The Foundation for Greatness
Tom Shrader begins a series on Nehemiah 1-8, focusing on how God prepares ordinary people for extraordinary leadership. He examines Nehemiah's strategic position as cupbearer, his broken heart over Jerusalem's condition, and his response of prayer and fasting. The teaching emphasizes that true leadership flows from compassion and dependence on God rather than positional power.
“Every one of us are leaders, and there is one essential quality that every leader possesses, and that is followers.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2004)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 46 min
Themes: leadership, prayer, compassion, brokenness, preparation, calling, service, dependence, feeling ordinary, new to leadership, parent, mentor, struggling with purpose, young adult, seeking direction, manager
Scripture: Nehemiah 1:1-11, 1 Kings 11:11, Matthew 24, Revelation 2-3, Revelation 3:14-20, John 3:30, 1 Timothy 1:13-15
Theological Themes: providence, divine calling, intercessory prayer, spiritual preparation, biblical leadership, servant leadership, god's sovereignty, stewardship
Full Transcript
We start today a brand new series, at least brand new for many of you. We are going to look at the first 8 chapters of the book of Nehemiah. So if you have Bibles with you, you may open them to that.
This will be a bit of a frustrating series, but just for two types of people. Those of you who like verse by verse teaching, and that is typically what we do in church. If you really like that, you are going to be a little frustrated, because this is sort of verse by verse, though it is not exactly verse by verse. Or those of you who don't like verse by verse, you are going to be frustrated too, because it is a verse by verse, kind of non-topical study. It is a tweener. I don't know how to describe this.
We are going to take a look at these 8 chapters, and we are going to look at the person in Nehemiah. When you typically see Nehemiah referenced, you will see it in the context of leadership. He is wheeled out frequently at these Christian business men's and women's CEO conferences, and here is Nehemiah the leader, and there is absolutely no question, and our emphasis in the study is going to be on this idea of leadership. But I don't like that exclusively, because it seems to imply you need to be the owner of a business to be a leader.
Here is my premise, always has been, and it always will be, and that is that every one of us are leaders. That there is one essential quality that every leader possesses, and that is followers. If you have somebody following you, and I don't care if it is a toddler, you are a leader, and you need to understand these characteristics. What you are going to see about Nehemiah today is that He is a very ordinary fellow in terms of His life, in terms of His position, in terms of what is going on, and it is in the midst of this really almost ordinariness or mundaneness of His life that you see a magnificent thing happen.
Historical Context
We have to give you just a little bit of history, so hang in there with me. Essentially, if we are going to look at the nation of Israel, we begin with Abraham, and so we are back to plus or minus 2000 years BC, and we just kind of trace this through. The codes, the covenants, the statutes, the instructions really get formalized 1400 BC when Moses comes along, and then the nation of Israel, they want a king. So they get Saul, they get David, and then they get Solomon.
In 1 Kings 11, verse 11, God speaks to Solomon, and He said this, "Because you have done this, and you have not kept my covenants and my statutes which I commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you, and will give it to your servants." And that is exactly what takes place. The nation of Israel, the twelve tribes are divided, ten to the north, two to the south. There is huge conflict and war.
722 BC, God delays this judgment, and the scourge of the Assyrians come in. They invade the area, wipe out people, move people around. In 586 BC, Nebuchadnezzar comes in, invades Judah, Jerusalem, takes the people captive. And the walls are broken down. The city is destroyed.
I think many of you know that the city was basically surrounded by the wall, and the wall was their security. That's what kept enemies out. That's what gave them protection. This wall was essential to the preservation and the development of a city, of a town.
But in the midst of this destruction, God promises that He will be back. God promises that He will allow the people to return, to rebuild the city. And that happens. The first wave of this takes place in 538 BC, Zerubbabel. I always said that was Bing Crosby's favorite Old Testament character, Zerubbabel. Zerubbabel tries to rebuild the temple, then in 458 BC, Ezra comes along, and then 445-44 BC, along comes Nehemiah. That's the guy that's the focal point of our study.
As I said earlier, He is an average guy who excels to do great things. Opportunity knocks, He opens the door, He takes advantage of it.
The Foundation for Greatness
What we've titled today's session, Session 1, is The Foundation for Greatness. What I think I'm going to do is go ahead and work you through the outline. I know some of you, if I don't get it all filled in, you go a little nuts. So let me take you through the outline, and then we'll come back, and then I'll start, and we'll see if it follows the outline at all.
Number 1, Nehemiah lived at a pivotal moment. Number 2, He served in a strategic position. Not necessarily a powerful position, by the way, but a strategic position. Number 3, He operated with a tender heart. When we get to number 3, I want to show you a characteristic that's associated with real godly leadership that rarely do we talk about in the context of leadership. Number 4, He related to a powerful God. We'll see that relationship. Number 5, He acted on a critical principle. Number 6, He appealed to a reliable promise. And number 7, He counted on a divine intervention.
Living at a Pivotal Moment
So here's Nehemiah. He is an average guy at a pivotal moment, and this is what we're told in Nehemiah 1, that He served at a time that was in the 20th year, and He is in the capital. And my point is, it looked like any other time. It would have been very hard to distinguish this as a significant time.
In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus speaks to the disciples and He says this, "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. Be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time the thief was coming, he would have been alert and would have not allowed him to break into the house. For this reason, you be ready too, for the Son of Man is coming in an hour when you do not think He will."
In other words, there should be in our life this sense of vigilance, this sense of anticipation. Nehemiah, it's a normal day. The birds are singing. Maybe what makes it a little bit special when the guy delivered the paper today, He threw it into your
Understanding Our Cultural Context
When I looked around my neighborhood that morning, everything appeared normal. The streets were quiet, the zip code looked the same as always, which is kind of unusual for me. The coffee was brewing. Everything looked normal. Everything looked like it was okay, but it wasn't.
I believe those of you who say you're Christians need to be students of the culture that you live in. You need to understand this culture. If we were going to take you and send you to Japan as missionaries, one of the things we'd do to prepare you for that trip is we would help you understand the culture, because you understand that when you get there, there has to be some way to relate to these people.
When Paul arrives at Athens, remember what he does as he rides through the city and sees these god statues all over - something like 35,000 gods? When he gets his opportunity to speak, here's what he says: "I see that you're kind of godly people. You're worshipers." And then it says he quotes them, the poets of their day. You need to have some sense of the culture you live in.
The Reality of Our Current Situation
Now I really think some of you are already on the edge on this issue, and I'm afraid I'm going to push you over. I don't want to do that. There is this gloom, sense of pessimism about the culture. And I understand it. I do not look around and say, "Oh my, things are really getting better." I don't look around and say, "Oh boy, this is really encouraging. People are great. Business is good, and I love the world."
I think it's important to be realistic, and I'm going to take you to a conclusion. But when we get to that conclusion, I want you to see a ray of hope in the middle of it, though it's going to be a very dark picture.
I think I've quoted from this book before called *The American Paradox*. A psychologist, David Meyer, writes this book. At the beginning, he's paraphrasing - remember when Ronald Reagan was debating Jimmy Carter, and Reagan's question was very simply, "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Well, Meyers does a takeoff on this, and he says, "Are we better off than we were 40 years ago?"
He said the answer would have to be materially yes, morally no. Therein lies the American Paradox. We now have, as average Americans, doubled our income, doubled what money buys. We have espresso coffee, the World Wide Web, sports utility vehicles, caller ID. We have less happiness, more depression, more fragile relationships, less communal contentment, less vocational security, more crime, and more demoralized children.
The Turning Point: 1968
As you look at people who study the culture and you listen to them, here's what they say. They say 1968 was that dividing year. Now, that's interesting, because that's the year I graduated from high school. And I'm sure that surprises some of you, because you would have guessed '88 or '78, or '48, one of them.
But it was that time of free love, free sex, drugs. There was a bumper sticker that was absolutely everywhere in 1968. It was a stark white bumper sticker with black letters with simply two words on it. What did it say? "Question authority." And we lived that. You couldn't trust anybody.
I really believe that's become part of the culture, and frankly, part of the problem. Because no one trusts anyone anymore. Everything's a conspiracy. You saw that played out in 1968 and in the following years, and what you saw is just a gradual decline of the culture, of morals, of character.
When Character Ceased to Matter
Every time I talk about this, I hate to wheel them out and beat them up, but it doesn't get any more clear than when you had the Clinton presidency, and you had people saying, "Character doesn't matter. The stock market's up, things are good." Isn't that true? I mean, that's exactly what - character doesn't matter. And if you'll go back and play the tapes, my comment was: character doesn't matter if you don't have any. If you don't have any, it doesn't matter to you.
I don't think it's accidental that when Peggy Noonan wrote her last book on Ronald Reagan, it was called *When Character Counts*. It mattered. But this is just eroding away.
The Assault on Fundamental Institutions
Now that's the culture you live in. I don't know if you realize this, but 11 days from today, you will be able to go to the state of Massachusetts and get a license for a guy and a guy to marry, or a gal and a gal to marry. And that's going to be a license, and then they're going to bring that back here, and they're going to stick this right in your human resource department and say, "Now what are you going to do with my benefits?"
It is a crucial moment for us. It takes what's the fundamental building block of any society - the family - and essentially begins to destroy it, to where marriage doesn't matter. Can you imagine how stupid this is? We actually have to get a declaration that marriage means a man and a woman? I mean, what else has it ever meant? All you've got to do is look at the dictionary.
The Church's Confusion
So that's the culture. Here's what is maybe more alarming. Now you look at the church. The church is to be salt and light. The church is to be the persevering institution to declare the truth. And yet the church is confused. The church doesn't know.
So you've got churches that are not just trying to wrestle - and I'm not homophobic, I'm just saying that's just a cutting-edge issue. So you've got churches not saying, "Should we condemn or not condemn?" We're saying, "We're going to make these guys bishops and pastors and leaders." And that is a complete contradiction of what the Scripture teaches.
The Deeper Issue: Does Scripture Matter?
So what's at stake is not this issue. What's at stake is, does Scripture even matter anymore? So when you see that issue, it's not the issue itself, it's a broader issue. The issue is, does the Bible matter? Is the Bible the infallible Word of God? Or do we have to interpret it in light of our enlightenment here in 2004 and how brilliant we are?
Remember the Jesus Seminar guys? You remember them at all? They went around. Here's what they did. They were a bunch of scholars. They went around and they said, "We can't trust these guys that wrote..."
These Gospels were written by the disciples, and some of them wrote them long after Jesus died. John would be the latest, although I think it's pretty significant that John was an eyewitness, the disciple that Jesus loved. Here's what they did: They took everything that was quoted by Jesus, and they took—I'm not sure I've got the exact coloring right—but if they were absolutely certain Jesus said it, they put a black marble out. If they were not sure, it was gray. If they were unclear that He probably didn't say it, it was pink. If they were sure He didn't say it, it was red. Then they would cast these marbles out on each statement.
When these guys were all done and had lost all their marbles, they came back with here's what we're sure Jesus said. Listen to how this breaks down: Those guys were 50 years removed. They couldn't have known. These guys are 2,000 years removed. How would you know?
Either this is true or it isn't. If it's not, let's all trade in our coffee and bring on the booze and have a ball. If it's true, let's follow it. But I don't want to be hanging in the middle. Therein is the problem. So you get it? There's the culture.
A Great Time to Be Salt and Light
Having said all that, it's a good time to be alive, because our commission is to be salt and light, and you don't have to be much light to shine anymore. It is a great time, because people are more and more frustrated. There is this openness to a spiritual side, and yet there is this discontent when they get there.
When they sit and they listen to somebody like Wayne Dyer, this pure goofy stuff that you can't even diagram a sentence that makes no sense, that's so complex and confusing that you can't possibly get it, and you hear this and you go, that's goofy. It just is. You look like my dog as you watch him on PBS. Your head just starts to go like this, and you're just looking and saying, this is nuts.
Here you go: Jesus died for my sins. We went to see Ann Coulter the other night, and I don't know what you think of Ann Coulter, but she's always interesting. She said, "Hey, look, Vanity Fair says I'm ugly and arrogant, but Jesus died for my sins, so which do I care?" Well, that's a pretty good little context in the midst of all of that.
So there it is. It's a pivotal moment. It may look like any other day—you don't really know. The thing is, be prepared.
Nehemiah's Strategic Position
Here's the second thing: He served in a strategic position. Now we were strategic in the selection of the word strategic because it's not a powerful position. He's not a king. He's not a military leader, not a general, not a business powerhouse. He is a cup bearer.
Unless you've been around, you don't even know what a cup bearer is. We don't have them anymore. What they do in that day and age is if you wanted to get rid of the king—maybe you were an army or somebody who was a rival, or you were inside the kingdom and didn't like the king—you had a couple of ways to get rid of him. One of them, the typical way, is you get an army together and you overthrow him. But that's very costly, very painful. People get hurt. It's ugly.
So they came up with a new way: Poison him. Just put poison in his food. Well, after about the third king falls over dead, the king says, "All right, we need a cup bearer." What's a cup bearer? We're going to bring this guy in. We're going to gather around. When dinner comes out, he's going to eat it first. If he falls over, we're going to send it back. If he doesn't, then we'll be okay.
It was a very strategic position and very dangerous, obviously. You go to get life insurance. They're asking the questions: "Do you scuba dive?" "Yes." "Yeah, it doesn't matter. Do you skydive?" "Yes." "Well, it doesn't matter. Bungee jump?" "Yes." "It doesn't matter. What do you do?" "I'm a cup bearer." It matters. Because that throws off the actuarial tables all over the place. That's the cup bearer.
Two things about the cup bearer are very important. He monitored what was going on in the kingdom. He was in touch with—see how that relates to Nehemiah?—he monitored what was going on. He knows. He's compiling vacation time. So all of a sudden, if there's rumblings in the kingdom, he said, "You know what? I'm going to Pinetop for a couple weeks. Get another cup bearer in here."
The other thing that historians tell us, and this is what's really important, is that almost inevitably, there was a closeness between the cup bearer and the king. They traveled together. They spent a lot of time together. And they would develop a relationship in the midst of that. And that is Nehemiah. We're going to see that especially next week.
A Tender Heart for Leadership
Here's a third thing: He had something that you don't typically associate with leaders. He has a tender heart. We tend to see a leader like, "You're fired." I mean, that's how we see him. "You're done. I'm decisive. I don't look back. No regrets." Nehemiah is a leader. Look what happens in verse 2.
He's talking to some of the men from Judah, and he's asking concerning the Jews who had escaped and survived captivity, and what's the condition of Jerusalem? And they said, "There's a remnant there in the province who have survived captivity. They are in great distress and reproach, and the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and the gates are burned with fire."
"Now it came about, when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days." There's compassion. There's understanding. There's brokenness.
Here, I guess, is what I'd ask you: When's the last time you wept over the condition, either in the culture or in the church? When I was a young man, we would watch the nightly news, and David Brinkley or Chet Huntley would come on and say, "There's a breaking story in Frankfurt. We don't yet have the video. Here's the story. The video is on the plane. The video is just in." Well, what
would happen is, they'd send the video back by the airplane. I'd run down on a scooter, get it, bring it back, they'd reel it up, and there was news. There's a story, and then the video.
Now, we get the video before we have the story. We're seeing things unfold, and they're up there guessing in chapter 3. "I don't know what's going on. Here's what it looks like. Here's what we think it might be." They don't know. So they're giving me all this information, and it's unfiltered and not in context.
I don't know if it's in his book John Adams, or in Undaunted Courage on Lewis and Clark. Doesn't really matter. McCullough or Ambrose, one of the two, make this comment that in their day and age—now this is self-evident, but until you hear it, it doesn't go "wow"—in their day and age, news traveled at the speed of a horse. Think about that. The fastest way from here to there was a horse. They couldn't move information faster than that. Now it's instantaneous.
Information Overload and Spiritual Numbness
So now, you sit down at the end of the day, and you're watching the nightly news, and you're looking at the Sudan or Rwanda or something horrific that's going on, and you're eating your pizza while you're watching it. There's something a little bit cynical about that. That's just where we're numb to it. There's hurt and pain all around, and Nehemiah hears of the hurt and pain that's going on, and all of a sudden, it touches his life.
We have all this information. It is said that if you go out and pick a leaf and bring it in—so I'm standing in front of you, I got my hand now, there's a leaf—we have more, as a world, we have more information about this leaf and what goes into leafdom than they had at the time of Plato of knowledge of the entire world. And the knowledge we have is doubling. It's hard to get your arms around this. They say every five years, though I read last month, every three years.
So our stack—here's Plato's knowledge. Our stack is now like the Empire State Building, and that Empire State Building is doubling every three to five years. We know a lot. We can know so much that we're almost desensitized toward things.
Finding Your Passion Through Compassion
Let me give you a couple of things, because you need to have... There ought to be something that makes you cry. There ought to be something that lights you on fire. You need to be a person of passion, but that passion should flow from compassion.
I'll give you a couple of things. Every school day in this country—this to me is a staggering figure—every school day in this country, 1,500 kids drop out of high school. That's an amazing number. 1,500 kids drop out of high school. And they're not dropping out to be the CEO of IBM. They're dropping out to tattoo "I will work for minimum wage all my life" right on their forehead. It has a profound effect. Does that move you?
I'll give you one. Every year, between 1.2 and 1.5 million babies are slaughtered. And I think this is ready to turn. You've got radical feminists. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be redundant. You've got feminists—just kidding, you've got to have a sense of humor about all this. So you have this view. But you know what? They're sounding more and more strained.
The Reality of Life
Here's what's happening. We have a little girl at church, and she does some music. Christy Brazelton is her name. Christy is about this tall. Her husband is about 6'4". She came in the other day, stopped me. She said, "I'm pregnant." I said, "You've got to be kidding me, this is great." And now she's got a little pooch. It'll be about another four weeks, and it'll be easier to walk over her than around her.
So the other day, she left me a packet of the ultrasounds. Now when we took ultrasounds, they would go, "Oh, look at it," and I'm going, "I don't see—I haven't drank enough yet. I can't see anything there." It's just gray with a dot. But now, you see side views, you see the hand. There's kind of one of the baby waving. She took one of these pictures and framed it and wrote on it, "We love you already, honey."
Crisis pregnancy people tell us that if they can get a hold of a gal who's thinking about having an abortion and let her hear the heartbeat, 90% of the time, she will not go through with the abortion. This is a life. I don't know what else. It's a life. And yet we're killing them. Killing them. For the record. Maybe that moves you.
The Condition of the Church
I'll tell you what moves me, is the condition of the church. It always has been. I became a Christian in 1980, and then I started going to church, and when I started going to church, I looked around and said, "Man, this is screwed up." Because what I see in here isn't being played out.
In fact, let's take just a second and turn to the back, the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation. Let's spend a second there. I want to show you something. And then we'll move pretty quickly through the balance of this stuff.
Revelation, beginning in chapter 2, and this may stun some of you as you turn back there. If you have a red-lettered Bible, meaning the words of Jesus are in red, you're kind of thinking, "Well, once He dies, that's the end of Jesus." But when you get back to Revelation 2 and 3, you see it's all red-lettered. This is Jesus speaking. And He's speaking to seven actual churches. And He is, by and large, correcting them.
Jesus' Message to the Lukewarm Church
In Revelation chapter 3, verse 14, He speaks to the church at Laodicea, that is probably a pretty good representative of the church in Phoenix. And He said this: "I know your deeds, that you're neither cold nor hot. I would that you were cold or hot, so because you're lukewarm, neither hot or cold, I'll spit you out of my mouth."
Let's stop there. Here's what He's saying: "You make me sick here. You won't jump in with both feet, but you won't walk away either. You're just hanging there. And I can't stay. I don't like it at all." Here's what He says. And now He explains...
Because you say, I am rich and have become wealthy and have need of nothing. Now there's their condition. Again, I think similar to where the world we live in. Here's what they're saying. We got a lot of stuff.
Isn't that what happens? The minute you have stuff, the minute you have the smallest level of success, you begin to trust the success. The minute you have the smallest degree of success, that's what you begin to trust. And you become arrogant. And that's exactly what happened to them.
He said, so you say, we do not need you or you do not know that you're wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked. What's He talking about there? Their physical condition? No, their spiritual condition. Because you have this level of success, you don't even understand that spiritually you're depraved.
The Irony of Laodicea's Wealth
I advise you to buy for me gold refined by fire, that you might become rich, and white garments that you may clothe yourself, and that the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed, and eye salve to anoint your eyes. Why did He pick those illustrations? Laodicea was known for their wealth, for their clothing, and for development of an eye salve that was used by physicians all through the world.
He said, you got eye salve that you put on, and all of a sudden you see things beautifully, but you need my eye salve so you can see yourself as you really are. You're clothing yourself in these magnificent clothes, but you need to clothe yourself in my righteousness. Do you see this?
I know we're off track here a little bit, but I want to go down this road a bit. You'll never come to Christ in repentance and faith until you understand your need. And what wealth does, and success does, is it puffs you up.
The Servant's Heart
I was meeting the other day with an architect. Here's what the architect said, if you're going to be successful in architecture, you must be a servant. That's what he said. So I'm listening closely. What does that mean? That I'm here. I bring my skill, I bring my package, but ultimately I'm here to serve you. And that's true of architecture, that's true of all of life.
Well, you're never going to be a servant until you think like Christ. You're never going to be a servant as long as you have a haughty, arrogant attitude. It isn't going to happen.
That's what John the Baptist said. John the Baptist, Jesus said, nobody greater than John the Baptist ever lived. Bring on Abraham, bring on David, bring on Moses, Joseph, nobody bigger than John the Baptist. John the Baptist looks at Jesus, and here's his conclusion. John chapter 3 verse 30, He must increase and I must decrease. How can he say that? He understands who he really is.
Christ's Love Through Discipline
Now this church, Jesus is there. You're not hot, you're not cold. You don't understand what condition you're in. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, be zealous therefore and repent.
There's something that we don't always understand. We understand it humanly. You discipline your kids if you love them, and you only discipline your own kids unless you're on your way to child protective service, you don't spank the neighbor's kids, but you do spank your own. You do deal with your own. Why? Because you love them.
Jesus is saying, listen, I love my kids too. If you think you love your kids, I want you to know I love mine even more. I love my kids. And because I love my kids, I'm going to take them to the woodshed.
The True Meaning of Revelation 3:20
And then in Revelation chapter 3 verse 20, here's a verse that you've heard over and over again, almost always out of context and almost inappropriately applied. Almost always you hear it in the close of some message where, will you come to Jesus? Behold, I stand at the door and knock. And anyone who hears my voice and opens the door, I will come to Him and dine with Him and He with me.
So I even have a picture at home, and here's this fellow who's supposed to be Jesus standing at a door knocking, but there's no handle. Because according to that verse, of course, you're on the inside opening up. God's voted yes. Satan's voted no. You cast it. That's not what that says. That's totally inappropriate application.
He's not writing to unbelievers here. There may be some unbelievers in the church. He's writing to the church. Here's what He's saying. Everybody looks good. The music's prepared. The PowerPoint's ready. The video's cued. The bulletin's done. The ushers are in place. The greeting's done. The pastor's ready. You got this great church service going. Could I come? Would you let me in? Because right now, it's no different than a performance down at Civic Plaza. It's just like going to the Nutcracker. Everybody's done their thing and they're all prepared, and I might as well watch that as watch you guys. Do you see that? That's what He's saying.
Nehemiah's Heart of Passion
For me, about passion, that's what, to me, I want to see. Your passion doesn't need to be my passion. It's better that it isn't. Your passion needs to be your passion. But when you understand something breaks your heart, I don't care what it is, now you go after it. And that's what happens to Him.
He's in this strategic position. He has a characteristic you don't typically associate with leaders, and that is He has a tender heart. Here you go. Here's what fascinating is, He's related to a powerful God.
Here's what He says, and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. He said it's not enough to understand a culture. It's not enough to be moved. Now I have to go. Now I have to go to Him. Now I entreat Him. Now I'm involved. Now I'm involved in the disciplines of heaven, and those disciplines of heaven are things like fasting and praying and studying Scripture.
Approaching the Awesome God
And now He acts on a critical principle. And I said, verse 5, I beseech thee, O God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who preserves His covenants and the loving kindness of those who love Him and keep His commandments. Let thine ear now be attentive, and thy eye open to hear the prayer of thy servant, which I am praying before thee now. Day and night, on behalf of the
sons of Israel, thy servants, confessing the sins of the sons of Israel which have sinned against thee, and I and my father's house have sinned, and we have acted very corruptly against thee and have not kept the commandments nor the statutes nor the ordinance which you have given to thy servant Moses."
Here's what he said. He said, "We've sinned. It's a personal issue. It's my sin." A book written a decade or so ago had the title "Whatever Became of Sin." We've explained it away. We look around at people in aberrant behavior and our tendency is to say, "I wonder what happened to them. There must be a reason that they act this way." So we live in a culture where we're always a victim and never a villain. We're always a victim of what happened. But Nehemiah says, "No, it's my sin." And he's not even talking about his directly. He's talking about his ancestors.
You know what they did? God had this deal. He said, "Here's how I want you to plow your fields. I want you to farm them this way for six years, and in the seventh year, you don't farm that field." So that's how they did it for a while. Then all of a sudden, somebody's sitting around going, "We're giving away 14% of the deal here. Why are we doing that? Everybody else farms it seven years and keeps running. Why are we doing it?" They thought, "Well, let's plant it."
I'm sure the first year that they planted that, I'm sure they're standing around saying, "I don't want to be near you when the lightning strikes. God is going to get us. He is going to destroy us. He said not to do it, but we're doing it." Then what happens? Seven years later, when it's time again to lay this ground to rest for a year, probably some apprehensive, but not as much apprehension as before.
God allows them to go through 70 cycles of this—500 years. And then He zaps them. You can look around and go, "What kind of a God? God, what are you doing?" He gave you 70 cycles of it, 500 years to repent.
Nehemiah's Honest Self-Assessment
Nehemiah sees himself as he really is, just exactly like Paul did in 1 Timothy 1, verses 13, 14, and 15, when he says, "You want to talk about sinners, I'm the chief among sinners." And again, that's that clarion call.
I had a guy that came up after a study—this was years ago now—and he said, "Can I talk to you?" I said, "Absolutely." He said, "I really like the way you teach." I said, "Well, thank you." He said, "I think you mix up a little humor, serious, you do a good job, thanks." And he said, "But I won't be back again."
I said, "Well, that doesn't typically follow. You do a good job, but there must be a reason." I said, "What's the problem?" He said, "Here's the problem. You are so intolerant." And I said, "Okay, help me see my problem, because I'm willing to change. What do you mean intolerant?" He said, "It's very narrow, it's very black and white." And I said, "Well, what do you think I should be?" And he said, "You should be tolerant of everybody's view. Everybody's entitled to their opinion. Everyone has a view. You need to tolerate other people's views."
I said, "So everybody should be able to say whatever they want to say, and there should be any reprimand, nobody should be reprimanded or anything." He said, "That's exactly right." I said, "Well, you're violating that principle now. You're not even tolerating me. You're not tolerating my intolerance."
Not All Views Are Equally Valid
Now, here's a very important thing that you need to get a hold of. Everyone's view is not equally valid on every subject, right? So Cy over here is a heart surgeon. He's a heart doctor. Now let's say Karen goes down, and she's got pains in her chest or running down her arm. She feels like there's an elephant sitting on her chest. Who are you going to run to, Cy or me? Because I think it's just a female deal. That's what I think. You're going to go over to him, right? My view is not equal, do you see that?
We're going to fly home today. I'm not looking for a tolerant, open-minded pilot. I want a pilot that's very narrow-minded. I want a pilot that says, "You know, I've got this thing about having the wheels down when we land. I've got this thing about vectoring." And let's say he goes down and there's a co-pilot and I'm in the back and they say, "We have a problem. The pilot's down." I'll say, "I'll handle it, don't worry." I've never flown a plane in my life. Or you've got the co-pilot. Who are you going to take, do you see this?
All I'm saying to you is, everybody's entitled to their own position, but I don't have to listen to it. And everybody's position is not equally valid on every topic, do you get it? So when it comes to God, I want His view. Just like I want Cy's view on the heart and the co-pilot's view on flying, I want God's view on God. I don't want your view on God. I don't care what you think about God. It doesn't even matter to me what you think He is, or she is, or it is. What does God say? And what does God say about you?
A Reliable Promise
And then, there's the sixth point in this—there's a reliable promise. Here's what God says, I'm sorry, Nehemiah speaking: "Remember the word that thou has spoken to thy servant Moses, saying that if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though those that you have been scattered were in the remotest parts of the heavens, I will gather them from there and will bring them to this place where I have chosen to cause my name to dwell."
He said there's the promise, and He stands on this promise. Let me just make certain, and then we're going to go very quickly, because according to my clock here, I've got about four minutes. God makes promises to you, and they're just as reliable as the promises that were made to Nehemiah.
Remember this about a promise—a promise is only good as the one who makes it. I promised you that I would be here last Thursday.
That was my deal. That was my covenant with you, wasn't it? That was my agreement with you. The problem was, I couldn't have anticipated the death of this young man and the fact that I would have had to have been there. My intention was good, but my ability to understand all the circumstances and to pull this off was not omnipotent and omniscient.
God promises you. What does He promise? I'll never leave you. I'll never forsake you. All things work together for good to those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. Here's a promise you don't write down often: if you love Me and desire to live righteous in Christ Jesus, you will be persecuted. Those are all promises. They're as reliable as the moment they were given, because they're given by an all-knowing, all-powerful God.
Nehemiah Counts on Divine Intervention
And then here's the last thing. Nehemiah counts on divine intervention. Verse 11, he says, "O LORD, I beseech Thee, may Thine ear be attentive to the prayer of Thy servant and the prayer of Thy servants, who delight to revere Thy name and make Thy servants successful today and grant Him compassion before this man." And he's praying now before the king.
Let me give you this real quickly, and we could do a long time on this. There are four things that happen when you pray.
What Happens When You Pray
When you pray, number one, it makes you wait. When you're praying, all of a sudden, it's God's timetable, not yours. Here's the second thing it does: it quiets your heart. It's hard for your knees to knock when you're kneeling on them. It quiets your heart. It steadies you.
Here's the third thing. Over time, it brings you a clear vision. So I'm waiting, I'm quieted, and now I get a clear vision. In other words, I start to see things as God sees them. And praying activates my faith. The very act of praying is an act of faith.
The Faith to Do Nothing
Now, I wrote this down. I love this. It takes a lot of faith to do nothing. When we think of faith, we're going to say, "I'm going to step out on faith." And here I go. Faith. And I'm moving, I'm acting, I'm doing, I'm planning, I'm doing all this on faith.
It takes more faith to do nothing. It takes more faith to sit there and say, "You know what, God, I don't know what you want. I'm unclear on what you want. I don't know what you're doing. So God, you do it, because I know you. And I know you love me more than I love myself, which seems weird. And I know you know what's best for me." It takes a lot of faith to do absolutely nothing. That's what Nehemiah's doing.
Nehemiah's Strategic Position and Prayer
You see what's going on here? He's in a strategic, not powerful position. He's right there in the proximity of the king. He understands what's going on in Jerusalem. He understands what God's promised. He even probably begins to dream that maybe he's part of what God's going to do in that situation.
But he doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know where to go. He doesn't know what strategic plan to have. And so he says, "God, you hear the prayers, you've made the promise, you give me favor with this king." See, that's his prayer. He senses the king is a key part of this deal. This king doesn't give a rip about Jerusalem. He senses the king's a part of it, but he's saying, "How's that going to happen? What's going to happen? How will that take place?"
That's where we'll pick up next week.