Planting the Vision (Part 1 of 2)

Have you ever had an unfinished project that at first it bothered you, but over time you just got used to it being incomplete.

Maybe you began to ignore it altogether. That was the prevailing attitude Nehemiah encountered when he returned to Jerusalem and found it in ruins. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg looks at how Nehemiah began to rally God's people to action. I'm turning to the second half here of Nehemiah chapter 2. We pick up the story where Nehemiah has been successful not only in securing from the king sufficient provision and materials for him to make the journey the right kind of documentation, but also he has been successful in seeing the king reverse a previously hard and fast-held decision—a quite dramatic intervention that God has overruled in. And when we come to the eleventh verse, we have arrived at the point where, after these months of prayer and agonizing over the situation some miles from him, Nehemiah has arrived in Jerusalem. Now, the way in which I'd like to study this this morning is to provide for us eight words upon which to hang our thoughts.

The first word is the word relaxation. You'll find this point in the eleventh verse—a simple sentence which we may be tempted to overlook—"I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days." Why three days? After all, wasn't Nehemiah chomping at the bit, as it were, to get on with the task at hand? Had he not been anticipating this journey and the opportunity for work over a period of months now? And surely somebody possessed of such vision and keen to be active would waste no time at all in, as it were, washing up after the journey and immediately embarking on the task. Well, in actual fact, he didn't do that. But he had this relaxation period of three days.

If you doubt that it had to do with relaxation and rest, you can cross-reference this in Ezra chapter 8, verse 15, verse 32, and there you will find that it actually states that the three days had to do with rest. Now, this is something that we do well to ponder for a moment or two. Because by and large, business and industry in the world in which many of you men live is very slow to acknowledge what is an essential element in the conducting of every task—namely, the absolute necessity of rest and relaxation. The models which young men tend to follow, and young women too, who are in the marketplace of business and industry, tend to be those of the kind of dramatic individuals who appear on the front covers of magazines, seen getting off one plane and charging onto another, with their laptop open in front of them, grabbing for cellular telephones, making great deals and wheels as they go along, and eventually getting off the plane and charging straight into a meeting where they conduct this amazing business transaction and then continue on their journey to the next major event. Well, all of that comes with cost. The cost is often to the family.

The cost is often seen on the front pages of the magazine, but it is felt in many other ways. And the hard-driving leader that we tend to emulate needs to be poured through the grid of the Scriptures. And I suggest to you this morning that Nehemiah, in this simple sentence, provides a necessary antidote for many of our frenetic and frantic existences. He had made a journey which, had he gone across the desert, would have been five hundred miles. Having gone by way of the Fertile Crescent, it was between eight hundred and nine hundred miles—a long and tedious journey, very demanding, despite the fact that he was given these soldiers and officials to journey with him. Suffice it to say that upon arrival in Jerusalem, if there was one thing he needed, it was rest. The task to which he had been called was crucial. It was going to be demanding. It was very, very important that he went at it full strength. And because he was a wise man, and because presumably he paid attention to the Sabbath—'cause I would imagine the Sabbath was one of these three days, although that is conjecture—he takes the time to retune.

Now, think about it this morning. Some of us are here and we're overtired. When we are overtired, we usually don't know we're overtired. Usually, the people around us know we're tired. We don't know we're tired, because we're so busy going.

When we're overtired, our judgment is off, our efficiency is diminished. And that kind of fatigue syndrome, which gives you an adrenaline rush, is something that we ought to be really careful of buying into, especially in the work of the church. Some of us in the church feel that we're only effective when we're running around like chickens with our heads cut off, where we're going from one task to the next. We haven't found our security in God alone.

We haven't found that we can rest in his love and in his provision. We're somehow trying to justify our existence by doing all these unbelievable things and showing that we never have to stop, we never have to rest, we never have to relax. We can do it all.

Well, we can't. And when we reach that point where it suddenly hits us in the face, there are a number of things we need to do. When we are overtired, you should avoid at least this.

Let me tell you. If you are overtired, one, avoid making important decisions. Avoid writing important letters. Avoid the launching of new projects. Avoid the tendency to quit your job or to quit anything, for that matter. Avoid assessing your spiritual condition. And avoid assessing the spiritual condition of people around you.

Because the fact is that when the battery runs down that low, then it starts to impact dramatically every facet of our existence. So a wise man or woman, no matter how dramatic their conviction regarding the project in front of them, no matter how consumed they are with a vision, no matter how tempted they are to charge ahead at the first available opportunity, we ought to learn from Nehemiah this simple sentence, the beginning of verse 11, I went to Jerusalem, and after staying there three days I started. Relaxation. The second word, motivation. Motivation. Can we read these verses and find out what makes Nehemiah tick? That's what I'm always asking.

I want to know what makes someone tick, don't you? Why are you involved in this? Why are you even in Jerusalem? Why did you show up Nehemiah? Didn't you have a good job in Susa? Were you bored? Why did you leave?

Do you like long journeys? And all these kind of questions we may have plagued him with. And from the outside, we might have been attempted to decide that we knew what the motivation of his heart was. We might have looked on and made all kinds of wrong judgments. We might have looked at the man arrive and said, Oh, here he comes, the empire builder. He's only here because he wants to see an empire built. Somebody else might say, Yeah, I think it's kind of that.

I think it's probably more that he just wants to make a name for himself. Every time you have effective leadership, where there are people following—and that's how you know you have leadership. You know if you're a leader, if anyone follows you.

It's a very simple thing. That's the essential definition of leadership. A leader is someone whom people follow. If there's no one following, you don't have to sit around and have some kind of psychological testing about whether you're a leader or not. But every time you have a leader with people following, the leaders must face the fact that people will second-guess their motivations. And leaders must be prepared to allow folks to assume certain things without it completely disheartening them.

Whether it is Old Testament leadership in terms of Nehemiah, or whether it is New Testament leadership as effective as that which was represented in the life of the apostle Paul. Paul, responding to the criticisms and judgments that are made of him as a leader, says in 1 Corinthians 4, 3, I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court. Indeed, I do not even judge myself.

My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. Wait till the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of men's heart. At that time, each will receive his praise from God. Think how much nervous energy you have spent, and I have spent this week, seeking to decide why somebody did what they did and whether it was a good reason or a bad reason.

It's constantly judging the motives of other people's hearts, especially those who are in leadership. Now, we know why Nehemiah was there, because he tells us. Verse 12, I set out during the night with a few men.

I had not told anyone, and here's the phrase, what God had put in my heart to do for Jerusalem. That's the explanation of his motives. He's not a founder member of the Bright Ideas Club. He's not a member of the Sousa Architectural Society. He's not a member of Restorations of Old Buildings.

He's not a member of the Conservation Society. He can only be explained in light of the fact that God did something in his heart. He was just going about his business as usual. He had a good job, and he was in a good spot, but God began to move in his heart in a way that he wasn't moving in the hearts of others or in a dimension that was unique to him. And when you ask Nehemiah, What are you doing making this journey?

Why are you here? He says, Well, actually, it's because what God put in my heart to do… Can I ask you this morning? What has God put in your heart to do? Can we say, any of us, honestly, say, Then I told the people what God had put in my heart to do for Cleveland. I have a burning, driving, compassionate ambition for Cleveland that is not simply moved by externals, but is as a result of what God puts in our hearts to do. We need to ask him for that.

We need to ask him for that as individuals, because we're in Cleveland. This is what would make sense, that since we're here, there is something we're supposed to do here. And we are not here by chance, but we're here by divine appointment.

Many of us are a long way from home. We're not here on a fool's errand. We have not been brought together as a big group of people to sit around and slap one another on the back. We need to ask God to put a burning vision in our hearts as a church for what we are to do in Cleveland. And when that comes into the passion and the heart of leadership, then people will follow. Paul explains it himself in 2 Corinthians 5, writing of his ministry, he says, For Christ's love compels us.

He was compelled by the love of Christ. People say, Well, what are you doing here with the church? I can tell you in two words what I'm doing with this church under God.

The two words with which I began, the two words with which I continue, and the two words with which I will end. And they are edify, multiply. You find them in Acts chapter 9 and verse 31, where it says, And then the church throughout Judea and Samaria and the rest of the place enjoyed a time of rest and was edified, or built up. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost was multiplied.

Edified, multiplied. What are you doing? We are evangelizing the lost so that they may come to know Jesus Christ.

We are edifying the saved so that being built up, they may be multiplied. And what are you doing next Sunday? The exact same. And the Sunday after that, any change of plans?

None at all. So what will you be doing? Edifying, multiplying. That's it. That's all of it. So every time I teach the Bible, it is either that you would be built up in your faith or that you would come to faith.

And being built up in faith, you would realize that you didn't come to listen to this book simply for your head to expand with knowledge, but that you came to be inspired by the Spirit of God to go out and reproduce yourself. It's simple. Why? Because God put it in my heart to do.

That's why I'm in Cleveland, and that's why I stay in Cleveland. Relaxation. Motivation. Thirdly, examination.

Examination. He was clear in his mind about what needed to be done. During all these months of praying, he presumably had been thinking about how he would tackle the project. He had something of the mind of an engineer, I think, which many of us would love to have and do not have.

Many of us would have been confronted by this rubble and made it twice as bad within a very short period of time. But this man had some insight, and now he arrives in Jerusalem and he conducts a feasibility study to determine whether what he thought could be done could actually be done. How does he do it? How does he go about the examination? Let me give you three words to explain his process of examination.

First of all, he goes about it quietly. That's the explanation for the final sentence of verse 12. There were no mounts with me except the one I was writing on. He knew this was no time to take a circus on the feasibility study, no time to take a bunch of horses. The commentators say that he probably rode on a mule, which is different from a horse, so they tell me, which shows my ignorance of four-legged creatures. And seemingly horses get skittish and fall over and neigh a lot, whereas mules are more down-to-earth types. If you have a mule, you'll know, and if you have a horse, you can probably identify with that. But anyway, he decided he wasn't going to take a lot, he wasn't going to be riding around.

No mounts with me except the one I was riding on. There's a time to be silent, there's a time to speak, no time for fuss and bother, no time for people to be charging in saying Nehemiah is coming to town. So his examination is conducted quietly. Secondly, it's conducted secretly.

Three times, you'll find it in verse 11, then verse 13, and verse 15. He mentions the fact that he went on this reconnaissance mission by night. It was clear that he wanted to keep things to himself for the time being. He probably had good reason for that. You'll notice in verse 16, he hadn't been telling anybody what was going on. He didn't want to let the cat out of the bag too soon.

If he did, some people would be immediately discouraged and start saying, It can't be done. Other people who were on his side who weren't really keen on it would leak the information to his enemies, and if his enemies found out, they may try and shut the project down before it even began. There is a time for silence, there is a time for reconnaissance, there is a time for prayerful examination. Quietly, secretly, and thirdly, his examination was conducted methodically. And this comes through in verses 13–15, where we have this wonderful description of him going around the perimeter of the walls such as they were.

All of the silence and all of the secrecy, without methodology, would have yielded nothing. And so we have this detailed description of what was going on and where he was. Any of you who have had the privilege of visiting Jerusalem will know that the king's pool to which he refers here is the same as is referred to in the New Testament, it is the pool of Siloam, where Jesus told the blind man to go and wash after he had put the gravel and the dust of the ground on his eyes. It is also true that in Hezekiah's day, he built a tunnel from the pool of Siloam right in underneath the walls of Jerusalem, or through the walls of Jerusalem, into the city, so that if there came a time of siege, the people within the city would not be bereft of water. Again, if you've been to Jerusalem, you may have walked like this in Hezekiah's tunnel.

It's still there. It's a remarkable thing to do. The wall had fallen down, down the steep crevasses of the terraced hillsides. He can't ride his mule all the way. He gets off, he walks part of the way, he finally comes back around. And during this time, he's obviously building a picture of what's going to happen, thinking of the kind of people that he's going to need to involve. But he wanted to be sure of the concept before he introduced the project. Incidentally, for many of you who are troubled by the fact that he was the only one who was riding on a mule, let me just give you an insight from the orient. At the time of this description, it was customary for a person who was in a position of leadership to be clearly identified as being in leadership.

It's inconceivable that Nehemiah was riding on this mule because he was too proud to walk. He probably was doing so in order to be identified from the group and with the group as the leader of the group in the context of Oriental custom. So he puts together the project in his mind so that he can then share it with the people. That brings us to our fourth word, which is the word exhortation.

He's had his relaxation, and he's now completed this investigation or examination, and he is now at the point of exhortation. Then I said to them, verse 17, you see the trouble we are in. Now pause there for a moment, because the fact of the matter is, they didn't. The people who had taken the night journey with them had seen nothing new. They just saw what they'd seen before.

They'd become so accustomed to this stuff that it really never struck them in the way that it was obviously striking Nehemiah. And this is a very important principle. Good leaders will always see what other people miss. And in every generation, both biblically and historically, God raises up leaders who are given, if you like, a prophetic insight into what's going on, in the sense that they are able to bring the Scriptures to bear upon the context of the day in a way that both understands the day and understands the Bible.

I'm not talking about any kind of dramatic displays of telling the future. Simply the ability to speak, Thus saith the Lord, to a generation in a way that identifies the trouble we are in. For example, by and large, people are going in and out of churches today, and they think, because there is a fairly good attendance at church, that we're really in no trouble at all. But loved ones, the problem is that on multiple levels we're in deep trouble. Tremendous crisis of confidence about the authority of this book.

Is it really true, and if it's true, does it really matter? Check with the average child coming through a church organization to see whether they hold any convictions at all about the nature of the gospel, about the authority of the Bible, and you'll find that many people regard that as a kind of special interest for certain kinds of people, but not really foundational to anything. It is absolutely foundational. It will only take one generation for the total degeneration of the church in the West and in this country, and we're looking at it straight in the face. Things that have been happening outside of the church, and we understand why in the pagan world, are now being welcomed inside the church.

Now, by and large, the church just goes right past the average person, unless God raises up somebody to say, Do you see the trouble we are in? And so he says it. But they don't, until he points it out. You see, they were so familiar with the circumstances.

They can't consider it in this way. Rex Harrison sings, I've grown accustomed to your face, you know, the girl, whatever her name was. And these people were essentially singing, I've grown accustomed to disgrace. Because as long as you live with disgrace, I mean, if your bedroom is full of clutter, the first day it is full of clutter, it's like, Oh, my bedroom is full of clutter. The second day is full of a wee bit more clutter. And eventually the end of the week, it's not a bedroom anymore.

It's a wasteland. And someone comes in and says, I can't believe the state of this room. And the person says, this room is good. This is a nice room. What's wrong with this room?

I'll tell you what's wrong. You've grown accustomed to disgrace. You've grown accustomed to disgrace. And that's what had happened to these dear people. They were planting flowers in the broken-down walls.

They were having picnics on the site. And Nehemiah comes around and says, we had a major problem here. The interesting thing is, he didn't just say, you've got a problem. He said, we've got a problem. And not only do we have a problem, but I've got a solution under God. And that's the real test of leadership. You're listening to Truth for Life.

That is Alistair Begg with a messy cheese titled, Planting the Vision. We'll hear more tomorrow. As we learned today, it is the purpose of the church to edify and multiply. And that's our mission at Truth for Life as well. We teach God's word every day so that the lost will come to know Jesus. The saved will be built up and encouraged in their faith.

And ultimately, the local church will be strengthened. Along with the daily teaching you hear on Truth for Life, we love recommending books that will help you grow in your faith. But today, the book we want to tell you about is not a book.

It's a video. It's titled, Revival, The Work of God. This is a documentary film that explores periods of global revival throughout history and how God stirs great movements of renewed faith during times of cultural darkness. This is an encouraging film that will motivate you to pray for revival in our day. The documentary comes with both a DVD and a streaming link.

You can choose how you'd like to watch. In addition to the film, you'll have access to free study materials and 21 bonus interviews on the topic of revival that come along with the streaming link. Request the revival documentary today when you donate through the Truth for Life mobile app or online at truthforlife.org slash donate. Or if you'd prefer, you can call us at 888-588-7884. I'm Bob Lapine. Whenever we try to do God's work, we should not be surprised to find doubters. Tomorrow we'll find out why and we'll learn how we should respond. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.