I'm going to read a specific passage because I'm going to work through various parts of this. You'll find the outline in your folders about the topic. It's the first topic. It's the foundational topic to introduce us to this book and then to bring us to the point where we'll see how the Lord will use the servant Nehemiah to bring about revival in Israel. But before we continue, let's express our dependence on God in prayer. Let's pray. Gracious and merciful God, we come to thy presence. We are thankful for the blessing to be able to be here. Thy marvelous providence, we have come from various churches from east to west and north to south. We have been gathered together underneath the teaching of thy word. It is a gracious word. It is a full word. It is a word of instruction, a word of comfort. May it be a word that speaks to our hearts even as we listen to the topics and help us as we, this evening, begin this journey alongside of Nehemiah so many years ago. It's a blessing to these young people and give that they may know the God of Jeremiah in their hearts and seek the same reforms and blessings that he was able to experience as well. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. I want to consider these six things you find in your outline this evening. Blessed, concerned, prayed, expected, depended, boasted. And some of you are maybe still looking for Nehemiah, but it comes after the history books in the early part of the Old Testament. It's not way in the back, even though the history of the children of Israel is actually taking place toward the time of the Lord Jesus. So I want to briefly bring you up to speed in regard to that. You know that God brought the children of Israel, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, out of Egypt from being in slavery there. Moses led them out, and then Joshua. Then you have the time of judges, and then the kings. You've got David and all of his children, and Solomon, and so on. And then you have the two kingdoms. After the two kingdoms are divided, the people sort of depart from the Lord. And the prophets Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, and Micah are sent to call the people to repentance, less for their judgment to come. Then you have other prophets who prophesied from the time of Hezekiah to the time in which they will be exiled or brought into captivity in these other nations around them, Assyria and Babylon and so on. And you have then the minor prophets, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel as well. Now, the northern kingdom is taken over by the Assyrians in 722 BC. They were scattered. And those are called the 10 tribes that are scattered. But what we're talking about here in particular in Nehemiah is the southern kingdom of Judah. And in 586, the Babylonians and Nebuchadnezzar had come in to conquer the Jewish people. Jerusalem was destroyed. The temple was obliterated and the walls of the city were taken down and the gates were destroyed and also burned with fire. Eventually, after the Babylonians had ruled for a time, you remember Babylonian and Daniel and so on, but after the Babylonians, you have the Persian Empire who who take over. And they're pretty much ruling the land at that point. Now, there are still people in exile or in captivity of the ruling nation. And that's what's taking place here. And 70 years after God had said, I would bring his people in judgment for 70 years because they, for 490 years and more, had not kept his Sabbaths, he was going to bring them into captivity. And then you have the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Now, Ezra is going to, if you turn back a couple of pages, you get to Ezra. And before that, you have Chronicles. So these histories are just following each other in the order of chronology. So what's happening? It's an amazing history that the heathen kings are permitting the people they had conquered to go back to their homeland. 50,000 Jews had returned to Israel, to Jerusalem. That's what Ezra is about. King Cyrus had permitted them to return, and they began rebuilding the temple. And that had basically been completed by the time Nehemiah is ministering and serving back in the kingdom. Another wave of Jews had returned in 458. They beautified the temple and were recovering the teaching of the law. But the walls were still not repaired. The gates were still laying in rubble and ash. So that brings us to Nehemiah. And we learn, if you look here in our chapter together, that he was a cupbearer to the king. He was living in exile, just as many of the other Jews were, except those who had returned. He was living in a foreign land. But his thoughts We're still on the church, the people of God, the kingdom of God. Now look in chapter one, the last sentence of the last verse. I was the king's cup bearer. And going on, it says, And it came to pass in the ninth month, in Nisan, in the 20th year of Artaxerxes, the king, that wine was before him. And I took up the wine and gave it to the king. That's really all we're told about Nehemiah. This is what he's doing. He's a servant to King Artaxerxes. He has a wonderful position. He's living a royal life. He's the one, of course, who has to taste the wine. You know, in those days, these kings were afraid of being poisoned or a coup to take place. And maybe someone would poison the food or the wine. And they had cupbearers, then, who would taste the wine, make sure it was not poisoned. And then the king would feel comfortable in drinking it. Now, of course, the kings also would often spend a lot of time talking to their cupbearers and the courtiers around them. And Nehemiah then was a man who, we could say, had even a great amount of authority. And perhaps the king, Artaxerxes, would ask him, what do you think about this, Nehemiah, at times? What should I do? But ultimately, the point I want to make here is, this is ultimately not the reason God is going to use Nehemiah. You don't need to sit here tonight and think, well, I'm not Nehemiah. I'm not next to President Trump or Prime Minister Trudeau and serving him, so I have great authority and power to do something. That's not why God's gonna use Nehemiah. It all starts here with this burden and this call of God in the heart of Nehemiah. You see that he had a luxurious, he had a prosperous lifestyle. It seems like he had never been sad. Look at the end of verse 1 of chapter 2. Now, I had not been before time sad in his presence. He had it made. Comfortable. Every day, he had nothing to fear, unless, of course, King Artaxerxes would be overthrown, then he might have things to fear. But he had it made. What about you? How does this relate to you? How does Nehemiah relate to us? I know you're not in captivity. We're not slaves today. That's true. But if you just take a moment, put on your thinking caps, as Mr. Rugendoyed asked us to do, how are you privileged? How many other young people in this country, in this world, are able to come to a wonderful camp, to enjoy the food that you've been eating so far already, and to have the blessings you have? I think many of our parents and grandparents even have not had the privileges that you have today. Many of your parents, likely more so your grandparents, and maybe even great-grandparents, have not experienced the blessings you have. Sometimes coming out of World War II, they had hardly enough food to eat. All they could eat was turnips. If you go talk to your great-grandparents, they'll probably tell you, in the war, that's all they had to eat. You have many blessings. You probably just come here in a part of your life. It's unfolding. You're going to school. You have a place to live. You have nothing to worry about for where you're going to get your clothes from. You're able to expect to go on to college and get a degree, perhaps, and get married and have children. And everything is good. You're blessed. But we read on this particular day that Nehemiah was sad. He was concerned. Look at verse 1 through 4 of chapter 1. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hattuk, came to pass in the month Chislu in the 20th year as I was in Shushan, the palace that Hanani, one of my brethren, probably his brother perhaps even, came he and certain men of Judah and I asked them concerning the Jews that had escaped which were left of the captivity and concerning Jerusalem. They said unto me, the remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem also is broken down and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And it came to pass when I heard these words that I sat down and wept and mourned certain days, fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. I don't doubt a moment. that in the life of Nehemiah he had thought about before, because it's expressed to us to some degree, what's going on in my homeland? What's going on with the kingdom of God, of my fathers, the God who I serve as well? What's happening there? Is God blessing them? Is God prospering the work of this temple being built? He's just curious, in many ways, about the work that's being done there. And then these people come. Hanani, his brother, and others come and tell him that his brethren are in great affliction and reproach. And what do we read on hearing these words? Nehemiah sat down. And the literal expression here is he almost collapsed. He just sank down, fell to the floor. He wept and mourned certain days and prayed. We could say he was floored by this report. Why was this so important to Nehemiah? Well, the walls of a city are emblematic of an idea of protection. But it's also the idea of setting up your own a place of worship, not only, but your own state of government, for example. It also meant that at this point in time, God was not restoring Israel to its grandeur and its place that He had promised He would restore them to in time to come. It seems that King Cyrus had taken a different approach than the Babylonians. He had allowed certain people to return back to Jerusalem to begin building. But it seems that the people who had gone back, and even those who had remained behind in the first place, had become discouraged. There's no more work being done. They had become somewhat, you could say, careless. But there's more than this outward concern that Nehemiah has. He's concerned especially about the spiritual condition of the people there. There was seemingly a lack of concern for the work that needed to be done to build the walls to restore the kingdom of God. Their people had become complacent walking among these ruins. The walls were in disrepair, the gates were ashes, and the people carried on with life. What about you? The question of Nehemiah's concern comes to us. And I ask you to think about it. Put on your thinking caps and ask yourself the question, what's the state of affairs in our church? What's the state of affairs in your soul, spiritually? Are the walls built and the city gates in place so that evil and sin is walled out and the cause of God and his kingdom are being practiced in our lives and in our churches? Let me give you an example. If you hear of a young person who's your age or in your congregation who's overcome by some sin, you're aware of it. Or someone who's not walking in the way of the Lord. Does that become a concern for you? Are you concerned at all about that? Are the walls in your own heart and life broken down? The spiritual walls of discipline. The walls in which are designed to protect you from evil. What have you done with the gates, your eye gate? What are you letting in as you view the computer through that eye gate? Are the walls so broken down and become ashes that what's coming in is defiling you inside, corrupting you, immoral things, simple things, pornography? Your ear gates, what's coming into that gate in your life? What are you listening to? What voices do you hear? Are the walls of your heart broken down? Let me ask you another question. Is there really any difference between, if you really just, if we would take a bunch of you and then a bunch of your people you associate with who don't go to church maybe, or maybe do, but they're living in the world and living like the world. Is there any difference between us and how we live and what we say than what the world does and the world says? That's what was concerning to Jeremiah. He looked at those, his brothers, who are back in the place where they're living with complacency around the walls that are broken down and the city gates that are burned. And he fell to the ground. Is this a burden in your life? As you mingle with the other young people here this week, will this kind of concern and burden be on you? Or is your burden that God's name would be lifted up, that God's name would be feared and worshipped and that the other young people here would know the Lord Jesus Christ and receive him and love him and go back to their homes and to their churches and the same would continue to unfold in a exponential way? Now, before this message came to Nehemiah, before Hananiah came to him with the message of the broken walls, it seemed as if Nehemiah was somewhat content, but not anymore. As you hear this first message and the foundational message, as you think about your own spiritual condition and the spiritual condition of your friends and of the church, what does it do? Or do you just carry on as if this is the way we are, the way we live? Well, this brought Nehemiah to prayer. You know, when Nehemiah hears this message, from his brethren. He doesn't make a plan with his brother and say, what are we going to do? How can we solve this problem? He doesn't go to King Artaxerxes and say, you know, I have this great need. Can you help me out? Not at all. He goes to the king of kings. That's where we need to go, and often, sadly, it's the last place we go, but not in the life of Nehemiah. As you read through this book, and as you'll hear the other messages, you'll see that Hananiah's life was a life of prayer. There are nine prayers recorded in this book, and they're all significant. If you look at verse four, this is what happened. It came to pass when I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned certain days and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Verse six, let thine ear now be attentive and then eyes open that thou mayest hear the prayer of thy servant, which I pray before thee now day and night for the children of Israel, thy servant, and confess the sins of the children of Israel, which we have sinned against thee. Both I and my father's house have sinned. He sat down and he prayed and he wept. I want to ask you a question. I ask myself, when was the last time you wept a single tear when you prayed? Here's Nehemiah sensing the great concern. He fell down, and he wept for certain days. How long? Well, look at chapter 1, verse 1. This was the month when it came to him, which was Cheslu, which is December. If you go to chapter 2, verse 1, it came to pass in the month Nisan. That's what's happening here. He's praying this long. That's in April. How long is that? January, February, March, April, four months. I'll, of course, fast continuously through that time. But this was such a burden to him. He's weighed down by this. And he prays continuously, day and night. This is what leads us in to the end of this chapter, verse 11. O Lord, I beseech Thee, let now Thine ear be attended to the prayer of Thy servant, to the prayer of Thy servants, who desire to fear Thy name, and prosper, I pray Thee, Thy servant, this day. This must have been a daily prayer, so that when the day that we're going to read about in chapter 2, he's standing before the king, and he's looking sad, and the king asks him a question, this has been his prayer. And he's able to then immediately Issue a silent momentary prayer to god and lay out before the king What his request is The reality is if you write something in your notes under this point the reality is this was the beginning Of the work of god that he was going to accomplish in the building of the walls of jerusalem These walls were 700 miles away, but it began here on the work, on the knees of Nehemiah. Let's look at his prayer a few moments. What does he do first of all? He acknowledges God. Five, O Lord God of heaven, the great and terrible God, the great and awesome God. We can read terrible in many ways, but really here it's the idea of the awesome God who is filled with splendor and glory and who's like our God, that keeps covenant and mercy with those who love him and observe and keep his commandments. And then he goes on to describe, Lord, let your ear be open. Let your ears and eyes see and hear what's happening. Did God not know what was happening? Do you need to be reminded by Nehemiah? Not at all. But what Nehemiah is doing in his prayer is saying, Lord, don't you see what's happening? Is not your heart moved also as mine was when I hear what is taking place with your people and your name in Jerusalem? Does that affect us? When we hear what is happening in the church, hear what's happening in this world, And he goes on here in this prayer to confess his sins. He doesn't just confess the sins of those people. Why are those people, Lord, so complacent there in Jerusalem? No, he is saying, I and my father's house, we have sinned. We have dealt corruptly, verse 7. We have not kept the commandments, nor the statutes or the judgments which we were commanded by thy servant Moses. Then he comes to remember, eight, I beseech thee, the word that thou commandest thy servant Moses saying, if we transgress, you will scatter us among the nations. But if we return, and this is the verse that you find also, of course, in your folders and the brochure. If we turn and keep the commandments and do them, though you were cast out into the uttermost part of heaven, yet will I gather them from fence and bring them into the place I have chosen to set my name there, Jerusalem. The point Nehemiah does and the point I want us to realize is he takes God's own word and promise. And he brings them back to God. He's saying, God, are you going to do a half a work? The temple's built, but the city walls are still in ruin. And Nehemiah lays claim to this promise. And it's a promise you'll find if you do some study in the Old Testament, in Leviticus, and Deuteronomy, and 1 Kings, and 2 Chronicles, and Psalm 130, for example. Really, this is the crescendo, this is the climax of the prayer of Nehemiah. Lord, remember your words you have promised to your people. This will be the reason why he will be emboldened to speak to the king the way he does. But what about us? What about you? You ever been awake because of a burden and care for your friends? You don't know the Lord or the church? The cause of Christ? Have you ever burdened to the point where you've even fasted? Cried tears as you pray for someone you know who needs to be saved? Or does that sound strange? Do you, do I have this kind of care for the house, the church of God? Do you want revival to break forth into this camp as well? It's happened before in these camps where the Lord has visited. He has perked consciences and hearts of young people who came. I can take you to places where young men were gathering around and they were crying out to God, where chaperones were called to cabins at three o'clock in the morning because the whole cabin was weeping. They needed to be reconciled to God. Have you prayed for this? Are you concerned that that would be what happens here? It begins here with the prayer of confession as well. We have sin. Do you acknowledge what Nehemiah does here? We haven't kept. I haven't. You haven't kept the commandments of God. We haven't been the lights that we're called to be in this world. The prayer of Nehemiah here isn't, Lord, please get those people who are complacent in Jerusalem to get busy with the work of the temple and building the walls. It's not his prayer. His prayer is basically this. He hears with concern what's happened. He falls to the ground. He begins to pray. And his prayer is, Lord, here am I. Send me. Will this be your prayer as you are here at camp. And what does he do? He pleads the promises of God. Can anybody here tell me a promise of God? There's over 7,000 in the Bible, so you should be able to come up with a one or two. Go ahead. Shout it out. Promise of God. OK, never sending a rainbow in the cloud. What else? I'll never leave thee nor forsake thee. He promises eternal life for those who come to Him, believe in Him. There's all kinds of promises that God has in His Word. We should be able, if we want to be like Nehemiah, to immediately begin to say the promises of God. If we can't, we obviously are not spending enough time hearing what God has said. And how could we be like Nehemiah, who's going to take, Lord, you have said this. Therefore, do this if we don't know what he said. He who comes to me, I will in no wise cast him out, he said. That's a promise. And it's one you can take to him in prayer. That's what we need to learn here from Nehemiah as well. But to learn as well, just because we go to God, Lord, I come to you now, so don't cast me out to expect immediately to have an answer that would satisfy us completely. That isn't always the way God works. He can. But how long did it take here from the time that Nehemiah started praying to the time that God was ready to do the work he was planning on doing? Four months. But during this time, we will see that Nehemiah was expectant. He expected God to answer. And so here you have Nehemiah. He's got this care and burden. He's been praying and fasting and coming before the Lord with these requests and this prayer. And now he's standing before the king, and the king notices something different. He's sad. Now, if you were a king in those days and your cupbearer is coming up to you and he's very sad and gingerly hand you his cup, what are you probably thinking? Hmm. Is there poison in that cup? Is he part of a conspiracy to actually kill me? Look at the end of verse two. The king said to me, why is your countenance sad? Are you sick? This is nothing else but sorrow of heart. Then was I sore afraid. Nehemiah was afraid when the king asked him what was wrong. So he replies to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my countenance be sad? When the city, the place of my fathers, and the sepulchers lies waste, and the gates thereof are consumed with fire. And the king asked him the question, what are you making requests for? And then you have this short phrase. So I prayed to the God of heaven. And that instant, Nehemiah could not pray some long, elaborate prayer. He had to answer this question of the king. What do you want? And what do you suppose he had prayed in that moment? Lord, help me. God, just give me words to speak. I've been praying for days, and today is the day, as he's prayed at the end of the prayer in verse 11. This is the day. Now what am I going to ask for? Lord, help me. And what does he ask for? Everything. Nehemiah is so encouraged by this moment of God's providence of the king saying, what do you want? That he asks for everything. He doesn't simply say, you know, I'd just like to take a trip back to my own people in Jerusalem to see how this work is going on the walls. That's not what he said.