Nehemiah: Nehemiah, the Comfort of YHWH | Student Pastor: Sam Rapp

Well, if you're new around here, uh there's about four to six Sundays a year where um we've unofficially titled them Jacket Sunday because myself, the student pastor who loves wearing triple XL shirts wears clothes that fit.

So that's the biggest difference today is that my clothes fit and I look like a grown man, so uh at least a little bit.

Well, growing up, I always had the weak stomach out of my friends.

It was something that I had grown up with.

And at birthday parties in uh friends' houses, I all my friends would eat, as 14-year-olds do, just obscene amounts of candy and chips and crispy cream donuts and other amazing and horrible things to put in your body.

And they'd all feel fine, of course, because their stomachs were great, but I'd always feel horrible and I would actually get sick sometimes when I would join them in their snacking.

And my parents and siblings would always joke with me, like, oh, there goes Sam overeating again.

And I was always like, guys, like I ate the same amount that y'all did.

So I was like, what's going on within me?

My stomach finally got really bad in the summer between my junior and senior year of high school.

During this summer, I don't know what switch, but I like hardly I could hardly eat.

I was eating like 600 calories a day, and that was me like force feeding myself.

So that summer I lost about 35 pounds, and I wasn't like a puffy guy before that.

Like I was still skinny Sam that summer.

So I went from about 165 pounds to about 130 pounds that summer, and I was still about six feet tall, so it was not an ideal weight.

So here's a picture of myself and my dad from that summer.

Um I look about the same.

I know, I recognize that.

Uh you can you can say it.

Um I like I look fine, but I was like skinny, skinny in that picture.

So during this time, we went to too many doctors to count.

For months, no luck, no one knew what was wrong with me.

Some doctors thought I had a parasite in me.

That was that seemed to be a good guess.

So we do the stool sample situation, which if you've done the stool sample situation, it's one of the worst things to have to do, uh.

So I had to do that.

Uh I was getting blood tests constantly.

At 17 years old, I got a colonoscopy, which most people get at 50, halfway through their life, but not Sam Rapp.

Happy one year of uh driving your car, Sam.

Here's a colonoscopy now.

So it was a process of more than a year of seeing doctors almost every week with no success, trying all sorts of medicines, different antibiotics for these parasites that the doctors thought I had.

Of course, nothing worked.

The colonoscopy, by the way, was useless, uh which really stinks.

I would rather not have uh a camera go up there for no reason.

Um so finally I see this doctor.

For the hundredth time, I explain what's wrong.

And this guy, I don't know, I don't know what the Lord has gifted him with, but he knows immediately what's wrong with me.

So he looks at me, he looks at me up and down, he's like, Oh yeah, you have abdominal migraines.

Didn't know that was a thing.

You have abdominal migraines.

So hey Sam, here's the medicine you're gonna take.

Go in peace.

And it worked.

It was like immediately he gave me the right medicine, and to this day, ten years later, I take that same medicine every morning because it worked so well.

He knew exactly what was wrong with my situation, and so he knew exactly what the fix was.

Now here's the problem.

All the other doctors, as well trained as they were, they could not figure out what was wrong with me.

They could look me up and down, get all the stool samples they wanted, but they could not figure out what was wrong with Sam Rapp.

And it wasn't until this guy he knew where to look.

He knew where to look, he knew what questions to ask, and so once he got a good look at the problem, he knew what the right process was to rebuild.

He was a great doctor.

So this morning we're continuing in our study in the book of Nehemiah, the Old Testament book.

So if you have your Bibles, I would invite you to turn there with me.

Uh last week, Pastor Matt opened up chapter one for us.

And to catch you up a little bit, here's a little background about the book so far.

Our main character, Nehemiah, is living in Persia.

He's the cupbearer to King Artaxerxes.

Now, the cupbearer was one of the king's most trusted confidants.

The cupbearer would have made sure that no one poisoned the king with food or wine, and so the king literally trusted this person with his life.

Nehemiah and the king were living in Susa, which would have been the winter palace where the king lived.

Wouldn't you like a winter palace?

That sounds great.

This is what the winter palace, Susa the Citadel, looks like.

Susa is in modern-day Iran, about 800 miles east of Jerusalem.

So the story takes place around 445 BC, and at this point in Israel's history, the people are living in exile because of their own sinfulness.

The Lord had scattered them amongst the nations, and because of this, they had no central place of worship anymore.

There was no central place of safety, of power.

They had been living due to their own covenant unfaithfulness and the promises of cursing that God had promised in Deuteronomy 28.

He promised them that if they obeyed his word, they would live in blessing.

But if you know your Bible, you know the people of God are far too similar to me, selfish and unfaithful, not trusting in the word of God.

And so God keeps his promises and he scatters them, lets them be conquered.

So Nehemiah, this Jewish man, he's living in the palace of the king of Persia, and he gets these bad news that the walls of Jerusalem had broken down and the gates have been burned by fire.

And so the Israelites are wondering if God will ever return.

Will we ever live in the glory days of Moses and once again be in Jerusalem?

And so Nehemiah gets word of this, and his first response is to weep and to pray.

In his prayer, he confesses to God that like his people, he too has lived in sinfulness.

He's not perfect.

He has not lived in faithfulness.

And then he asks God to keep his promises.

Have you ever prayed that boldly?

He looks at God and he says, God, remember the word you gave to Moses.

I'm so challenged by that prayer.

And here's the word that God gave to Moses from Deuteronomy 28 that he quotes in chapter 1.

If you are unfaithful, this is from God, I will scatter you amongst the nations, and if you return, I will gather you from the uttermost.

So here's Nehemiah on his face before Yahweh, saying, Lord, we are returning.

We're coming back.

So would you be faithful to your word?

Would you, God, gather us back from the uttermost?

Would you rebuild what you allowed to be torn down?

God, would you bring grace to your disgraced people?

This kind of prayer has just about the same gravity as you and your sin, looking at God and saying, God, don't you forget the cross?

Don't you remember your son on the cross for me?

That's the kind of gravity that Nehemiah prays for.

God, remember your covenant promise to us.

Now, with that in mind, let's pick up here in chapter two.

This is what God's word says.

In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king.

Now I had not been sad in his presence, and the king said to me, Why is your face sad, seeing that you are not sick?

This is nothing but sadness of the heart.

Then I was very much afraid, and I said to the king, Let the king live forever.

Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves, lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?

So four months had passed since chapter one.

Kizlev, in the chapter one that we saw, is around November or December, and this month Nisan is uh like March or April in the ancient Jewish calendar.

So for four months, Nehemiah had just been praying and weeping.

For this entire time.

He hadn't made any plans yet, he'd just been praying.

In a season of waiting.

Maybe you've been there, maybe you're there now.

Maybe you've received hard news, and there's nothing you can do except pray.

Maybe you've had a very difficult relationship with a coworker or a family member, and it feels like you're stuck, and all you can do is mourn and pray.

And if that's you today, you find good company in the scriptures.

Nehemiah here is deeply grieved at this news of his people.

And all he does for these four months is pray, and then finally in chapter two, he begins to act after four months.

And that's not law.

Like if you if you have a big decision coming up or uh something big in your life going on, you're not required to pray and weep for four months before acting.

But now we certainly can learn from Nehemiah here to be quick to pray and slow to act.

So in his first course of action, he does what he always does as cupbearer.

He brings some wine to the king.

Maybe he got a few bottles from the cellar, dusted them off, and brought them to the king, and he shows up with his wine, and the king just reads his mail.

I don't know if you noticed it.

I love it.

Nehemiah says, I wasn't sad in the presence of the king, which always makes me laugh.

What he means by that is, yeah, I'm certainly sad inside.

Like you know the reality of my life, and but I'm gonna put on a great face.

But the king knows Nehemiah so well that he can read it.

He says, Nehemiah, why are you sad?

You're clearly not sick.

No one poisoned the wine, so you're not sick, so what's going on?

And it's hard to wrap our minds exactly around what this relationship would have looked like.

This king of Persia here, Artaxerxes, would have been the most powerful man in the ancient world.

He was the commander-in-chief of the ancient Near East.

And the cupbearer was his number two guy.

Like he was his ride or die guy who was right with him.

He probably spent the most time with, the man that he trusted his life with, and because of that, because the king could have anyone he wanted as a cupbearer, the cupbearer certainly could not be a bummer of a guy if the king wanted to spend all his time with him.

Nehemiah had to put a good face on all the time.

He couldn't just mope around whenever he was sad like this, and that's why verse 2 ends like it does.

I was very much afraid.

Because the king seeing Nehemiah sad could have been a death sentence for Nehemiah.

So Nehemiah replies out of genuine fear and with praise to the king, let the king live forever, Artaxerxes.

Here's my loyalty to you.

And here's why I'm sad.

He says, The city, the place of my father's graves, is burnt.

The gates are destroyed.

How can I not be sad?

Let's pick up in verse four.

Then the king said to me, What are you requesting?

So I prayed to the God of heaven.

And I said to the king, If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's graves, that I may rebuild it.

And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, How long will you be gone when will you return?

So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time.

And I said to the king, If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the prince beyond a province beyond the river, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forests, that he may give me timber and make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.

And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.

So instead of chopping Nehemiah's head off for being sad, he says, What are you requesting?

And I love what Nehemiah does here.

I don't know if you noticed it.

He just says, So I prayed to the God of heaven.

This is a man of prayer.

Like chapter one, we see this long, beautiful, wordy prayer, and then here in this time of action, he just maybe shouts a little, God help me, and then starts talking, praying in the moment.

Maybe you've been there, maybe you prayed a prayer like that this morning, getting the kids ready for church.

God help me.

Now we see Nehemiah does two things really well, doesn't he?

First, he is a man of prayer.

I mean, he spent four months just praying and grieving, but not only is he a man of prayer and empathy, he is also a man of action.

If you're anything like me, it is very easy to sway from one extreme of this to the other.

Either to just pray and not plan, kind of the let go and let God kind of mentality, or to just plan and not pray, which that's probably, if we're honest, how most of us operate.

Frantically planning our days and weeks and lives, our kids' lives, our finances, our troubles, you name it.

The plan, plan, plan, plan, act.

Because if we're honest, our life moves too fast to pray.

Now, Nehemiah displays a really beautiful mix of both prayer and action.

And because of that, he's thought of everything.

And maybe we're gonna see his plans come together, not because Nehemiah is really smart, but maybe in his spent months of prayer, Nehemiah's heart began to align with the God he was praying to.

And so Nehemiah asked for all these things from the king.

And what's crazy, the king says yes.

Look at verse 8 again.

And the king granted me what I asked.

Why?

For the good hand of my God was upon me.

The king says yes, not because Nehemiah's plans were great, not because he was so smart or convincing.

The king said yes, according to Nehemiah, because the good hand of his God was upon him.

And I love that phrasing.

He doesn't just say the hand of God was upon me, he says the good hand of my God was upon me, and that's a small but very helpful difference.

He's saying, not only is my God above everything, but he's morally good and he's mine.

He's accessible, he's personable, he is a God who cares for his shamed people.

But the reality is Nehemiah was ultimately powerless.

The king said no, the mission's over.

The walls will just continue to be in rubble, the covenant promises of Deuteronomy 28 still unkept.

And so it had to take an act of the good hand of his God for the king to approve of his mission.

Even in the book of Ezra, the book right before this, this same king Artaxerxes said no harshly.

But yet God had softened his heart to say yes now.

So the king sends Nehemiah out, 800 miles to Jerusalem.

And as with any move of God, even as Matt just prayed, there is opposition.

We meet these two friends that are anti-Nehemiah.

We meet Sanbelat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite.

And in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, names matter.

And Tobiah literally means Yahweh is good.

And it's ironic because this man whose name means Yahweh is good is one of the two men who are anti-Yahweh's plan here.

Isn't that ironic?

And yet, even in opposition, Nehemiah continues in faithfulness.

He goes 800 miles to Jerusalem, he stays there for three days, then he sneaks away in the middle of the night without telling anybody his plan, and he brings a couple guys with him.

And then Nehemiah does this slow, intentional walk around this very, very special wall.

In these verses, we see the word inspect twice.

Once in verse 13 and another in verse 15, as Nehemiah goes around the wall.

And the word for inspect is the word shavar, which means the level of detailed searching that a doctor would use as he probes a wound.

It is a doctoral level of examination because Nehemiah must become an expert in the rubble.

And here's a big vital point that I want you to hear this morning.

The extent of the rebuild can be so only as far as the destruction is known.

Nehemiah must be a doctor in the rubble.

He must know intimately how low in disgrace they are, so that he can set the plan in action for the rebuild.

And so finally, once Nehemiah had become an expert in the wall's destruction, he brings his plans to the leaders.

Let's read verse 17 again.

Then I said to them, You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.

Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

And I told them, of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me, and they said, Let us rise up and build.

So they strengthened their hands for the good work.

Nehemiah had become an expert, and he knows how to rebuild, and so he calls him up.

And not only that, but he comes with the commission and authority of Yahweh and said, The leaders are inspired, let us rise up and build.

Feels like a great end of the story, doesn't it?

And then once again, opposition comes.

Again, look at verses 19 and 20.

But when Sanbellat the Horonite and Tobiah, remember our friend, the Ammonite, servant and Geshem the Arab, heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us, saying, What is this thing that you are doing?

Are you rebelling against the king?

You see our two guys again?

And then they bring their friend, this time Geshem.

And the three of them, much like middle schoolers, start yelling at Nehemiah and his friends, saying, What are you doing?

They start mocking him.

But what's so brilliant about Nehemiah is he didn't tell anybody his plans.

So there's no room for gossip.

So much so that even his most violent opponents had the story wrong.

You notice what they said?

Are you rebelling against the king, the king that sent Nehemiah?

They had the story wrong.

So Nehemiah brings the ultimate trump card.

Verse 20.

Then I replied to them, the God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build it.

But you have no portion or rights or claim in Jerusalem.

God of heaven must show up.

So Nehemiah closes with a harsh word.

He's saying, if you're against the mission, you don't belong here.

Yeah, Tobiah, you might be a Jew.

Your name is really good.

You might even be a legal citizen, but you stand at odds with Yahweh.

And I promise you, Tobiah, that the hand of God will make us prosper.

And now one of my favorite things about Nehemiah is his name.

Like I said, all names matter, and Nehemiah means Yahweh comforts.

I love that.

In the book of Nehemiah, Yahweh, our God, comes to his disgraced, discouraged, and hopeless people.

This people without a home, without a central place of worship, and Yahweh brings comfort through his servant Nehemiah.

The one commissioned by a Persian king to rebuild the walls of God's holy city.

Where to be outside of the walls means you're outside of God's presence.

And to be inside the walls meant you are inside Yahweh's presence.

And what does Nehemiah, the comfort of Yahweh, do?

He, a man living far outside Jerusalem in a foreign land, hears word of his disgraced people.

And he weeps and he prays for them.

He travels 800 miles authoring the commission of a king.

He speaks a word to no one.

He spends three days alone and then with surgical precision probes the walls as to know precisely how to rebuild.

And beloved, the better Nehemiah is here.

The comfort of Yahweh, Jesus of Nazareth, has come with a vision to rebuild far exceeding the walls of Jerusalem.

Jesus, who knows the disgrace of his people, the disgrace of those born after the likeness of Adam, is here.

Jesus, who with grieved heart, knowing with surgical precision, the rubble that we have been left in, is here.

Jesus, the great physician who came not to save the healthy but the sick, who has come to take the rubble and ruins of our spiritual state, and on his cross and resurrection, has established a rebuild far exceeding that of Jerusalem.

Jesus in his incarnation provided what the Holy of Holies provided in the time of Jerusalem.

The presence of God is no longer limited to a place in the ancient Near East, but the presence of God arrived as a man.

Jesus, your greater Nehemiah, who knows the rubble of your heart more than you do, has come.

And he took it upon himself that he might take your burned down and broken heart and rebuild and redeem.

Now the scary thing to do with this reality is to be honest enough with ourselves that we don't have it all together.

And that's a scary thing to do, especially here in Marietta.

I mean, everybody in Marietta looks like they have it all together, don't they?

And yet what I'm curious about this morning is what sort of freedom we could walk in if we grow more and more honest that we don't have it all together.

That like the Israelites, we are a mess to confess that the walls of our hearts, like the walls of Jerusalem, are in ruins.

What's crazy is that Jesus actually already knows the rebel.

He knows your addictions, he knows your vices, he knows your deepest, darkest sins, and that's actually why he went to the cross.

Now I've been reading this book uh by a pastor named Dan Dane Ortland, or sorry, uh Ray Ortland, his dad, uh, called The Death of Porn, and I would commend it to you.

And here's a quote that he said that has been rocking my world.

He says this you can either be impressive or you can be known, but you can't be both.

That stinks, doesn't it?

So what I'm praying for, for our church, is that we would seek to be a people, not who are impressive to Marietta, but that we would seek to be a people by God's grace, according to the cross, who would grow more and more honest about our brokenness, not pretending to have it all together, but acknowledging that none of us do.

That's actually why God was murdered on a cross.

Remember what I said just a few minutes ago about the wall.

The extent of the rebuild can be so only as far as the destruction is known.

And that speaks an awful lot to our hearts.

Beloved, the more honest you are about your broken and sinsick heart, I promise you the more freedom you will walk in.

And what the scriptures promise is that the soul-level freedom that the gospel purchased happens as we come to the Lord with open hands and say, Lord, I have nothing.

Your Lord, who is the great surgeon of your heart, knows where your wounds are, knows where your sin is, and he loves to heal it.

And with that, maybe the word of God is pressing on you this morning to come to the Lord, maybe with a secret or a sin that you've never you've never brought to him before.

And I would just invite you to this morning as we pray here shortly.

And I would invite you, knowing in confidence, that your Lord Jesus took it already upon himself.

That you are free to bring yourself to the Lord of hosts.

So, beloved, cast your eyes and your heart on the greater Nehemiah.

The greater comfort of Yahweh, no matter how much rubble you find in your heart this morning, Jesus of Nazareth knows how to rebuild it.

He, your comfort, loves to rebuild, and it is a rebuild far better than Jerusalem.

So would Redeemer Marietta, would we be known for her and our courageous honesty?

That would we say genuinely we are more broken than we originally thought, but more loved by God in Christ than we could dare to dream.

Now maybe you're here and you have a question about anything I said this morning, or would just like some prayer.

I'll be down front after the service and would love to talk or pray with you.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for this morning.

Thank you that in Jesus our comfort, we no longer have to perform, we no longer have to pretend.

But that Lord, in Jesus we find all of the beloved belonging and forgiveness that we could ever long before.

Father, we confess this morning that we are not all that we wish we were.

And yet in that we are still fully beloved.

Father, as we approach your table now that would you continue to be with us and comfort us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.