Fifth Sunday after Easter

How have you handled crises in the past?

How do you deal with it?

How do you approach difficulties,

especially when change happens

and the status quo is disrupted?

And it's maybe not disrupted

in the kind of way that you want it to be disrupted.

It's not like things are getting better,

they might have gotten worse.

How do you deal with crises?

What do you do with the jarring news

that disrupts your day-to-day?

A loss, a betrayal, a breakup, an accident,

an injustice, a tragedy,

a misguided moment,

a lapse judgment, something like that.

Any situation that has the effect of paralyzing us

with fear, sadness, anger, a crisis.

What do you do?

How do you deal with it?

I think it's an important question to ask.

In a regular, often that we ask this question,

often because here in Canada and in the West,

by and large,

we have,

we're under an illusion that tragedy doesn't really befall us,

that we live a really good life.

And so we do.

Never, never in human history have we had such a good stretch.

I'll speak for the West, not the world over, but in the West.

Such a good stretch of bounty and affluence.

This idea that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer,

it's actually, generally speaking,

the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer as well.

We have, again, in the West,

the least amount of food insecurity.

People live longer, healthier lives.

It's a remarkable time that we live in.

And I'm not saying that those are the only or the best metrics of what it means to live the good life.

But what it ends up doing for us is, again, generally speaking,

it causes us to have a delusion that we are invincible,

or that tragedy might skip over us,

or that we won't experience a type of crises.

We know that, theoretically, that's not true,

but just on a gut reaction, a day-to-day experience,

we have, in a sense, blinders to the reality of life's frailty and fragility.

So, I'll ask the question again,

how do we deal with crises?

How do we deal with tragedy?

How do we deal with difficulties?

Life is full of them, is it not?

One sickness, one death, one lost job,

one compromise is all it takes for us to see the reality of this life.

And that's not to be like a Debbie Downer,

life is beautiful, there's wonderful aspects to life,

but it's fragile, it truly is.

So, as we continue our series in Ezra and Nehemiah,

remember, Old Testament, it's two separate books,

but traditionally, it is one book,

really three movements within that one book,

the first with Zerubbabel, and then with Ezra,

and now we're on to the third movement with Nehemiah.

We enter into Nehemiah chapter one,

and we see Nehemiah, he's an Israelite, but he's in exile, but born in Persia.

Israel was exiled about a hundred years before Nehemiah comes onto the scene,

and he is serving King Artaxerxes, that same king that we read in the book of Esther.

And he's the cupbearer.

And the cupbearer is no small duty, no small position.

Yes, he makes sure the wine isn't poisoned, very important,

but he is a confidant of the king.

And in some, in the ancient world,

some cupbearers were even so highly elevated that they were,

really, it's like the king, the prince is the cupbearer,

like really high authority.

We find Nehemiah, he's the cupbearer to the king,

he's high ranking, he enjoys great influence,

he enjoys a premium life of wealth,

he serves the greatest king that is existing in the world at the time,

his life is set, and yet,

he hears news of a crisis in Jerusalem.

Something is not right.

The rebuilding and restoration of Jerusalem has grinded to a halt,

and so too has the life of Nehemiah.

It's grinded to a halt.

This news has taken him completely off his feet.

The promised land that God gave to Israel is in great trouble.

The inhabitants are in peril.

There's suffering, there's shame, there's enemies,

and Nehemiah is heartbroken with this news.

For Nehemiah, the remnant of God's people,

those that remained in Jerusalem, in Judea,

for the remnant, for Nehemiah,

there couldn't have been a worse situation that could have happened.

It is a massive problem.

So Nehemiah is going to deal with a serious crisis here.

And it's very instructive for us this morning to see how he deals with it.

Because he deals with it actually in a very, very incredible way.

Something that we can learn from.

But also it points us to who God is, once again, and what he has done.

So I've broken the text into really two parts.

Nehemiah's proper response, and that's going to be the whole of chapter one.

Jeff read just chapter one, but really we're going to be in chapter one and two this morning.

So the first part, chapter one,

Nehemiah's proper response to the crisis at hand.

The second is Nehemiah's courage to act.

So if you have a Bible, it would help me a great deal if you would follow along.

Don't take my word for it.

Read along with me.

At any point, you can get up and get a Bible.

Don't worry about interrupting me or others.

But follow along if you can.

So Nehemiah gets us really terrible news.

Verses one to three.

He is, it's like the worst case scenario.

If you would remember earlier in Ezra,

there was a contingent that went back to the land to rebuild the altar.

With Zerubbabel, Ezra went there to rebuild the temple.

And in Ezra chapter four, the chronology isn't exactly the same.

It's like a, in Ezra, it's like a look, like a look ahead in Ezra chapter four.

But we see that the temple rebuild gets halted for 20 years.

And then it goes, it gets resumed and they build the temple.

But we're kind of in that Ezra chapter four timeline right now.

Okay.

So there's a halting of the rebuild of the temple.

It's devastating news.

And look with me in verse four, just the first part of verse four.

As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days.

I'll pause there.

You could easily skip this.

How, how is it that Nehemiah properly responds to the crisis?

We could easily skip over this, but I think it's very important.

He grieves.

He's sad.

He is, he is devastated and he doesn't move on very quickly.

He sits in it.

He sits in his pain and his suffering.

He weeps and he mourns.

And it's not for a couple minutes or an hour.

It says it's for days.

It's a very important thing to grieve well and to embrace sadness, not forever, but for a season.

It's, it's a sobering thing to do.

It helps us apart from it being cathartic.

It helps us to have a real perspective that life isn't as it ought to be.

The pain is real and it hurts.

It just, it really does.

Our temptation, by and large, isn't to avoid grieving by keeping a stiff upper lip, but rather to avoid grieving and sadness through distraction.

We drown out unwanted feelings with substances or entertainment or pleasure or a combination of all three.

Maybe I left something off the list, but we distract ourselves with things so that we don't feel as bad.

There's a time to be happy and to move on or to get a break or reprieve from our grief and sadness.

But when it's the initial instinct to push it away as quickly as possible, it's a bit problematic.

The truth is, God has made us with emotions.

I'll say this and I, believe me, I don't like using, especially my children as sermon illustrations.

So, they're their own people.

They're not props for the church.

So, that's why I say this.

But I'll just say this.

An unknown child to you, we have three of them, so maybe you can figure it out.

But the child will remain unknown, has very big emotions, like gargantuan emotions.

That are, she's, he or she are still learning how to figure out.

And our challenge as parents, and especially for me, is to encourage these God, these beautiful God-given emotions,

but to help her to be in control of the emotions and not the emotions in control of her.

And often I, you know, I come in and I go, why do you have big emotions?

And she goes, because you have big emotions.

And I say, yeah, that's right.

Let's learn together.

I bring that up just to say that emotions are not bad.

They are actually very good.

And we like to hide the maybe embarrassing emotions.

Big fat tears are, I don't know, make people feel uncomfortable.

And that's okay if you feel uncomfortable with it.

But we hide emotions as if they are bad, as if they are a chink in our armor.

When the reality is, is that God has given us emotions.

So much so that throughout the scriptures, it says that God, he actually grieves himself.

He is saddened himself when his people transgress the covenant.

That relationship with him grieves him.

Now, there's a whole topic of discussion to get into.

How does God feel?

Does he feel?

Is this just a way that he is communicating to us?

It's an important conversation.

It's not the conversation we're going to have this morning.

But our emotions are God-given.

In a very real way, they reflect us as image bearers of God.

So Nehemiah is sad.

And it's a very appropriate way to hear this news and how to respond to this news.

He is a broken man.

Sadness helps him to cope.

It helps him also to be empathetic.

It helps him and us to be vulnerable.

But more than anything else, it helps us to see reality for what it is.

That it's tough.

And there's a tough situation.

And that we ought not to move so quickly away from it.

It's okay to mourn.

It's okay to be sad.

Nehemiah's situations, it's difficult for him to comprehend.

Jerusalem is this, it's a promised city.

Jerusalem is this incredible place in the Israelite psyche.

And now it's under siege.

It's not being rebuilt.

Does this mean that God has abandoned his people forever?

The promises that he made are null and void.

How can this be?

So Nehemiah grieves, but he doesn't simply stay grieving and mourning.

He begins to pray.

And here is where we get to see another proper way Nehemiah responds.

So look with me, verse 4, but the second part of verse 4.

This is how he begins his prayer.

A few months back we were in a series on our midweek Bible study on the Lord's Prayer.

And we see something very similar with the Lord's Prayer here.

Nehemiah doesn't simply jump to, God, this is a bad situation.

You need to help me out.

We need to strategize, open up doors.

I'm going to talk to the king.

Let's get this done.

Right away he acknowledges who God is.

The God of heaven.

And to say that he prayed to the God of heaven isn't saying that God physically exists up there.

It's saying that God is above and beyond everything that we see.

He's the creator God.

He is all-powerful.

He has this recognition of who he is.

Completely other than, completely sovereign over, completely strong and perfect and all-knowing in every possible way.

The God of heaven.

That's how he opens it up.

Verse 5, he continues on.

He says this,

Here's the prayer.

Here's the prayer.

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, your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants.

God, you are lifted high.

There is none like you.

You are the one who has made covenant with our people.

Remember our covenant.

Do not abandon us.

You are greater.

You are bigger.

Please hear my prayer.

Say, you know, oh, you're buttering God up.

Yeah, I mean, if you look at it that way, sure.

But really, it's giving him the honor and praise he deserves.

It's very important that there is a sequence to how we come before the Lord.

We lift his name up because he truly is, on one hand, our Father.

There's an intimacy.

But he is also our King.

We don't come into the presence of a King in kind of a haphazard, you know, a non-humble, non-respectful way.

I mean, the coronation happened a week ago last Saturday, eight days ago.

The King's a servant, but he's also the King.

Like, there's a level of respect that he has afforded.

How much more the King of Kings, the King of the Universe, the Creator of all things.

This is what Nehemiah is doing.

Recalling who God is and what he has done will always help us to have perspective in terms of life being frail and fragile

because it reminds us of our current state and how we have no true ability to fix things.

But it also reminds us that God is unchanging and nothing can cause him any sort of harm or pressure.

He cannot be at all messed with.

He is strong.

He is always constant.

God alone is unchanging.

God alone is all-powerful.

He is all-knowing, surprised, and never surprised at the infidelity of his people.

And yet, he still makes a covenant with them.

He, it's not like God somehow was surprised when Israel went off the rails, found themselves in exile.

That didn't surprise God or take him, you know, unawares when hundreds of years before he made a covenant with them.

He knew the frailty and the brokenness and the propensity of sin that people would experience.

The infidelity that they would have towards him.

So, recalling God's character and covenant, it's an important aspect for perspective, but it also results in soul searching.

And this is precisely what we see in this next portion of the prayer.

In verse 6, and in verse 6 to 8,

Let your ear be attentive, your eyes 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, the statutes, the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.

Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying,

If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples.

I'll just pause really quickly there.

If we think of sin as merely missing the mark, which it is a definition of sin.

You know, you miss the mark, you aim for the target, you miss.

It's sin.

Then we're not going to feel the gravity of what sin truly is.

Sin is, it's an infidelity to God.

It's going after other faiths or philosophies or promises or desires.

Like a husband goes after mistresses.

There's something deeply grievous about that.

God has been this God that has initiated time and time and time again with Israel.

It's not like there's this cosmic dating app that Israel hooked up with God and then they got married and all of that.

It's God.

He fashions Israel.

He brings them into the land.

He brings them out of famine into Egypt.

He brings them out of slavery from Egypt.

He gives them a land.

He gives them a constitution.

He makes promises.

It's God, God, God, God, God, God, God.

And the relationship that he develops and he makes with his people,

it is like a husband and a bride.

And yet, in this case, the bride is constantly unfaithful.

God forbid this touches anyone in our congregation directly or indirectly,

but I'm sure we can know or we have known people,

I mean, this is a deeply personal thing to talk about,

that have suffered infidelity.

And it is devastating to the core.

This is what sin is described like in the scriptures.

And I think this is the way we ought to look at it.

Here it says, down in verse 7,

we have acted very corruptly against you.

There's also an injustice done towards God in sin.

It is a complete relational trust breakdown.

And here, Nehemiah is doing some soul searching.

So, I'm not suggesting that every crisis that we go through

is a result of our own sin.

It may be, I mean, if somebody dies suddenly,

it's not your fault because you've sinned,

like you've put a hex on them or something's, you know,

bizarre in the spirit world.

But, we should ask the question,

have I sinned towards this person?

Is this loss that I'm experiencing,

not just with a person, but any kind of loss,

is a result of sin?

What part have I played?

God, have I sinned against you?

Have I acted corruptly?

Have I trusted in other gods?

Please, please show me.

And it's an opportunity for us

to get right with God once again

and to come to him and look for mercy and forgiveness.

Our hearts drift, they do.

And in times of crisis,

when we come to God

and we're praying,

we are stripped down to nothing.

We trust nothing else but him.

Nehemiah's fasting,

and that's an aspect of fasting as well.

The things that we look to as comfort

are stripped bare.

And all we have

is us before God

and we're raw towards him.

It's an opportunity

to ask God

if our hearts have drifted,

and if so,

how far

and how can we get back to him?

God is not a vindictive God

so that every time we

do something against his laws,

he's just there,

ready to smite us.

But really,

God is the creator of all good things

and his good design is

for our life.

There's no substitute

that will somehow be better.

So after confession,

Nehemiah finally brings

the request to God.

Look with me in verse 8.

Remember the word

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 your outcasts

are in the uttermost parts

of heaven.

It's another way of saying

to the ends of the earth.

From there,

I will gather them

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 by 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 grant him mercy

in the sight of this man.

He's talking about the king.

Now I was cupbearer

to the king.

O Lord,

will you please remember

your people?

His name is lifted high.

There is soul searching done

and now Nehemiah brings

the request to the Lord.

O Lord,

the crisis is too much.

Please stop it.

I'm the cupbearer

to the king.

Give me an opportunity

to speak to the king.

Maybe he can help us.

Friends,

I'm tempted to ask you

if you pray,

but the reality is

even the most ardent skeptics pray.

Whether you pray to the universe

or there's some kind of self-prayer,

whatever it may be,

the practice,

the practice of prayer

is an intrinsic thing for humanity

and it matters

how we come before the Lord

and the things we ask him.

It matters that we come to the God of scriptures,

to the God of scripture

and we ask him to fulfill his word

and his design.

And it's hard to pray

in a consistent way,

but we need to remember

that if we're not praying to the Lord,

we're praying to something else.

Hopefully not someone else.

Again, our hearts drift.

Nehemiah here reminds us

to pray to the Lord

and to be fervent in that prayer

and to bring our requests to him.

So the real question is,

who are we praying to

and how are we praying?

Prayer is a practice.

So eloquence isn't a prerequisite to prayer.

There's a way to pray,

but it's hard sometimes.

You know, one of the things that we do here

is we try our best to pray the Bible

because, I mean,

our words are fine,

the Bible's words are far better

and they ground us

in how God wants us to pray

and approach him.

So let us pray

in a very real, honest way,

remembering that God alone

heals, restores, and redeems.

So here it is.

He prays,

give me favor with the king.

Verse 11.

And then it says,

and I was a cupbearer to the king.

Okay?

Roll credits,

scene,

episode one of the mini-series.

You're thinking,

Nehemiah's next scene,

he's in front of the king.

It's going down.

Like, God has heard the prayer.

The problem is huge.

He's going to,

you know,

the next scene,

the next day,

the next moment,

he's going to be before the king.

But look with me

in chapter 2, verse 1.

And this moves us

soon to our second part

where Nehemiah,

his courage to act is incredible.

But look with me

in verse 1 of chapter 2.

In the month of Nisan,

in the 12th year

of King Artaxerxes,

when wine was before him,

I took up the wine

and gave it to the king.

Now I had been sad

in his presence.

And the king said to me,

Why is your face sad

seeing you are not sick?

This is nothing

but sadness of the heart.

Okay.

Just pause really quickly there.

This isn't the next day.

This is four months later

that this is happening.

If you look here

in chapter 1,

if you go back to chapter 1,

verses,

chapter 1, verse 1,

it says,

Now it happened

in the month of Kislev

in the 20th year.

chapter 2 starts

in the month of Nisan.

It's about 100 plus days

between Nehemiah's prayer

in chapter 1

and what actually goes down

in chapter 2.

Four months of living

with the fear

that your people

may be destroyed.

Four months of unanswered silence.

Nehemiah's praying

day and night, okay?

He is laboring in prayer.

God is not answering him.

At least it seems like

he's not answering him.

For four months.

Now, okay,

in a lifetime,

four months,

what's four months?

Pray for something now

that is urgent.

There is a calamity,

a crisis upon you.

Pray that the Lord

would intervene

and keep praying

for four months.

It's a long time.

It's a difficult

series of prayers.

Frustrations

surely mounted.

Four months.

Will Jerusalem

be a wasteland

in four months?

Four months of silence.

You know,

the wonderful thing

about prayer

is that God answers

in his own timing

and in his own way.

Sometimes it's with a no.

Sometimes it's with a yes.

But God hears

and he answers his prayers.

But again,

in his timing.

So,

in this period

of waiting,

what happens to Nehemiah?

Well,

we're not sure,

but what happens

with us

when we have to wait?

It helps us

to relinquish

our desire

and ability

to control the narrative.

To fix things

on our own.

Nehemiah is powerless

and he knows it.

For if he had the power

to remedy the situation,

he would have done

so immediately.

Because,

how does it end?

Chapter 1.

At the very end

of verse 15,

and grant him mercy

in the sight of this man.

Oh,

a bit before that,

sorry.

Give success

to your servant today.

Nehemiah wants

this solved ASAP

and he has to wait

four long months.

The temptation

of the Christian

to accuse God

of being absent

is ever present.

It is.

It is present

in our home.

It is present,

I'm sure,

amongst us

this morning.

We have prayed,

we have looked

to God

and he has not

come through.

At least from our perspective.

But again,

God's timing

is not our timing.

God knew

when it would be best

for Nehemiah

to be in front

of the king.

And it wasn't right away.

It was four months after.

And I'll just say this

before we get

into the next section.

If Nehemiah went

haphazardly in front

of the king

as the cupbearer,

very good possibility

that he'd be hanging

from the gallows.

You don't go into

the king's presence

with your own agenda

showing sadness,

especially as a cupbearer.

You're bringing wine,

you're bringing happiness,

you're bringing the party.

If Nehemiah went in

in his own timing

and his own strength

with his own strategy,

who knows what would have happened.

Jerusalem would have been

potentially laid waste forever.

But God in his timing knew.

God in his timing knew.

So look with me,

chapter 2, verses 1 to 6.

And let's see

Nehemiah's courage to act.

Number one,

there's courage right away

to wait for the Lord.

It takes a lot of courage.

It takes a lot of patience.

And we see that here.

Look with me now

to verse 1 to 6.

In the month of Nisan,

in the 20th 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 you are not sick?

This is nothing but

sadness of the heart.

Then I was very much afraid.

And that fear is a real fear.

His life hangs in the balance,

but also Jerusalem

hangs in the balance.

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?

Its gates have been destroyed by fire.

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?

And when will you return?

So it pleased the king to send me

when I had given him a time.

Nehemiah is risking life and limb here.

And in God's timing,

he has favor.

God answers his prayers.

Four months later,

God answers his prayers.

I mean, if the king was having a bad day,

if there were bad news,

also Nehemiah is asking the king,

in a sense,

to undo the decree that he gave

to put a moratorium

on the building of Jerusalem.

It could have been very offensive to the king.

What you did was wrong.

Please reverse it.

No.

I mean, that's what gets you,

you know, to the chopping block.

But instead,

in God's timing,

in God's ways,

bathed in prayer,

looking to God

for salvation,

he says,

Long live the king.

And he appeals,

not to the rebuilding of Jerusalem

so much as he does

to the sense of honoring the dead

that the Persians would have.

What does he say

in verse 6?

He says,

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?

To honor the dead

was big in Persia.

And the Lord,

in his wisdom

and in his timing,

helps Nehemiah

to appeal to the king

in the way

that the king would understand.

In his timing.

And what is the result?

Favor.

So,

look with me,

continue on

in verses 7 to 8.

And I said to the king,

If it pleases the king,

let letters be given me

to the governors of the province

beyond the river.

That's a trans-Euphrates,

not like modern-day Iraq,

that they may let me pass through

until I come to Judah.

And a letter to Asaph,

the keeper of the king's forest,

that he may give me timber

to make beams for the gates

and fortress of the temple

and 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.

The king hears him favorably,

grants him these

even greater requests

than just put an end

to the destruction,

help me to rebuild it.

But here's the big deciding factor

in all of this.

Verse 8,

the second part of verse 8.

And the king granted me

what I asked.

Why?

For the good hand of God

was upon me.

That was it.

We saw this a lot

in Ezra chapter 7.

Ezra 7 · chapter mention

The good hand of the Lord

was upon me.

God favored me.

God was directing

all of his steps.

It wasn't the king's decree

ultimately,

but the hand of the Lord

upon him.

There's more to say

on this subject,

but it's really important

that we understand

that the hand of the triune God

is guiding history.

And it's hard to think

about that,

especially when there is

mass killings

in multiple parts

of the world

happening right now

or genocides

or the ongoing culture

of death in Canada

with euthanasia

and abortion.

You think,

how on earth

is God guiding history?

Like,

is he guiding it

towards evil?

There's a lot to say

about that.

It's a tough question,

but we can trust

that God is working

all things out

for his glory

and for the good

of his people,

directing all of history

towards a triumphant end

where Jesus will come

and destroy

all that is evil

forever,

that there will be

no more tears

of sadness,

that light

and life

will be in abundance

forever and ever.

And here

is an example

of God

guiding

the

guiding history

by his good hand

directing the affairs

of even the king

of Persia.

You might never be

in the position

of Nehemiah

before a king

standing in the gap

for an entire nation,

but we are faced

with decisions

on the daily

that require courage

and God's good hand

upon us.

There are people

that look to us,

one person,

a dozen people,

whether it's

the employees

under us

or the children

that God has given us,

influence,

the neighbors

that we influence,

family members

that rely upon us,

whatever it may be,

we need God's good hand

upon us

on the daily

and Nehemiah

teaches us that

consistent,

real,

godly,

raw prayer

is at the core

of that.

Doing right

takes courage

and responding well

in times of crises

may require courage.

And here,

Nehemiah's act

of courage

in the presence

of a king

is directly connected

to his prayer life.

And it is hard

to pray,

but friends,

this is why

we gather together

and we pray

week after week

and we ask the Lord

to help us,

to cleanse us

from our sins,

to help us

to live for his glory,

to build up

our inner man.

This is why we pray.

But remember

that the courage

to act

in,

in,

what is it,

the,

in the month

of Nisan,

it really began

at the,

at the first

of the month

of Kislev.

Don't despise

the daily habits

of praying.

But,

if this was just,

just pray more sermon,

I think we would be

improperly served.

Because ultimately,

we can't will ourselves

to pray

and to desire God.

God gives us

the gift

that draws us

to himself.

and ultimately,

we see that

Nehemiah stood

in the gap

for his people,

but really,

Nehemiah was a picture,

a shadow

of Christ

who was in

an even greater

position than Nehemiah.

The,

the,

the king of heaven.

And what does he do?

He empties himself,

he puts his

life on the line

to stand in the gap

for you and me

because of sin.

Not just to rebuild

walls of a city,

but to rebuild

the lives

of people.

And what does Jesus do?

He,

he,

he doesn't just

get favor

before a king

and travel to Jerusalem

and fix things.

He travels to Jerusalem

and dies.

He,

he dies completely

in,

in,

in,

in,

in,

in,

in just way.

I mean,

the calamity of calamities

is Christ on the cross

and yet through that

what happens?

He rebuilds

a church,

rebuilds a people

into a church

so that you and I,

the scriptures describe

as living stones.

It's a remarkable thing.

Jesus is the greater

Nehemiah

who is rebuilding

the temple

that is called

the church

where his spirit resides

and he teaches us

to pray.

And not just that,

but when he dies

and rises again

and ascends to heaven,

he continues

to intercede

on our behalf

so that Jesus'

prayers help us

in our day to day.

His spirit

aids us

as we

do the things

that he has called us

to do

and helps us

to come back

when our hearts drift.

Jesus is the true

advisor to the king.

In fact,

he's the king himself.

He is at the right

hand of the father

and he is also

to all of us

who have put our faith

and trust in him,

has given his

strong hand,

his good hand.

He's given us his favor.

Let us pray.

Heavenly Father,

we thank you

for this example

of what prayer

looks like

in a time of crisis.

Lord,

we thank you

what action looks like

in a time of crisis

and how it takes courage,

but really

it takes consistency

of consistency

in prayer

to be on our knees

seeking your face

and Lord,

in the times

where we do not

hear from you,

when you are silent,

would you please

reassure us

by your word,

by your church,

by people

that we call

brothers and sisters

to keep going

and that you do

hear us

and that you do

desire to answer

our prayers

and bless us

and Lord,

we just ask

for your patience

and wisdom

and perspective

to know

that your timing

is better than ours

and your answer

is always better

than ours.

So Lord,

we go our separate ways

soon,

Lord,

trusting that

you desire to bless

and not to curse

and to continue

to build up your church

as a temple

of the Holy Spirit.

We thank you

in Christ's name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen.