The man for the time!

Nehemiah not only heard from his friends about the destruction of

Jerusalem but he also heard from heaven.
  What he heard from heaven not only sparked a fire in his passion, but a fire in his heart that would transform the people around him.

I’m always hearing people gripe.
  I’m always hearing people complain about church, the president, their friends, their co-workers.
 
 These people are in constant griping mode.
  What the hour in which Nehemiah lived needed, and what our hour needs are not people who will just discuss all the problems of the universe, but people who will get up and do something about them! That is the need of the time.
 

Nehemiah was a man such as that. Nehemiah saw the problem that was in Jerusalem - and yes, he was distressed, he analyzed it, he scrutinized it, and he felt the great burden of it in his heart - but he didn't stop there wallowing in self-pity, but he got up and in the midst of his grief he took action and he did something about it. whenever God wants to get work done He goes to people who are willing to do some work. He lays hold of people who are willing to do something! So many complainers and critics and self-proclaimed prophets and back seat drivers in the world and in the church are able to point out all the problems, but very few are willing to do something about it.
  Listen
, the burden that God places on squeezes the grapes in lives and produces wine, but most of us see only the wine and not the burden.
  No power on earth or in hell can conquer the Spirit of God living within the human spirit; it creates an inner invincibility.
  If our life is producing only a whine, instead of the wine, then ruthlessly kick it out.
  It is definitely a crime for a Christian to be weak in God’s strength.
  (Chambers)

In Nehemiah's day there was a work to be done for the Living God. Guess what.
  In James’ day, in AIM’s day, there is work to be done for the living God - and although, as you may know in the history of the book of Nehemiah, there was a small remnant who had already returned to

Jerusalem, there was much work that still needed to be done. In 536 BC we know that Zerubbabel and Joshua brought about 50,000 Jews back to

Jerusalem. In 516 BC they rebuilt the temple, and in 457 there was a small revival under the prophet Ezra whose book is before Nehemiah. But now we've reached the year 445, and it's a new day, it's a new hour,
it's a new generation of the people of God, and God was looking for a man for that hour.
Someone to go to the ruined city to restore the walls, which signified safety and order - and the man to which God turned to in that hour was Nehemiah.

Nehemiah was a cupbearer, but the passion in his heart brought him further than anticipated.. First of all in chapter 1 we find him as the King's cupbearer, then when he hears the call of God to build the walls of

Jerusalem he becomes Nehemiah the builder. By the end of this book we find him as Nehemiah the Governor of the city - actually overruling in all the affairs, religious and social, within the city. But here in chapter 1, before God calls him in verse one as such, we find him as the cupbearer of the King. to be the cupbearer was to have great authority and responsibility. In fact, some have said it was a position of great influence - Nehemiah would have been a confidant to the king. The King, in quiet hours, when he felt free and relaxed, would be able to bounce off Nehemiah some ideas; so he had to be qualified with great wisdom and political aptitude. Some have said that he would have been an official of the court, wielding much power, and would have traveled around with the King on his various outings and excursions, and given him advice on great matters of the kingdom.

The reason why God turned to Nehemiah was not his position. The reason why God turned to Nehemiah to be a man for the hour were the characteristics that we see in chapter 1.  There are three of them: one,

1.
     
Nehemiah was a man of burden; he was a man upon whom the burden that weighed heavy on God's heart weighed heavy too.

2.
     

 He was a man of prayer, he put that burden in his heart into the articulation of the language of heaven, prayer before the throne of grace.

3.
     
He was a man of action - he wasn't just a man who knew what to do, and knew to pray about what needed done, but he was a man willing to get onto his feet and do something about it! Because of those characteristics Nehemiah became the man for the hour.
   (Taken from sources from the internet)
 

How different this story might have been -
 how different it may have all turned out if the man that God turned to had not been a man like Nehemiah, of his great spiritual character and caliber. The circumstances that we find ourselves in often betray our true character and show our true colors. Many things that come into our life that we think may be the breaking of us, happen to turn out to be the making of us.
 
Lord I pray that you will not pass us by.
  Allow me to be ripe for the season, prepared in heart and in tune with what you’re doing in the lives around me, in the lives of the city in which I live.
  Lord I pray you would rise up a generation of Nehemiah’s that would rebuild the walls of the church, the walls that Satan has torn down.
 

He was a man of burden. Verses 1 to 3 show us that he lived in a state of dereliction around him. If I had room I would write out Psalm 79 that describes what the city was like after it had been taken into captivity and after the people had returned - this was the spirit of the situation: 'O God, the heathen are come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled; they have laid Jerusalem on heaps. The dead bodies of thy servants have they given to be meat unto the fowls of the heaven, the flesh of thy saints unto the beasts of the earth. Their blood have they shed like water round about

Jerusalem; and there was none to bury them. We are become a reproach to our neighbours, a scorn and derision to them that are round about us'. Such was the situation, and things hadn't got better - according to Nehemiah's hearing - since the people had come back into the land. From

Jerusalem being a city of praise and glory, it has become a city of shame and reproach second to none even in the nation.

Now Nehemiah is the story of the rebuilding of the walls of

Jerusalem. We must understand before we go on any further that ancient walls served many functions in old cities. I love what it says in Deuteronomy 22, it helps me understand the principle of the wall around a house in the Old Testament, and also therefore it is reasonably concluded that this must be the principle around the wall of the city. Deuteronomy 22 and verse 8, and Moses gave the people from God the instruction: 'When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon thine house, if any man fall from thence'. The idea of safety and protection so that no one on the top of the roof, your roof, would ever fall off and their blood wouldn't be upon your hands because you didn't build a fence or a wall around the roof. What we need to realise is that in ancient times, even in New Testament times, the roof was like a bachelor's pad - only not just for bachelors, but also for married people and families, and great generations of relatives. It was a place of communion, it was a place of retirement, we read in 1 Samuel 9 that Samuel communed with Saul upon the top of the house - a place of communion where people would get away from the family or from the affairs of business, and commune with one another about business matters or intimate details. It was a place of retirement, we read - quite humorously for some - in Proverbs 21:9: 'It is better to dwell in a corner of the housetop, than with a brawling woman in a wide house'. The idea of retirement, getting away from it all, whatever that 'all' may be.

A place of communion, a place of retirement, and then in Acts chapter 10 and verse 9; 'Peter went up upon the housetop to pray about the sixth hour'. It was also a place of prayer, because you could get away from all the noise and you would probably be out under the sky and see the wonders of nature and feel nearer to God. You remember the Lord often went up into the mountain to pray - but in Matthew 10:27 we also read that the housetop was a place of testimony. I mean, Jesus said: 'What ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops'. It was a place to stand up to be heard and to herald some news, whether good or bad. So what I want you to see is the housetop that this wall was put around was a living area, or maybe a study area of meditation, an area of communion or retirement, of prayer, of testimony, but if you neglected the wall around that rooftop that special place could become a dangerous place, even a fatal place for those who are without, and even those who are young and careless within falling over the edge.

Now please retain that thought within your mind, because that same principle I believe was in the building of walls around cities, for protection and for security. It also primarily allowed the people in

Jerusalem to cultivate their spiritual lives without any outside interference from other nations with pagan gods. I hope you understand it was a place of safety not only physically, but spiritually. Now let me take the application like this to ourselves: we as believers, do we not, have walls of spiritual protection, spiritual security, that we put around ourselves in the disciplines that we're meant to exercise as God's children. I could name a whole lot: baptism is one, the reading of God's word is another, prayer daily before God, witnessing, fellowship, the breaking of bread, the prayer meeting - we could go on and on and on and talk about the many exercises that are encouraged for our spiritual well-being in the New Testament. They are there for our protection and cultivating of our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now before we enter in this morning or in subsequent weeks to Nehemiah's struggle to rebuild the walls of

Jerusalem, maybe there are some of us here today that need to examine the state of our own spiritual walls. How are they? How is your communion with God? How are your quiet times of retirement with God? How is your prayer life with God? How is your testimony and witness with God? Are you being influenced by the world without? Are you careless and trying to go into the world from within? Are there are some gates that you have left open for the enemy to slip through? Has neglect of something loosened a brick or a stone, exposing a gap for the enemy to squeeze through? Have the roots of the weeds of compromise grown into the foundation walls, and are almost ready to tumble them down?

Now listen: if your spiritual walls, your spiritual disciplines are in need of repair - whether it's just one brick, or a whole section of the wall - now is the time to implement the spiritual principles that we find in God's man for the hour, Nehemiah. Here's the first: he was a man of burden. Now listen, if there were personal walls that I have been talking about, there also were national walls - and as we look out, and if you remember what I have read to you about some of the bishops of the Church of England and the House of Lords, you would have to say that not only are our own personal spiritual walls at times derelict, but nationally the walls of the so-called church of Jesus Christ are crumbling down and corroding! I want to ask you in the light of Nehemiah's great burden for his home city and the walls around it: do you have a burden for the

church of
Jesus Christ and the awful state that it finds itself in this very day?

The wall building didn't begin with the mixing of cement, do you know what it began with? It began with a burden in the heart of a man called Nehemiah. He was called to build the wall, yes, but it all started first and foremost where he had to weep, he had to mourn, he had to fast, he had to afflict himself because of the awful ruin that the people of God were in - and no other preparation for the work would do than that. Now I don't know whether there's anybody contemplating going into the work of God here - but I hope we're all in the work of God in some shape or form - do you have this burden for the dereliction in people's lives, whether they're not saved, or whether they are saved...or whether it's the church of Jesus Christ locally here in the Iron Hall, or corporately in this district, or right across the land - do you have a genuine burden for the state of dereliction?

Nehemiah was not a man to paper over the cracks - in fact, when Nehemiah met the people in

Jerusalem he didn't attempt to gloss over their spiritual condition, the condition of the walls. If you turn to chapter 2 and verse 17 we read: 'Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in,
 and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of

Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach'. He saw things the way they really were, in contrast to Eli - you remember Eli in the Old Testament, he refused to recognize the need of restraint, walls of discipline, in the life of his own sons. Because of that he brought reproach, distress, and disaster on

Israel for Samuel reads that 'His sons made themselves vile, and he restrained them not'. He was unwilling to recognize the need of the hour - can you recognize it?

I believe there is a spiritual stupor upon the

church of
Jesus Christ, that when you start to mention subjects like this they think: 'Where's he living? What's he doing? Things aren't as bad as all that!'. Listen: Nehemiah was a man who was burdened because he saw things the way they really were, and when Hanani his brother came with the terrible news I'm sure that Hanani had a burden on his heart too. He had seen it all, but my question is: did Hanani allow his burden to make him do something about it? Oh, we don't know, but one thing is for sure: we can all shake our heads at times, maybe we can even see what's going on around us and in us, and we can sigh over the state of the congregation of the people of God like Hanani did - but the question is this: it's quite another matter to do something about it, isn't it? There is such a long journey between knowledge and practice, but the fact that Nehemiah was perhaps 700 miles away from the situation in

Jerusalem here in the palace in Shushan made no difference! He was burdened about it! You don't have to be in the midst of all the sin in the world to be burdened about it. You don't have to be in the Church of England to be burdened about it. My friends, in all of his luxury and his prestige in the palace, it didn't matter, it didn't deter him - and I'll tell you, there's no indication in verse one and two, before this news comes to him, that he had any intention of abandoning his privileged position. But by the means of what might not have been any more than a casual inquiry in verse 2, he asked concerning the Jews that had escaped - he's only asking about home - he hears the news of disaster, and it has overwhelming effects on his soul. In verse 4 it says: '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 had a heart for the testimony of God's people. He was like Moses, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Here's the next question, and I'm determined to finish this this morning: he was a burdened man, the state of dereliction, but what did that burden drive him to do? What was the first work that his burden made him do? What was it? Pray! He was a man of prayer and he made, in verses 4 to 9, a supplication for divine power. He had seen the state of dereliction, and now he makes a supplication for divine power - and instead of doing what we would maybe do, and rush to the King: 'King Artaxerxes I have served you for many years, and I have given you faithful advice all my days, can you give me a bit of advice and do something, maybe wield the arm of your power a little'. He didn't go to the King, he went to the King of kings.

If Nehemiah tells me anything, it tells me that Nehemiah was a man of prayer. There's about ten prayers in this book - it starts with prayer and it ends with prayer, and in verse 4 look what it says: he sat down, he wept, he mourned days, he fasted, prayed before the God of heaven. In verse 6, look at him as he cries: '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'. He prayed day and night, have you ever done that? He prayed weeping - when was the last time I did that? He fasted - you'd know by looking at some of you the last time you did that! - but he was a man of prayer.

I'll tell you, if you look at the dates in this, it says that he prayed four months like this. I'm not saying he fasted, he might have fasted a meal or two for four months. But if you look at the date here, in verse one it says 'in the month of Chisleu', which is the month of December really for us - and you go to chapter 2 verse 1, and it says that in the month of Nisan his answer came - and that is the space between December and Nisan, April, of four months. Grief, fasting, praying, weeping for four months - and I'll tell you this: it so altered his appearance that King Artaxerxes asked: 'What's wrong with you?', we'll see this next week, 'What's wrong with your countenance?'. Do you know what was wrong? H