We're beginning our series in the book of Nehemiah, picking up right where we left off in Ezra. And Psalm 106 is fitting because the book of Nehemiah begins with a prayer, and a prayer that uses very similar language. It's a prayer of confession of sin, recognizing that our fathers have sinned, as the psalmist said in Psalm 106, and we have sinned. There's also a recognition that there's been a failure to recognize God's power. And it's upon God's power to deliver, God's power to intervene, that we depend. And Nehemiah voices those same ideas as Psalm 106 in this prayer. Nehemiah chapter 1. After we read the text, I'll give a little context for where we are in the story, the plan of redemption, the story of the Bible. I invite you to turn your attention now to Nehemiah, chapter 1. The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hekeliah. Now it happened in the month of Kislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa, the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire. As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days. And I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant, that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you, Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes and the rules that you have commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you have commanded your servant Moses saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to Me and keep My commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make My name dwell there. They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant. and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name. Give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. Now I was a cupbearer to the king." Thus ends the reading of God's holy word. Let's turn to the author of these words, the God of heaven, and ask that he would bless our time meditating upon his word this evening. Father in heaven, we thank you for your Word. We thank you for the light that it is to our life. We pray that you would make it our delight this evening, that we would hunger and thirst after it, that we would be able to focus on your teaching. Father, please make my words true. Please work despite my weaknesses, that the words that are sown in my weakness would be raised by your power. Father, we thank you for your Word and how it instructs us to pray to you and gives us guidance in that activity that we don't have to guess, but we can be guided by the truth of your Word even as we communicate to you. Thank you for this blessing, Father. We pray that you would bless the rest of our time. In Jesus' name, Amen. So we've just gone through Ezra. Nazareth began with the story about the first wave of God's people returning to the Promised Land, returning to Jerusalem and Judah. And God orchestrated that in an amazing way. He had a pagan king come and overtake the Babylonians, and he worked and stirred in King Cyrus' heart that he would send God's people back. And we read the various waves of that happening. There was the first wave with Zerubbabel and Jeshua. And they came back and they made an altar and they laid down the foundation of the temple. And then they eventually built the temple. And then Ezra came and he worked to bring about reform in the people's hearts. That was the second wave. And now we pick up 13 years after we last read in Ezra with Nehemiah, this third wave of a returning remnant. And we'll unpack that as that develops in the story of Nehemiah. As I introduced Ezra, you may remember that in tradition, Ezra and Nehemiah were really one book put together. And Ezra was likely the author of both books. And we will meet Ezra again in this narrative. And yet, we get a lot of insight into Nehemiah's perspective. And if Ezra was the author, he was certainly depending heavily upon Nehemiah's experience. It's an exciting book. It's a very dramatic book, and it's very personal It's a little bit different than Ezra that way because we we read Nehemiah's perspective Regularly throughout it's a first-hand account and for many reasons I think that's why Nehemiah is often taken up over Ezra if that's been your experience as it has been mine and As we begin this story, it may feel a little bit repetitive, and I'd ask you to bear with me, to continue to seek what God would have us know. And you might say, why are we preaching on this content again? Why are we coming back to this? And my first answer would be, well, God didn't see it repetitive to include the book. So there's value in having this other perspective of Nehemiah in addition to Ezra. There's also some overlapping events. You'll remember in Ezra chapter 4, we actually saw some foreshadowing of the opposition that we'll read about here in Nehemiah. There's other things that are very similar, reoccurring patterns in God's people. And yet, God is striving for us to see what He is doing in His people's lives, the importance of communing with Him, worshiping Him, how that ought to be priority, and the longing for a Messiah. The final restoration of God's people, what was just a taste in the remnant coming out of exile, is fulfilled when Christ utters in the kingdom of God. In Nehemiah 1-7, we're going to read about Nehemiah trying to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem. And Nehemiah comes in as very much a governor figure, a leader among the people, and he's concerned about the protection of God's people, and he's trying to build up this wall so that they would be protected against opposition from those who are in the surrounding areas and those who were in Judah while the Israelites, while the Jewish people were in exile. And yet while he's concerned about the wall and he's concerned about the practical need of safety, it's very clear that Nehemiah, his primary concern is the worship of the Lord. And we get hints at that in our sermon text this evening, in his prayer. And we'll get to some of this, but the report is that they are in great trouble and shame. And if we think about where Ezra left off with the need for confession and repentance and corporate oaths to try to strive for faithfulness, we know that God's people continue to struggle with sin. And when we unpack Nehemiah, the sin of God's people are on the forefront. And Nehemiah is concerned, yes, with the physical threat, the physical opposition, but he's also concerned with the surrounding nations influencing the worship of God. It's a very similar mission as Ezra. They wanted to worship God rightly, and they didn't want the surrounding nations to influence that worship, to paganize it, to make it a synchronistic thing, where they're bringing in pagan idols with the worship of the Lord. So they need to build the wall to keep out physical threat, but also spiritual threat. They were to be a people set apart. And they were struggling. And Nehemiah's solution The temple has been built. Now we need to build this wall. Chapters 1-7 are on the wall itself. And that message, that theme of worship really hits home with the remaining chapters which are focused on the heart of the people and the reformation of the people. Very similar to Ezra. Our main focus this evening is going to be the prayer itself. We have these introductory verses, verses 1-3. These verses, these events, the most likely background for these things are found in Ezra chapter 4. Verses 7-23 of Ezra chapter 4 are about an opposition to Artaxerxes, the king at the time, back in Persia. And Artaxerxes had given permission to the rulers of the land around Judah to put a stop to the work that was going on. What had been a blessing upon the people, Cyrus and Darius had blessed the work in Judah. Artaxerxes temporarily put a stop. He had been threatened that if the people continue to form their own identity, they'll stop paying you taxes, you'll lose control. And he says, okay, stop the work. And the people were in a desperate situation. And that's likely the context. We're taking place, the story's picking up there with King Artaxerxes and him by force stopping the people from work. There is hostile neighbors in Jerusalem. It's a desperate situation. They no longer have the blessing of this overseeing king of Persia. They're on their own. They're vulnerable. And Nehemiah gets this report. He says, how are they doing? And they are in trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down. Its gates are destroyed by fire. This news sets the rest of the letter in action, the course of events in action. Nehemiah responds. And yet notice what his initial response is. His first step, his first action is to pray. He weeps and he mourns and he fasts and he prays. As we get to know Nehemiah more, this will become more of a shock because Nehemiah is clearly a man of decisive action. He's a decisive leader and he puts things into motion. He goes and does things. And yet, as he is in this situation and hearing this news, his first action, his first response is prayer. And it's almost a transition in character. As we're not yet familiar with this Nehemiah, it's almost as if he's channeling some of Ezra. That was very much his MO. I'm going to remove myself from the situation. I won't act. I'm going to pray. And we saw how that was an example to the people and that spurred on the people in obedience. And yet Nehemiah, for the rest of the book, really doesn't operate that way. But here he does. And it's a model for us. This is a testament of his faith. Nehemiah, though he's a man of action through the rest of the book, and he's an active leader, very much in the middle of the action, he's still a man of prayer. And there's actually fourteen references to Nehemiah praying in this short book. Fourteen recorded times that Nehemiah prays. We ought to learn from Nehemiah And our first response to trouble, to difficult things, ought to be to pray. In chapter two, we will see that this prayer, there's no real response. Nothing happens until four months later, at least four months. The rest of the narrative doesn't pick up until four months. So we get this news, we hear this prayer, and then there's silence for four months. And then the story picks up again. Four months isn't really that long of a time in the grand scheme of things, but put yourself in Nehemiah's shoes. He's just heard from his brother that the people are in trouble. The gates are on fire. He has to wait for four months before there's a response from the Lord. That must have been an agonizing four months, waiting upon the Lord. Nehemiah is not sure if his people will survive, if there will be anyone left as the days go on. His hope for the Messiah, for the promises of God, the covenant promises are that this remnant would be preserved. His faith depends on it. And he waits four months before he can see anything happen as a result of this heartfelt prayer. And we're going to think about the character of his prayer this evening. He doesn't immediately pray for a change of circumstances. He doesn't pray that he would be able to go and rebuild the wall. That isn't what he voices to God. He doesn't immediately pray for the deliverance of God's people. He first begins by turning to the character of God, and then he prays a prayer of confession of sin. Again, this cues us into what is Nehemiah's true motivation? What is his true concern? His concern for the hearts of the people, that they would remain faithful, that they would confess their sin before the Lord, that they would be walking rightly before Him. And his concern for the wall is in service to that primary concern. We see Nehemiah demonstrate a good model for prayer. There's a helpful acronym that we sometimes use called ACTS, where there's adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication. And a biblical prayer is good to include those things. Nehemiah demonstrates it for us here, and so we'll just briefly go through each section in verses 4 through 5. We see adoration There's a praise of God He begins with praising God for who he is Praise the God of the heavens God is over all things Nehemiah is recognizing the transcendence nature of God and The God that Nehemiah worships is not like the pagan gods who is bound to the whims of the king or of the people's fancies. He is over all things. Nehemiah is recognizing that he's praying to him because he is the only one that is in a position to intervene in the way that God's people need intervention. God is transcendent, and yet even as He acknowledges His transcendence, He is a mere man speaking to the God of heaven. And He holds both of those things together. Earlier in our evening psalm meditations, we meditated on Psalm 116, and we thought about and studied how the psalmist there says that, I call upon the Lord because of who He is. Great and merciful and gracious is the Lord. I call upon the Lord because he has inclined his ear to me. It's because of who God is that I am able to pray at all. And Nehemiah is demonstrating that posture. The Lord hears and answers prayer because of who he is. Nehemiah gets back to that kind of idea, that kind of basis for prayer in later verses. But before he does, he moves to this second element of prayer. Confess your sins in prayer. If we're unfamiliar with the circumstances, this might be a confusing step for Nehemiah to take. As he's bringing the troubles of God's people before God, he begins with confession. And yet, he roots it in the history of God's people. If you look at verse 8, you see the story unfold of the warnings, and we've gone over this in our series on Ezra, but the warnings that Moses gave to the people, that when you go into the Promised Land, if you are unfaithful, if you are disobedient, there will be covenant curses. that your disobedience will result in you scattering. I will scatter you among the nations." Nehemiah recognizes that any difficulty that God's people are going through at this time is due to sin. Sin is not always the direct, or our difficulties in life are not always the direct result of our personal sin, but all difficulty, all that's wrong in life is the result of sin. Things are not right because we live in a fallen world, not because God made it to be that way, but because we rebelled against him and we are suffering the consequences. And it is good and right when we suffer corporately to corporately confess sin, to recognize that we haven't lived righteously before God. So whenever we approach God, it is good for us to recognize that we really don't deserve to have His ear inclined towards us. We must walk humbly before Him. And yet, as His children, we have the right to demand that He hear us. So we can pray boldly, and we see Nehemiah pray boldly, and yet there's a confession of sin. We also see Nehemiah has a proper perspective of his position in life. The end of this chapter reveals that Nehemiah is a cupbearer to the king. That was a position of prominence. We can think back to others that we read about in history, in the history of God's Word, of cupbearers. We think of Joseph. There's a position of prominence. It's also a difficult position to be in, an extremely stressful position to be the cupbearer to the king, to bring the king's cup before him and make sure that it is untainted, unpoisoned, and pleasurable to the king. and he's landed in this prominent position. We'll think about that more, but notice how he addresses the Lord in his own posture before him. Nehemiah, first and foremost, is a servant to God. Hear the prayer of your servants that I now pray. Nehemiah has this posture Though he serves this earthly king, he recognizes that ultimately all that he does is in service to the Lord. He is a servant to God. God is the Lord of his life. And he comes before him as his servant. This really is at the heart of the Christian walk, that we would recognize that Jesus is Lord over all of our life. And when we struggle, when we go through difficulty, particularly when our own sin is a struggle, when we're failing to put it to death, it's often because we have not acknowledged that the Lord Jesus is Lord over that portion of our life. There's a practice in biblical counseling where if someone's struggling with sin or struggling with acknowledging the Lordship of Christ, you write out every area of your life on a napkin or on a piece of paper, and you tear it up and you have all these categories. I'm a son, or I'm a brother, or I'm a worker, I'm employed, I'm a student. I have this job, I have all these things, and you write it all out. What are you? What do you do with your life? And you take all of the things that you are willing to say, I'm willing for Jesus to direct every area of what I do in this situation, and you place those out. But then you honestly look at those categories and you say, there are some areas of life that I'm not willing to give over to Christ. And you work through those things. You confess that hesitancy to give Christ lordship over a particular area of your life. We see Nehemiah here, confronted with the sin of his people, acknowledging that he is a servant to the Lord. He is in service to Him, that all that he is, is in service to God. And that is to be our posture. And confessing sin works that posture out. Like Ezra, Nehemiah also takes on as an intermediary the sins of the people on himself. We saw how beautifully Ezra did that in Ezra chapter 9. And Nehemiah does it here. He prays confession for the sins of the people. And we must remember that we have a mediator as well. And Christ took on our sins. As we confess our sin, we recognize that we are not paying for our sin as we confess it, but it has been paid for by Christ. And that is crucial as we deal with our sin. Lastly, as we look at this, verses six through seven, Nehemiah clearly defines sin as sin that is in opposition to God. Sin is a failure to do what God has commanded. There's no excuses made here. Consider the circumstances, Lord. The people are in a tough spot. But He says, No, we, I have failed, my fathers have failed, your servants of Israel have failed to do your word. No matter the circumstances, we have not kept your commandments, your statutes, the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. We confess it before you. This is the proper perspective, the proper posture to God, rich, full confession. We had robust sermons, robust examples from Ezra, and it comes up here in Nehemiah, and it'll come up again in Nehemiah. And it's a good reminder for us. We must be confessing our sin to the Lord. Nehemiah, in many ways, is recognizing that he comes before the Lord empty-handed. as one who has acted as an enemy to God. And yet, he makes his requests to God. And we are to make our requests to God. No amount of shame or guilt ought to give us an out from praying to God and asking that He would be active in our lives. Too often we say, I don't deserve my heavenly Father's ear. I've sinned too much. And yet, we are to confess, and then we are to ask that God would give us more, bless us, deliver us. We see that here in verses 8 through 11. The Lord has no reason to show mercy to this remnant in Jerusalem, except that he has said he would do it. And that is Nehemiah's basis for praying. The basis for his prayer, his hope for his prayer, is that God has promised that the people that turn to Him, the people that cry out to Him, He will bring out of the exile, bring out of that scattering, and He will restore them. And Nehemiah prays back God's promises to him. And he asks that God would intervene, and that he would be faithful. And he dares to make that request, not because of anything in Nehemiah, not because of any obedience by the people, but because of who God is and what He has said He will do. And is that your reason for hope this evening? Is your basis for hope your own abilities? The things that you're able to do, the comforts you're able to provide yourself, or is your basis for hope the promises of God? That He will save you from your sin, that He has sent His Son to die for you, to be raised from the dead, that He's ascended on high and He's right now interceding for you. and that he will come again. Is that your basis for prayer? Nehemiah appeals to the covenant promises of God, and the Lord protects his people. We are to pray God's promises back to him. Know the promises that are for you. Be reading God's word. Be comforted by these promises. Pray them back to God. Let that be your hope. Let that be your response to difficulty. Nehemiah has a tall order here. He's asking for the Lord to give him success before this man. We learn as we turn to Nehemiah 2, and as we'll pick that up next week, he's talking about King Artaxerxes. that he would have success in his interactions with this pagan king, who Nehemiah likely knows that Artaxerxes' response to the letter was that God's people be prevented from building the wall, from building the things that they had set out to build, the houses, their homes, rebuilding life there in the New Jerusalem. And yet he asks for success. Four months later, there's a response. And yet, you'll notice that Nehemiah asks for success today. In verse 11, he says, give success to your servant today. There's an example there for us. We ought to be praying continually. as long as today is today, that we would be asking for God to act in our lives, that He would be active. I must confess and repent that there are too many days that go by where I have not sought the Lord's action, where it's been what seems to me and from my perspective a run-of-mill day We just go about our pattern. We're not depending upon the Lord. I fail in that area. I think we often fail in that area. But we ought to learn from Nehemiah that we ought to be praying for success today, every day. The impression that this verse gives us, we can't say with certainty, but the impression it gives us, that as he says today, is that for four months, Nehemiah regularly, daily, was asking for the Lord to act, asking that he would intervene, that he would be faithful to his promises, that he would forgive them of their sins, that he would be praised, that he would respond to this plight in Jerusalem, and that he would answer. we ought to be continuing in prayer. When the answer doesn't come right away, pray again tomorrow. Continue to pray. You might say, well, it's easier to do when there is your people suffering, and the gates of the city are on fire, and there's a present drama, a present need. But we must see with the eyes of faith and recognize that there are real threats, real enemies seeking to undo you. to push back the light of Christ, to diminish your witness, to lead you into temptation. And yet, we have a promise. As we think about the gates of Jerusalem on fire, we think about the words of our Savior, that He will build His church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. There is a spiritual battle and we ought to be praying for success. We ought to respond to life's difficulty with prayer. Brothers and sisters, wait upon the Lord. Commune with Him. Go before Him in prayer. Praise Him. Confess your sins. Ask that He would act. There may be difficult decisions you have to make in your life, difficult things before you, and learn from Nehemiah's example here. As he placed his faith in the Lord and prayed, to the Lord. Respond with prayer. Let's do that now and ask that our Father would bless our time meditating upon His Word. Father, we thank You for this time that You have given us. We thank You for the encouragement that we have from Your Word, for the testimony that we have of Nehemiah and his faithfulness. And we know that Nehemiah was a sinful man, and yet he acted faithfully, and we have it before us that we would see his example and turn to You. that we would respond to the difficult things in our lives by depending upon you, by asking that you would act. Father, help us to recognize that in a very real sense, all of this life, this side of glory is difficult and broken, and that we need you, that there are real threats, that there is a real spiritual battle. Open our eyes to these things, that we would pray expectantly. We need your help. Too often we depend upon ourselves, so I pray that you would work by the power of your Spirit that the words that we've meditated on this night from your holy and perfect Word, that they would impact us, that they would change our hearts, that we would be more and more faithful in prayer. Help us to grow in what that ought to look like. We pray by the name of your precious Son, in Jesus' name, Amen.