Nehemiah: Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah | Associate Pastor: Matt Armstrong

Amen.

Thank you, Sam.

Morning, everybody.

My name is Matt.

I'm one of the associate pastors here.

And this morning we get to begin a new series in the book of Nehemiah.

Nehemiah is an Old Testament book.

Someone in the first service told me they have never heard of the book of Nehemiah.

That gets me so excited.

Because I love starting a new series, jumping into an Old Testament book.

So whether you've never heard of it or you've read it a hundred times, we have the privilege to jump into this beautiful Old Testament book.

But depending on where you're coming from, we need some background.

I thought about uh if you're unfamiliar with the book, uh it's like when you go to a movie and uh it's like a sequel or something.

Um like the Marvel movies back in the day.

I love the Marvel movies.

Um during COVID, we watched all of them again in order uh to uh to the big climax in Endgame.

And uh it's so funny.

Uh the uh there's the 21 movies that come before Endgame, and so if you want to know what's happening in Endgame, you have to watch those in order.

Um not really.

You can go to the movie and you might you'd enjoy it, but you'd have questions, you know, and you might miss things like when Captain America catches Thor's hammer at the climax of the final battle at the end of the movie.

This is this is one of the high points of my cinema uh experience as an adult.

When I was in the movie theater, uh the day this came out, watching the movie, when when Captain America catches this hammer at the climax of this battle, the theater erupted in cheers and clapping.

And I've seen, you may have seen online there's like memes or like little videos of the like people across the world, right?

Why?

Why are they standing and cheering?

Because they've watched 21 movies of a story climaxing in this moment.

And uh so if you're unfamiliar with uh the book of Nehemiah, you might miss, you may not stand up and cheer three or four weeks from now when we hit a point in the story.

So we're gonna start up, I mean, as we should, as we should.

So uh part of the sermon is just background.

I want to fill you in on where this book comes in the story and the flow of the history of redemption, and also a little bit about uh the man it's named after.

So uh this story, Nehemiah, begins at the end of what is known as the exilic period, the period of exile.

But how did we get here?

So here's a brief timeline, the history of Israel.

Around 1800 BC, God comes to Abraham and he sets his family apart as the people of God.

About 1300 BC, God comes to Moses at Mount Sinai, calls him, informs the nation of Israel.

About 1,000 BC, King David is anointed as the second king over Israel.

About 80 years later, that kingdom, the kingdom of Israel, the 12 tribes of Israel that God gave the promised land to, it splits in civil war into the uh the northern kingdom known as Israel and the southern kingdom known as Judah.

About 200 years later, the northern kingdom of Israel is defeated and kind of wiped off the map by the foreign kingdom of Assyria.

And about 150 years later, the southern kingdom of Judah is attacked by uh Babylon, King Nebuchadnezzar, if you recognize that name, comes and uh destroys the southern kingdom, destroys the city of Jerusalem, destroys the temple that Solomon built, the center of Jewish worship.

Many are taken from uh Judah, the the the elite, the educated, the wealthy.

They're taken into exile, into the kingdom of Babylon.

That's where, if you're familiar with the book of Daniel, he's one of those exiles, the ones who's taken out.

Uh about a hundred years later, Babylon itself is defeated by the kingdom of Persia.

King Cyrus is king of Persia at that time.

You read, uh we'll read King Cyrus' name throughout the book in the book of Nehemiah.

Now, Persia's kind of foreign policy was sort of the opposite of Babylon.

Babylon would conquer a nation and would would take the elites of society and try to assimilate them into Babylonian culture.

Again, if you read the book of Daniel, that's what's happening.

Um Persia's uh perspective was the opposite.

They thought it was easier to rule people if you let them worship their own gods.

So uh King Cyrus, we're told in the book of Ezra, was moved by the Lord to send the people of Israel back and to fund the rebuilding of the temple and the city of Jerusalem and the wall around it.

So the first wave of Israelites returned to Jerusalem around 539.

They begin rebuilding the temple, and this is the time of Haggai and Zechariah, the minor prophets in the Old Testament.

Little less than a hundred years after that, Ezra is sent to Jerusalem.

That's the book just before Nehemiah, about 14 years before Nehemiah himself is sent.

So that's where we are starting in 445 BC.

So let's look at Nehemiah chapter 1.

Nehemiah 1 · chapter mention

The words of Nehemiah, son of Hakalia.

Now it happened in the month, month of Kislev, in the twelfth year, as I was in Susa, the capital, 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 walls of Jerusalem, the wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept, and I mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the Lord of heaven.

And I said, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments.

Let your ear be attentive and your eye open to hear the prayer of your servant, that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you.

Even I and my father's house have sinned.

We have acted very corruptly against you, and have not kept the commandments and the statutes and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.

Remember the words that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, 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 you your dispersed be un under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell there.

They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and your strong hand.

O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and came to mercy in the sight of this man.

Now I was a cupbearer to the king.

The word of the Lord.

Did you notice in Nehemiah's prayer?

Oh, sorry, point one.

Nehemiah enters God's unfolding story of redemption.

You don't want to miss that.

Did you notice in Nehemiah's prayer that he calls on the Lord to remember the word he had spoken to Moses?

Now, Nehemiah is calling the Lord to remember the covenant that God made with his people at Mount Sinai.

We talked about that briefly in the timeline.

The Old Testament is really a history of a series of covenants.

God made a covenant with Abraham, he made a covenant with Moses, he made a covenant with David, and they all kind of build on each other until they climax into the new covenant that Jeremiah foretells and that Jesus brings into existence.

But what we see here in Nehemiah's prayer is that everything that happens in this book, everything that is happening to the nation of Israel is happening within the context of this covenant.

Because the covenant was the grounds of the relationship God had with his people.

And in that covenant, he gave them, he told them the law, and he said, If you keep my law, I will bless you.

If you break my law, if you fail to keep my law, I will curse you.

Everything that happens to God's people happens in the context of this covenant.

So Nehemiah recounts in verse 8, If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples.

And this is exactly what had happened.

About 70 or 80 years prior to this, God had scattered his people through the destruction of Assyria in the north and Babylon to the south.

If you're familiar with the Old Testament prophets, especially Jeremiah, Isaiah, Ezekiel, this is what they were all about.

They were calling God's people to be faithful to the covenant of God.

And they were calling God to be merciful to this unfaithful people.

But unfortunately, if you're familiar with those books and the history of Israel, God's people did not remain faithful, and so they were sent into exile.

But the Lord goes on.

He said, If you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of the heavens, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell there.

Now this part of Deuteronomy has also already begun to take place.

In Ezra chapter 1, we're told that King Cyrus, the king of Persia, who defeated Babylon, had begun to send Israelites back to the land to rebuild the temple, to rebuild the city.

Ezra 1 · chapter mention

Two waves have had already returned.

One a hundred years before and one fourteen years before with Ezra.

The temple, like I said, had been rebuilt, but the rebuilding of the city and the wall around Jerusalem had stymied.

It had been it had been cut short because of opposition they were experiencing by others in the land.

And so now, this is a context.

Nehemiah receives this word from his brother and his companions, and he he weeps because God's promise of redemption, of returning his people to the land and restoring their place there, and restoring the city and the worship has been cut short.

And so he is heartbroken.

The remnant, they said, who had survived the exile, are in great trouble and shame.

He hears that the wall of Jerusalem is broken down and the cate, the gates are destroyed.

And so he is moved.

He weeps bitterly, he mourns for days, he fasts and prays before the Lord.

And this shows us a lot about who this man is.

Brings us to point too that Nehemiah, in this story, he is a new Moses for the people of God.

In response to this heartbreaking news, he fasts, he prays, he mourns, and he cries out to the Lord in prayer.

And we learn a ton about him through this prayer.

What do we learn?

First, he is in the position of great influence, just as Moses was.

We'll talk about that more in a second.

He becomes aware of the suffering and distress of God's people, and he is heartbroken.

And he cries out to the Lord on the people's behalf.

He repents of sins, his own sins, and the sins of the people.

He calls on the Lord to remember his covenant.

And he begins to fill this place of one who will lead his people, God's people, back to the promised land.

And spoiler alert, he will ultimately fail to bring the people all the way back to the Lord in obedience from the heart.

And we will leave this book waiting for another.

Now, all these things connect Nehemiah to Moses, but there's two other things I want us to note before we move on.

First is that Nehemiah himself is raised up by the Lord to this task before him.

In chapter two, he will tell us that it was the Lord who moved him, put it in his heart to do what he is about to do.

Secondly, in this story that's unfolding around him, he realizes that he has a part to play.

I love the way this book ends.

And if you're paying attention and reading this narrative coming out, you get this glimpse at the end of the prayer that we are reading a story told by a master storyteller.

Because he starts off by giving us this background that he's in Persia.

His brother comes with these companions.

He asks, right?

This is not the internet, there's no texting, uh, there's not even like a newspaper.

So um takes years to get word, and so he asks them what's going on in the home country, and he learns that the people are full of shame, they are in distress, and so he is heartbroken.

And he prays.

And at the end of the prayer, he says, This, O Lord, give success to your servant.

Success for what?

Grant him mercy in the sight of this man.

Well, who is this man?

And then he gives us the last line of the chapter.

He says, Now I was cut bearer to the king.

Aha! Oh, it's like this unveiling, it's this reveal, this great reveal at the end.

Why didn't he tell us he could have told us that at the beginning, but he waits.

He builds this tension.

We feel his grief and his anxiety for the people, but with this word, he reveals that he is a man in a place of incredible power and influence.

Every day he is at the side of the king, and he puts his life at risk for the king.

The king trusts him with his life.

Nehemiah tastes the food, he drinks out of the cup of the king to make sure it's not poisoned.

So he has incredible, he's in a place of incredible influence, power, and trust.

Point three.

We too are being called into God's redemptive story.

Now I want to be careful here because these Old Testament stories sometimes, especially when we tell them to our kids or do Bible stories, we tell them like uh little moralistic tales or fairy tales, and you know, be like David or be like Ezekiel or whoever, be like Nehemiah.

And that's that the morals of these stories that are not the point.

Uh these this is not our story, this is God's story.

And so he's the main character, and the focus needs to remain on him.

Point one A.

Point two is we can also learn from looking at these Old Testament characters, these Old Testament forefathers and four mothers in the faith.

So, what can we learn from observing Nehemiah here?

Well, first, Nehemiah cares about more than just himself, or even more than just his family.

He is moved by the plight of God's people and the glory of God's name among the nations.

Second, even in the midst of suffering and oppression, Nehemiah confesses that the Lord's covenant faithfulness and his uh steadfast love for his people.

Right?

The common view of the day is like, well, if we got defeated by the Persians or the Babylonians, their gods are stronger than our gods.

But God had been very clear that Yahweh was the God of the whole world and all the nations.

And so even though they were living under oppression, Yahweh still reigned above all.

He was quick to confess his sins as well as the sins of the people, which is a fascinating thing to think about.

That he he was he came before the people as a representative of the people to confess their sins.

And so in so doing, he is throwing himself and the community at the Lord's feet and asking for mercy.

He's not standing before the Lord and and calling out out of his righteousness, oh Lord, we are righteous, therefore, act on our behalf.

Rather, he says, Lord, we are sinful, we have failed to keep your covenant.

And yet you are the God who is faithful and full of steadfast love.

He calls on the Lord's mercy and his grace.

And he calls on the Lord to hear and to see this uh the situation and act in line with his word.

Right?

As he he's throughout the prayer, he quotes Deuteronomy in four different places.

And he says, Lord, remember your word.

Yes, we have failed to keep your covenant, but you told us that if we would return to you, if we would repent of our sins, that you would come and you would redeem us.

And in all of this, Nehemiah realizes that he has a part to play in this unfolding story.

He's not just an observer, but that the Lord has placed him here for such a time as this.

And what I love about this story is that it teaches us to ask the question where's God placed me in his unfolding story?

Right?

The Bible begins at creation and it ends with the new creation, the creation of the new heavens and the new earth when this earth and these heavens pass away.

And so the story of the Bible encompasses us.

We exist within the story.

And I believe that God calls each and every one of us.

When he calls us to himself, he calls us into his story.

And it reminds me of this awesome old movie.

If you're my age, it's you know classic, the never-ending story.

You guys anybody remember?

Never-ending story?

No, no one?

Come on, interaction.

Um I'm not alone in this room, am I?

All right.

This is this awesome.

It's a story about this kid, you know, preteen or some young kid, who finds a book in an attic and he starts reading it, and there's this big storm going on outside, and it's an adventure story, and he really gets wrapped up in the story and he gets all involved in it until at one point he realizes it's not just a story, it's not just a written-down story, but it's it's a it's a real story that's happening right now, and he actually gets drawn into the story.

He becomes a character in the story.

He meets the people in the story and what's unfolding.

And I believe this is exactly this is a metaphor for the scriptures.

God is telling us of this epic adventure story that takes place from creation to the new creation.

A battle of good versus evil, of redemption, of love, of sacrifice.

And he says, You, my beloved child, have a part to play.

Jesus taught his disciples that even the poorest widow could bring glory to God in a small act of faithfulness that almost no one would notice.

Do you remember that story when Jesus is with his disciples in the temple, and all the rich and and the marvelous people are bringing their tithes and their offerings, and then finally this little old widow uh drops her two pennies in.

Probably no one else noticed, no one else wanted to notice, but Jesus notices.

And he says to his disciples, Do you see this one?

Everyone else gave out of their plenty, she gave out of her want.

She's given more than anyone else.

In that moment, Jesus taught us that there is no small part.

Oh, that's stupid saying, there's no small parts, there's only small actors, right?

Um each one of us, no matter where we are, no matter what our education level, our economic status, our race, our gender, God can use us in his story.

And so where have you been placed?

Where is your influence?

Maybe it's just your children, maybe it's a whole company, maybe it's uh a political system, maybe it's just your friends.

But God has placed you to take part in an unfolding story of redemption, and he has something for you to do.

This is God's grace to you.

He didn't need to include us, and yet he absolutely does.

Now, what's true about Nehemiah and Moses and us is that we ultimately fall short.

No matter how hard we try, no matter how righteousness, how righteous we try to be, we fall short.

Moses never stepped foot in the promised land.

Nehemiah, while he was able to finish the building of the wall, he was not able to heal the hearts of God's people.

And that brings us to our final point, which is that Jesus is the perfect and the better Nehemiah.

Now, Jesus uh Nehemiah gives us a beautiful picture of a man who loves the Lord and loves God's people.

But no matter how hard he tried, and he tries real hard, in fact, I think he crosses the line a couple times.

He's not someone we necessarily want to emulate if you read through the end of the book.

He kind of, you know, he gets fed up with people and he rips their hair out and beats them up.

Not something we're not something we're gonna model here at Redeemer.

But it's something we can relate with, right?

How many times have I yelled at my kids and then had to go and apologize?

Noah, keep keep your mouth shut.

Um we know that we fall short.

Um but just like Nehemiah, just like Moses, Jesus.

Jesus comes in and he is the perfect mediator.

He was born into a particular place and line of influence.

His heart was broken for the plight of God's people.

He owned and confessed their sins, and he leads us into the new and everlasting promised land.

And unlike Nehemiah, Jesus is able to heal our hearts so that we can actually love God from the heart and live out of a redeemed heart.

In Nehemiah's prayer, we saw that he is calling God to remember his promises from Deuteronomy.

And one of those promises, God says, You know, I've scattered you to the four winds, but wherever my people are, I can gather them back to the place where my name dwells.

The next verse that Nehemiah doesn't quote, listen, listen to this verse from Deuteronomy chapter 30.

Deuteronomy 30 · chapter mention

This is the continuation of that promise.

He says, And the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.

And the Lord your God will put all these curses on your foes and the enemies who persecuted you.

Now this is actually true.

God did pour out judgment on the nation of Assyria and the nation of Babylon, the nation of Persia.

But this speaks to a day in the future when the better Nehemiah, the better Moses would come, when Jesus came and he took our sins on himself.

He took the curses of the covenant and our failures on himself and he took them to the cross.

And he died there on the cross for our sins.

He entered the grave, and on the third day he rose again to newness of life.

And he says to us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, if you will put your faith in me, then we become one.

We are united to Christ.

We are united with him in his death.

We're united with him in his burial, and we're united with him in his resurrection.

And in that resurrection, we are given new life, circumcised hearts, so that we can love the Lord our God from the heart.

And we can live, live out of those redeemed hearts.

So, beloved, Jesus is the hero.

He is the new and better Nehemiah.

He is the one who will truly lead us into the eternal promised land.

We follow him, we look to him.

But even as we do, and even as we fall short every day, he calls us to walk with him in faithfulness out of this renewed heart of love.

Like Nehemiah, you have a part to play in God's unfolding story of redemption.

And as we go through this book, my prayer is that we will be swept up in this story and inspired and encouraged to go and to leave this place and to ask the Lord, how is it that you would have me play my part today and this week?

Beloved, let's pray for that.

Lord, we love you.

Lord, you didn't have to tell the story this way.

Lord, we're often confused by the way you do tell the story, but this is good news.

You have saved us.

You've saved us by grace, not because of the good works we have done, but you've had mercy on us.

And you call us to take part.

We have a part to play.

Lord, what is that part for each and every one of us?

Would you tell us?

Would you open our eyes and our ears to see you, to hear you, to see what you're doing around us, so that we can take part in that very good work?

We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.