All right, good evening, everyone. Welcome to our service tonight. Happy to see each one of you. Trust you've had a good day and a good week. Welcome to spring. Feels that way, doesn't it? We do want to say thank you to Nathan for bringing a little bit of Florida up to us yesterday and tomorrow. Unfortunately, not enough, because then Friday, you know, we drop back down to 50 or something. But that's okay. We'll enjoy the two days we have. Well, this evening, we're going to be back in Nehemiah chapter two. Before we turn there, let's ask the Lord's blessing on our service. Father, I thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather together in your house on this Wednesday evening. Thank you, Father, that we can just set aside the cares, the pressures of life, that for these few moments, we can fellowship together, commune together in your word, and I pray that the Holy Spirit would teach us, help us, Lord, to learn, help us to make application. And Father, we thank you for the prayer time that follows, Lord. It is equally important and perhaps in some ways it is even more important that we have that time collectively as a church to come together and pray. And so I trust you would bless us as we do so. And Lord, we pray that you would be with the teens, be with the clubs, Lord, everything that happens on this property tonight, may it resound to Your glory. And Lord, we'll seek to give You honor as we pray this in Christ's name and for His sake. Amen. You may be seated. And as I said, we are in Nehemiah chapter two once again this evening. We are returning looking at the theme that we began last week looking here at chapter two. And the theme, which is really the message that we're driving at as we study through that is very simple. You and I, as we serve the Lord, need to have a realistic view of what that service looks like. We need to be realistic. We need to have a realistic idea of what our expectations are in service. I suppose, to put it another way, rather than allow the disappointments of life, and we all face disappointments over the course of life. Rather than allow those disappointments to cause us to become jaded, we should focus on the promises of God. Even though our current circumstances are problematic, and we're thinking now from the book of Nehemiah, When you think about Nehemiah, his own circumstances might not have been that problematic. I mean, he's living in the palace of the king. He is a counselor to the king. He is someone who is in a position of influence with the king, if you will, but his heart is burdened for his people. His heart is burdened for the glory of God and for Jerusalem that now still lies in ruins 444 B.C. is the date of the book of Nehemiah. Chapter 1 is really 445 B.C. and Chapter 2 then takes us into 444 B.C. So we're right at the turn of those two years. So 444 is what we use. But from 570 to 444, remember in the 4 Christ you're counting backwards, right? Sometimes we get confused by that. So the bigger number is further away in this case. So 586 really to 444. So 140 years. 142 years has transpired. And his heart is broken because Jerusalem has lain in ruins for all those decades, for over a century. And that, of course, also is a blot, if you will, on the name of God. This is something that from the viewpoint of the pagans, they would look at that broken city, now coming up on, you know, not too far away from two centuries really. And they would see that as a testimony to how weak the God of Israel, the God of the Jews is. And his heart, Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah's heart, all these Amayahs, you know, they're too close. Nehemiah's heart is shaken by this. He is concerned about it. So he is disappointed. God's people are living in disappointment. And their current circumstances are problematic. But the testimony of the book is that as Nehemiah trusted in God, as he believed that God would fulfill his promise, as he carried that hope in his heart, that enthusiasm infected God's people in Jerusalem. When He returned to Jerusalem, rather than coming among them and bemoaning how bad things were and how long they had been bad and how much work it's going to take to fix it and how long will it take us to fix it, He came in, and I want you to see that as we go through this chapter. He came in with a heart of passion, with zeal, with a zest. We can do this. God is with us. The hand, the good hand of God is with us. And that spirit, that enthusiasm infected God's people, and they rebuilt the walls we're going to find as we study through this in less than two months. 52 days they were able to affect the rebuilding of those walls. Now there was still work to do, but just that alone was a testimony to the glory of God. And Nehemiah Though he came with organizational skills and though he came with writs from the king that gave him certain authority to get the job done, it could not have happened if he hadn't come with that attitude, with that spirit. And that's really what we're driving at. When we talk about a realistic view, perspective on service, it is not ignoring the difficulties and the problems. But it's understanding that we cannot allow the difficulties and problems to defeat us or we'll never accomplish anything for God. That's why the walls were still broken. But it was that enthusiasm that came from him to the people that moved them in turn to roll up their sleeves and get to work. And so, that's the big picture that we're going to see as we go through this. Part of maturity, here's a general statement, right? Part of maturity is learning to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be. Is that when we begin to adult, you know, that's kind of a verb these days, right? When we are adulting, that's one of the lessons we have to learn. The idealism of youth, the expectations of youth turn into the realities of adulthood, right? Life is not the way we wish it is or would be. But that's where maturity comes in. I have to deal with life as it is, the reality of it. That's what we're talking about. Our service for the Lord is a service that is offered to the Lord, not in terms of the way we think it should be, but in terms of this is where we are. These are the circumstances that God in His divine providence has directed for us to be serving within and we can still serve Him whatever those circumstances. So, that's the reality. So, Nehemiah 2 provides helpful insight into the realities of service. It helps us to see it realistically. Now, having said that, Nehemiah When he set out to do what needed to be done, and we're going to see this through the book, it was not a smooth and rosy kind of service. Not only were there real problems that moved his heart to pray as he did, but the work itself was full of problems. And we're going to see that. And so, what can we learn then from Nehemiah? He accomplished great things for God. Already suggested, 52 days rebuilding the walls. What can we learn from that? Well, the first point that we're going to do tonight, then we'll get to the next week to the second point. But here's the first point. involves waiting. What did he just say it? That was an illustration. Service involves waiting. Now what we see here in the text Four months have elapsed from the time that Nehemiah's brother gave him the report about Jerusalem until the opportunity in chapter 2 when the king asked him, what would you have me to do? Four months have elapsed. What was Nehemiah doing during that time? Well, I think chapter 1, verse 5, where we have this prayer recorded, I don't think this is a one-time prayer. I don't think he prayed, you know, his brother said, hey, here's what Jerusalem is like. Oh, he prays, God, you need to do something, and then he forgets about it for four months. Do you imagine that's what happened? I don't think so. One of the things we see about Nehemiah is that in 13 chapters, in 11 of those chapters, we find a prayer by Nehemiah. So I think it's safe to say that for four months, Nehemiah has been praying that God would do something about the devastation in Jerusalem. And now four months later, we get to chapter two, and God says, I'm gonna answer your prayer, Nehemiah, and I'm going to use you as the agent to fulfill that prayer. Nehemiah could not have known that that's what God would do. Maybe there was some element in his prayer that, Lord, if you would give me the opportunity, I could perhaps do this or do that. But he would not have the freedom to just get up and go. He could not take a leave of absence. He could not go to the king and say, you know what, I think I'm gonna take the next six months off and go to Jerusalem. I think I've got vacation time saved up. It didn't work that way. There's no personal time and all that. You served the king when the king said you served. And he is in a very sensitive place. Important, yes. The cupbearer was often a counselor to the king, someone the king highly trusted. His life was in the cupbearer's hands. But for that very reason, the king would not want him to leave. because now he's got to replace him with somebody else that he has equal confidence in. From the king's perspective, you want to keep those people close by, right? And there's the whole loyalty question as well. So what is Nehemiah doing for four months? He's praying. Four months is a long time to have to wait for God to answer a prayer. Would you agree with that? But you know, in the Bible, There were people that had to wait far longer for God to answer their prayers. Abraham waited 25 years for Isaac. Joseph spent time as Potiphar's slave, and then he spent time in prison before God placed him into the position as Pharaoh's second. Israel was enslaved for 400 years in Egypt. Moses spent 40 years in the desert before God used him to bring Israel out of Egypt. The nation spent 40 more years in the wilderness. David spent his 20s running from Saul. After having been anointed the king, he spent his twenties running for his life. Paul spent three years alone in Arabia, and then he spent many more years in obscurity and Tarsus before the Lord began to use him. We have trouble thinking about Paul that way, right? I mean, it's Paul, the Apostle Paul! He was saved on the road to Damascus, and then he just sort of dropped off the map. Three years in the desert, many, many more years in Tarsus. He was not part of the scene. He wasn't one of the movers and shakers until Barnabas got him, brought him to Antioch. He began to serve in Antioch and from there we see the record of the man we revere as the Apostle Paul. It didn't happen overnight is the point I'm making. So this idea of waiting on the Lord, that service involves waiting. It really is not something just for Nehemiah for four months. This is a principle that we can see in many different cases for many different people in the Word of God. And therein lies a general rule for us. Oftentimes our service for the Lord involves waiting. God uses that time of waiting to prepare us so that we might serve Him. Let me put it another way. Do you remember why did Moses need to run to the wilderness? What did he do? Yeah, he killed the Egyptian. Why did he kill that Egyptian? The big picture, what was he wanting to do? He wanted to deliver his people. 40 years later, God uses him to deliver his people. He wasn't ready for it. He may have had the desire, the motivation, he did not really understand. Forty years later, God prepared him. God humbled him and this humble and meek man, not the proud Moses of the first 40 years of his life, but the meek and humbled Moses who spent 40 years in the wilderness. God used that time of waiting to develop him. so that he could then go back and do what he wanted to do 40 years before. Now he could be used of God to do that. So this idea of waiting on the Lord is not a foreign concept. God often does that, but here's the reality, waiting is hard. I mean, especially for us because we live in the day of instant everything, right? I mean, back not too many generations ago when meals had to be made from scratch every day, life was a little different. It ran by a different clock. But we live in the day where if you wanna go 60 miles away, is that a journey of any great length? Well, it's only 60 miles from here. I'll jump in my vehicle and drive there and I'll be there in less than an hour, right? What's 60 miles to us? But for most of human history, oh, they're 60 miles away. Oh man, we'll never see them. You realize that for most of the generations of humans, especially us European descended people, They did not, during the Middle Ages, you would have never gone more than five miles from the place where you were born. I mean, most of you probably have driven more than five miles just to come to church tonight, right? Different concept, different world. Waiting means different, something different to us today than what it meant for previous generations. Waiting is hard, but while we wait, there are some things we should be doing. And this is what we gain from the text. God is using this idea of waiting to prepare us. so that we can have a more effective ministry. We can offer more effective service for him. So what should we be doing during this time of waiting? Well, there are three things I wanna suggest tonight that we should be doing during this time of waiting. And one of them, you probably, when I say it, you're gonna say, well, yeah, that's obvious, but I have to say it. Waiting provides time for us to pray. That's what Nehemiah did. For four months, I believe, he was praying. Chapter 1, beginning in verse 5, not a one-shot deal. He is praying over and over 11 times in 13 chapters. Many of his prayers are just sentence prayers. What does that suggest? That he was a man of few words. Or maybe what it suggests is that he embodied what 1st Thessalonians 5.17 says should be true of us. Pray without ceasing. Pray without ceasing does not mean without any break. That would be an impossibility. The word translated without ceasing is used of a hacking cough. I can identify. And what is the thing about a hacking cough? Well, it just, you know, you cough and you cough and you cough and you cough. You pray and you pray and you pray and you pray until God gives you an answer. You pray without ceasing. Notice verse 4. The end of the verse, the king says, For what dost thou make requests? So I prayed to the God of heaven. Did he have time to go to a back room? Do you think he got down on his hands and knees in front of the king and prayed to the God of heaven? What does this suggest about the character of his prayer? Could he ignore the king and say, I'll be with you in just a second? What would be the character of his response? The king asked the question, how long could he wait before he answered? He had to have an immediate answer. And what this suggests is this prayer, when he says he prayed to the God of heaven, this is not some big, long, fancy, well-worded prayer. This is simply a man who prayed A man who spent long times in prayer, who in that moment simply says something to the effect of, God help me. And then he gives the answer. I think that kind of prayer is possible because he was a man of prayer. Because he prayed. He's been waiting for four months and he's been praying for four months. In my mind, he's been praying for an opportunity like this. And totally unexpectedly, from the human standpoint, he could not have known that the king would ask him that question. And he couldn't have been prepared on that day for that question. But here's the question. And here's the opportunity. God help me. And then he lays out before the king what he is requesting. Put it in context. Verse two says at the end, I was very sore afraid. This is not two friends who were, you know, having a conversation and one guy says, well, what can I do to help you? Lord, give me wisdom. And then you tell your friend, this is the king. You might be his counselor, you may be someone that he has a lot of confidence in because of, you know, his life is in your hands, but he's still, you know, what do we sometimes say? The law of the Medes and Persians. Do you understand that's who we're talking about here? I mean, literally, this is the man who embodies the law of the Medes and Persians. His word is law. And you don't come into his presence with a frown. You come into his presence happy because you're in the presence of the king and you don't want him to think he's a bad king. And if you're not happy, then that's in essence, he's gonna take it personally. So he's sore afraid because his life is now on a knife's edge. He doesn't know what's going to happen. And then the king says, well, what do you want me to do? Does he have any expectation that when he lays this out, the king's going to say, well, that's, yeah. Or is the king going to say, how dare you come into my presence and bring such as this? His life is hanging in balance. How did he handle it? Lord give me wisdom, a quick sentence prayer. It shows he was dependent on the Lord in every situation. But verse eight says it all well. Notice at the very end of verse eight. And the king granted me according to the good hand of my God upon me. Nehemiah wants us to understand that yes, the king responded to his request, but it was the hand of God that moved the heart of the king. Does God still do that today? Let me put it another way without trying to get overly political here. We have an election coming up a week from yesterday. Y'all knew that? Anybody? And you know, we may have certain expectations. I don't know what's gonna happen. You don't know what's going to happen. I remember two years ago, we all thought we knew what was gonna happen and it didn't happen that way, right? Remember that whole red wave thing that didn't materialize? So we really don't know what's going to happen. We don't know next Wednesday night how we're going to feel. Can I say this? Whoever wins that election, they're in the hand of God. God can move them however he chooses. And that's why from our perspective our service for God doesn't change depending on who the president is. We're the children of God. We're called to provide a witness to the hostile world around us no matter which party is in power. And during the time of service, we pray and we trust God and we are absolutely dependent upon Him. One reason God makes us wait is because He's teaching us dependence upon Him. That brings me to the second point very quickly. So, service involves waiting. Waiting gives us time to pray. Secondly, waiting is an opportunity to develop patience. You know, patience is a good thing, isn't it? Isn't patience one of the fruits of the Spirit in Galatians 5? So isn't it the will of God that we have patience? But what does James tell us about the development of patience? Patience is born out of trial. So we find ourselves in a time of waiting, and maybe that waiting is in a period of trouble, of difficulty. And while we're waiting on the Lord, we're praying to God of heaven, just as Nehemiah would have done, Lord, please do something about the problem in Jerusalem. And then he has to be patient. God didn't answer it the next day, or the day after, or the day after, or the day after. And four months later, seemingly out of nowhere, the king says, what would you have me to do? Waiting reveals our impatience and it teaches us to be patient. So an impatient leader, by the way, can cause a lot of problems by impetuously just jumping in. Someone made this observation about Nehemiah. I want you to think about it as we go through the book. From the way this book sets out the character of Nehemiah, it seems very clear that Nehemiah had a natural bent. His character was such that when he saw a problem, he gave swift and decisive action to meet the problem. That his character was not one to say, oh, we got a problem, I guess we need to think about that for a while. His character was, we got a problem, let's fix it. Now why is it striking to make that observation about the character we see develop through the book and we come to chapter 1 and see what did he do when the problem was presented to him? He prayed. He waited. He did not rush into the king and say, hey king, I need you to do something for me. That would not have gone over very well. He waited and he prayed. And he could not have known when he was praying how God would answer that prayer, but he kept praying, I believe. And God used him. He had his priorities in the right place. His patience is seen when he arrived in Jerusalem. We didn't read it tonight, but when he arrived in Jerusalem, we see this back in verses 13 and following, we find that when he got there, when he got to Jerusalem, he waited three days before he did anything. I mean, he gets to Jerusalem and then he's there three days. Nobody knows why he's there. The Jews would be scratching their heads saying, whoa, this guy's from the king's court. And he's got soldiers with him. What's he doing here? I hear he's one of us, but, you know, I mean, can you imagine for three days, the conversations, the whispers, the questions, he didn't say to anyone why he was there. And then he moved cautiously in the middle of the night. He walked around the walls, he actually rode a horse, and he went around the walls of Jerusalem. With his own eyes, he wanted to see what the problem really looked like. How much work is it really going to take to fix this? And then, he got the people together. See, consider, he could have gotten there the first day and said, we're gonna fix the walls, I'm meeting everybody in an hour. I mean, a man of action. He didn't do that. He got there, he showed patience. Showed patience waiting on God to act before the king gave him the opportunity. He showed patience when he got there. And then I want you to notice number three, and I'm almost finished, so just give me a couple more minutes or couple loosely. Waiting on God is a time for prayer. Waiting in God is an opportunity to grow in patience. But I want you to notice a very important thing that it is not spelled out specifically in the passage. But I think that it's rather obvious. Because when the king said, what are you requesting? And he says in verse 5, And then he goes on from there and he says, Could I have a letter to the governors who are on the other side of the river? Could I have a letter to the man over the king's forest so that I could get trees, so that I could use them to build the walls, to build my own house? What is all this indicating? If he had not given thought to what it would take to rebuild the walls in Jerusalem, and the king suddenly out of nowhere says, what are you asking for? What would he have said? Ah, could you give me a little time? But he had a plan. And this is what I want you to see. He has a plan. What has he been doing for four months? He's been praying while he waited. He's been exercising patience while he waited. And he's been thinking, what would it take to fix those walls. Whoever God raises up to do it, what will he need to fix that problem? If God gave me the opportunity to do it, what would I want available so that I could fix it? 52 days is spectacular, nearly miraculous. But I want you to understand this. Those 52 days of actual work on rebuilding those walls was only possible because he spent some time for four months planning. This is what I want to say. Sometimes we get the idea that prayer and planning are mutually exclusive. Are they? I mean, shouldn't we just trust God, bless God, God will take care of it, I don't have to plan. Is that right? No, we pray because we're absolutely dependent upon Him. That's what prayer ultimately is acknowledging, isn't it? But it is not improper or wrong to plan. Now, our prayers are that God would direct our planning and that he would bless it as he sees fit, but we have to plan. It is not improper at all to plan. And so, we see that that's what he does. He plans, he thinks ahead, and when the opportunity comes and the king says, what are you asking for? Could you give me some time? Let me go back and rebuild the walls. Could you give me..." Why did he ask letters from the governors, by the way? Because he's going through enemy territory. Where does he have to pass to get to Jerusalem? What group of people will he have to pass through? We know them from the New Testament. But they're mentioned here in this passage in verse 19 as Sanballat and Tobiah. Sanballat and Tobiah were two men who represented the Samaritans. The same Samaritans who, Ezra chapter 4, had stopped the work on the walls 13 years before. These same men, this same people group, they did not like the Jews. They wanted to get rid of the Jews. What would they do if they caught Nehemiah walking through there on his way to Jerusalem to fix the walls? He would not be allowed to pass. But if he has soldiers with him and a letter from the king saying, let him pass, what are they gonna do? Grudgingly. One more thing. Why did he ask for a letter for the man over the king's forests? Trees. I mean, are you going to rebuild the walls without wood? You're going to have to have wood. But understand this, and this was interesting. I was reading today about the man that we would consider the forester for the king. Same time period. Trees were a precious commodity. They always have been, especially in the Middle East at that time. And this man who was a forester cut down a tree and they gave him the death penalty for doing it. So without permission from the king to cut down trees to help rebuild Jerusalem, they couldn't have done it. He thought ahead. He knew what had to be done, how it had to be done, what T's needed to be crossed, what I's needed to be dotted. He did all of that while he's waiting on God to answer his prayer. It isn't wrong and improper to plan. We pray, absolutely, while we're waiting for the opportunity. We learn patience because we want it yesterday. But we're planning so when the Lord gives us the opportunity, when the door opens, we're ready to go through. Now, if God doesn't open the door, praise God. But if God does open the door, I wanna be ready. Isn't that a good rule of thumb for us? Realistically serving the Lord, this is a time for us to wait on the opportunities, pray for those opportunities, be patient as we wait for the Lord to open the doors of those opportunities. But bless God, by His grace, we can plan. And when the opportunity comes and God opens the door, we're not then going to waste time saying, oh, look at the opportunity we have. We better get a plan together. We have a plan. He had a plan. So, lessons we can learn from Nehemiah, important lessons that I think are practical for us. Now, next week we're gonna talk about the next major point of realistic service. I'll go ahead and give it to you now, and then we'll develop it next week, Lord willing. It's simply this. If you're going to serve the Lord realistically, you're gonna have to work with people. I'll just let that settle, and we'll talk about it next time. Let's pray. Father, we thank You for the opportunity we have to spend time thinking about Nehemiah, thinking about this book, thinking, Father, about a man that You used mightily, but a man whose life from a practical standpoint can be used for us to learn lessons. And Lord, the idea of what service looks like, the reality of that service, being realistic about what it takes for us to be utilized in service. Father, there's more for us to learn. I pray that we would, and I pray that each of us individually and our families and our church family Lord, help us as we wait to not spend the time of waiting doing nothing, but to pray by your grace to develop patience. And by your grace, may we be looking ahead and planning so that if you do open the door, Lord, we're ready to go through and serve you. So help us, Lord, to grow from our study. We pray in Jesus' name.