Hello and welcome to our broadcast. We begin a brand new series today in the book of Nehemiah. Have your Bible ready if you can. I'm reading in Nehemiah chapter 1, it says the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hekeliah. And it came to pass in the month Chizilu in the 20th year, as I was in Shushan the palace, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came, he and certain men of Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped, which were left of the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. Now we have as we open this story here, Nehemiah is in the palace. He has a very plushy job. And one day, Hananiah comes from Jerusalem and Nehemiah is concerned about what's going on back there. We need to keep in mind that Nehemiah was born into the captivity. And when the remnant was allowed to return to go back, actually a small handful of people went back. And Nehemiah did not go back. He didn't return with the remnant, maybe because he had his plushy job there, I don't know. In any event, as I said, he was born into the captivity. He had never seen Jerusalem as it was in its glory days as some of the men and women who had come from Jerusalem in the captivity had seen. Maybe he's on some kind of a guilt trip that he didn't go back. Maybe he stayed in the area because God told him to. We can't know for sure. In any event, we see that he's concerned, and he said what is happening of the captivity concerning Jerusalem. Now, what is left of them, that is those who have been allowed to go back to Jerusalem and rebuild the city and rebuild the walls. Well, in verse three, it says, they said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down and the gates thereof are burned with fire. Well, what is Nehemiah's response? It says here in verse 4, it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. He sat down and wept. Now here's a question. What do we weep about? Sometimes ladies weep at weddings. Sometimes somebody will watch a sad movie and weep. Sometimes they'll weep over a heartache in the family or whatever. What causes us to weep? And why is he weeping? I mean, it's just talking about some walls back there. No, we're not talking about walls back there. We're talking about people and we're talking about the cause of God and what he is doing and what a mess it is in. And so somehow, some way we see here that Nehemiah was very concerned about it. So he sat down, he wept, he mourned, he fasted certain days, he prayed before the God of heaven. Now, he could have just said, well, too bad. Things are so bad back there. Tell them I'll be praying for them. No, he didn't. He didn't. He got really moved because of the situation. Are you moved at all because of the situation today? It's not very good. It's spiritual things in the world today. Well, he prayed. And in his prayer we read in verse 5, he said, I beseech thee, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God that keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe his commandments, let thine ear now be attentive and thine eyes open, that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now, day and night, for the children of Israel, thy servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee, both I and my father's house have sinned." Now notice the attitude here. He didn't say, yeah, they are a bunch of sinners, and that's why they're in trouble. He said, we have sinned against thee. Both I and my Father's house have sinned. We have dealt very corruptly against thee, and have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes, nor the judgments which thou commandest thy servants to keep. Now, all through the Old Testament, you're going to find these phrases. commandments, statutes, judgments. Do you have any idea what that means? I mean, they all mean something. Well, we're too busy watching television to get into the Bible and find out what that means. Yeah, okay, let's get in line then with Nehemiah. We have sinned against thee. We have rejected the word of the Lord. We have more time to watch the trash on TV than we do to find out what God's commandments, statutes, or judgments are. Let's just be very honest about the situation, and then maybe we can get God to do something about it. Well, Nehemiah says in verse 8, remember, the word, that thou commandest thy servant Moses, saying, If ye transgress, I will scatter you abroad among the nations. But if ye turn unto me, and keep my commandments, and do them, though there were of you cast out into the uttermost part of the heaven, yet will I gather them from thence, and will bring them unto the place that I have chosen to set my name there." Now, he had chosen to set his name in Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a mess. Today, God has chosen to set his name in two places. One is our local churches, and one is our homes. And in both cases, the situation, if we're honest today, is just as much of a mess as it was for Jerusalem in the days of Nehemiah. in verse 10 he says now these are thy servants and thy people whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power and by thy strong hand oh lord i beseech thee let now thine ear be attentive to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants who desire to fear thy name and prosper, I pray thee, thy servant this day, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man, for I was the king's cupbearer." Now notice he says here, Listen, please, Lord, please listen to the prayer of thy servant." He's referring to himself. And then he says, "...to the prayer of thy servants," plural. He had some other people who were concerned about the situation back in Jerusalem, "...they that fear thy name." And he said, now, I am going to go in and see the king, and I pray that you'll give me mercy in the sight of this man, for he said he was the king's cupbearer. Now, as we get into this series in Nehemiah, it would be good here to have a little background information. Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem, and we have what the Bible calls the Babylonian captivity. God's people were taken away into captivity. The Babylonian Empire, however, later was conquered by King Cyrus of Persia. King Cyrus issued the Proclamation of Restoration, which said the Jews could return to Jerusalem and rebuild the walls and rebuild the temple there. Well, the Book of Ezra describes the proclamation, but only a handful of people chose to accept the offer. Most of the exiles preferred to remain there. They had some jobs, they had farms, they had established businesses, and they were quite content just to remain there in Babylon, while a small remnant returned to Jerusalem. Well, when they went back under the direction of Zerubbabel, they found nothing but a wasteland. Well, the second temple began to be rebuilt in about 536 BC, but there was years and years of construction. There was very little progress in morale. of the people was very low. There was a lot of economic tensions in the land, maybe over land ownership and bad harvests and all the things that come along in the life of a believer and the life of everybody in this world, for that matter. But the remnant back there was very discouraged, and they were divided. And they needed that temple as a focal point so that they could get together around the things of God. Well, God sent the prophets Haggai and Zechariah, and construction got underway again, and the temple was finally completed, and that was about 516 BC. Well, we read in the Bible that when it was completed, some of the people shouted for joy. But those who were there and had seen the former temple, the Solomon's temple, when they saw the new one, they just wept. Some who hadn't seen the old way, they thought it was great. But the people who realized in the glory days of Israel under Solomon, when that temple was there in the first place, they just broke down. Well, it's about 458 BC when you have the book of Ezra. And Ezra came in and he began to preach against the religious abuses that were going on in the world. And generally speaking here, he is focusing on encouraging that remnant. Now, we need to understand that in the day and the age in which we are living today, there's three things basically that are happening. One is anarchy, the other is apostasy, and the third one is apathy. Now, anarchy, we look into the world and all you have to do is watch the news. Check the news tonight, you'll see all over the world there is anarchy. Anarchy everywhere. It's never been as bad as it is right now. And the Bible says it's going to be like that at the end of time, so Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus. Well, while there's anarchy all over the world, there's apostasy in our churches. And especially in the last five to 10 years, even what we call fundamental independent Baptist churches are going apostate at an alarming rate. We've even dumped the plan of salvation to say you don't need to repent. All you need to do is pray a prayer, then you can go to heaven. Well, according to Jesus, that isn't so, except you repent. you shall all likewise perish." And so our churches are going apostate at an alarming rate. Well, God has always had a remnant. And you look back here in Nehemiah's day, and that remnant went back, and they were going to rebuild the walls. What were the rest of the people doing? Oh, they're back out there in the world, and they're checking out all the material things of the world. They're not concerned about eternity, they're concerned about the world. That is the case today with most people who are sitting in our churches every Sunday singing the nice songs and even teaching Sunday school and being deacons and whatnot. More interest in the things of the world than in the things of God. Ninety-five percent of the people who sit in our fundamental independent Baptist churches do nothing for God from one Sunday to the next. That's what the Bible calls apostasy, and of course, we've accepted that. We've made it acceptable because we can get their money and build bigger buildings. Well, we have anarchy in the world. We have apostasy in our churches, but the problem that we have is that we have apathy among the remnant. Apathy. The Bible says in Romans 11 and 5, even so then at this present time also, there is a remnant. And what we want to try to do here is to be an encouragement to the remnant. That's what this internet broadcast is all about. Most of the people who call themselves Christians today aren't going to listen to this broadcast. There's going to be a few that want the truth. There's going to be a few who want to say, all right, let's humble ourselves and pray and do like Nehemiah did here in chapter one and realize that we are sinners and we need to get God to help us fix it. That's all we need to do, but we can't do that as long as there is apathy among the ranks. And so God's focusing all the way through this book of Nehemiah. He is not focusing on that larger group that didn't bother to come back and even get involved. He is focusing on those sincere believers, those ones who came back, those ones who paid the price, those ones that got out of their comfort zone back there in Babylon and came back to do the job, and they are very, very discouraged. And so Nehemiah comes on the scene for that remnant, and he says to that remnant, let us rise up and build so they strengthen their hands for this good work. They strengthen their hands for this good work. Now back in Revelation chapter 3, we read about the church at Sardis, and he says in verse 4, And he is talking about that remnant. But to that same group, he says in verse 2, Be watchful and strengthen the things that remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found thy works perfect before God. Now what we need to realize is, all right, I'm going to be part of this remnant. I'm sincere about that. And I'm going to just try to do what God wants me to do, and I'm going to try to live what God wants me to live in this age in which we're living. All right, that's great. Let's realize that things are not the way they need to be. There's much apathy amongst the remnant, and the whole book of Nehemiah is focused on getting the remnant back alive again. Well, Nehemiah said unto them, You see the distress that we are in? Come, he said, let us build up the wall, that we be no more reproached. Well, that music tells me we're out of time, so we gotta go. Tune in again for our next broadcast. We'll try to make it plain, and we will try to make it simple.