allows for the nation. To cause them to see sense. To cause them to seek after. But no matter how many times they are punished. They seem to make the same mistakes.

In our house growing up, you know the way sometimes with discipline, you get nervous about how you discipline your children, especially in public because, you know, we live in a culture that's so sensitive to a genuine overreach and discipline. And so, parents come up with code words, don't they? In our house, the code word was a reminder. And, you know, you look at the child that was misbehaving, you say, when we go home, there'll be a reminder.

And they would, you know, straighten up and hopefully begin to do what they were meant to do. Well, this nation had reminder after reminder after reminder. And yet, they still falter and they still fall. When the nation loves God, the land is secure, but when the nation wanders from God, the land is attacked. That's the history of this mess. Second thing I want you to notice are the details of the mess. The details of the mess that we see presented in the text. I simply want to make a couple of very simple observations. The first one begins, the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hakalai.

Nehemiah's dad there, Hakalai. His name means wait for the Lord. That really is a good summary of the nature of what is happening. Nehemiah is still living in exile, still away from the land, in trouble, not knowing what to do. He's going to pray about things for a season. We see that in verse four and we get a summary of his prayer, what comes through the rest of the chapter. Things are going to take time, but God is a God we can wait for. And Nehemiah is going to record for us the way that the Lord worked in that dark moment to rebuild the nation.

He's the one in control. But the first one continues, now it happened in the month of Chislev in the 20th year. The month there it's speaking of is really mid-November to mid-December as we would reckon it. And it's the 20th year, the 20th year of Artaxerxes. He's been on the throne. He's established. He knows what he's doing, he knows his empire. And actually, historically, this is a time where after a tumultuous period of getting established and rebellion and needing to assert himself, this is a period where now things are largely at peace.

Ezra has been back in Jerusalem for 13 years and Nehemiah is naturally interested in the progress that has been made. Nehemiah, we're told in verse 1, is in Susa. That was the winter retreat, the winter palace for the Persian kings. It's located in modern-day southwest Iran, about 900 miles from Jerusalem. That's where he is. And so providentially, God has 900 miles from Jerusalem in the palace, beside the most powerful man in the world, humanly speaking, his ambassador, waiting for the Lord.

Look at verse two. “Hananiah, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem.” Hananiah's name means God is gracious. So, it's a very positive name.

But what he brings is not a positive report. It's a devastating report. It's bad news concerning the fortunes of the city. And verse three tells us what the bad news was. "They said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire."

Now, the term remnant speaks of that small group, not all the Jews, but the small group amongst the Jewish people that were faithful to God. That were committed to the things they ought to be committed to. And here are the remnant that have been faithful to go back and to seek to reestablish temple worship and to reestablish the people in the promised land. But their condition is not good, it's hard. And Nehemiah is told about that remnant that they are in great trouble and shame. Now, trouble is an easy word. It means hardship. There's difficulties. Life's not easy for them.

The word shame, though, has a broader connotation. It implies that they are being ridiculed by the others, by the foreigners, by the other people groups of the land. They're a bit of an embarrassment given their current circumstances. Their misfortunes are making God look small because they are so in trouble. You have an idea presented in chapter 2 that is very, very similar where the concern about the nation and its reputation is paramount. They have become an embarrassment to God. And in particular, they're an embarrassment because of two things. The walls are broken down, we're told. Walls in that world were a sign of strength. We don't think of walls surrounding the city. There's a famous city in Northern Ireland called Derry or Londonderry. And it's famous because it's a city that has a wall around it. People talk in their songs about Derry's walls.

And at one point, whenever the opposing king came against the city, the apprentice boys came and closed the gates so the people could hide secure behind the walls, and they were able to wait things out. Well, that's nothing new. Ancient cities were secured by their walls. Well, if they had support that could come, they closed the gates and they tried to outweigh the people outside the walls. It was a way to protect the city. Those even who were farming on the outside could rush in before the gates were closed and be secure. So, the walls were a sign of strength.

And you see that all the way through the Old Testament. 2 Samuel chapter 5 records how David, when he took Jerusalem, he built up the walls of Jerusalem. King Solomon, 1 Kings chapter 3, did the same. He fortifies and expands the walls of the city. And in the Old Testament, whenever things are bad, it's normally described as the walls being broken. 2 Kings 14, Jehosh, he breaches the walls of Jerusalem and so plunders the city. The Babylonian army, Jeremiah 52 verse 14 are described as breaking down the city walls. Lamentations 2, 8 and 9, the prophet Jeremiah laments the destruction of Jerusalem noting that God had determined to destroy the wall and let the gates sink to the ground.

That's the way that world thought. The walls breaking down was a sign of security going and the walls being built up was a sign of security being established. You remember in Psalm 51, David in his spirit of repentance in verse 18, he prays, “Lord build up the walls of Jerusalem. Make this city stronger. As I renew my commitment to you, would you strengthen the city?”

And the gates, Nehemiah says, or hears, were destroyed by fire. It was the ultimate sign of a city's defeat. If the gates, the big, strong, thick, wooden gates were burnt down, the city was breached. In Jeremiah 17, 27 God gives a warning to the people if they continue to break the Sabbath that their gates will be burnt down.

And so, it seems that there had been work going on in Jerusalem. There had even been work beginning on the walls and everything had ground a halt. Ezra chapter 4 verse 7 to 23 seems to summarize the historical context, the other people groups of the land. They wrote a letter to the king, to Artaxerxes to raise suspicion and to cause everything to grind to a depressing halt. So that's the details of the mess. Third thing I want you to see then is the response to the mess. And this is what I want us to apply to our hearts. Look at verse four.

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And they continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. What does Nehemiah do after hearing this devastating report about this real hardship that the people of God faced?

Well, he displays godly sorrow. Weeping. Now, this is the chief bodyguard. He's not a soft man, but he is now a weeping man. A mourning man. A fasting and praying man. To fast is to be so consumed with the need to bring your requests before God in prayer that even the normal routines of eating are set aside so you can even more give your time to prayer. This is a man with burden.

And it goes on a long time. Remember we said this news came to him in the month of mid-November to mid-December. Well in chapter 2 when he'll speak to the king it'll be somewhere between mid-March and mid-April. We're talking about four months. This is ongoing behavior; this is an ongoing posture. The prayer we have in the rest of chapter one is really a summary of the tone and nature of what he brought before the Lord.

When Nehemiah is confronted with the mess of a broken world and the suffering of the people of God, suffering is real and so sorrow is real. Difficulties are actual and so prayer must be actual. That's the right response. So sometimes Christians live in this world like they're meant to not be affected by anything around them. That's not true. It's not the pattern laid out in Scripture.

But when we watch the news and we see the horror of the Epstein files and all of the misery and sin and hurt that has been caused by wicked men and wicked women, friends, we should be filled with real sorrow. That that can happen in this nation should devastate us. Not completely break us but certainly should cause us sorrow. When we are reminded, I think we get so cold and used to it, but when we're reminded about the numbers of abortions that continue to be carried out in this land, friends, there should be a heavy heart. There should be a brokenness that we feel. We are far too used to it. We don't even shed tears anymore.

When we see whether we agree with the politics or not, when we see the ungodliness of so many who are involved in our political system and the land, the way they speak, the crassness with which they act. Friends, that should not do anything other than upset us and move us to prayer.

We'll have time later on today to talk about some of the ways our church has engaged in mission, but when we hear Ireland, you know, we've got the Irish pieces on the wall for VBS. When we hear about Ireland being the most unreached part of the English-speaking world, we should be grieved by that. When we receive updates from Adrian about a small faithful church trying to be established in a city like Mendoza in Argentina, where there is so little gospel light, we should be burdened for what's going on. Here's the very simple point this morning.

God's people grieve a broken world. We're meant to grieve a broken world. We're meant to cry. We're not meant to be running around like we're invincible. We're meant to be moved and affected by the brokenness of what we see around us. There is a doctrine of lament that has been forgotten by the modern church.

And yet while we do grieve, we do not grieve without hope. Because though the reality and ugliness of our sinful world is clear, we know who sits on the throne. I mentioned some of the other names, but do you know what the name Nehemiah means? Yahweh comforts.

This was a world that was broken. Jerusalem was in a mess. Its walls were broken down. Its gates were burnt. The whole situation seemed to stall. But the God of comfort had his man where he needed to be. 900 miles away in Susa, at the side of the king, with his ear, and as God moved the heart of Nehemiah to a godly brokenness, God had also been preparing the way to bring about restoration. Our hope is never in the world getting it right. Our hope is never in the church getting it right. Our hope is to be found in the God who is the source of all comfort, enacting His plans to save a broken and sinful world.

Friends, it's so easy to get overwhelmed by the nature of what is wrong with our world, and there's a sense where that is right. But there's a greater sense that our God is still on His throne. and he is the God of comfort. And if this morning, you're overwhelmed by politics, you're overwhelmed by ethics, you're overwhelmed by the drift of society, your comfort can only be found in the God who made a way by which sinful hearts can be transformed through the work, through the atoning work of Jesus Christ. Let's grieve the condition of the nation. But let’s hope in the God of all comfort.

Let's pray.

(Prayer) Heavenly Father, we are so thankful for the honest way with which Scripture encourages us to lament the brokenness of this world. And yet, Lord, we also give thanks that this world is not left to its own devices. But there is the God of comfort, who works all things together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purposes to conform us to the image of Jesus Christ and in that Lord we hope. Bless us we pray and help us even over the course of this series to learn what it means to live and to serve in a broken world for the glory of our Savior Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray, amen. (End)

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