Establishing a Vision (Part 1 of 2)

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We've all experienced trials that feel like they might break us. If that's true of us, it was certainly true for Nehemiah and God's people when they faced tragedy. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg considers how and why Nehemiah's response made such a lasting difference.

Music playing. In Nehemiah chapter 1, the words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah. In the month of Kislev in the 20th year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile and also about Jerusalem. He said to me, those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates have been burned with fire. When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Then I said, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you.

We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name. They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. I was cupbearer to the king.

In the month of Nissen, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought before him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before, so the king asked me, Why does your face look sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart. I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire? The king said to me, What is it you want? Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king, If it pleases the king and if your servant has found favor in his sight, let him send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it.

Then the king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked me, How long will your journey take, and when will you get back? It pleased the king to send me, so I set a time. I also said to him, If it pleases the king, may I have letters to the governors of Transufrates so that they will provide me safe conduct until I arrive in Judah. And may I have a letter to Asaph, keeper of the king's forest, so he will give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel by the temple and for the city wall and for the residence I will occupy. And because the gracious hand of my God was upon me, the king granted my requests. So I went to the governors of Transufrates and gave them the king's letters. The king had also sent army officers and cavalry with me.

When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard about this, they were very much disturbed that someone had come to promote the welfare of the Israelites. There's probably little doubt that you could say that Nehemiah lived on the edge. His job essentially demanded it, to be the cupbearer to the king possessed immense clarity.

You drank the stuff, if it was poisoned you were a goner. Goodbye Nehemiah and long live the king. So you needed to be the kind of individual who was shrewd, the kind of individual that had an eye for detail.

You would need to be able to gauge character and pay careful attention to those who were around, especially since the position that one fulfilled was of such strategic importance. He's introduced to us in a matter of few words in the opening of the book. We are told who he is, Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. And there it ends.

He had no great pedigree of which we're told he was essentially a no-name. Like some of us. Like most of us.

Ultimately, like all of us. When is it? Well it's winter time we're told, it's in December the 20th year of the king's reign. It's the second half of the 5th century BC, it's quite a while ago. And where is he? Well he's 800 miles, we're told, from the deepest concerns of his heart. His great longing and concern was far removed from the place of his employment.

He was in Susa, the capital of the Medo-Persian empire, a place that was central to the activities of the then known world. He was in a strategic spot, but he was a long way away from what he ultimately really cared about. And he receives, we're told here, a visit from one of his brothers and some of his friends. And so it is that he reads, he learns of what's going on amongst God's people in God's place.

Neither time nor distance has eroded the deep-seated concerns of his life. And the news wasn't good, we read that there. The information was described with words like survival, trouble, disgrace, burned, broken. Safe to say that he could have taken blows to his body with a greater sense of deference than he was able to sustain these blows to his heart and mind as he thought about the people that he had left behind in the situation. Now the historical significance of these events I'm going to largely assume, because you will have studied this.

But for those of you who have forgotten, I'll give you a thumbnail and brief refresher course. Remember it was 722 BC, the Assyrians raided Israel, that was in the north. As a result of the invasion in the north, a bunch of people in the north decided to hightail it to the south, that was to Judah.

So there was a big immigration, a big influx of people. They settled in Judah, but Judah does not do well in relationship to God's word. They mocked his messengers, they despised his words, and they scoffed at his prophets. And therefore, in response to the promise of God, in 586 BC, we have judgment. Invasion, chains, bondage, and an 800-mile route march into the Babylonian captivity. And once again, the people of God are in exile.

They are living under a foreign power as their forefathers had been in Egypt. It's during this period that some of the psalms are written. For example, Psalm 137, by the rivers of Babylon we sat down and wept.

How could we possibly sing the Lord's song in a foreign land? And they were writing that in this experience of exile. Then in 539, Babylon was overrun by Cyrus.

He instituted a policy of repatriation, allowing a number of people to return to the country of origin. That's described for us in the first six chapters of the book of Ezra. And there you read of how a small company went back.

They began to rebuild the ruins, only to have their project come to a grinding halt all over again as a result of the intervention of Arctic Xerxes. And you can read that in Ezra 4 and verse 23. Now, it was news, I believe at least, of the second desolation which was being brought to Nehemiah.

And in response to discovering what was happening with the work of God, if you like, in Jerusalem, he, Nehemiah, was overwhelmed by sorrow. Now, people can respond to circumstances simply by rehearsing them or bemoaning them, and that is largely the case in the moving amongst people who do God's work in our day. It's not difficult to find a group of people who are able to describe the circumstances and lament them. Oh dear, isn't this dreadful, and oh, are we not in a sorry predicament here, and oh, I never imagined that it would be like this.

And you're only in these people's company for four or five minutes till you find yourself thoroughly depressed. They are poor souls, and we are poor souls to the degree that we engage in that kind of thing. Not that we are triumphalistic, not that we are jingoistic or unrealistic, but that we must always come to the circumstances which confront us within the church, within our churches, within the work to which God has called us, in light of the fact of who God is. And in seeing God in all of his glory, we then look at man in all of his predicament. And every so often on the stage of human history, when the light seems to be most extinguished, and when circumstances appear to be at their darkest, God, having fashioned somebody unbeknown to others, raises them up in that moment in time. And what was needed in this circumstance was a man who could make a difference. The world, someone said, will always make way for the individual that knows where they're going. And it is clear, as we're about to see, that Nehemiah was someone who could cope in the midst of ruin and despair, and who could not simply cope, but who could also forge ahead. Somebody who could establish a vision. And when I say establish a vision, I do not mean an individual who could talk in sort of dramatic possibility terms, but somebody who could bring the truth of God to bear upon the circumstances of the now, in such a way that he was able to encourage those around him to become partners in the very work of God. So God puts his hand on an ordinary man with an extraordinary gift for an out-of-the-ordinary responsibility. That's the way he chooses to do it. Ordinary people to whom he gives extraordinary gifts for out-of-the-ordinary challenges.

That's probably where most of us are living our lives. And therefore, we do well to consider the pattern that is established here by Nehemiah. I want to trace a line through this by encouraging you to notice, first of all, his reaction.

His reaction. When I heard these things, he says in verse 4, the way in which you and I react to circumstances tells a great deal about us. And especially those of us who have been entrusted with positions of responsibility, we have unique challenges in this area because of the way in which our reactions will affect the reactions of other people.

Nobody lives to themselves, no one dies to themselves, and certainly in leadership, we have a real challenge there. Maybe there are some airline pilots here who fly commercially, and I always marvel when we have encountered some of the severest turbulence that you think a plane can stand. When you finally hear the captain's voice over the intercom, it is always with such poise. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm sorry about that little bump.

I mean, coffee has been going off the ceiling, people have been screaming, and prayer meetings have been happening instantaneously with people who don't even believe in God. And finally, he comes on and he says, I'm sorry about that little bump, you know. Or when we did a go around in a 747 coming out of London into Pittsburgh, we were wheels down and within three miles of the runway, and he pulled it out. And the child in front of me started to shout, I don't want to die, mommy, I don't want to die, which was really bad because I wanted to shout the same thing. And eventually, when we went back into the nether darkness, his voice came out again and he said, I'm sorry to have to give you the scenic tour of Pittsburgh this evening.

It was very reassuring to me. If he'd come on and shouted, whoa, hey, whoa, I'd be with the kids, you know. Now, when you take the people going up to examine the circumstances as dispatched by the leadership in the book of Numbers, the twelve men who went to spy in Canaan, as the children's song says, ten were bad and two were good. They all saw the same stuff, they all experienced the same place, they all encountered the same challenges, they were all aware of the same opportunities, and ten of them said, shut it down, we shouldn't do this, it can't be done, there are giants in the land. And two said, with God, we can take the place over, Caleb and Joshua.

The proportion is largely the same, it would seem to me, whether it's in your session or wherever it is, you've got twelve guys, there'll be ten of them that know why it can't possibly be done, and leadership is going to have to be prepared to stand up and react in a different way. And so the reaction of Nehemiah is illustrative for us. Notice the depth of his devotion, the extent of his compassion. This is no formalized mourning on his part, this is not a concern on Nehemiah's part about buildings and walls and gates, as we will see. He wasn't weeping because the walls had broken down, he was weeping because of what the broken down walls represented, because the glory of God was being dragged in the dust of a Judean hillside, and people were looking on that and saying, so where is your God now?

And that is exactly what men and women are doing. I was just back in my own city last week, and in Glasgow, and coming on church buildings again and again and again, that are Islamic temples, in the city in which I grew up with the motto, let Glasgow flourish by the preaching of his word, and by the praising of his name, and the churches. Now I'm not so concerned about the buildings, I don't mind about the buildings, but it's what it represents. If you've read Stott on Acts, when he describes Paul going into Athens, do you remember, I'm assuming you've read it now, and if you haven't, you should read this section on Acts 17, it is wonderful. And he talks about how he goes into this magnificent city, and yet how it is not the aesthetics of the city, it's not the architectural dimensions of it that bring the paroxysms to his heart, it is the fact of the idolatry of the place, and the godlessness of it, and the abject poverty of spiritual reality that distresses him to the very core of his being. And Stott says from his book, when is the last time any of us went into a contemporary western city and were grieved to the very core of our being for the tragic emptiness of the church of God in our day and generation? You see, it takes the Spirit of God to create that kind of reaction in the life of a man or a woman. It is not a natural response, it is a supernatural response.

And that, you see, is what marked Nehemiah out as a man of vision amongst people who encountered the same circumstances but did not react in the same way. He sat down and he wept. Who will weep for the twenty-two-minute service? It would be funny were it not so tragic, huh?

I don't want to come to you as the prophet Amos, but I do believe that without a real significant move of the Spirit of God in this country, we're probably less than a quarter of a century away from duplicating the demise of Western Europe. And the deadness and emptiness of a bereft evangelicalism may then, if we're alive, grant us tears. See, the key thing is that we need that dimension of understanding, like the men of Issachar, that we would understand the times in which we live and we would understand the God who rules over those times. So, his reaction is one of devotion, it is one of compassion, it is to cry, it is to weep, it is to mourn.

But notice that his counteraction is also vitally important. He doesn't simply dissolve into a bucket of tears, but he fasts. He sets aside his normal intake of food, the routine that is attached to it, for the express purpose of seeking God. And in the experience of that, he comes to him in prayer.

He knew that none other than God could accomplish what was necessary. If the city was to rise again, if the gates were to be restored, if the glory of God was to ring, then it would all be as a result of God's intervention. Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain that build it. What do you find the hardest part of gospel ministry? Is prayer not close to that? It is for me the challenge of public prayer, in really praying, the challenge of personal prayer, in really praying, the challenge of believing that if I were to spend significantly more time seeking God on my knees than scribbling about God in my notes, that in actual fact God may yet be magnified to a far greater degree than has ever happened. If, said someone, our prayer is meager, it is because we regard it as being supplemental and not fundamental, that we can do more than pray after we've prayed, but we can do more than pray until we've prayed.

One of the commentators—I think a man by the name of Barber, although even looking at my notes, I can't think who he is—he says this in a little trilogy. The self-sufficient do not pray. They merely talk to themselves. The self-satisfied do not pray. They have no awareness of their need. The self-righteous cannot pray.

They have no basis upon which to approach God. And therefore, any attempt to explain the visionary impact of Nehemiah or of others like Nehemiah that fails to see this essential element as being, namely that an essential element, will in itself be flawed. The little phrase there in verse 4, for some days, actually is a significant phrase.

For some days I mourned and fasted. If you check the time gap between the first verse of chapter 1 and the first verse of chapter 2, the time gap is approximately three or four months. It's not immediately apparent until you go and check it.

If you check it, you'll find that what I'm telling you is accurate. Interestingly, when you get to chapter 6 into verse 15, you discover then that the time that it actually took for the construction itself was 52 days. So if you have four months, it's approximately 120 days, and 52 days, so more than twice was spent in praying and in realigning his heart and mind and will with that of Almighty God, of gaining perspective, of thinking.

We ought not to think of him as some kind of trance. I imagine him praying, sometimes walking, sometimes including others, sometimes alone, often with a notebook, as it were, and writing down the things that were coming to his mind. I don't think you can understand chapter 2 except for the fact that in the experience of prayer, he was fashioning and forming certain convictions and practical factors that would be necessary if this sense of prayerful dependence upon God was going to be turned in to reality amongst those with whom he was going to minister. Reacting with compassion and counteracting with prayer.

That's from Alistair Begg's teaching today on Truth for Life. We'll continue this message tomorrow. Alistair originally preached this message to an audience of pastors, and as much as ever, our pastors really need our prayers and our encouragement. I mention this because October is Pastor Appreciation Month, a great time for you to reach out to those who help lead your local congregation.

Let them know how thankful you are for their leadership. And if your pastor's anything like me, he loves books and sermons, you'll find a terrific collection of pastors' resources in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. We recommend a USB titled The Pastor's Study. It contains more than 60 messages from Alistair.

It's available for purchase for just $5. Or you can share The Pastor's Study for free through the Truth for Life app by passing a link to your pastor. There's also a transcript that accompanies each sermon. Finally, the Basics Conference for Pastors and Church Leaders, which is hosted by Alistair, is now scheduled for May of 2022. The conference takes place just outside of Cleveland, Ohio. Registration to the conference also makes a great gift for your pastor. Visit basicsconference.org to learn more. I'm Bob Lapine. If the men and women mentioned in the Bible are ordinary people like you and me, how does a simple cupbearer find the courage to face an out-of-the-ordinary challenge? Find out when Alistair continues this message tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.