Let's take our Bibles now and we'll turn to the book of Nehemiah, again today, Nehemiah chapter 1. And as you're turning, I just want to say publicly I'm very thankful for the mother that God gave to me. She's still going strong, still living and doing well, and she was been a very faithful, hard-working mother, a Christian mother, and it's greatly blessed to have such a mother, and just want to express my gratitude for her, and also for my wife, who is an amazing mom, raising six children, and such a hard worker, and such a devoted wife and mother, and I'm very thankful for her. And I'm sure many of you can say the same about your moms, about your spouses today and I hope that as Pastor Nick has already mentioned that you'll be sure to let them know that you love them and you appreciate them. All right we're going to read from Nehemiah again today Nehemiah chapter 1. We're just getting started in our study of Nehemiah. Our second last week was an introductory sermon to the book so we're going to read the first four verses this morning. Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 1, the words of Nehemiah the son of Hakaliah came to pass. It came to pass, excuse me, in the month of Chislev in the 20th year, as I was in Shushan the citadel, the Hanani, one of my brethren, came with men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and its gates are burned with fire. So it was when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned for many days. I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Let's pray together. Almighty God and our most merciful Heavenly Father, we bow in our hearts before Your Majesty this morning. We ask that the seed of Your Word that we are about to consider might be rooted deeply in our hearts and that it might bring forth true and lasting fruit in our lives. And we ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. In a recent article in Bloomberg Business, Mark Ellwood, he confronts in the article what he calls the cult of positivity. What does he mean by that? Well, he's talking about the push to be upbeat and buoyant all the time, even at the expense of acknowledging or processing difficult emotions and experiences. And sadly, this kind of thinking has crept into American churches. The attempt is to make the worship experience and everything surrounding church life one of nothing but joy, joy, joy, excitement, excitement, excitement. And everyone keeps a kind of painted grin on their face all the time and the concern is to do nothing but encourage and pump everybody up. In an article entitled, The Lost Art of Evangelical Weeping. Timon Klein writes these words, there is a mood and practice of forced buoyancy in American evangelical churches. In near Orwellian fashion, this frenzied gaiety tries to sanitize the church of any perceived negativity, sorrow, or grief. And maybe you've even noticed that modern worship songs, many of them are excellent. We've seen numbers of this, not to just be criticizing modern worship songs, but you may have noticed that many of them, probably most of them, in contrast to the Psalms, for example, if you read the book of Psalms, many modern worship songs tend to be heavy on jubilation, but very light on lamentation. Full of expressions of gladness, but almost empty of expressions of grief. And Christians can get the idea that there is no place for sorrow in the Christian life. That a healthy Christian never feels sad and never mourns, or at least he shouldn't. But as the great Puritan Thomas Watson reminds us in his book, The Godly Man's Picture, a truly godly man is not only known by his joys, he's also known by his sorrows. He's not only known by his rejoicing, he is known for that, but he's also known by his weeping. For example, he knows the godly sorrow of repentance. what it is to be grieved over his remaining sin. He knows what it is to be grieved at the sin in the world around him. He knows the emotional pain of trials and afflictions in this sin-cursed world. But there's something else about a godly man or woman. He or she knows something of what it is to be grieved and to be burdened over the condition of Christ's church, especially in times of spiritual declension. Not with a worldly sorrow that leads to despair, but with a godly concern that leads to earnest prayer and action. And this is what we see. with Nehemiah here in this first chapter of the book of Nehemiah. Now last week we began a new series of messages in the book of Nehemiah in which I gave something of an introduction to this book. You remember Nehemiah lived sometime after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians and during the period of the exile after the Jews had been carried away into captivity. So the throne of David has been cast down. Jerusalem, the holy city, has been overthrown and trampled under the feet of the heathen. The temple has been destroyed. The promises of God concerning the Christ who was to come from this people and through whom the world would be blessed had seemed to come to nothing. But roughly 70 years later, when the Persians came into power, God stirred up the spirit of Cyrus, the Persian king, to allow a remnant of the Jews to return to their homeland. And they came, it was compared to the population, the Jewish population, it was a small number, but it was a remnant of them. They came, they began to rebuild the temple, which they eventually finished after stops and starts, or a major stop and then start. And after many years, it took about 15 years, they finally finished the temple. But as we come to the historical setting of this book, there is still a lot of work to be done. In fact, things are still in something of a mess in Jerusalem. And this is where our man Nehemiah. comes into the picture. Now our focus this morning will be on the first four verses of Nehemiah, and I'm going to seek to open them up under the following headings. First, Nehemiah's situation and position, verse 1. Secondly, Nehemiah's question and concern, verse 2. Third, the report that Nehemiah received, verse 3, and then verse 4. Fourthly, Nehemiah's reaction, verse 4. So first of all, Nehemiah's situation and position. This book begins with these words, the words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaliah. And this tells us, by the way, that what we have in Nehemiah is Nehemiah's own firsthand account of these events. This has been called by some the memoirs of Nehemiah. The story is mostly told in the first person. Not all of the book, but most of chapters 1 to 7, part of chapter 12, and most of chapter 13. The time in which these events began, the text says, is in the month of Chislev in the 20th year. Chislev is between mid-November and mid-December in our calendars. And the 20th year, as we learn later in chapter 2 verse 1, is probably a reference to the 20th year of the reign of the Persian monarch, Artaxerxes. We're told in chapter 2 that it was in the 20th year of Artaxerxes that Nehemiah made his request to the king for passage to Jerusalem. So this really helps us tremendously to pinpoint the time in history when this occurs. which helps us then to understand what was happening in the world at that time, and that's going to give us some insight along the way in our study of this book. I'll have more to say about this throughout the course of these messages, God willing. But for now, just to point out that after King Cyrus who died in 530 BC, we had the brief reigns of Cambyses and Bardia, then Darius I who reigned until 486 BC. And he was the king of Persia back when the temple was finally rebuilt. He was followed by Xerxes, also known as Ahasuerus. Now you may be interested to know that Xerxes was the husband of Esther. Something else very interesting historically that some of you history buffs may want to know about Xerxes, you may not have realized that this was the husband of Esther, but Xerxes is also the king of Persia who attempted to invade Greece. And he's associated with the famous battle of Thermopylae against the 300 Spartans. And if you don't know about that, you need to know about that. I think it could be argued as one of the most significant, one of the top and most significant Epic making events and history changing events in the history of Western civilization. Well, Artaxerxes, our guy now, he was Xerxes' son. We also have reference to the place where this all begins. Nehemiah says, I was in Shushan, or Susa. The citadel is also known as Susa. It may be translated Susa in some of your English versions. Shushan or Susa was in what is now southwest Iran, about 150 miles north of the Persian Gulf. It served as the winter palace for the kings of Persia. Now why Nehemiah, maybe the question comes to your mind, why didn't Nehemiah not move to Jerusalem with the remnant of Jews who returned? Well, we're not told. It's very possible he was too young at the time. He may not have even been alive yet since the first group returned several decades before the events of this book, so we don't really know for sure. But a bigger question is, what was Nehemiah doing in the winter palace of the king of Persia? Well, he tells us later, in the last verse of this chapter, that he was the king's cup-bearer. Kind of like a butler, but he was his cup-bearer. Now, it's very important, I think, for us to realize that that was a very important position. Extremely important position. Yamauchi cites various sources describing the traits Nehemiah would have had as a cupbearer to the emperor. He would have been well trained in court etiquette. He would have known how to select the wines to set before the king. He would have been a convivial companion with a willingness to lend an ear at all times as the king would sometimes talk about things with the cupbearer. Nehemiah would have been a man of great influence as one with the closest access to the king and one who could well determine who got to see the king. Above all, Nehemiah would have enjoyed the unreserved confidence of the king. The great need for trustworthy attendance is underscored by the intrigues that were endemic to the Archimedes or the Persian court. Now what does he mean by intrigues endemic to the court? Well he's talking about conspiracies. At least four Persian kings had been murdered. And one of the common methods of murdering someone in the ancient world was poisoning. Just drop a little poison in the king's wine. So the royal cupbearer had to be a man the king could trust. It was a very honorable and prestigious position. As Derek Thomas points out in his commentary, what is especially noteworthy about this is the fact that a Persian king in the fifth century B.C. was able to place his complete trust in a Jewish cupbearer. Now think about this. Really this kind of speaks to this whole matter of the Jewish response to the exile. You remember the Israelite theocracy has been destroyed, never to be restored again. Israel, even after some of the Jews were allowed to return and rebuild and even all the way until the coming of Christ, the land of Israel, the Jews still remained under the rule of Gentile powers. There's no more Old Covenant theocracy. It ended. with the fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians, it ended forever. No more old covenant theocracy never would be. And here were the Jews living in heathen societies and cultures and under the rule of these various world powers, first the Babylonians, then the Persians, later the Greeks, and then the Romans. And it's very much like our situation as Christians. The new covenant church is not a theocratic state. But under the New Covenant, the church, God's people are scattered throughout the world, existing within the midst of many nations. Well, the exile was something of a precursor to that. It was something of the beginning of the transition to that. So here were God's people in Babylon, and here they are in Persia under the rule of Persian kings. How were they and how were we to conduct ourselves in such situations? Well, much like Daniel does, Nehemiah presents us with a model here. You see, this was the great question of many of the Jews living in exile. How were they to live in these heathen societies and cultures? What role were they to play? How involved in the society and its life were they to be? Well it appears that some of them were simply absorbed into the society and they settled down in these pagan nations in every way. Essentially they became good Babylonians or good Persians. They may have seen that life there offered a degree of wealth and security and pleasure that can never be had back in Judah, so they forsook Zion, threw away their distinctive identity and whatever semblance of biblical religion they might have had, and they caved in to the pressures to compromise. And it appears on the other extreme, there may have been others. who went to the opposite extreme. In the history of Israel, there were always, almost always a radical element, groups like the Rechabites or the Essenes or even the Pharisees to some degree who were extreme separatists. These were the kind of people who would stand strongly opposed to any interaction or relationships with the Babylonians or the Persians at all, isolationists. who were totally hostile to every aspect of Persian life and culture. They could not see how it could be consistent to sing the Lord's song in a strange land. Drawing from Psalm 137, where we read about the despair and the despondency of some of the Jews in that psalm, which reads, by the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. This is explaining in poetic language their grief, their sadness. over being taken away from their homeland into these pagan cultures by the rivers of Babylon. There we sat down. Yea, we wept when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst of it, for there those who carried us away captive asked of us a song, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land, in a foreign land?" You see, that's the great question. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land, an ungodly land? A perverse and immoral society and apparently some of the Jews thought that it was impossible. And they would have absolutely nothing to do with any aspect of these pagan societies, just opt out of society altogether and retreat into isolation. Now this is the same question that confronts us. How can a Christian whose citizenship is in heaven, Paul tells us, Seeing the Lord's song as an exile and stranger upon the earth, as Peter tells us. How could we do that? Well, men like Nehemiah and Daniel, and women like Esther, tell us how to do it. They did what Jeremiah had in fact instructed the exiles to do in Jeremiah 29. that while remaining separate from the sins of these societies at the same time, they participated in the society. And in many cases, they even held important positions within the structure of the civil government of these societies. They excelled in their occupations for the betterment of the society. So on the one hand, they lived lives of godliness and integrity and did not give in to the pressures and forget Zion. But on the other hand, they also sang the Lord's song in a strange land. And they participated in the life of Babylonian and Persian society and culture. Both Daniel and later Nehemiah lived and they operated and they conducted themselves within the structures and the politics and the customs of these cultures. And clearly, Nehemiah did this, just as Daniel did, while still preserving his faith and his witness and without compromising his obedience to God. And there's a lesson here for us. In fact, there are several lessons we can draw from this. First of all, this teaches us that by God's grace, you can live in a godly manner in an evil society. You can, by God's grace, remain true to God while at the same time not becoming a hermit. isolated from the world, but fully participating and working in and even as every Christian should seek to do, excelling in various occupations and positions and roles within the society, participating in its life without giving in and being swept away by the sins and the unbelieving worldview of the culture. You don't have to take your family and live up in the mountains of Montana isolated from people to be faithful to God. Or opt out of national traditions and economic structures of the society in which you live in order to be godly and nor should we do that. Remember what Jesus said, you are the light of the world. Men do not light a lamp and put it under a basket. but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. Let your light so shine before men." Don't stick it under a lampstand, but participate in the society. Be involved in the life of the society around you, and let your light shine before men. that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." And we see this in Nehemiah. Another lesson here is that God in His providence has His people in all places and walks of life. Sometimes in surprising and strategic places. In Scripture, we read of a Joseph in Egypt, an Obadiah in the house of Ahab. We read about that believing Jewish servant, slave girl in the house of Naaman the Syrian. Believers in Caesar's household. And here we find godly Nehemiah in the court of the great monarch of Persia. God has His people in all kinds of places, all kinds of positions and occupations and situations. And we also see God's providence in that Nehemiah was there in that circumstance and in that position at that time. And that was not by accident. It was God's doing. It was all part of God's sovereign plan. And my dear brother and sister, that's true of your circumstances as well. If you're a Christian, God has you where you are, and you are there for a purpose, to be a witness, to open a door, to influence events. for reasons you might not even be aware of and may never know until the last day. And seek like Nehemiah to excel in what you do, to be good at it, to bloom where you're planted. You've heard that saying so true, bloom where you're planted. That's what a Christian should do. Wherever you are, bloom where you're planted, my friend. Your heavenly Father will be pleased and you can trust that in God's own good time and way, your life will have an impact. his kingdom and glory. Well, so much for Nehemiah's situation and position. Notice, secondly, Nehemiah's question and concern. As it came to pass in the month of Chislev in the twentieth year, as I was in Shushan, or Susah, the citadel, verse 2, that Hanani, one of my brethren, came with men from Judah, and I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning Jerusalem." Now when Nehemiah refers to Hanani as one of my brethren or one of my brothers, it may in fact be that Hanani was actually his biological brother because he refers to him again later in chapter 7, as my brother. At any rate, Hanani and his colleagues have returned to Susa from the land of Judah. Now perhaps they had been in Judah for many years, or maybe they had just made a recent trip there. Well, when they returned, what was the great question on Nehemiah's mind? Well, his question, I think, tells us something about his heart and his character. He wanted to know how things were with God's people. He says, I asked them concerning the Jews who had escaped, who survived the captivity and concerning Jerusalem. He's concerned about the condition of God's people and the city of God. Nehemiah had probably never been to Judah himself or had ever seen Jerusalem, but his heart was there. And he's concerned about the conditions there. Now let me just say that this language, the Jews who had escaped, when you read that, that may seem to have reference to those who were maybe not taken into captivity by the Babylonians, but that's very, very unlikely. In Ezra, we learn that the people there were primarily Jews who had returned from exile, and the word translated escape is actually akin to Isaiah's expression, the remnant, that little portion of Israel with whom the future of God's covenant promises would lie. And so it's probably speaking of those who escaped in the sense that they escaped the captivity by returning to the land of Judah. So we see here in Nehemiah a heart that is concerned about the cause of God in the world. Though he's living in Persia, he's serving in this very prestigious position in the court of the emperor of much of the known world at that time, and he's fulfilling the responsibilities of his employment and his calling there, there is another kingdom to which he belongs. And that he is most concerned about, the kingdom of God. Now as Christians, we ought to be like Nehemiah in this as well. We ought to be very interested. Very concerned about how the kingdom of God is progressing in the world. And desire to know what the conditions are. It's a good sign, a healthy sign when we are and it's a bad sign when we aren't. If we love Christ, we should love His cause in the world as Nehemiah did. It makes me think of William Carey. We've been reading about William Carey recently in Family Worship and many of you have heard of him. He's sometimes called the father of modern missions. He was born in 1761 and he lived in England. He was a Christian man who worked partly as a cobbler, a person who repairs shoes, and partly as a teacher. Just an ordinary kind of common guy. He wasn't very highly educated. He didn't have a theological education or anything like that. But Cary would read stories about the travels of Captain Cook. which opened his mind to the existence of other lands and peoples where the gospel had never been heard. He also read the lives of David Brainerd and John Eliot, missionaries to the Native Americans in North America in the 17th and early 18th centuries. And there began to develop in Cary's heart as a Christian, a burden for the unreached peoples in the world. On the wall over his workbench, he placed a large map that he had drawn of the world. with the names of countries and populations, and he began praying for the peoples of the world. Well, many of you may know the story. As he began praying for the peoples of the world, and this burden increased, he began to think, perhaps I myself can be part of the answer to my prayers. And he began praying that God might make it possible for him to do something about it. And eventually he did. With the support of friends and Baptist churches at the age of 32, he set sail for India where he labored for the next 41 years as a missionary until his death in 1834. And his burden, you see, for these unreached peoples, it was fueled in part by what he learned about them. As he sought to learn about them. It's hard to be concerned about needs you don't know about, right? The more we know about the work of the gospel throughout the world, the more we will be moved to pray and know how to pray. And it may be that some of you here today will be part of the answer to your own prayers, as Carrie was and as Nehemiah will be. That's one of the reasons that we give reports in our prayer meetings, so we can know what God is doing in the world, what the needs are, where the needs are. And that's one of the reasons you ought to be here. if you're able to be here. Derek Thomas commenting on this writes, all believers should demonstrate concern for the welfare of God's people and the cause of the kingdom of God beyond their own neighborhoods. Every Christian should have a spirit of missionary inquiry. Nehemiah wants to know and we should want to know as well. But next, thirdly, we have the report that Nehemiah received. And the report was not good. It was bad news. Verse 3, and they said to me, the survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are burned with fire. I was thinking about this and one of the things that I appreciate about the report that was given to him by Hananiah and the others is that it was an honest report. I mean, they told it like it was, and that's so often not the case. I remember when I was first converted as a young man, and I went into the ministry, and I was full of zeal, and God had awakened me to my own lost condition as someone who had been a church member for many years and had professed to be a Christian, and it was like I had new eyes to see. really what the terrible state of many of the churches were there in South Carolina where I was laboring. There were churches everywhere but most of them were dead and I feared and believed they were many of them full of people who really weren't converted. And yet I would go to the associational meetings, because I was required to go to them, and they would have these local associational meetings, and everyone would get up and just talk about how wonderful everything is. We got this much money in our offerings, and this much for the Lottie Moon offering, and this much for this whatever else offering, and we had these many decisions, and I'm thinking, man, are these, they live in the same world that I'm living in. And yet, it goes back to what I was talking about at the beginning. of the message, this spirit of a kind of false kind of buoyancy that sometimes can be present. Everyone wants to talk everything up and make everything sound like it's just wonderful and grand instead of facing the facts and the reality of what the situation really is for the church or for the churches. So Hananiah, he didn't try to make it sound wonderful. He told the truth. This is the situation. This is what's happening. And this report is twofold. First, there's a description of the people. Two words describe the people. One, they are in great distress. The word translated great carries the idea of remarkable, more than the ordinary degree. Great, and the word translated to stress, ra'a, we're told, is perhaps the strongest word in the Hebrew language that depicts danger, disaster, calamity, or misery. The second word used to describe their condition is translated reproach. They are in great distress and reproach. It's a word that speaks of scorn, contempt, disgrace. They were the object of insults and taunts, a laughing stock, we might say, to the enemies of God around them. Of course, when God's people are in a disgraceful, shameful state, it brings reproach upon the name of God as well. But then this report also described the physical condition of Jerusalem itself. Not just the people of God, but the city of God. The text says, the wall of Jerusalem is also broken down and the gates are burned with fire. So it's not a pretty picture. And it doesn't seem to be what Nehemiah was expecting to hear, and certainly not what he was hoping to hear. And when he hears this bad news, what kind of effect does it have upon him? Well, notice now, fourthly, Nehemiah's reaction. How did Nehemiah react to this? Well, he didn't say, oh well, too bad. At least my life is good here at the palace. And then go on about his business and forget about it. He didn't just make some pious remark. Oh, God have mercy, I pray for them. But then he never did, or did only once or twice, half-heartedly and forgot about it. How did he react? Verse 4, so it was when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for many days I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Now let's break down this reaction of Nehemiah. First of all, it was an emotional reaction. The text says that after hearing the report, he sat down and wept. and mourned for many days." And again, what does this tell us about this man, Nehemiah? Again, it tells us he was a man who cared deeply about the well-being and the reputation of God's people, which are both a reflection upon God's reputation. He's deeply burdened with the cause of God in the world. This bad report affects him. It makes him cry. It causes tears to run down his face. He's overwhelmed by this emotionally and he sits down and he weeps. And brothers and sisters, I wonder, do we know anything of what it is to mourn over such things? Do we know anything of what it is to be distressed and grieved over the welfare of God's people, the welfare of the church as Nehemiah was, or to be emotionally moved with concern for the souls of lost sinners? There is a right kind of sadness, as I was saying at the beginning of the message. There is a proper sorrow that we ought to feel at times. Nehemiah wasn't sad because his favorite football team had lost the Super Bowl. Because someone put a dent in his new truck, or he wasn't feeling gloomy and distressed because his house only had two bedrooms and he really couldn't afford something bigger. He'd like to have three bedrooms, or because it only has three bedrooms and he wanted to have four bedrooms, or because his girlfriend broke up with him. Now these are the kind of things that we often mope about and feel sad about. But no, he's grieving and burdened for the cause of God in the world. Do you and I know anything of this? Here we see in Nehemiah something that is often true in God's dealings with His people. When God intends great mercy and revival for His church, He first fills His people, at least some of His people, with a painful sense of burden and heaviness in their souls over the condition in which we find ourselves. And when we do feel something of that, it's a good sign. It just may be the prelude. to a time of blessing. Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. The Christian mourns over his own sin, but there's also a proper sorrow over the sin we see in the world around us, both in the lost world in general and also in the professing church. When we look at the Lord Jesus, of whom Nehemiah is just a faint picture, when we look at our Lord Jesus, our great example, what do we see? We read of Him at times rejoicing in the Spirit, but we also read that He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Think of that awesome scene in Luke 19, 14, when our Lord beheld the city of Jerusalem. They had been given so many privileges. And yet as he looked at that city, it was full of false religious profession, religious hypocrisy, full of hatred and rejection of the very one God had sent to save them. He saw Jerusalem bringing damnation upon itself. And Luke tells us that as he beheld the city, he wept over it. And surely if we have received something of His Spirit, we ought to know at least something of the sorrow that He felt. The same sorrow that Nehemiah felt in our text. As we look at the world around us, at our own country, as we look at the condition of the Christian churches around us in our land, certainly we ought to be able, in some degree, to identify with the sentiments of the psalmist. When he cried out in Psalm 119, rivers of water run down my eyes because they keep not your law. Or when he said, I beheld the transgressors and I was grieved because they kept not your word. There's a very interesting passage in the book of Ezekiel that speaks to this. Ezekiel is given a vision of the destruction of Jerusalem. And in that vision, there's a man with an ink corn who's commanded to put a mark upon the forehead of certain people who are to be spared God's coming judgment. Certain ones who were God's true people in the midst of all the religious hypocrisy and all of the wickedness of that city. And notice what it was that distinguished those people from the others. Ezekiel 9 verse 4, and the Lord said to him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and put a mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and cry over all the abominations that are done in it." Jerusalem was the city of God, the place where the temple was located. They were God's own covenant people. They were the people to whom God had given His Word and the true religion, the old covenant visible church. But they had departed from God and they had defiled His worship. They had committed spiritual adultery and idolatry. And God says to Ezekiel, I'm going to destroy them. But I still have a people in the midst of that, a remnant who are My people that I'm going to spare. And this is how they're known. They sigh and they cry for all the abominations that are done in Israel. And my dear friends, if the Lord Jesus were to send an angel to this church, and he said to that angel, I'm about to bring judgment upon this land, and I want you to spare my people, and this is the mark of my people. Find the men and the women and the young people who sigh and cry for the abominations of America and the abominations of the professing church in America. Find the men and women whose hearts are broken over these things and grieve by them. If that were to happen, would you be one of those who would be spared? Certainly if abominations were in Israel in Ezekiel's day, and if the Jews in Jerusalem were in a sad state when Nehemiah received this report, the same is true to a large degree of the professing church today, especially in our own country. So we all need to ask ourselves, do I know anything of this grief that we see in Nehemiah here in our text? There's one passage in the prophet Isaiah where God begins to describe all of the judgments that he had brought upon his people and then he says, but you did not fast and you did not weep. He's making the point you were calloused to it. It hasn't affected you. So Nehemiah's attitude here is a challenge. To all of us, we need to ask ourselves, do I know anything of this grief that we see in Nehemiah? And if we don't, we need to ask God to awaken us. And if we do, dear friends, it's a good sign. It may mean that God is about to act. This is the context in which God is about to call and He's about to use this very same man, Nehemiah himself, to be His instrument of revival and reformation. It was an emotional reaction. Secondly, it was a praying reaction. He says, and I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven. He began to make this a matter of prayer. Thirdly, it was a persistent reaction. He was persistent in his prayers. The text says that he was doing this for many days. We're not to really understand the prayer that's recorded later here in verses 5 to 11, which we're going to look at, God willing, next time. We're not to understand that as the record of just one prayer that he prayed, but as a summary. of the general content of his prayers and the main emphasis of his prayers over a period of days. Notice, for example, in verse 6, he says, please let your ear be attentive and your eyes open that you may hear the prayer of your servant which I pray before you now day and night. So he begins to pray about this and he continues praying about this for many days. day and night. In fact, if he received the report in the month Chislev, and according to chapter 2 verse 1, he went before Artaxerxes to ask permission to travel to Jerusalem in the month Nisan, that indicates that he made this a matter of prayer for somewhere in the area of five months before he took any action. Now that doesn't mean he did nothing but pray for five months. No doubt he continued to fulfill the duties, his duties as a cupbearer, his other responsibilities. Perhaps then when he got home at night, when he got up in the morning, at other times when he had opportunity, he gave himself to prayer about this. And he did not give up praying, he was persistent. Just as the Lord has told us many times to be persistent in our prayers, he was persistent. He kept praying about this. Sometimes God delays the answer to our prayers. for His own wise reasons. While we think that we're working on God in our prayer, He's actually working on us. And He's causing us to search ourselves and our motives, and He's preparing us so that we're able to receive properly without it destroying us, as it were, whatever it is He's purposed to give in answer to our prayers. So we must keep on praying, being persistent in the regular habit of prayer, in prayer in general, and in prayer for any particular need that has been especially laid upon our hearts. And Nehemiah is a good example in this. But there's something else about his reaction. It was emotional, prayerful, persistent, and then fourthly, it was also very serious. Very serious. Notice he also joined fasting to his prayers. I don't think that, again, this means he fasted for the entire five months that he was praying about this. No one would be able to survive if they did that. But the idea seems to be that as he kept making this a matter of prayer, and I guess he's making this a matter of prayer over this five months. My idea of probably what's happening here is, as time goes on and he continues to pray, he begins to think, maybe I should do something. It wasn't like he was in a natural position to do this, but he begins to think, maybe I should take a risk here. And maybe Artaxerxes would let me go back. But at any rate, he's praying about this over this period of time and he's burdened about the state of Jerusalem. And the idea seems to be that as he kept making this a matter of prayer, he sometimes set aside special seasons of fasting joined to his prayers during this period. He was so moved by what he heard about the terrible state of things back in Jerusalem, so burdened over the desolate state of God's people that he would set aside food for a time and he would give himself the special intensified seasons of prayer. This was more than just the regular habit of prayer. There are these special seasons, focused prayer with fasting. And this reminds us, as we see elsewhere, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testaments, that together with our daily practice of prayer, it's sometimes good and proper to clear our schedule for an extended period of time and to devote more than ordinary time to seeking the blessing of God and sometimes even joining fasting with those prayers. Ferguson makes the comment, at the very least, life in today's busy world requires that we fast in relation to our use of time if we are to know God's Word and be stimulated to fervent prayer. And we could say fasting from our cell phones, get unglued from your social media for a period of time. And then, of course, there's fasting from our regular meal times. That in itself, he says, may involve us in fasting in relation to food as well. There are no gains without pains, Ferguson says. So do you ever at any point throughout the year set aside more than the usual amount of time to focus on prayer? Undistracted extended seasons of prayer and sometimes with fasting and that's something that we should all do from time to time and especially in times of extraordinary need. Fasting has been described in this way as a Christian's voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes. A Christian's voluntary abstinence from food for spiritual purposes. It's a good definition. Notice fasting is voluntary. Though it was practiced on many occasions by God's people, both in the Old and the New Testaments, there's actually only one fast that was mandatory and compulsory. Under the Old Covenant, God required the people to fast in connection with the Day of Atonement. Now that was a national fast involving every man, woman, and child in Israel. It occurred only once a year on the Day of Atonement and that's the only fast that's actually commanded in the Bible. And of course, it passed away with the passing of the Old Covenant. We no longer observe the Day of Atonement. So fasting is not some kind of mandatory practice that we are required by the Bible to fast. You know, you should fast this many times on this day and this...none of that in the Bible. But it is a voluntary practice and it's something practiced on occasion. We find both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. It's never to be looked at as an end in itself. or as an ordinary mindless kind of religious ritual, but it is an occasional aid to spiritual concentration and urgency with reference to some exceptional circumstance or need. And especially an aid to intensifying the urgency and concentration of the soul in prayer. It's almost always joined with prayer. Prayer and fasting. And brothers and sisters, again, I wonder, do we know anything of what it is to have Such a burden about spiritual concerns, such a burden for our own souls, for the souls of our family, for the souls of others, such a felt need for God's guidance and God's wisdom, such a burden for the cause of Christ in the world and in our own country, or such a sense of our need of the blessing of God's Spirit upon our efforts as a church that we can hardly even eat or we're willing to lay aside food for a time. to give ourselves to special intensified seasons of prayer. David Brainerd, a great missionary to the Indians, he often joined fasting with special seasons of intercession. For example, he records these in his journal. He recorded on one occasion in his journal these words. And this is as he's preparing to enter into the work of the ministry. He's not yet in the ministry, but he's preparing. He said, I set apart this day for fasting and prayer to God for His grace, especially to prepare me for the work of the ministry, to give me divine aid and direction in my preparations for that great work, and in His own time to send me into His harvest. He said of His experience that day, I felt the power of intercession for precious immortal souls. for the advancement of the kingdom of my dear Lord and Savior in the world, with all a most sweet resignation and even consolation and joy in the thought of suffering hardships, distresses, and even death itself in the promotion of their salvation. My soul was drawn out very much for the world. For multitudes of souls, I think I had more enlargement for sinners than for the children of God, though I felt as if I could spend my life in cries for both. I enjoyed great sweetness in communion with my dear Savior. I think I never in my life felt such an entire weanedness from this world and so much resigned to God in everything." Now brothers and sisters, how much do any of us know of the kind of praying and intercession that David Brainerd was talking about there? Ardent, agonizing, wrestling with God for our brethren, for the needs of our souls, for the work of God in the church and in the world, pleading for the salvation of sinners, great sweetness and communion with the Savior. We're the men and the women and the young people." And he was a very young man when he wrote that. We're the men, women, and young people like Brainerd and like Nehemiah who knows something of what it is to have experiences like that in prayer. Indeed, like the Lord Jesus. of whom Nehemiah is just a faint picture but he is a picture of the Lord Jesus who sometimes prayed throughout the entire night and sometimes joined fasting to his prayers and he wept over lost sinners and he was so moved with compassion and concern for your soul and mine dear friend that he went to the cross to suffer and to die for our sins to pay whatever price it required to save us from our sins so that you might be saved from your sins, from your sins, that you might be reconciled to God in Him and He's willing to receive all who come to Him in faith and to save them. May God help us, not only to be more like Nehemiah, but to be more like the one of whom Nehemiah Throughout this book, really, as we study, is only just a dim picture, a dim reflection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who left his home in glory. He left his prestigious position, if we might say, and he entered into this sin-cursed world, and he gave himself, and he wept for us. and He died for us that we might be saved. May God help us to be more like Him. Let's pray together. Our Father, we thank You for Your Word, the seed that has been cast out upon the soil of our hearts today. We ask, O Heavenly Father, that You would water that seed by Your Spirit, that it would work in us, that it would shape us and conform us more into the image of Your Son. And for those who do not know Him, we pray that even this day, You would have mercy upon them and draw them to Christ, that they might be saved. And it's in His name we pray, Amen.