It All Begins With Prayer

Introduction

At the beginning of the year, I taught a series on Ezra.

Ezra began with a return of the Jews living in exile to Jerusalem and Israel.

Zerubbabel led them in rebuilding the temple.

Ezra came with a second wave of exiles returning and he was tasked with rebuilding the people through confession, repentance and applying the Word of God in their lives.

Ezra and Nehemiah were one book in the early Hebrew text.

In fact it wasn’t until 1448 edition of the Masoretic Hebrew text were the two separated for the first time.

Origen (185-253) scholar from Alexandria in Egypt was the first to divide the two, followed by Jerome when he translated the Latin Vulgate.

Both of these books are historical in nature

Picking up where 2 Chronicles leaves off and bring us up the 400 years of silence before John the Baptist arrived.

As Ezra was concerned with the spiritual, covenantal life of the new community,

Nehemiah was concerned with

The protective wall around the city

The administrative aspect of the city

However, Nehemiah is as “spiritual” and faithful as Ezra.

Both trusted in YHWH and His presence, power, and plan.

So we start today going through Nehemiah

I’ve become fascinated with these two books over the past several months of study.

We began our process of revitalization of our church - to renew it, follow God’s direction of ministry for us, and to reach people for Christ.

We started much like we find Zerubbabel did in Ezra by rebuilding the temple

We commited ourselves to having 52 quality Sundays of worship. To rebuild our worship of God

We commited ourselves to renewing our spiritual live through God’s word and be obedient to it as Ezra led the people of Israel to do.

The third aspect of the return from exile was to rebuild the walls.

I see this for us as a church is to recreate our identity in our community.

Walls for the Ancient near east were a sign of identity as a people, it symbolized a group of people that could be seen by other nations and recognized as a fortress city or nation itself.

For Israel rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem was important because it revealed God’s blessing, served as a sign to Israel’s enemies, and showed God was with His people.

The walls provided protection and dignity to a people who had suffered the judgment of God but had later been restored and returned to the Promised Land.

The Report: A Reality Check

Let’s read Nehemiah 1:1-11

The very first sentence gives us a heading for the book, “The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah.”

It begins in Chislev, November/December, of 445 BC.

Nehemiah receives a report of the situation in Jerusalem. how the returnees were faring and it was bleak.

Great trouble or “distress” is a common word for “evil,” “misery,” “distress,” and “injury”

Not what the returning Jews expected as they followed God’s lead to return to Judah.

They were expecting the covenant prosperity and they got calamity.

The second term disgrace or reproach - it refers to shame, disgrace or reproach which describes one’s condition.

On top of that, the walls were broken and the gates had been burned.

In the ancient world, this was a calamity of total defenselessness.

Nehemiah’s Response

When Nehemiah heard this, he was moved deeply emotionally

He expresses his sorrow by weeping and mourning and then he intercedes with a discipline and diligence, fasting and prayer.

Prayer is a way for humans to show their faith and trust in a faithful, trustworthy God.

It’s an outward manifestation of a biblical worldview and faith.

If we love God and the advance of His glory, we will feel deep sorrow when the advance of the gospel is halted, and we will be disciplined and diligent to fast and pray.

If we are not feeling sorrow and cultivating diligence and discipline, we should seek to stir ourselves and one another up to love and good deeds.

We can do this by considering what Nehemiah shows us about where he got this kind of passionate fervor for God and His kingdom.

In the content of his prayer in verses 5-11 Nehemiah shows that he understands the Scriptures and wants to see the Scriptures fulfilled.

If we would feel the kind of zeal for the church that results in weeping, mourning, fasting, and praying in response to reports about how the enemies of the gospel have attacked God’s kingdom, we should seek to understand the Scriptures and pray that God would cause us to long for their fulfillment.

Nehemiah in verse 5 begins his prayer with 3 statements about God.

God is Great and Mighty or awe-inspiring

God keeps His covenant

God keeps His steadfast love.

This prayer focuses on God’s character, the eternal redemptive purposes of God, and the promises/covenants of God.

Based on who God is and His faithfulness, Nehemiah shares his request to God.

Nehemiah’s Prayer

In His prayer Nehemiah is basing it own the Hebrew scripture in Deuteronomy 4:25-31, ““When you have children and grandchildren and have been in the land a long time, and if you act corruptly, make an idol in the form of anything, and do what is evil in the sight of the LORD your God, angering him, 26 I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you today that you will quickly perish from the land you are about to cross the Jordan to possess. You will not live long there, but you will certainly be destroyed. 27 The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be reduced to a few survivors among the nations where the LORD your God will drive you. 28 There you will worship man-made gods of wood and stone, which cannot see, hear, eat, or smell. 29 But from there, you will search for the LORD your God, and you will find him when you seek him with all your heart and all your soul. 30 When you are in distress and all these things have happened to you, in the future you will return to the LORD your God and obey him. 31 He will not leave you, destroy you, or forget the covenant with your ancestors that he swore to them by oath, because the LORD your God is a compassionate God.”

Nehemiah knew his bible and knew he was experiencing the exile and he prayed that he might experience what God promised would come after the exile.

So, since they were there due to their sin, Nehemiah begins his prayer in verses 6-7 by requesting that God hear his confession of sin.

Then he refers or reminds God of what He told Moses in Leviticus 26:40-42, ““But when they confess their iniquity and the iniquity of their ancestors—their unfaithfulness that they practiced against me, and how they acted with hostility toward me, 41 and I acted with hostility toward them and brought them into the land of their enemies—and when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they make amends for their iniquity, 42 then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will also remember my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land.”

Because Nehemiah knew his bible, that was why is was so emotionally affected by verse 4.

Do you want to love God, God’s kingdom, and the advance of the good news of God’s triumph in Christ?

Do you want the strength of character to look a desperate situation full in the face and have the wherewithal to do something about it?

Fill your mind with the Bible!

We see in verse 10 a deep concern for God’s people by Nehemiah.

If you care about something more than you do about how the gospel is advancing, then you may be shaped more that than God’s word.

Football, hobby, sports, whatever it is.

Do you know all about your sport and little about the bible?

Are you more upset to see your team lose than hearing that Christians are being persecuted around the world.

Do you know the players better than you know pastors or missionaries and co-laborers in the gospel?

Nehemiah was in the world, but not of it. He doesn’t mourn like those who have no hope.

He mourns because the enemies of God’s kingdom have prevailed, and he mourns because he loves God’s kingdom more than life.

He also doesn’t stop with prayer.

He intends to go into action, and in verse 11 he asks that God will prosper what he sets out to do.

Only at this point do we learn that he was a highly placed official in the Persian government.

He was the cupbearer for the king.

He likely tasted everything that went to the king before the king partook.

This would mean that the king trusted Nehemiah, and if Nehemiah didn’t want to be poisoned, he would take pains to ensure that everyone with access to the king’s cup would be trustworthy and faithful.

In the midst of these responsibilities and duties, with all this influence, Nehemiah knows the Bible.

Nehemiah’s supreme concern is for God’s kingdom.

I doubt that Nehemiah would plead that he was too busy to study the Bible or pray.

He wanted to study the Bible and pray, so he made time for it.

He wanted to beseech God to show mercy to His people, so he didn’t grumble about fasting.

Having prayed in response to the report, Nehemiah goes into action in chapter 2.

That’s for next week.

How Does This Relate To Us?

The first thing that Nehemiah does after hearing the report is to pray!

We need to pray today more than ever.

If we want to see our church renew and become all that God wants it to be we need to pray.

Especially during this time of the pandemic and the current situation we are in.

Things will not be the same as it was before.

So how do we move forward as a church, we have to relearn how to do church, we need to discover how God wants us to carry out our mission.

We need to pray!

In Isaiah 56:7, it says, “I will bring them to my holy mountain and let them rejoice in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be acceptable on my altar, for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.”

This is the verse Jesus refers to when he is cleansing the temple.

Our church should like the temple be a house of prayer.

In verses 6 and 8, Isaiah mentions two groups of people.

In verse 6, it speaks of the "foreigners who joined themselves to the Lord" and in verse 8, it speaks of the "outcasts of Israel."

To put that in church language, when we seriously return the church to being a house of prayer, it will attract both those who used to be there but were scattered and those who were never there in the first place - first time guests and people coming back!

As we become more and more filled with the Spirit of God, we’ll just want to pray more and when we do we will change and people will notice us and the church.

As we prepare for the future and the revitalization of our church we need to start with prayer.

I don’t how many books have affirmed what I already knew, that prayer is and should be the top priority of any church including ours.

And yet like so many other churches, we just skim over or skip it completely.

I have confessed to God for not focusing on prayer and I ask you to forgive me as well for not teaching prayer and modeling it for you.

How can we keep prayer a focus while in the midst of a pandemic, stuck at home so we don’t catch or spread the virus?

We will begin with a weekly prayer email sent to each of you.

If you don’t have an email, then call me and I’ll send you a letter each week.

As we do this, we need to hear your needs, so email me, message me on Facebook, call me, whatever you can and let us know how we can pray for you.

I’ll send prayer needs for the church as well.

If you want to be on a prayer team with me, let me know and we’ll pray together with a others in a small group setting in person, on the phone, or online.

As we continue with rebuilding our temple, - worship, and renewing the people - each of us in our spiritual walk, we will begin to bathe our efforts in prayer.

Will you join me? This will be the hardest thing we ever do, but it will be the most rewarding.

As we do, we’ll become that “House of Prayer” Isaiah talks about.

Who’s with me?

Prayer