A Conversation With The King (Part 1)
Notes
Transcript
Lord’s Supper
Lord’s Supper
Ask the men to come and have a seat at the front.
Reminder: when the men bring the plate around, if you wish to participate, you’ll need to take from the plate.
Pray and thank the Lord for giving His body and shedding His blood for us.
Serve the bread
Read Luke 22:19.
Partake
Serve the grape juice
Read Luke 22:20.
Partake
It was here, at this passover supper, that Jesus told His disciples something extraordinary. Jesus said that by shedding His blood, He was establishing the New Testament, or the New Covenant. Jeremiah had prophesied about this in Jeremiah 31:31-33.
Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, That I will make a new covenant With the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers In the day that I took them by the hand To bring them out of the land of Egypt; Which my covenant they brake, Although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, And write it in their hearts; And will be their God, And they shall be my people.
Jesus was saying, “I am establishing a New Covenant that will do away with the Old Covenant - the Mosaic Law. I will ratify this New Covenant by the shedding of my blood. No longer are you bound to the Law; you are bound to me.”
The disciples wouldn’t understand His words right then, but about two months later, by Acts chapter two, they would understand it much better. Christ had fulfilled the law. Salvation was not earned by the law, but was enabled by the grace of God! Believing in Christ’s work on the cross is the key that opens the door. Thank God for the New Covenant!
Pray
Review
Review
Turn to Nehemiah 2:1-8.
As Nehemiah prayed, he remembered what God had said to Moses. Nehemiah believed God and had confidence that God would do exactly as He said. Nehemiah took God at His word. Because he chose to do this, Nehemiah had confidence that he was in a right relationship with God and then he made his request to God. He prayed for mercy as he planned to approach the king regarding the walls of Jerusalem.
Introduction
Introduction
Read Nehemiah 2:1-8.
Have you ever planned for a conversation and then it went nothing at all like you planned?
Maybe you sat down one day to do an interview for a new job. You thought the conversation would go one way, but the employer took it a completely different direction.
Or perhaps you’ve experienced this in a conversation with a spouse. You said one thing and you meant one thing, but your spouse, at no fault of their own, understood you to be saying something else entirely different.
I can’t remember the exact conversation but I know that’s happened to my wife and I and it was almost comical. It was like we were both talking together but we weren’t speaking the same language. It was almost as though I had to back up and ask if we were both speaking English or not. My mind and my train of thought and my plan for the conversation was on a totally different wavelength from Jana’s. And it’s not that one was right and one was wrong, just the conversation went nothing like I had planned.
Nehemiah here experienced something similar in that he planned to have a very important conversation with the king, but it started out nothing like he had envisioned.
Next slide here:
The circumstances of the conversation - Nehemiah 2:1.
Four months passed from Nehemiah chapter one to Nehemiah chapter two. After four months, Nehemiah was still affected by this news.
Application: Sometimes our grief is so great that it does not go away immediately. That’s okay. When you are grieving some loss, take the time to grieve. Don’t run from it. Don’t suppress it. Only understand this: time does not heal all wounds; God does. God is more than enough for any grief. Let your grief drive you into the loving arms of God, just like Nehemiah did.
During that time of prolonged sadness, Nehemiah prayed and prepared, but above all, he waited. Just as Nehemiah exercised faith to pray, Nehemiah exercised faith to wait. He kept serving as the king’s cupbearer because that is what God wanted him to do at that time.
Application: when you’re waiting for something, keep serving and doing what God want you to do. That’s when God opens doors and He’ll do it when you least expect it so that He get the credit, not you.
That’s what happened to Nehemiah. One day, Nehemiah was going about his job of serving wine to the king. Pagan kings drank alcoholic wine. Israelite kings were discouraged from doing so because of the risk it posed of clouding their judgment.
It is not for kings, O Lemuel, it is not for kings to drink wine; Nor for princes strong drink: Lest they drink, and forget the law, And pervert the judgment of any of the afflicted.
Application: Christian, there’s a lot of wisdom in that principle and in that verse. As a Christian, you’re a leader of righteousness in our community. You’re called to be different. Proverb 31 teaches that the safest way to avoid the risk of your judgment being clouded by alcohol is not to drink it at all. I believe that that is the best policy both for kings and for Christians.
On that particular day as Nehemiah went about his job, he could not hide the fact that his heart was aching and that he was distressed about the condition of Jerusalem. The king noticed, and a conversation began.
Next slide here:
The beginning of the conversation - Nehemiah 2:2-3.
Read Nehemiah 2:2.
This is not the way Nehemiah planned for this conversation to begin.
Eastern monarchs were sheltered from anything that might bring them unhappiness…
Nehemiah had good reason to be deeply afraid!
Had Artaxerxes been in a bad mood, he might have banished Nehemiah or even ordered him killed, but instead, the king inquired why his servant was so sad.
Wiersbe, Warren W.. Be Determined (Nehemiah): Standing Firm in the Face of Opposition (The BE Series Commentary) (p. 31). David C Cook. Kindle Edition.
Nehemiah, in sadness and in fear, answered the king and explained his grief. Notice, he never mentions Jerusalem. Perhaps it was best not to mention the name of the city that was accused of being a rebellious and bad city, as Ezra 4:12 says. So Nehemiah left the city unnamed, but he began to make his case to the king.
“Why shouldn’t I be sad?”, says Nehemiah.
I wonder if there was a slight quiver, a shakiness in Nehemiah’s voice as he spake the words of verse three:
“Let the king live for ever: why should not my countenance be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ sepulchres, lieth waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire?”
His sorrow was for good reason, as he explains, but still, he wasn’t supposed to say this. He wasn’t supposed to say what he was about to say. In Persian society, it wasn’t culturally acceptable for servants to share their problems with kings. The king had enough to worry about on his own; he didn’t need to hear his servant’s problems also.
This took tremendous courage! This was like Esther coming uninvited to the throne room of Ahasuerus. This was Nehemiah’s make or break moment where his very life hung in the balance. Despite his own fears, he chose to speak up! Rather than turn a deaf ear to the cries of his brethren in Jerusalem, he became a powerful spokesman on their behalf.
This moment reveals much about Nehemiah’s character, his heart, his inner man. It establishes for the rest of this book who Nehemiah is as a man.
Here was a man who knew the feeling of fear in his heart, but he did not let fear stop him from speaking the truth or from doing right. Nehemiah shows us that courage is not the absence of fear; it is doing what you know is right in spite of fear. Nehemiah will exhibit this same characteristic many times throughout the book.
Read slowly:
Application: are you a man or a woman of courage?
In my lifetime, I don’t think I’ve seen courage much promoted in our culture. If it was, then my generation and those younger than me must have missed the memo somewhere, because courage is not a defining character trait of American young people.
I’ve seen courage referenced most frequently in two ways:
In our nation’s military - advertisements, promotional material, etc
In the LGBTQ movement that promotes people “coming out” as being courageous.
What we need is for churches to return to courageous Christianity!
Christians who are courageous enough to lead in prayer like Nehemiah did!
Christians who are courageous enough to have the hard conversations like Nehemiah did!
Christians who are courageous enough to stand for right like Nehemiah did!
Christians who are willing to risk their reputations, their careers, and their lives like Nehemiah did.
What we need is some courageous Christianity. Are you a man or a woman of courage? How is that shown in your Christian life? How courageously are you following Jesus?
Usually if something requires courage, then by definition it isn’t popular.
Courage = doing whatever is not popular or commonplace.
Nehemiah tells us in verse two that he was fearful. He was “very sore afraid.” This wasn’t just a little bit of fear, this was a great fear! So how did he manage to be courageous and overcome his fear?
The answer is clearly evident from Nehemiah’s life and practice: he believed God.
Read slowly:
Faith in God is the wellspring from which real courage flows.
Nehemiah’s faith in God made him courageous! It’s so simple, Christian! You want to live a courageous Christianity? You want to live a bold, vibrant Christianity in a culture that is just overflowing with the watered-down stuff? Then choose to believe God!
Believe God when He says to embrace sacrifice in Luke 9:23, “take up your cross daily and follow me…”
Believe God when He calls you to distinct living in 1 Peter 2:9. We are to show forth the praises of him who has called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.
Believe God when He calls you to radically forgive others in Matthew 18:22.
Exercise your faith in God! Take Him at His Word and then you will have courage like Nehemiah!
How was Nehemiah so courageous? It’s because Nehemiah believed God. He knew that this was exactly what God wanted him to do. So hard as it was, Nehemiah courageously explained the reason for his sorrow.
Next slide here:
The prayer in the conversation - Nehemiah 2:4.
Read Nehemiah 2:4.
This prayer was very different from the one we witnessed in chapter one. This prayer was short, silent, and deadly serious. Nehemiah doesn’t tell us, but I wonder what he actually prayed.
“Lord God, please help me.”
One writer refers to this as a “telegraph prayer.” You might call it an “emergency prayer.” We’re going to see Nehemiah do this multiple times in this book. Why could he pray like this and have confidence that God would hear? The answer is because he had already been praying and fasting about this for the last four months. He had already been working the soil. The field had already been plowed many times before. Now it was time to plant the seed in the heart of the king and to trust God for the harvest.
In a fleeting moment, he prayed to the God of Heaven, and then presented his case.
Read slowly:
Application: Christian, you won’t have confidence that God hears your emergency prayers unless you first spend time with Him in seasons of prayer. He might hear your prayer, but you won’t have confidence without the seasons of prayer. Get alone with God like Nehemiah did in chapter one. Get to know Him in prayer and then you’ll have confidence that He hears you in a crisis moment like this.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Conversations are a normal, mundane part of life, but some are more important than others. This one required great courage. This one required great commitment. There was no turning back after Nehemiah opened this can of worms.
What enabled him do this? He believed God. His faith in God enabled him to be courageous. Church family, let’s follow Nehemiah’s lead in A Conversation With The King.
