We've already looked at the opening verses of Nehemiah. It's very simple and straightforward and devotional manner to encourage your hearts to pray. Nehemiah was thinking about the state of God's work. And that's where we start tonight. We're here to pray for the work of the various churches. So our focus is obviously on the state of God's work. Now despite the fact that here and there we have blessings, we have answers to prayer, movings of God, yet you look across the board, not only in the free church but right across the land, in the day in which we're living and the state of God's work is one to cause great alarm. We are in somewhat of an analogous situation to what is described here with the walls broken down, the gates burned with fire, the people held in reproach and suffering much affliction. Now obviously the degree of reproach and affliction is different from place to place, but nonetheless looking broadly at the cause of Christ in America or Britain or Western Europe today. And I mention these because historically, these were the great centers of spiritual blessing. Every one of those places. From Britain, the gospel spread across the world. It spread to the New World here in America. It had such an impact on the foundation of this nation. From this nation, it has spread around the world. And no nation in the last century or more has produced as many missionaries or as much financial support for the work of God as the United States. And so this country has been a place blessed of God and been used to bless others for God. Western Europe was a place visited by the Great Reformation. And while in some places that light was snuffed out, Yet in others, the work really prospered. And even in the darkest places, God established good witnesses that have persisted to this day. But what a difference. You can no longer talk about Western Europe as Christian. The United Kingdom, unlike the United States, has a specifically Christian Constitution. There is no attempt in the British Constitution such as it is. And I say such as it is because when I say Constitution, it's a very different kind of constitutional document than you would have here in the States. But there is no attempt to segregate God from the state or the state from God. And yet, Britain is far from being Christian. There is less God mentioned, less of God mentioned, less of godliness in public life there than there is here. So Britain is not Christian. And certainly. The segregation between the state and God is so complete in America. That you can only look and say the walls are down. The gates are burned with fire. The cause of God is in trouble, and the people of God are held in affliction. So we look at the state of the work. We look at the state of our own works. And we would be foolish to say that it's all that we want it to be. But it's not. Far from it. So as we take stock of the work, we're doing what Nehemiah did. We start where he started. And then he prayed. Now, I've gone into that a little already, the preliminary idea of his praying, and I'm not going to repeat that tonight. But I want you to notice what he prayed. And I want to come to something right at the very end of the prayer before I say anything about what's in between. This comes out in the very last verse. He's praying for the work of God, and now he says, he brings it down to himself, that the Lord would grant him mercy in the sight of this man, the king, for he was the king's cupbearer. Now there's a lot more in that, as the next chapter shows, than those words would initially indicate. In that prayer there was the idea, Nehemiah was praying for the work, but Nehemiah had a burden to be, and this is the point I want to emphasize, to be mightily used of God Himself in seeing the answer to the various needs. Nehemiah was not only praying God would meet the need, but that God would take him in a very meaningful way and use him in meeting the need. Now, you know, there is a sense in which you can never pray detachedly. You can never stand back and pray for them and leave it there. I think very often that's a weakness in our praying. Oh, I'll pray for you. But it's always at arm's length. We're praying, Lord, bless them. Do this for them. Do the other thing for them. Let them do this. Let them experience the other thing. But until we get to the place where Nehemiah got to, we're never going to pray effectively. If we have a burden for the work to pray, then it has to come down. Lord, I am willing to be an instrument of God that thou wilt use in answering my prayer. I want to be part of the solution. I want to be part of the answer. I want to be used of God. Now, that's not to say everybody's going to be a preacher, or a missionary, or what we call a full-time worker. Actually, every Christian is a full-time Christian. But it's not to say everybody's got to be, quotes, in full-time work. But it is to say that every Christian is a servant. You'll notice how when he was praying, Nehemiah said, I'm your servant. Remember the prayer of your servant. But then remember the prayer of your servants. All the rest of them are praying as well. Every Christian is a servant. And every servant has a role in seeing the walls rebuilt, the gates re-hung, the city re-established, The work of God prospering. Every Christian has a part to play in that ministry. And so we come to pray tonight. It's not just Lord bless them. Lord bless them indeed. These are important matters to pray about. But prosper me that I may work for God. I want to do something. Not just spectate as others do it. I want to do something for the work of God. I want to be used in helping it forward. I want to do my part in God's work. Now, in Nehemiah's case, his part was very prominent. But there was only one Nehemiah. And for one Nehemiah, there were hundreds of other people who didn't play that kind of role. But without their role, his role would have been a failure. couldn't do it all by himself. So tonight, as you come to pray, remember, when you pray for an answer, you've got to be willing to be part of the answer. We start with our own church. I trust you'll pray for the preacher. This preacher needs it. Any preacher will need it. The preacher who doesn't value the prayers of God's people should not be in the pulpit. He's an idiot. Should not be there. Paul, the apostle cried, pray for me, pray for me. Can you imagine that? I've often remarked on that in prayer meeting. This man who could get right through to God in a way that nobody else seemed to know anything about. He got revelations from God that nobody else received, not even the other apostles. And yet he says, pray for me. I trust you pray for the preacher. Pray for the services. Pray for the people. Pray for each other. Pray for the families. Pray for the unsealed. Pray for the community. Pray for the outreach. Pray for the success of the word and work of the ministry. All those things are very important. But Lord, grant me mercy. I need to know what I can do in the work of God. Now that opens up a whole line for you to think about. Number one, what am I doing in God's work? Number two, what can I do? What lies to my hand? What is that in my hand? God said to Moses, well, what's in my hand to do? I want to do it. I don't know what the Lord will use you in doing, but I want to tell you this, if you're willing to be used of God, God is willing to use you. There are ministries in the church that don't get a lot of attention. The Bible speaks of a gift of helps. It's always, to me, a fascinating gift. I don't think that that was particularly a charismatic gift, that it was like the gift of an apostle that, you know, It died out with the apostles, helps. It's one of the most necessary gifts to be exercised in the church of Christ. We read of Barnabas that he was a son of consolation, a son of encouragement. When I preached in Barnabas years ago, I pointed out something that has never left me. One of the most beautiful traits in Barnabas's character. Barnabas was always ready to see the grace of God in other believers. When others couldn't see it, he could see it. He would take up the weak. He would carry them along. He went to be an encouragement. Barnabas, for most of his life, when he fell out with Paul, both of them were certainly to be blamed because they acted most unlike themselves. But for the most part, Barnabas was a man without a personal agenda. Barnabas was there just to encourage. Now he was a mighty man, mighty preacher, mighty apostle. But he was there as an encourager. I've told you before that the little church I grew up in, we had the strangest bunch of people. We had some very capable people, but we had others that were not only capable, but they were unfortunately capable of blowing apart everything that they'd ever built. And every so often, you'd think that there was some evil spirit got into them. They would just blow apart everything good that they had done. Sort of a tough way to do the work of God. Everything had to be their way or the highway. Everything had to be It was no small issues. Every head was a big issue. As I said to you on one occasion, even to where you place the fruit or the vegetables when you were decorating the church for the harvest. I forget what it was, cabbage or something or other. I don't want that there. I want it there. I mean, you've got to be off your head, absolutely off your head to allow things like that to get to you. But they did. Yet, you know, when I look back in that little church, I find people who could pray and people who could serve. My memory goes back to one man who died in Australia. He went, he emigrated in the very early days. Jimmy would never have been a preacher. Jimmy could have prayed publicly in a prayer meeting, but he was not an eloquent man. He was not a learned man. You'd have to say, in many ways, Jimmy was very, very limited. But I want to tell you, Jimmy had a gift. He would stand at the door of that church, and on a winter's night, very few cars around in those days, people would be walking to church, maybe from the bus or from their house, cold, it was miserable, damp, maybe raging rainstorms, whatever. And Jimmy would be standing there to greet them. And I want to tell you, when you met Jimmy and he shook your hand and he smiled and welcomed you to God's house, you forgot every drop of rain you'd felt. Just a gift to encourage. It's a wonderful gift to have, and it's a wonderful gift to exercise. Now, how much does it cost you to smile? Not usually very much. And that was his great asset, and it was from the heart. He just loved people. When we lost him as he was emigrating, We lost something very, very precious. Now, there are other gifts. I met other people there. I remember my church in Canberra, later that became Balamony. We had a woman there, and I used to say, I wish I had a church full of her. She was just an ordinary country woman, farmer's wife. She'd come into church, that little country church to sit. And thankfully in those days, we had a lot of visitors coming in. I suppose they all wanted to come and see what the new preacher from the city looked like. I can tell you one thing they looked at, they saw the picture. I was 24 and a half years old and they thought I was 40. That's how good a job the photographer did for me. But they were coming in and you know, She'd be there, she'd talk to them, she'd welcome them. She had that ability never to stick her nose in anybody's business, never to pry and never to gossip, but just to be able to talk to people who felt they had known her all their lives. Helping in God's work. I could go down there and I met so many people, very ordinary people. Very ordinary. That's the charm. That's the beauty of it. They're just ordinary people. They're not out to make an impression. They're just there. They're praying for God's work. They love the work of God. They would live for it. They would die for it. They give to it. They attend it. And they're seeking others to bring them in unto the sound of the Word. And when they get the opportunity, they're there to serve Christ. Now, you can't pray You cannot pray for a work that you're not committed to. You cannot really pray for something that you're not personally invested in. I'm talking about your local work. Obviously, you can pray for foreign missionaries, but as a church, we have an investment in those. This is how Nehemiah prayed. Now, when he got to praying and his heart was in it for himself and for the whole work, you'll notice how he went about it. First of all, there was a confession of sin. The state of God's work has not come about by accident. It has come about by wholesale failure of generations of God's people. And that's what Nehemiah is praying. Generations of God's people. You know, back in the 1800s, back in the 1800s, preachers were already turning out tracts and leaflets about the death of Mrs. Prayer Meeting. The church prayer meetings were already beginning to go down. This is the 1800s. Remember, it was in the 1800s. If you start in America from 1799 or around there, right through to the middle 1820s, America was in the most prolonged revival this country has ever seen. Then in the 1850s, it saw another great revival. You go over to Britain, you had much the same thing. You had great movings of the Spirit of God, and yet in that very century, In the shadow of such movings of the Spirit of God, you had preachers having to lament. The prayer meeting is dying. Churches giving up in prayer. Christians giving up in prayer. Families giving up in prayer. Preachers giving up in prayer. They were lamenting it then. How far have we come down that road? Generations. God's people, the failure, the sin. And we are here where we are not by accident, but because of sin against God. In other words, Christians did not. They did not really cherish what they had from the Lord. They didn't cherish the preaching of the gospel. They didn't cherish the freedom to evangelize. They didn't cherish the power of prayer. They didn't do it. Oh, many did, but there was this general malaise. More and more worldliness coming in. More and more of the world. More and more mechanical religion. So here we are where we are. So we confess sin. We have dealt very corruptly. We have not kept your commandments. But then he pleads the promise, Lord, remember your word. Now he preached two things, Lord, we are where we are in fulfillment of your word. What has happened in Christendom is the direct result of what God said. God said, if you do this, this is what's going to happen. The church did it. This is what has happened. But now Nehemiah reminds him, Lord, remember the other side of that. You said that when your people would turn on to you, when they Came back to the lord wherever they were scattered you have promised That even though you were scattered to the uttermost parts of the earth yet. I would gather you He said lord. Remember you have promised there be a restoration Now one of the great themes of the bible is the theme of restoration Again, and again, you see it on a corporate level and on an individual level Restoration, what is it that said about our shepherd? In Psalm 23, he restoreth my soul. That's the great work of God. And it's not only for us individually, it's for us as a group. There is a restoration. And so Nehemiah is praying, Lord, remember your promise. And now hear my prayer. There was an urgency for Nehemiah. I think he came to the place where he realized You know, it's all right to say there's a promise. But if we don't see something soon, it's never going to be seen at all. He came to realize there's an urgency here. These walls are broken down. These gates are burned. There's just a few people who have escaped, and they are in great affliction. But other people had been sent into that land. You read of them and the troubles. In fact, the troubles persisted right through biblical history, and to a large extent they persist to this very day. Other people have been sent into that land. And looking at it from a human point of view, there was nothing to stop even more coming in. And if something weren't done soon, it wouldn't be done at all. I'm not in the business of being an alarmist. I believe God is going to do His work I believe that God has a program that he will fulfill to the end of time. I believe in the absolute sovereignty of God. But I also believe, I was pointing this out to the students the other day, this is something that too many people do not take note of. I am never in Scripture called to make the secret counsel and decree of God the basis for my daily life. I am called to make God's, what's called His preceptive will, His commandment, His revealed word. That's the basis for my daily life. Looking at things in a human standpoint, if we don't see God work soon, we're never going to see Him work at all. Somebody else may see Him work at a later time. you and I are going to live and die if we don't see him do something soon. That's where Nehemiah was, so there was an urgency. It's interesting that really in the same general time frame of the return from Babylon, you had Daniel praying. And in chapter 9, Daniel felt the very same thing. and he cried that God would hearken and do, and then he prayed, defer not, delay not, oh my God. There's an urgency here. We have to see the Lord work. Now, if we have that, it'll drive us to prayer. If we pray, we will be heard, and as we're heard, we must be ready for God to take us and use us as and when and where and how he will. Nehemiah prayed. He prayed for God's work. And without going into the rest of the story tonight, the reality is, because that man prayed, the work of God was turned around. The walls were built, the gates were hung, the city was reestablished, Inhabitants inhabited Jerusalem and once again it was a praise for God in the earth. And you could trace it all back to a man on his knees.