Nehemiah Goes into Action (Part 1 of 2)

Do you ever struggle with prayer?

If you do, you're not alone. Even the apostles had to ask Jesus to teach them to pray. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg takes a closer look at Nehemiah's prayer and shows us how it models a helpful framework for us for how we approach God with more meaning and purpose. I invite you once again to take your Bibles and we'll turn to Nehemiah together. And as you turn there, let's pause for a moment and ask God's help as we study this passage. Make the Book live to me, O Lord. Show me thyself within thy Word. Show me myself and show me my Savior, and make the Book live to me.

Amen. As we study the Scriptures together, we recognize that God speaks to us through them as individuals, and we believe that he would speak to us through them as a church family. And what we hope to be able to build out of these studies are not simply truths on an individualistic level but truths which have apparent and immediate applicability to Parkside Church.

Our focus is very clearly this, and rightly so, realistically so. So when you're thinking along these lines, please be praying to that end that God would be confirming and convincing us as a church family about the nature of these things. Last time, in chapter 1, we set out to notice three things concerning Nehemiah. First of all, the reaction of Nehemiah, which was to the news of the sorry state of affairs in Jerusalem, to sit down and burst into tears. And his mourning was indicative of his reaction. Now, we know that it wasn't because the walls were broken down. It really would be a little extreme to get that upset just because some of the stones had toppled over. It surely was because of what was represented in the destruction of the walls—namely, that God's glory, which was to be established in Jerusalem, was really being dragged under the dust, into the dust of the Judean hillside. And that was his reaction to it. It was a reaction which marked him out from others who seemed to have grown acquiescent to the state of affairs. We then went on to look at his counteraction. And still there in verse 4, we were discovering that he fasted and he prayed.

And indeed, any attempt to explain what happens in the book of Nehemiah, but for that dependence upon God that Nehemiah displays, is going to be a flawed explanation. Now, I want for a moment this morning to consider this prayer with you as it is therefore, as in chapter 1, and then to move immediately into chapter 2. One of the questions that is often asked, especially by younger believers, is, How do you pray? Is there a way that you can help me to pray? Because when I close my eyes, my mind wanders.

I'm not really sure what I should say. I don't have any real pattern to what I do. And so I find myself either just saying the same thing over and over again, or else I dry up very, very quickly. Well, one of the things that has been helpful to many of us, and certainly in my life I've used it since I was smaller, is to use the little acronym, or acrostic, ACTS. A-C-T-S. And the four words that build from it—adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication.

That is one helpful facet of it. The other helpful element is to establish your own prayer diary, either Sunday through Sunday or on a monthly cycle or whatever you determine, and to begin to enter names and concerns against those particular days. If, for example, you determine that you're going to pray for your mom and dad on a Tuesday, then write that down for your prayer on Tuesday morning. And when you come to the S in the ACTS word for supplication on Tuesday morning, you're not in any doubt about what you're going to seek God for. One of the things you're going to ask him about, and always will, on Tuesday mornings is his blessing upon your mom and dad. If you are concerned about some friends at school, then put them down for Wednesday or for Thursday or whatever it is, and before you know where you are, you will build up a compendium of prayer which will begin to work as a means towards the end of purposeful praying. Now, underpinning all of that is the notion of the constituent elements of prayer.

And I want to show you from this prayer that the ACTS acronym works in relationship to Nehemiah's prayer. First of all, notice his adoration. What does it mean to adore somebody? It means to magnify them, to tell them that we love them, to extol them, to declare their greatness.

It means to cherish them, which is another wonderful older-fashioned word that comes from the wedding service, to love and to cherish till death has due part. Well, at the very beginning of our prayers, we want to tell the Lord how much we appreciate him. We should start our prayer every morning by saying, Have I told you lately that I love you?

Have I told you that there's no one else above you? You fill my life with gladness, and so on. I love you, Lord. That's adoration. And we don't just love him because we get a feeling in our tummy, but we love him because of the characteristics that he has chosen to reveal to us, such as he adores him, you will notice, in verse 5, because he is a great and an awesome God. God is worthy of our praise, as we sing here, worthy of worship, worthy of praise, worthy of glory and honor.

And Nehemiah reckons that. God, I adore you, you are great and you are awesome. God, I adore you, you keep your promises, still in verse 5. You are a God of covenant love.

You always abide by the things that you've said concerning your people. God, I adore you, thirdly, because you are a righteous God and you demand love and obedience. God, I adore you, fourthly, because in verse 6 you listen to the cry of your children.

Now, you see, there we go. All of a sudden we've got a structure for our prayers. Put that down for a Monday. You need another prayer for Tuesday? Go into the book of Ephesians and take the first of Paul's prayer for the church at Ephesus and break out from that the elements of adoration and confession and thanksgiving. Go into the second prayer for the church at Ephesus and do the same thing. Go to Daniel's prayer in Daniel 9. Go find prayers in the Bible.

Go get with people who pray. That's how we'll learn how to pray. And Nehemiah is a classic and wonderful example here. And in his adoration, he manifests two things. One, a God-centered perspective, not a man-centered perspective.

This isn't I, me, me, mine. This is Nehemiah saying, When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have ordained, what is man that you are mindful of him? Nehemiah's world begins with God.

It doesn't begin with Nehemiah. We'll never know what it is to really pray as long as my world begins with me. Because as long as I am the champion of my world, the author of my destiny, in charge of my future, then why would I need to talk to anybody else?

If I've got it all buttoned down, why would I need to get down on my knees and talk to someone that I cannot see? But when I understand the nature of God's revelation to me and how finite I am and how hopeless in myself, especially when you think about some of the big projects in which we would like to engage, then it drives us to our knees. So he has a God-centered perspective. We need to pray, incidentally, for a God-centered perspective in our lives and in our church, because it's very possible for us to become very man-centered. We think in terms of individuals or groups, and we determine that as long as we have these individuals or these groups, then all will be well.

God looks down, and he may choose to remove individuals or groups in order to prove to us that we don't need these people and definitely that we shouldn't depend upon them. You take, for example, how it's illustrated with the preoccupation with the Hubble telescope. God has seen all this stuff from every angle it's possible to see. He's seen it when he created it. He's seen it from every conceivable point. And what we ought to be saying is, isn't it amazing that God in his providence has allowed us to grow smart enough to be able to design one of these things that allows us to begin to probe into the vastness of our solar system and begin to scratch the surface of what God in his infinite wisdom has been able to do all along?

But we're so man-centered. We look up at our buildings. We walk through our cities, our proud achievements.

I did all this. Then you go out into the park, and you hear the birds sing. You say, Uh-oh, I didn't do that.

And then you see the ducks coming down. You say, Uh-oh, and we didn't do them. And then you see these little puppies born. You say, I can't do that. And then you take a child in your arms and say, And we didn't do this.

That rings a bell. A God-centered perspective and a God-centered trust. Some trust in chariots, says the psalmist. Psalm 20, verse 7.

It's a good verse, a good memory verse. Some trust in chariots and in horsemen, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God. Now, the way in which we manifest our trust is in our prayer life.

You spend time with me and I with you, and I can tell you who you trust, because we will reveal it in the way that we come before God. When we really have a God-centered perspective and a God-centered trust, then obstacles won't daunt us. Delays won't depress us. And disappointments won't finish us off.

But when I am relying upon myself and upon my own ingenuity, then those delays and those disappointments and those obstacles can be enough to close down the operation. Now, Nehemiah, in adoring God in this prayer, manifests his submission to the mind of God, because he recognizes that God's thoughts are greater than his own. That's part one. Adoration. Secondly, confession. In verse 6, he says, I confess to you the sins we Israelites and my Father's house have committed against you.

Now, if you're looking in your Bible, you'll notice that I've left out a key phrase. It's relatively easy to say, I confess the sins that we Americans have committed against you. I confess the sins that my Father's family have committed against you. The part that sticks in your throat is, I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself.

Me. The old children's song goes, It's not my brother, not my sister, but it's me, O Lord, standing in the need of prayer. I need prayer.

And if you're honest, so do you. And when I pray, I need to pray in honest confession. Before God would ever move in revival in the life of an individual—and what is revival? It is to breathe life into a body threatening to become a corpse.

And some of our spiritual experiences are very akin to that. We're almost embalmed. We look like Lenin that they dragged him out the other day, gave him a quick spring clean, and then put him back in his box again. I mean, everything is apparently there, but he ain't mounting no revolution anymore. No way, because he's dead. And there's no revival that's going to sort him. Now, he's going to stand at the judgment seat, and he's got a big shakeup coming, but beyond that, he's there, and he's done.

And some of us are just like that. We're almost embalmed. I stand in my office, and I watch the people come in and leave church buildings on Sunday mornings. It's a revelation to see your faces.

Now, it's a revelation to see my face as well, so don't feel in any sense, you know, put upon by this. But I look at you come, and I say, God, what are we supposed to do with these people? I mean, here they come with a bundle of aspirations and hopes and disappointments and fears and failures and everything else, and they make their way down the pathways and into here. And some of us are just trapped in a complete stuck routine, and we need revival. And we're thinking that God is going to come and revive us by giving us some little blessing that comes from the top down, as it were.

But I want to tell you this. When Isaiah received the commissioning in Isaiah 6, remember? He got a live coal from the altar that came and touched his lips. It was within the context of confession. I confess, he said, that I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. You see, the challenge in confessional praying is to be honest.

Robert Murray MacShean, the Scottish Presbyterian who died at the age of twenty-nine, said he recognized that the seeds of every sin known to humanity existed in his heart. Now, you're not supposed to expect that from your pastor. He told his congregation, every sin that anybody ever did, I have them in here.

You'd probably want to get rid of somebody like that, wouldn't you? But it's true. Never in the history of God's dealings has there been a revival amongst the people of God without genuine, honest confession of sin. And not generic sins. Oh Lord, we are sinful. But this, Lord, I confess to you today that I am guilty of unbelief.

I do not believe your Bible. Lord, I confess to you today that pride fills my heart. Lord, I confess to you today that it's real easy to become a gossip.

Lord, I confess to you today that I am a grumbler, and everyone knows that I am a grumbler, and I'm making other people grumble because I'm so good at doing it. And so on. When we start to name sin and call it for what it is and confess it for what it does, then we start to make progress. Because up until that time, we're just playing around. Because God knows we're sinful. And we know we're sinful.

But let's call it like it really is. Okay, confession and then thanksgiving. Thanksgiving. Verses 8–10, he recounts the wonders of God's promises. These verses in 8–10 are similar to what you find in 2 Timothy 2 and verse 11, if we died with him, we will also live with him. If we endure with him, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will disown us.

If we are faithless, he will remain faithful, because he cannot disown himself. And as Nehemiah recounts a similar sort of parameter, he utters his thanksgiving to God. And so, how much adoration is there in your praying? Do you have an adoration section? Do I have an adoration section?

Or does it go straight to the shopping list? Lord, I worship you this morning. Now, let's get down to business, Lord. We've got a few things here to talk about.

He understands that, but he doesn't like it. I love it when my kids want to come. They just want to snuggle. Can I just snuggle you, Dad? You mean you don't want anything? No, I just want to snuggle you. Sure, let's go.

Now, in certain cases it crushes the life out of me nowadays, but it's still a lot of fun. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving. How much thanksgiving is there in our prayers?

The general confession in the Church of England liturgy is matched by the general thanksgiving. It goes something like this, Almighty God, Father of all nurses, we, your unworthy servants, give you our humble and heartfelt thanks for all of your goodness and lovingkindness to us. We praise you for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life. But above all, for your amazing love in our redemption. We pray that you will give us such an awareness of your goodness that our hearts may be truly thankful and that we may declare your praise not only with our lips but in our lives by giving ourselves in your service and by walking before you in holiness and righteousness all our days. You want to know what God's will for your life is?

I can tell you in three phrases. 1 Thessalonians 5 16. Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances. For this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. So I know three things that he expects to be true of all of us, and therefore three things that should permeate a church family.

Joy, prayer, and thanksgiving. You want to pray for our church? You want to put it on Monday? Frankly, put it on every day of the week. We need it.

Put it on every day of the week. Lord, make our church joyful, prayerful, thankful. So when people come to our church, it's a joyful experience. It's a prayerful experience, and they are caught up in the thankfulness of folks around them.

They're not bellyaching about how bad it is and what didn't happen and where we're not going and the next thing. They are just thankful people. They're not unrealistic, but they're thankful.

They're not stupid. They recognize through their tears that there is pain, there is disappointment, but they have a joy that pervades all of that. And at the very heart of it all, when you touch them anywhere, they're always praying. They're always praying. The fourth element in prayer is what we refer to as supplication.

That's the S in the word acts. Adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. And this supplication comes in verse 11. You notice that there are ten verses before he ever gets to asking what he wants. 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.

And here it comes. It is as bold as it is specific, and it is as reverent as it is clear. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. I have this boss.

I'm going to talk to my boss the first chance I get. And, Lord, I'm talking to you first to see if you couldn't be at work in his life, because I know that would make a big difference. However, if we do not believe that God is able to work in the heart of a pagan king or in the mind of a pagan boss, then we will be on our feet all the time in human ingenuity trying to find ways to make it happen. But when we truly trust in God, we can shut up on our feet and open up on our knees so that we will discover that God moves man through prayer. When I don't believe that he moves man through prayer, I will be constantly on my feet trying to move man myself.

It's a great challenge! Great challenge for our church! Now, there is an obvious link between the length of time that Nehemiah takes seeking the face of God and then the specific way in which he approaches the face of Arctic Xerxes. And what I'd like to do is give you just five words now that charts our progress through the first ten verses of chapter 2. Verse 1 of chapter 2 reads, In the month of Nissen, in the twentieth year of king Artaxerxes. What in the world does that mean?

You can write across your Bible, One day in April, four months later. Now, this is significant, because it reminds us of the amount of time that Nehemiah has been prepared to stay in the waiting room. He's obviously a very purposeful kind of character. He's not sitting on his hands. He knows what he wants to achieve.

He's clear, as we will see in his planning. But he recognizes that unless he waits upon the Lord, he will never renew his strength. Unless he waits upon the Lord, he will never mount up with wings of his egos. Unless he waits upon the Lord, he will never walk, run, and not be weary. Unless he waits upon the Lord, he will never walk and not be faint. Lord, I wanna walk and not be faint. I don't wanna wait upon you.

Lord, I wanna fly like an eagle. I don't wanna wait upon you. Lord, I wanna be able to soar up on the hills, but I don't want to wait upon you." And the Lord says you can't do it. Some of the things that we face as a church family are so elementary.

They are so obvious. And fundamental at the heart of it all is this, we can go no further than our dependent commitment to God in prayer. It is fixed with God that a work which is not founded upon prayer will never be accomplished. Okay? But with God all things are possible. You're listening to Truth for Life and that is Alistair Begg with a message he's titled Nehemiah goes into action.

We'll hear more tomorrow. Now October is Pastor Appreciation Month and during this month we want to recommend to pastors a study that you can use yourself or recommend to others that will teach the foundations of Christianity to those who are new to the Bible. The study is called The Basics of the Christian Faith. This is a 13 lesson study that begins by listening to a message from Alistair and then you follow that up with in-person conversation. It's an excellent resource to use in a new members class or to give those in your congregation who are discipling new believers. And if you're not in pastoral ministry this is still a great way for you to introduce a friend to Jesus in a one-on-one setting. The Basics of the Christian Faith comes with a step-by-step leader's guide and a companion study guide for the person who's being discipled.

Best of all Alistair does all the heavy lifting. He does the teaching. You simply need to follow the prompts and work your way through the material that comes prepared for you. Each study guide is only eight dollars. You'll find The Basics of the Christian Faith in our online store at truthforlife.org slash store. We also have a video we want to recommend to anyone who's leading a Bible study or interested in teaching your family about church history. It's a documentary called Revival the Work of God. The film comes with both a DVD and a streaming option for viewing. You get both so you can choose whichever works best for you. The streaming option comes with many hours of bonus material including 21 interviews, 11 conference sessions about revival.

You can even download study guide materials and leader notes free of charge. Ask for your copy of the documentary film Revival the Work of God when you donate to the Ministry of Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate or call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. If we are seeking God's direction and after we've fasted and prayed we still have fear, does that mean we need to pray more or pray better that we're not trusting God? We'll hear the answers from Alistair tomorrow. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.