“People to meet in heaven: Nehemiah”
Nehemiah 1:1-3
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
Early in the 1800s, a young man in London wanted to be a writer, but everything seemed against him. He attended school for only four years and his father and mother were in jail, not to mention his brothers and sisters, because they couldn’t pay their debts. So to survive his hunger pains, he got a job pasting labels onto bottles in a rat-infested warehouse.
“It was a crazy, tumble-down old house,” he later wrote, “literally overrun with rats. Old grey rats swarmed down in the cellars, and the sound of the squeaking and scuffling came up the stairs at all times.” He slept in an attic with two other boys from the slums.
His life was so miserable, he would later write, “I had no advice, no counsel, no encouragement, no consolation, no assistance, no support, of any kind, from anyone, that I can call to mind, as I hope to go to heaven.”
Even worse, when his family was freed from the debtors’ prison, his mother sent him back to work. Of her he said, “I never afterwards forgot, I never shall forget, I never can forget, that my mother sent me back.”
But there was one thing he could do and that was write. At least he thought he could write. That’s why he slipped out and mailed his first manuscript in the middle of the night, hoping no one would laugh at his dream. But that manuscript was rejected, and so were countless others.
But finally, in 1833, when he was twenty-one, a London magazine agreed to publish his very first story, “A Dinner at Poplar Park.” It would be the beginning of a long and essential literary career.
And today, we’re thankful for this man named Charles Dickens, who rose above unbelievable hardship and difficulty, and gave us such stories as Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, A Tale of Two Cities, and A Christmas Carol.
In our text today, we meet a man much like that. For this man named Nehemiah was able to rise above incredible hardship and difficulty, to do the will of God. And that’s why we want to meet him in heaven!
It’s been said that, as we consider many of the people in the Bible, we often think they were amazing, extraordinary people. After all, David was a writer of psalms and a slayer of giants. Samson killed a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey. Elijah called down fire from heaven to consume his sacrifice. And Peter walked on water! We could never do what they did. We could never be like them.
But at the same time, we forget that all of them were plain, ordinary men. Sure, David wrote psalms and killed giants, but he also stole Bathsheba, and took the life of her husband. Samson loved Delilah. Elijah became depressed and wished that he could die. And Peter sunk!
But even though all of them were such plain, ordinary men, God used them to do extraordinary things.
So it was for a man named Nehemiah. If you would, please turn with me in your Bible to page 503. I’ll read the words of Nehemiah chapter 1, starting at verse 1: “The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, ‘The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.’”
We’ll stop there for just a moment. It was some four hundred years before Christ, and the nation of Israel was in captivity, in exile. Their hearts had strayed so far from God that He had no choice but to judge them and to punish them and to send them far from the land and the homes they loved. And while they lived in faraway Persia, their capital city, Jerusalem, was destroyed and their temple lay in ruins. It was truly one of the worst times in the history of Israel.
But slowly and surely, through a king’s kindness, some of the people began to go back. And when they returned home, what did they find? Look at verse 3: “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.”
The walls of their capital city, Jerusalem, were torn down and the gates burned. It was a scene of chaos, of devastation and anarchy. Their beloved city was destroyed and the people who lived there, lived in fear and disgrace. And the nations that surrounded them mocked them.
Psalm 79, a psalm written at this very time, says: “They have defiled Your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins. They have given the bodies of Your servants to the birds of the heavens…they’ve poured out their blood like water…and there was no one to bury them.”
And what did Nehemiah do when he heard the news? Look at verse 4: “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
But who was Nehemiah and what good could he possibly do to help save Jerusalem? After all, he was in Susa, the capital of Persia, eight hundred miles away!
Turn the page to page 504 and look at the top left corner just above chapter 2. There it says: “Now I was cupbearer to the king.”
Cupbearer to the king? What’s that?
Nehemiah wasn’t simply a servant, a butler, a man at the beck-and-call of a king. To be a cupbearer was a position of authority and great responsibility. You see, if you wanted to kill a king, one of the easiest ways was to poison him. And if there was one thing Persian kings feared the most, it was poison. So in that time and place, every king had a cupbearer, someone he could trust implicitly, someone he could trust with his life.
So whatever the king ate (and he ate several times a day!), Nehemiah ate. And whatever the king drank (and he drank several times a day!), Nehemiah drank. It was a position of trust, of responsibility, of authority. He was the king’s confidant, his right-hand man.
Isn’t it amazing what God will sometimes do? Sometimes He places us in certain positions of responsibility and authority, then He uses us to do His will.
Think about it! Once a boy named Moses was destined to be drowned, till his mother floated him down the Nile, to be raised as Pharaoh’s son. Joseph was once a slave and a prisoner, till he became second-in-command in all of Egypt. Daniel escaped the lion’s den to be an advisor to the king. And a poor, orphaned, Jewish girl named Esther became queen.
And there’s a first lesson we should learn from this text. Ask yourself this--where has God placed you and what is He asking you to do in your place and time? Nehemiah, a Jew in exile in Persia, was a cupbearer for a king.
Even more, when he heard what had happened to his nation, to his people and to his home, that the walls were broken down and its gates destroyed, what did he do? The Bible says he wept, he fasted and he prayed.
And there we find a second lesson to learn from this text. Just as Nehemiah once felt a burden on his heart, so should we.
What is it that burdens your heart? What is it that keeps you up at night? Do you need to reconnect with God? Is there a relationship you need to restore? Just like Nehemiah, maybe it’s time for you to pause in your spiritual life, to weep, to fast and to pray.
But Nehemiah didn’t stop there with fasting and prayer. In fact, just as soon as he asked his king, King Artaxerxes, to let him go, he went all the way to Jerusalem, eight hundred miles away, and began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Nothing would stop him--not people, not personalities, and not problems--from getting the job done.
And there’s a third lesson we should learn from this text--if God has placed a burden on your heart, if there’s a job that needs to be done, don’t stop with tears, fasting and prayer. Just like Nehemiah, reconnect, rebuild. Get the job done.
And no matter what trials, hardships or difficulties you face, remember the words of Paul to the Philippians. “I can do all things through Christ, who strengthens me.”
If you were to visit Oklahoma to see the site of the bombing and to remember the terrible loss of life that once happened there, you’d find a sprawling, 100-year-old American Elm tree where that massive building once stood. Tourists drive for miles just to see it. People pose for pictures beneath it. No tree, it seems, is more cherished than that tree.
So why is it so important to the people of Oklahoma City? Because it endured the blast.
You see Timothy McVeigh parked his rented yellow truck only yards away from it. And when his bomb blew, it took the lives of 168 people and wounded 850 more. The force of the blast ripped off most of its branches and embedded glass and debris in its trunk. And fire from cars parked beneath it blackened what was left.
At first, workers wanted to cut it down, but when family members and survivors gathered together a year later, and stood beneath its branches, they noticed it had begun to bud. Leaves and green sprouts pressed through gray soot and broken bark. Life arose from death.
So they saved it and protected it. They even placed a plaque at its foot. It read: “The spirit of this city and this nation will not be defeated; our deeply rooted faith sustains us.”
And so it is for us. For through all our trials, our tears and our heartaches, our deeply rooted faith sustains us.
How is all this possible? Because of the One who was crucified outside Jerusalem’s city wall, outside Nehemiah’s city wall. He died the death we should have died. He paid the price we should have paid. And all because of Him, we are saved.
Dear Father, help us to learn the lesson of Nehemiah, who, by Your grace, wept, fasted and prayed, and did what You called him to do. Keep us, help us and sustain us, that we too may do Your will in our time and place, for Jesus’ sake. Amen