“Principles for Living by Faith”
(Nehemiah 2:1-10)
Series: REBUILD (Nehemiah)
Rev. Todd A. Linn, PhD
Henderson’s First Baptist Church, Henderson
- Open your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 2.
We are studying the Book of Nehemiah in a series called REBUILD. To rebuild is to build again something that has been damaged or destroyed. Nehemiah is rebuilding the damaged and destroyed walls of the city of Jerusalem.
But the Book of Nehemiah is not just about rebuilding walls, but about rebuilding souls. Many of us are rebuilding our lives, rebuilding our marriages, rebuilding our walk with the Lord.
Like us, Nehemiah is a follower of One True and Living God. And Nehemiah, along with all of God’s children, had been living for years in exile in Babylon. Because of their own sin, the sin of unfaithfulness to the One True and Living God, because of their own sin God raised up a foreign king named Nebuchadnezzar to discipline His children. God used Nebuchadnezzar to carry away into captivity God’s people in Babylon. God loves His children so He disciplines His children.
And after several years of discipline, God works through the hearts of various human leaders to change the events and the people begin to gather back in the land, little by little. Eventually the Jewish temple was rebuilt in the year 516 BC. And while the rebuilding of the temple was complete, in the decades that followed the walls remained unfinished. There was stone scattered all around the city and the gates of the city were still broken down having been burned and destroyed.
And when Nehemiah gets word of this he is heartbroken. He hears about it in the year 445 BC when he is 1000 miles away in the Persian capital city of Susa, the Washington DC of the Persian Empire. He’s got a job there as cupbearer to the now reigning king, the Persian King Artaxerxes. As the king’s cupbearer, Nehemiah was entrusted with tasting the king’s wine to ensure it wasn’t poisonous. It was a position that required the highest degree of integrity and trust. And God is going to use Nehemiah and Nehemiah is going to trust God to use him, trusting God to do the work of getting Nehemiah back to Jerusalem to lead a massive rebuilding project for the glory of God.
Have you found Chapter 2 in Nehemiah? Remember the events? All we read about in Chapter 1? Nehemiah hears about the condition of the walls a thousand miles away in Jerusalem and verse 4 says he “sat down and wept, and mourned for many days…fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
Then we read Nehemiah’s prayer last week. Nehemiah’s prayer contains adoration, confession, and recitation; adoration of the Savior, confession of sin, recitation of Scripture. And we talked about our own prayers following this model of adoration, confession, and the recitation of Scripture. I trust we all memorized at least one verse of Scripture that we can use as we call upon the Lord in prayer, speaking God’s words back to Him.
In essence, Nehemiah prays, “God, remember Your Word, the Word You spoke through Your servant Moses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You said that if Your people living in exile, scattered all across the land, return to You, confessing their sins of unfaithfulness, You would return them to their land! Remember Your Word, Lord! Here we are, Your people! Here we are confessing, repenting, and asking that You restore us to the land!”
And Nehemiah has been praying like that for quite some time. His heart is heavy and the burden is great. Let’s see what happens next.
- Please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word. We’re in chapter 2. Our passage today will go through to verse 10. Chapter 2, verses 1-10, but let’s read just the opening verses to get us started and then we’ll pray.
1 And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had never been sad in his presence before.
2 Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.”
So I became dreadfully afraid,
3 and said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?”
• Prayer.
After serving the Lord for 15 years in Pakistan, missionary Warren Webster was invited to speak at the famous Urbana Missionary Conference held annually now in St Louis, Missouri. Part of Webster’s message included these words, he said: “If I had my life to live over again, I would live it to change the lives of people, because you have not changed anything until you’ve changed the lives of people.”—Chuck Swindoll, Growing Deep in the Christian Life
You have not changed anything until you have changed the lives of people. Nehemiah is a man whom God uses to change the lives of people. And God can do the same in your life, too. Nehemiah is a man wholly committed to the Lord’s service, seeking to walk by faith, to use his life to advance the gospel and the kingdom of God. His life is a life lived by faith. And He shows us how we too can live by faith this week and the weeks to come.
We’re going to be learning from Nehemiah this morning. He’ll be teaching us as we read his story. We’re going to be learning “Principles for Living by Faith.” Really simple points that surface from the verses, rising up from the text and into our ears and hearts. Principles for living by faith.
Now before we write down the first principle, let’s remember the year is 445 BC. We know that because Nehemiah tells us in the opening verses of the book that it’s the twentieth year, this is the twentieth year of the reign of King Artaxerxes, comes out to 445 BC. And what month is it? The month of Chislev, toward the end of the Persian calendar, roughly mid-November. Nehemiah learns about the walls being broken down a thousand miles away and he weeps, mourns, fasts, and prays “for many days.” How many days? Well, look again at verse 1 now of Chapter 2. Chapter 2, verse 1:
1 And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes…
Time has moved along. Nisan is the beginning of the Persian and Jewish year, new year, and is roughly equivalent to our month of April. So Chapter 1 opens in November 445 BC and Chapter 2 opens in April 444 BC. Four months has gone by. Four months.
Four months of weeping, mourning, fasting, and praying. Here’s the first principle, ready? Let’s put it on the wall, first.
1) Sometimes We Just Have to Wait
Okay? Sometimes we just have to wait. We said before that the Book of Nehemiah is like Nehemiah’s own personal diary. Reading the Book of Nehemiah is like reading Nehemiah’s journal or memoirs. Well, Nehemiah’s diary has no entry for four months. There’s nothing to write down because nothing happened. Perhaps he hoped to hear from fellow Israelites, “Hey, things have changed down in Jerusalem! The walls are being rebuilt, after all!” But nothing.
Sometimes we just have to—everybody say, “Wait.” Sometimes we just have to wait.
Nehemiah has been weeping and mourning for four months. He’s been sad. Yet he says in verse 1—the end of verse 1—he says, “Now I had never been said in the presence (of the king). I had never been sad in his presence before.”
In other words, Nehemiah was concealing his sadness whenever he was around the king. Why is that? Because, in those days, you were expected to always have a cheerful countenance in the presence of the king. You were always to be “up” and you were always “on.” The powerful king has a lot going on if you ever appeared before him in any way other than cheerful, positive, and optimistic, you could literally be killed. He could just like, “I don’t like the way you look today. I don’t trust you. You’re out!” And you could lose your life over that.
So Nehemiah has been concealing his hurt, his heaviness, his burden. He’s been going in every day and putting on his “game face,” you know. Smiling through the hurt, grinning and bearing it, keeping it together. Game face.
Some of you know what that’s like. Something’s happened and you’ve been hurt. And you’ve got to keep going. You don’t want to, but you’ve got to. Everyone’s counting on you. And you’re pushing through, smiling through the hurt and pain, waiting for things to change. You can’t stop. You’ve got to keep going. Sometimes you just have to wait. In the meantime you keep going forward, keep trusting, keep believing, living by faith in the God who is in control and always does what is right. Your faith keeps you moving forward when your heart is broken.
Now, we’re going to see that Nehemiah has a plan. He’s been praying for four months. He’s been thinking this through. And he has been anticipating this very moment. In fact, when you go back to the last verse of chapter 1, verse 11, you see there that all of his praying over the months culminates in this statement where he says at the end of chapter 1, in verse 11, last part of the verse: “…let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man,” this man being King Artaxerxes. He adds for our understanding: “For I was the king’s cupbearer.”
So Nehemiah has a plan. He is planning on asking the king to allow him to return to Jerusalem to lead the rebuilding project of the walls. He had never been sad in the presence of the king, but he has been praying for four months now and He’s trusting God to do the work of turning the king’s heart. Nehemiah won’t know until he asks, so here we go, the day has come! “Let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man (King Artaxerxes.)”
2 Therefore the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.”
So I became dreadfully afraid,
Now we know why he became “dreadfully afraid!” He could die for this, being sad in the presence of the king. The king knows Nehemiah is not sick. He says that. So what’s the deal, Nehemiah? The king could have even suspected an evil plot on the part of Nehemiah. Not being able to look him in the eye, you know. These kings—including King Artaxerxes—killed people if ever their throne was threatened. “Nehemiah, why aren’t you looking like you usually do, is there some evil intent in your heart?”
Nehemiah says, “So I became dreadfully afraid.” By the way, I like honest leaders, don’t you? He’s writing his own memoirs. He could have edited it to make himself look good. He’s honest: “I was very much afraid!”
3 and said to the king, “May the king live forever! (that’s something people always said to the kings, a word of favor, even today, ‘long live the king, or long live the queen) Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?”
And then, Nehemiah waits. What will the king say in reply? How much time transpires? Will, he call for the guards to come carry him away? Well, God gives Nehemiah favor before the king. Verse 4:
4 Then the king said to me, “What do you request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.
5 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.”
Now we’re going to see that things get better for Nehemiah. But not before waiting. Weeping, mourning, fasting, praying. Four months. Sometimes we just have to—what?—wait.
How many times did the psalmist say, “I waited upon the Lord?” You keep waiting. Living by faith often means that sometimes you just have to wait. Trust that God is working on a timetable that may not be yours, but it is His and He always does what is right. So, in the words of the gospel song, “Hold on my child, joy comes in the morning!”—and often only after much mourning; m-o-u-r-n-i-n-g.
When the king says in verse 4, “What do you request?” Nehemiah says, “So I prayed to the God of heaven. Verse 5, “And I said to the king, ‘if it pleases the king…(let me return to rebuild.)”
Did you see that quick prayer there in verse 4? Normally, when we read something like this in the Bible: “So I prayed to the God of heaven” what we read next is the prayer. Not here. There’s no prayer. Why? Because this is one of those quick prayers. What did we call this kind of prayer do you remember? Bullet prayer or arrow prayer. Shooting up a quick prayer like an arrow to the Lord. This is the kind of prayer you pray when someone pulls out in front of you on Highway 41. “God, help me!”
I imagine Nehemiah’s prayer was something like, “God, guide my words.” An arrow prayer. Now, let me give you this second principle for living by faith. Second principle to remember this week:
2) Arrow Prayers Flow from Kneeling Prayers
Nehemiah was a “prayed up” man. He had spent months on his knees in prayer. The depth of kneeling prayers, like the one we looked at last week—verses 5-11—give rise to arrow prayers.
See, if all we pray are arrow prayers—“God, help me! Get me out of this! Help me pass this test!”—if that’s all we pray, then our prayers are pretty flimsy arrows, launched from a shaky hand and bow.
The time you spend on your knees in meaningful prayer will result in a daily walk where arrow prayers become much more meaningful—they are launched from a steady hand and bow that have spent much time in the stability of careful study and reflection.
That’s just a quick principle to remember this week as you live by faith: arrow prayers flow from—what?—from kneeling prayers.
Now, Nehemiah has prayed and he makes his request. He says in verse 5: “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it.”
And he waits for the response from the king. And the first time you ever read this, you’re waiting, too! What’s going to happen next?! Verse 6:
6 Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him), “How long will your journey be? And when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me; and I set him a time.
God gives Nehemiah favor before the king. It goes well for Nehemiah. Write this down. Ready? Third principle for living by faith this week. Remember this:
3) God Can Work through a Pagan’s Heart
Who holds the king’s heart in His hand? Anyone? Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord. Like courses of water, He directs it wherever He wishes.”
God can work through a pagan’s heart. I have to smile when I read that parenthetical statement there in verse 6: “Then the king said to me (the queen also sitting beside him)…” You’re reading that and you’re like, “What is that there?!”
Well, God works through the king and the queen. And sometimes God works through the queen to get to the king. I see King Artaxerxes like most men. He’s calling the shots, but the queen is there next to him and, perhaps he’s peripherally seeking affirmation, the way we men do sometimes. Our wives often bring out the best in us, don’t they? Every husband says, “Amen.” The king’s getting ready to answer Nehemiah. He looks at Nehemiah and then, a bit of a sideways glance at the queen, and says, “How long will your journey be?” God works through a pagan’s heart.
Nehemiah knows that God is in control. Nehemiah is trusting God to do the work even through an unbelieving employer. Don’t say God can’t work through your unbelieving boss. He can. God holds the human heart in his hand and directs it like rivers of water wherever He wishes. God is ultimately in control of every single circumstance.
By the way, if you really believe Proverbs 21:1, you’ll never worry about your political leaders. Pray for them, but don’t think God is absent. The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord.
Nehemiah must have been a good worker to the king. He says, “How long will your journey be? And when will you return?” Like, “I need you! You add value to the organization here!”
Some of us if we asked off work for some spiritual reason, because we’re not the best workers our boss’s would be like, “Go! Take all the time you need! In fact, don’t come back!” Learn from Nehemiah. Nehemiah was a good worker. A man of integrity, honesty, probity.
“How long will your journey be?” So Nehemiah “set him a time,” told him how long he’d be away. But then—Nehemiah’s been thinking about this for four months!—so he does on to make further requests, verse 7:
7 Furthermore I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the River, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah,
Nehemiah knows that the only way he will have success on the journey is to have the king’s total backing. And to show the king backs Nehemiah, he’ll need hard copies of that backing. So he’s like, “Give me letters that I can show people on the way, a letter from you that I can show governors (or leaders) of the region across the Euphrates river, that they must permit me to pass.”
So when Nehemiah is on his way and somebody stops him he can be like, “Wait—look here. See this letter? See there at the bottom who signed it?!” Then folks would be like, “Okay, move along then.” He also requests a letter, verse 8:
8 and a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest (that’s a cool job title, isn’t it?! Business card reads “Todd Linn, keeper of the king’s forest”), that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel which pertains to the temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy.” And the king granted them to me according to the good hand of my God upon me.
There it is, an acknowledgment that God is the one making all this happen through Nehemiah. This was all “according to the good hand of my God upon me.” Verse 9:
9 Then I went to the governors in the region beyond the River, and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent captains of the army and horsemen with me.
So not only does the king give Nehemiah a bunch of letters he can pull out and show folks along the way, but Nehemiah adds the king also “sent captains of the army and horseman with me.” He gives Nehemiah a powerful entourage of many men and horses for the journey. This would have been quite an impressive sight! God can work through a pagan’s heart.
Now, I want to ask you to write down a fourth principle for living by faith. It is an implicit principle that comes from reflecting on this narrative. And it goes like this, write this down, number four:
4) Confident Faith Leads to Confident Prayer
When the king asks Nehemiah, “How long will your journey be?” Nehemiah replies by setting a time—and then asking for additional letters, letters regarding his travel, the materials he will need; very specific by the way in verses 7 and 8. This leads us to conclude that Nehemiah had really thought this thing through.
Nehemiah had been visualizing all of this in his prayers for four months, every rebuilding project, all the rebuilding materials, believing the time would come when he would make his request. He had confident faith that God would work through Him in answer to his prayer. Confident faith leads to confident prayer.
He saw it all first before it happened. That’s praying in faith. Confident faith leads to confident prayer. The presence of faith does not mean the absence of planning. Nehemiah was thinking all this through as he prayed to the Lord.
When you pray, do you think it all through? Do you have confident faith that leads to confident prayer? As you’re praying are you thinking, “And what if the Lord gives me favor here? What will it all look like?” Do you pray believing—really believing God to answer your prayer? Nehemiah did. Two verses here:
Mark 11:24, Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
John 15:7, If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.
Confident faith leads to confident prayer. One more principle. Everything’s going so well. Nehemiah is clearly in God’s will. God’s answering his prayers. He’s on his way to REBUILD, rebuilding the walls. Everything’s great—and then, verse 10:
10 When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.
Write down this final principle:
5) God’s Will Often Includes Opposition
These two rascals—Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite—these two guys always appear when everything’s going well, they come and cast a long dark shadow upon Nehemiah and the work. Every time they enter, you can almost hear the music: “Dunn, Dunn!”
We’ll read more about them later, just know for now that God’s will often includes opposition. Don’t assume that criticism and negativity means you’re outside of God’s will. God’s will often includes opposition.
We’ll see later that Nehemiah responds biblically to the opposition. He’ll say, last verse of chapter 2, verse 20: “So I answered them, and said to them, ‘The God of heaven Himself will prosper us…” Nehemiah’s not worried about the opposition. He knows the One True and Living God, the God of heaven Himself, will prosper him.
When you face opposition this week, just turn it over to the God of heaven. That’s what Jesus did. 1 Peter 2:23, “When He was reviled, did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously.”
Principles for Living by Faith:
1) Sometimes We Just Have to Wait
2) Arrow Prayers Flow from Kneeling Prayers
3) God Can Work through a Pagan’s Heart
4) Confident Faith Leads to Confident Prayer
5) God’s Will Often Includes Opposition
The good hand of God upon Nehemiah is the good hand that guides Nehemiah to the good work: the rebuilding of the walls around the city of Jerusalem. It’s the same good hand that guided Ezra to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. It’s the same good hand that guided the people of God to worship Him in that temple through so many sacrifices that prepared them for the ultimate sacrifice to come: the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.
The gracious good hand of God gives to us Jesus Christ to take away our sin, to live for Him, to “rise up and build” for Him this week as we live by faith. He gives us grace, grace greater than all our sin.
• Let’s pray and then we’ll respond. Bow your heads.
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