Sermon Transcript
The words of Nehemiah the son of Hachaliah. Now it happened in the month of Kislev in the 20th 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 commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word that you 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, and give success to your servant today and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.
Now I was cupbearer to the king.
As the calendar clicked over to 2021, I had actual excitement that we were starting a new year. I, I don’t think that’s ever happened to me before. I mean, like, New Year’s Eve can be kind of fun sometimes, but the real difference between December 31st and January 1st has really never put any extra pep in my step. But this year, this year was different. I am ready to begin again.
How about you? You ready for a new direction or a fresh start? I’m sure that you are. But question for us, As we begin again, what are we shooting for? Do we only want to get back to normalcy?
Like, is that all that we want? Or do we want to aim for something bigger than simply normal?
I’ll tell you, I want something better than normal. I want something grand. Something that will really fill my soul. So, how do we get there?
How do we restart in a way that will make that happen? How do we restart right?
Nehemiah has some answers for us. Now, a little background on Nehemiah. He’s a Jewish boy, but he’s living in Persia. So how does a Jewish boy get to Persia? Well, many of you know the timeline of Israel, but for those of you who don’t, the northern part of Israel was conquered by Assyria in 722, and the 10 Jewish tribes living in the north, they were completely wiped out and have never in a serious way been identified again.
The 2 Jewish tribes in the southern part of Israel were able to hang on, and they survived Assyria, but they did not survive Babylon. Babylon came and utterly destroyed the southern part of Israel called Judah in 586, and Babylon wiped out everything. That’s Jerusalem with the temple, the city walls, everything. It’s all gone. It’s, it’s gone.
And they carried off some Israelites back to Babylon, carried them off into exile, and captivity, and that included some of Nehemiah’s ancestors. Babylon, however, did not stay the leading world power forever. They were conquered by Persia in 539. So now, since Babylon has been conquered by Persia, Nehemiah’s family is now in Persia. And Persia was a little bit more gracious than Babylon or Assyria, and they began to let some of the Israelites return to their homeland and even rebuild the temple that had been destroyed.
So, we find Nehemiah in Persia, the descendant of exiles. But when his story opens in the pages of Scripture, he seems less like a prisoner of war and more like a prince. He’s in the lap of luxury. He tells us, the last verse of chapter 1, he’s the cupbearer to the king. That means he would always be with the king as the king traveled.
And the king did travel because the king is always going to try to be in the most comfortable spot, if that’s a summer home or a winter palace, always gonna have great views, comfortable weather, servants galore. And Nehemiah, as the king goes, Nehemiah gets to tag along because he’s the cupbearer. And what’s the actual job of the cupbearer? Many of you, I know, already know, but he eats the food and drinks the wine before the king eats the food and drinks the wine, so that if anybody has tried to poison the king, Nehemiah gets poisoned instead and the king is spared. So Nehemiah, in other words, is a professional eater.
And a professional wine drinker. That’s his job. Eat royal food, drink royal wine, travel around with the king. He has no idea the trajectory of his life is about to change. He has no idea he’s about to begin again, but he will begin again.
And as he does, as we look at our passage for today, Nehemiah shows us the 4 initial steps for how we can begin again. So, step 1 to beginning again, it might not be what you think.
Grieve. Step 1 is grieve. Say, what? What? Yeah, grieve.
Grieve for what should be but isn’t. So, have you ever encountered something that made you want to shout, it shouldn’t be that way!
That’s where to begin when you begin again. Bryan Stevenson wrote the book Just Mercy. Bryan Stevenson was a student at Harvard Law School. He then took an internship with the Southern Prison Defense Committee in Atlanta. They sent him— the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee sent him to a penitentiary in Jackson, Georgia to meet a man named Henry who was about to be executed, or he was condemned to be executed.
Henry had been in prison for 2 years, but no one had met with him, no family, no anybody for 2 years, no legal counsel was looking at his case after he was convicted. Stevenson’s job going to the penitentiary was only to tell Henry he would not be executed for at least a year and to say, you know, the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee would, we’d get somebody on the case as soon as we can. So Stevenson is supposed to drop this message and then he can get out of there. That’s all he needs to do. But then he meets Henry, and they strike it up, and they talk about music and movies and family and their faith, and 3 hours went by just like that.
And then the guards burst back in. They’re really mad that Stevenson has overstayed his time, and this particular guard mistreats Henry getting his shackles back on, but Henry appears really patient, and he even sings an old spiritual as he’s being escorted out of the room and down the hall, and something breaks in Bryan Stevenson. He says, there are prisoners condemned to die and no lawyer is reviewing their case. He says, something is wrong with that. And now, 30 years later, Stevenson has spent all this time pouring himself out for those who have been failed.
By the criminal justice system who were wrongly convicted, and because of Stevenson’s work, they have now been set free. You see what we’re talking about? Something happens and it makes you want to shout, that’s not the way things should be! It grips you and it changes your life. That’s what happened to Nehemiah in Nehemiah chapter 1.
What I want to know is, has it happened to you?
In our area here, San Francisco region, Pew Research surveys that only about 10% of people identify as evangelical Christian, and only about 20% of that 10% attend church regularly. So, there’s only 2 or 3% of the population that is going to church as evangelicals in our area on any given Sunday. That breaks my heart.
Jesus has the keys to living in right relationship with God, right relationship to others, and right relationship with the physical world around us, with creation, and the far majority of people around him— around here that They don’t know him, so they are hurting. They’re in broken relationship with God. They are in stunted relationship with others, and they are living in a diminished capacity in relation to the rest of creation.
Do you want a hint of proof of that? I know this isn’t irrefutable, but it’s a hint. The only statistical group in to report improved mental health between 2019 and 2020— now this is from Gallup surveys, all right— but the only group to report increased mental health are those who regularly attend religious services. Everyone else, every other group, doesn’t matter— men, women, every age, every political affiliation, everybody, everybody had decreased mental health between 2019 and 2020. But connecting with a church on a regular basis?
Doing better. Improved mental health. People need Jesus. We have to get Jesus to people. That is our primary mission as a church.
Do you, do you know the largest reason, in, in my mind at least, I won’t speak for everybody, but in my mind that for now we have decided not to gather in person for church. You know the main reason in my mind? Because, because we believe if we only meet virtually, we will have a better chance— no guarantee, but we will have a better chance of getting Jesus to more people in our community. We believe if you invited your average neighbor— and remember, your average neighbor around here is not a Christian, and we want you to invite them to church. If we— if you didn’t know that, please invite people to church.
But if you invited them to an in-person service, the majority of people around here in our area would say something like, what are you trying to do, kill us? Why do you care more about your rights to meet than my health? That’s what they would say. That’s what they would think. And that would put us in the position of because we had invited them to an in-person service, we have now burned a bridge that that person needs in order to get to Jesus.
On the other hand, if you invite your non-Christian neighbor to church and you can say something like, you know, we’ve decided only to meet virtually even though we have the right to meet in person because we care about you, we care about our community, and here’s a link to our online service. I think that builds a bridge for that person to get to Jesus. They will listen to a church more at least, who puts its own rights on the back burner and prioritizes their needs, their health, their safety. I think being only virtual gives us a better chance of getting Jesus to people around here, as long as we’re inviting them to it and explaining we’ve decided not to meet in person. That’s our mission, right?
Get Jesus to people. You got to have some kind of mission. You got to be going somewhere. You, you have to have something about which you are passionate enough to get you out of bed in the morning. Something has got to break your heart.
Now Nehemiah hears the walls are down around Jerusalem Verse 3, and without the walls up, the city can just be overrun by anybody. All the progress that has been made rebuilding the city and rebuilding the temple up until this point is in danger. So, he weeps. Verse 4, he mourns for days. He’s a snotty mess.
He stops eating. He’s devastated because Jerusalem is in danger.
Does anything grip you like that? If not, you’re not beginning again. You, you aren’t going anywhere. Life is probably just about you and your comfort and your fulfillment. What’s the fun in that?
We’re built to be on a mission, and until you have a mission, you haven’t really begun anything, let alone beginning again.
Next step, step 2, pray.
After Nehemiah sees the cause that will change his life forever, what does he do?
He goes to the only one who can do anything about it. It. God. He prays. Now, one thing you’ll notice reading Nehemiah is that Nehemiah is not contemplative.
He doesn’t go sit by Walden Pond and journal. That’s not who he is. He’s a doer. He’s a strap on the tool belt and get to work. Like, when you see a problem, fix it.
He’s not let go and let God. He’s not Jesus take the wheel. Do it.
But even he knows, even he knows he needs to go to God. When he starts praying, he prays just like Jesus would later tell his disciples to pray. He starts, Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Did you see that? Verse 5, he says, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant.
And he says, God, you are big and mighty, so I’m coming to you. He doesn’t first go to the king, even though he hangs out with the king all the time. He doesn’t first go to the king, and he notably calls the king a man. Verse 11, this man. Now, everyone else in Nehemiah’s day believed the king was a god.
The king believed he was a god. But Nehemiah says to the Lord in heaven, give success to your servant today and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.
Nehemiah says, I know who’s really in charge, and Lord, if you so wish, the king will grant me what I ask. The king answers to you, God. God, you hold the king’s heart. God, You are the one who holds the king’s decisions. The king is nobody.
He is a man. You are God. That is how Nehemiah prays. Step 3, Nehemiah includes something rather peculiar in his prayer. He repents.
So, step 3 is repent. Verses 6 through 8, Nehemiah confesses the sins of the people of Israel. He says, I, or even I in my father’s house, have sinned. We’ve acted very corruptly against you and have not kept your commands.
In other words, before going forward with what he’s going to do, Nehemiah goes backward. He owns the reasons why Israel is in this mess in the first place. Now, for Nehemiah, this is interesting. His family hasn’t been in Jerusalem for maybe 140 years. He— Nehemiah did not participate in the corruption that sent them into exile.
So Nehemiah could easily say, that was my ancestors, that’s on them, that wasn’t me. Yet he doesn’t do that. He knows— he knows there’s no point in trying to get back to the land or trying to establish Israel unless they really deal with the problem that got them exiled in the first place. Like, unless we admit and own the error, we’re probably bound to repeat it. It’s a little like a cavity, right?
You have to get in there and you have to dig out all the crud. You can’t just cover it up. But oh, How we love to put a cover over our mistakes, don’t we? What do we do? What happens after we make some big goof?
What’s the first thing that we think? Something like, I hope nobody finds out, right? Because we wrongly believe if no one finds out, we’ll be able to move forward without the pain of admitting that we’re wrong, right? Nobody needs to know the wiser. Right?
I can learn from this privately without owning it publicly. That’s what we think. But as you have probably already realized from life experience, covering up our mistakes doesn’t free us from them. In fact, like, the more we cover up, the more we work to justify, the more we excuse ourselves from responsibility, what happens? Happens, the more stressed and anxious we become, the more defensive that we are to others.
It’s not the way forward. So, question for us— Nehemiah spends significant time on this, so we can too— what is in our past, what might be in our present, that we don’t want to own? Let’s start as individuals, then we can get more When has someone pointed out one of your faults and you didn’t own it? Like, even if you said sorry out loud, right, in your head you’re not sorry. You’re still justifying it.
Like, you don’t, you don’t actually think that it’s a problem, or you don’t really believe that it’s your fault, even if you apologized verbally. Anything like that? That in your life?
Anything you haven’t owned in that way? Or maybe there was a time you did something wrong, but you never got caught. It was never exposed, and so you’ve never owned it.
Listen, there is no going forward unless you go back. You’re just trying to cover up a cavity without digging it out. You gotta dig it out.
Okay, a little more corporately. How about our church, Bridges?
Anything in our history we need to own as a church?
Now, that question could get a little dangerous, right? And I don’t actually know how you might answer. I honestly don’t have anything in my mind when I ask that question that you need to admit, but hey, we’ve been here 80 years, right? I’m sure there was something that we wanted to get past without actually dealing with it. And whatever that is, we have to own it.
Okay, so now, very corporately, like Nehemiah, how about as a nation?
Anything in our national history we need to own?
You know, it’s interesting, I was talking to a friend of mine from Germany and he said in German schools students study the Third Reich history, Nazi history, for a whole term in 8th grade, in 10th grade, and in 12th grade. So they study it 3 times. And additionally, the sites of the old Reich tyranny, as he called it, from the Bendlerblock in Berlin to the concentration camps, all the old— all those old sites. They’ve been turned into history museums to educate the next generation of this travesty that Germany unleashed on the world. They teach it was a travesty.
On the positive side, Germany is a security guarantor to the State of Israel, and Germany just recently, because of that, worked to include Israel in Europe’s deal for the German invention invented COVID vaccine, which has now, as of this last week, been given to 20% of Israel’s population. We hear that, right? And we say, that sounds pretty good, Germany.
Sounds like you’re owning your past. Like, way to go. Nothing more to talk about here. Now, what if modern Germany, and that maybe could be an individual or an institution within Germany or the whole nation itself, of modern Germany just got wildly defensive anytime 1933 to 1945 was brought up, and they said, well, it’s not our fault. That wasn’t us.
Don’t blame me for what previous generations did. What would we say? How would we respond to Germany saying that? We’d probably say, well, Kind of calm down there, Germany. You don’t need to get defensive, just own it, right?
Just say something like, those were terrible moments in our history and in the history of the world, and it’s Germany’s fault, right? And we’re determined never to repeat anything like that again. Right? And if they said something like that, which they do through their actions like we just talked about, we’d say, oh, okay, yeah, you got it, like, we’re good, we don’t need to say anything else. We understand other people, other nations need to own their past, but when it comes to the dark parts of our history, we’re reluctant, right?
Especially if it’s about issues involving race, slavery, civil rights. Well, it’s not my fault. I wasn’t even born. Why are you blaming me? I didn’t make any of those laws.
Whoa! Hey, you don’t need to be defensive.
Right? Why not just say those are some of the worst moments in our history and we as a country are to blame and we’re determined never to repeat anything close to that again? Why not just say that? There doesn’t need to be any heat in the conversation.
We own it, then we move forward. So Nehemiah repents, and here’s, here’s the best part when repenting to God: you always have assurance that God will embrace you and welcome you home when you repent. Verse 9 and 10, Nehemiah reminds God, hey God, remember, we are your people. You have promised to be with us. You even promised to bring us back to the land.
You are a God who keeps his covenant of steadfast love, right? Nehemiah knows he’s in with God. No doubt in his mind where he stands with the Lord in heaven. Now, verse 8, Nehemiah also says, like, God, you were right to send us away. Your wrath is justified, right?
You told us what would happen if we disobeyed you, and we did it, and you did it, and that’s fine. But then, hey, you promised some other stuff, right? We are your redeemed people. You won’t leave us. You will bring us back.
He is so confident and so bold about his acceptance by God.
Do you have that kind of confidence when you confess and repent to God?
If you are a Christian, if you believe Christ’s death and resurrection reconciled you to God, right? That’s what a Christian is. So, you were wandering away from God. You were disobedient to His commands, but Christ rescued you.
If that is you, do you pray as if you’re rescued? Do you pray as if you’re already included? Do you approach God’s throne of grace with confidence? Hebrews 4:16, Or are you uneasy about where you stand with God? Like, I don’t know if he really wants to talk with me.
I’ve been gone too long. I’ve been too bad.
Listen, when you repent with God, when you own your past, when you freely admit that you deserve to be excluded but you trust Christ to grant you inclusion Like Nehemiah, you can have assurance that you are included. It’s the same thing Paul says, Romans 7:24, right? He says, what a wretch that I am! Who will save me from this body of death? Repentance.
But then his next phrase, the very next words out of his mouth, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, right? I’m a wretch who deserves to be excluded, but I immediately praise God for including me through Christ’s work. I’m an included wretch. In Christianity, you never have one without the other. In Christianity, there’s no lingering, woe is me.
We don’t wallow around in repentance. We have immediate rejoicing after repenting because we have been rescued.
Okay, so lastly, he has grieved, he has prayed, he has repented, and now the final step, Nehemiah engages. Step 4 is engage. Nehemiah is going to actually do something about about the problem. He says, I’m cupbearer to the king. Verse 11, he prays, God, give me favor with this man I’m about to go talk to.
Nehemiah is the doer. He is the guy who will strap on the tool belt and get to work.
He probably has no idea how hard it’s going to end up being, but he does know he will need to leave his place of comfort in order to engage the problem. Do you want to know if your heart lines up with God’s heart or not?
Just ask yourself, am I willing to leave my place of comfort to engage the problems that I see in the world? Am I willing to do that, or do I only engage the problems to the extent that it doesn’t really affect my comfort. You know, like Nehemiah could have said, I’ll sit up here in the palace with the king, I’ll eat his food, I’ll drink his wine, I’m gonna stay here, but don’t worry, I’m not gonna do nothing, I’m gonna send some memos to try to help Israel rebuild. Is that you?
Offer help while maintaining comfort?
Or do you say, I know it’ll be hard.
I know it’ll cost me dearly, but I believe it’s worth it. I’m going to engage.
Nehemiah left the place where he was trusted, esteemed, respected.
Nobody more trusted than the cupbearer, right? Because the cupbearer could just poison the food after he tasted it, and then it would go directly to the king. He’s maxed out on how trusted he is. But Nehemiah leaves his place of comfort and respect, this place where he’s affirmed, needed, And he goes to where he is unknown, where he’s questioned, where he’s disrespected, and he does that in order to engage the problem.
Is that your heart?
God’s heart is always to engage.
We know that because that’s what God did, right? Right? Jesus left all comfort. He left the pleasures of the eternal palace, and He came to rescue an obstinate and rebellious people by dying in their place. Jesus knew how much it would cost Him, and yet He still engaged.
That’s his heart. That’s who God is.
Bridges, may we be more conformed to his image. May Christ’s sacrificial DNA come in and rewrite ours, because ours has this tendency to look out for ourselves first.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for new beginnings. Thank you for the assurance that we always have your acceptance through our faith in Christ. Lord, thank you that we are not beginning again alone, but that you are here with us and you are guiding us. Lord, give us unquenchable passions. Lord, let us see problems in the world that need fixing.
Let us see our neighbors as you see them. Let us see the world as you see it, and give us your same heart to put it back together, to point it to you, to restore it to what it could be. Lord, give us a vision that we cannot walk away from.
Lord, help us pray to you for help, repent where we have fallen short in the past, and help us engage where we need to be going forward. We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
