Speaking to the King

We laid down our burdens, we gave Jesus the hard stuff but what does it look like to really do this life with Jesus.

You don’t need to pick up your burdens that you gave to Jesus but your crisis still needs to be lived in.

If you wrote down how you parent your child, when you walk out of this time of worship you will still need to be the parent to your child. The difference is you will be obedient to what Jesus tells you and not parent by how you feel.

Maybe it’s not parenting but other life crises that are coming or your going through.

Or maybe its a hope, a deep desire to see relief or change in your life, your friends life, your community, your work.

How do you follow God in faith in real life?

That’s what we are talking about today.

Nehemiah 2:1–10 (CSB)

1 During the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was set before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had never been sad in his presence,

The thing I love about Nehemiah is his practical, depressed and fearful faith.

When he hears about his city it breaks his heart. He gets down, but down is not what absorbs his life. His feeling, his mental state doesn’t become who He is.

Nehemiah desired to do something about it.

If you came last week, I shared what He did first. First he prays. and what you may not realize is that He prays that he can go through a King who already told the people of Jerusalem to stop rebuilding many years prior.

If you don’t know what this means to you, have you ever been

pursing Godly good dreams and they got stopped by someone.

It seemed so unfair. Then once again you had opportunity to pursue those Godly dreams again but the thought might come up, I’ve already tried that before. We’ve already tried that before. Or someone else already tried that before, that just won’t work cause it doesn’t happen.

Nehemiah knew all those “it’s already been done before” but

God can use us all as we are in the way that we are, with the limitations we have to raise us up and bring God glory.

Nehemiah, knew that this was the moment, he knew from his time with the king could kill him. How absolutely terrifying but important this time was and Nehemiah didn’t waste it just because he was afraid. He praised the king and talked about things the king cared about.

4 Then the king asked me, “What is your request?”

So I prayed to the God of the heavens

Nehemiah had already prayed hadn’t he? Yet once again he prays. My friends let us be a people of constant prayer. This is our power and it is the power we most neglect. Our ability to speak, listen and hear from God.

5 and answered the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor with you, send me to Judah and to the city where my ancestors are buried, so that I may rebuild it.”

6 The king, with the queen seated beside him, asked me, “How long will your journey take, and when will you return?” So I gave him a definite time, and it pleased the king to send me.

7 I also said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let me have letters written to the governors of the region west of the Euphrates River, so that they will grant me safe passage until I reach Judah. 8 And let me have a letter written to Asaph, keeper of the king’s forest, so that he will give me timber to rebuild the gates of the temple’s fortress, the city wall, and the home where I will live.” The king granted my requests, for the gracious hand of my God was on me.

Nehemiah does the scary, he actually asks of the king for what he wants. Nehemiah puts his life literally on the line for the yearning of his heart.

If you are praying for something please

Be willing to follow through on the actions that will allow that vision to come to pass.

If you are praying for victory in court, than follow through with the lawyers and the stuff that it takes. If you are praying for a job, than be willing to talk with people, get educated or whatever else God makes available for you to get a job. If you need a breakthrough in a relationship be willing to go to counseling with that person, be willing and open to the hard.

Often God will take us right into the hard and show us that He is faithful right there too, in the hard and in the blessing.

Nehemiah could have lost his life but instead he makes not one but two requests of the king and gets everything, everything that He asked for.

Nehemiah didn’t let the past stop his prayer.

He still took it to God in that beautiful prayer of Nehemiah chapter one which I talked about last week. Now he was again before the King with the opportunity to do what has already been tried many years earlier.

But do you remember last week when I told you that we knew that He prayed between November and December of 444 BC. It was now sometime between March and April.

4 to 5 months passed from when Nehemiah prayed. It could be assumed that Nehemiah kept praying during those months, a quick prayer here, a formal prayer, prayer with friends. No action on this prayer for months. We are just beginning March. Do you remember what you prayed for in November, when people were thinking about Thanksgiving and putting up Christmas lights?

How long are you willing to wait on God answering your urgent heart cry?

Even after praying, we don’t see action on this prayer for 4 months!

For some it was much longer than 4 months. The Prophet Daniel shared about the rebuilding of Jerusalem 95 years earlier!

Psalm 27:14 CSB

14 Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart be courageous. Wait for the Lord.

Psalm 33:20 CSB

20 We wait for the Lord; he is our help and shield.

Psalm 37:7 CSB

7 Be silent before the Lord and wait expectantly for him; do not be agitated by one who prospers in his way, by the person who carries out evil plans.

Sometimes people can be so stupid stating they are faithful and taking the first thing that comes along when in actuality they are impatient.

Relationships taken because finally after being lonely for so long someone is interested even though they don’t exactly have the same interest in God as you.

Jobs that finally have enough money but take us away from the vision God gave us.

My friends don’t let impatience and fear take us away from the blessing that comes through obedience to God.

Fear can just make us stupid. Fear can make us afraid to talk to people. Fear can make us do the exact opposite of what will bring us closer to what God has for us. Our response to fear is a determination of our faith. Courage is faith to act in the midst of fear.

Courage is being willing to wait on God for the timing to be right. Intelligence is knowing that faith will rely on God to do what He said, not on what we hope or urgently desire.

We will see that Nehemiah was afraid, but used everything he learned in his life to not be stupid. He still leaned heavily on what God has taught him and mixed his faith to be courageous when he was afraid to still do what God has shown him.

Where you come from, the people you know, the world you grew up gives you information about things I don’t know. You are God’s person right there, in your family, your work, your neighborhood, your community. If you look around this room you will see God’s people who are perfect for the situation in life that God has got them in.

Nehemiah had been working in the royal court and now was the prize person to be the chief cupbearer to the king. He put his life on the line everytime he drank for the king. As I shared last week, he was a eunuch, having his body destroyed by the customs of the Persians that he served who didn’t worship God and treated men who would be in the presence of the King’s harem, the wives and mistresses of the King, with such savagery, yet all that sacrifice Nehemiah wasn’t just treated with a wealthy lifestyle he was in a perfect position to help the people of his hometown.

Would however Nehemiah run up to the king and demand that he fix the walls of Jerusalem? Stupidly going against the Persian customs.

No Nehemiah waited until God gave the opportunity. And even then it was scary because Nehemiah was depressed in the presence of the King. This King didn’t worship God, didn’t love the Lord Jesus, everything was about himself as King. The fact that a servant wasn’t happy in the presence of the King could be taken by the King as an insult and Nehemiah could be killed.

2 so the king said to me, “Why do you look so sad, when you aren’t sick? This is nothing but sadness of heart.”

I was overwhelmed with fear

I love this verse, memorize this verse my friends. So many of us are walking around with feelings that we are afraid of. Nehemiah had taken his feelings to the Lord in prayer and he had lived with those feelings and he kept working with those feelings, and here it is that God is made it possible for Nehemiah to use those feelings to accomplish what Nehemiah had been praying about.

He could’ve wallowed in His sadness. So many walk around with the labels the doctor has given them but not realized that this not all there is. You may have a mental health or physical health condition but that is not you. You are a child of God, whom God wants to use to bless this world in the way that you are made for, in the age that you now are, with the abilities you know have, God just asks that you be obedient.

Nehemiah was.

3 and replied to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should I not be sad when the city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”

I talked earlier about knowing your way around your world. Nehemiah knew his way around the king. He didn’t say, “Jerusalem has no walls and I am sad!”

The king many years earlier had said Jerusalem couldn’t rebuild its walls.

Instead Nehemiah knew that the King cared a lot about how people viewed him as king. So he first praised the King. Then he knew of the King’s concern for the treatment of the history of people, of dead people, Nehemiah correctly called them his ancestors.

Nehemiah knew how to talk to the people he was used to.

I really enjoyed our time of worship outside behind the Chick-Fil-A that we did last year. The most wonderful and terrifying thing about it was I had not idea how to talk with the people who were unsheltered or living out of the motel 6 that used to be there. But Victor did, man I learned so much just listening to him talk.

I also know that Phil had no idea how to “witness” or “evangelize” in the setting we were at, but Phil knows how to praise God in singing, and so he did what he knew and wow how God was glorified in that time.

Nehemiah was patient.

Nehemiah was praying

Nehemiah was willing to ask.

Now with the power of the King of Persia Nehemiah could begin the really hard task of making the vision happen

9 I went to the governors of the region west of the Euphrates and gave them the king’s letters. The king had also sent officers of the infantry and cavalry with me. 10 When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard that someone had come to pursue the prosperity of the Israelites, they were greatly displeased.

Even after Nehemiah had given so much faith, to be in prayer for four to five months, to make a requests that could have cost him his life. Nehemiah wasn’t done in his faith journey.

How many of you know that

in this life there is no happily ever after.

When Nehemiah heard of the problem that broke his heart and God to place a vision in his head. Nehemiah gave the prayer we read last week in Nehemiah 1. Then it was four months until God allowed Nehemiah to speak to the king. Nehemiah had to wait.

Then Nehemiah spoke to the king in the scariest moment but God is faithful and the King gave what God wanted, Nehemiah got an army, got resources to rebuild the walls. It still took him at least two months to travel and while he could have traveled that fast it probably took longer.

Then, as soon as he gets to the area of Jerusalem he has people who are against him. It’s been at least six months and their is still hardness in the path.

Easy doesn’t mean Godly.

God allowed each of these people to come against Nehemiah and in each one, spoiler alert, we will see that

God is more powerful than the fears and opposition that come against Nehemiah.

Today I know God is calling you to know Him better. Know the power that saves you. The power that makes it where you can be the person who lives in a right way at work. The power that allows you to love people who are impossible to love. The power that allows you to be kind to people who are mean. The power that allows you to be self-controlled when you face temptations to commit fraud, to act in evil, to go after sexual immorality, to go after what you think you should have but don’t because you still have stuff you have to do, God gives you the calling to that kind of self-control.

Nehemiah a man whose heart was broken, whose body had been broken by his bosses, who had to serve people who were against God, was willing to trust in the God who could give him victory for many, many months and kept going through the adversity.