Nehemiah 4:9-14
And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. In Judah it was said, “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” And our enemies said, “They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.” At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, “You must return to us.” So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
Background to the text: The story of Nehemiah starts out by mentioning the great trouble and shame that came upon the Israelites because the city walls were broken and the gates were destroyed by fire. On hearing this news, Nehemiah fasts and weeps for many days confessing his sins and the sins of the people. He knew that the reason why they were in trouble was because of the sins of the people. The walls were a mirror image of the condition of their hearts. The hearts of the people were far away from God.
In the midst of that God calls Nehemiah out of his life of comfort to lead the people back to God. God provides favor in the eyes of the King, he approves of the rebuilding plan and the Jews finally after 150 years start rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. You can imagine how big a deal it was for them! Two weeks back we looked at the first eight verses of Chapter 4 where we find a lot of opposition to the rebuilding work.
The enemy cities around Jerusalem taunted them and plotted ways to hinder the work. We learnt that there’s always a cost when it comes to obeying God’s Word. There is opposition from within – your own flesh and there’s opposition on the outside – when you’re persecuted and insulted. We need to be a community of Jesus followers willing to pay the cost for being obedient to God.
Today we’ll be looking through verses 9-14 of Chapter 4. I believe the text teaches us two things:
1. The priority of prayer
2. What it means to be in a Promise filled Partnership with God
The Priority of Prayer
V8 And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. 9 And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.
In verses 8, we see how the enemy nations get together and plot against the Jews to distract them from rebuilding the walls. They were furious when they came to know that the walls were being rebuilt. They concluded that the elevation of Jerusalem meant the depression of their state and an insult to their national dignity. They couldn’t allow that to happen so they began to plot and scheme.
V9 says that in response to that Jerusalem prayed to God!
In the previous chapters, we’ve already seen how Nehemiah turned to God in prayer at every point. Now it’s beginning to rub off on the Israelites as well.
Genuine faith is always contagious!
Why did they have to pray in the first place? Didn’t God already know that they were facing severe opposition? Doesn’t Jesus say that “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him”? (Matt 6:8) What happens when we pray? I think it’s a good time to remind ourselves about the doctrine of prayer.
The truth is that God doesn’t want us to pray so that he can find out what we need. He already knows. He wants us to pray so that our dependence on Him can increase. When we approach God in prayer, we express a trust in Him, that God hears and answers our prayers. That’s why Jesus compares our prayers to a child asking his father for a fish or an egg (Lk 11:9-11). A child expects and trusts his father to provide for his needs. Similarly we ought to expect, in faith that God will provide for us. Our dependency on God increases through prayer.
Secondly, God does not only desire that our trust in Him grows through prayer, but He also wants our love and our relationship with Him to deepen. What happens when we truly pray is that the wholeness of our character relates to the wholeness of God’s character. What I mean by that is that everything we think and feel about God also gets communicated while praying to God. This in turn will deepen our love and understanding of God, and therefore deepens our relationship with Him. God absolutely delights in that! And God loves that! He delights that you make much of Him as you pray!
Lastly, what happens when we pray is that it allows us to be participants of a story that is bigger than our own. Through prayer, we are aligned to God’s kingdom purposes that have eternal significance. Isn’t that what Jesus referred to when he prayed the Lord’s prayer: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. It’s not without reason that great revivals broke out of an intense time of prayer.
Prayer is THE thing for a believer in Christ. Your dependence of God increases, your love and relationship with Him grows and it realigns you to God’s will and gives you a burden for eternal purposes. I like one definition that I heard about prayer: Prayer is a very important vehicle through which God accomplishes His purposes through our lives!
How often have we viewed “prayer” as something so vital and indispensable to the Christian walk? Why do you go to God in prayer? Do you seek to depend more on God, trust Him more fully, deepen your love relationship with Him and align your life to God’s will through prayer?
And I think the phrase “we prayed to our God” should push us to also focus on corporate prayer. When a brother or a sister in the Lord shares a struggle, when we think about the lost in the city, when we think about growing in our love for Christ, does it move us to pray as a church?
Prayer must be a priority for a Christian both personally and corporately!
What it means to be in a Promise filled Partnership with God
Now we’ll come across three different types of challenges that we face while trying to do what God has asked us to do. I’ll list down the three challenges and then we’ll look at the faithful response to those challenges:
1) The enormity of the problem
In Judah it was said, “The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” (v10)
They suddenly realized that the vigor and strength of the porters who carried the load were wavering. They were becoming weaker. They saw the debris on the ground and they were like “we can’t do this! It’s impossible.”
Have we been in a similar place before? You’re looking at the circumstance around you and you feel defeated. The problem is too huge to be fixed. Maybe it’s a struggle with sin, you’ve tried different ways of removing and controlling it, but you’re left helpless and defeated. You respond by “I can’t do this. It’s impossible”. Maybe you’re crushed by the weight of the task to reach the lost. You look around you at 23 million people and it leaves you feeling perplexed and discouraged. Maybe it’s a broken relationship with a family member or a friend, you don’t think there’s a possibility of seeing that relationship restored and so you’ve given up. The problem is enormous!
2) The threat of the enemy
11 And our enemies said, “They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.”
The enemy’s plan was to secretly surprise and invade the Israelites as they were building the walls. By killing the Jews, the work would inevitably stop. That was their aim. Just think about the Israelites, what were they risking in the rebuilding process? Their own lives!What would happen if someone threatened you because of your faith? You’re living out your faith radically but that doesn’t settle too well with some people. Have you considered that cost of following Jesus? Maybe it’s not physical persecution in your case but what about social and psychological persecution. What would happen if you were threatened to be removed from your circle of friends because of your love for Jesus? Or being mocked and insulted for being a Jesus follower?
What would happen if someone threatened you because of your faith? You’re living out your faith radically but that doesn’t settle too well with some people. Have you considered that cost of following Jesus? Maybe it’s not physical persecution in your case but what about social and psychological persecution. What would happen if you were threatened to be removed from your circle of friends because of your love for Jesus? Or being mocked and insulted for being a Jesus follower?What about persecution in your college or workplace? What if obedience to Christ cost you your job or your studies? You were trying to share your faith but it didn’t go down well with the management. These threats hit us at the core of our faith because of the cost involved.
What about persecution in your college or workplace? What if obedience to Christ cost you your job or your studies? You were trying to share your faith but it didn’t go down well with the management. These threats hit us at the core of our faith because of the cost involved.
3) The discouragement from family and friends
At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, “You must return to us.”(v12)
Ten times! Ten times family members and friends of the Jews who heard these enemy threats came and tried to persuade the Israelites to quit and return back from to safety.
I think one of the hardest things to deal with is the discouragement we receive from family and our close friends. You’re trying to live out your faith in obedience and the people who have a lot of influence over you are trying to pull you away. The pressure is immense because they’re the ones who’ve poured into you, invested in your life and supported you. Sometimes it’s out of a genuine concern but in reality it is a discouragement from being obedient to God. Just imagine being put in a position where you’re confronted by your family & your only response is that you need to be obedient to God. In other words you’re put in a spot where there’s no other explanation or reason to their questions except that you want to be obedient to God. How hard is that? I know of many cases where family was their breaking point in obedience to God.
And this is how they responded to the enormity of the problem, the threat of the enemy and the discouragement from family and friends:So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. 14 And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.”
So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. 14 And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.
Nehemiah reminds them of who God is! He tells them to recall and bring to mind who God is and what He has done for them. We end up having a skewed understanding about the character of God due to our sin. That was the impact of the fall when Adam and Eve sinned. They questioned and doubted the goodness of God and thought he was withholding something good from them by telling them not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Similarly, all of our unbelief stems from a wrong understanding of God. So what can change that? God’s character and promises! We need to be frequently reminded because we’re professional forgetters.
You may think you can’t have victory over your sin, you probably feel weighed down by the enormous task of the mission, or the helplessness with respect to seeing that broken relationship restored…God is great and awesome! He’s bigger than your situation. “Behold, I am the Lord, the God of all flesh. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jer 32:27)You might be facing severe threats from enemies who don’t want you to be obeying God. The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge, my shield, and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. (Ps 18:2)
And the same goes with the discouragement that comes from family. When the people closest to us seem distant, the reminder is that “Our God will never leave us, nor forsake us”.
Lastly, I find it interesting that Nehemiah said “and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes”. There was prayer, there was a reminder of God’s character and promises but let’s not forget that there was also a fight! Active involvement of the Israelites was required.And that’s one of the key things about the Christian life. It is a partnership with God. More specifically, it is a responsive partnership! There is a responsibility on our part but it is always responsive! That’s how God designed it to be. For eg: God commands us to do something and as responsive partners we obey. In fact it was this partnership that was majorly affected in the Fall. Man no longer wanted to be in a partnership with God. He wanted to be independent of God thus bringing the wrath of God upon himself. But God is so loving that He sent His one and only Son to die in our place to satisfy the wrath of God. God saves us by sending Jesus to die on the cross and in response we put our trust in Jesus. God reveals His glory and in response we worship! Even in the challenges that were mentioned today: struggle with sin, broken relationships, weight of the mission, tough circumstances that you’re facing, threats of the enemy and the
And that’s one of the key things about the Christian life. It is a partnership with God. More specifically, it is a responsive partnership! There is a responsibility on our part but it is always responsive! That’s how God designed it to be. For eg: God commands us to do something and as responsive partners we obey. In fact it was this partnership that was majorly affected in the Fall. Man no longer wanted to be in a partnership with God. He wanted to be independent of God thus bringing the wrath of God upon himself. But God is so loving that He sent His one and only Son to die in our place to satisfy the wrath of God. God saves us by sending Jesus to die on the cross and in response we put our trust in Jesus. God reveals His glory and in response we worship! Even in the challenges that were mentioned today: struggle with sin, broken relationships, weight of the mission, tough circumstances that you’re facing, threats of the enemy and the discouragement from family and friends…know that even at this point God wants you to be actively involved. You are still a responsive partner. There is a fight!
You’ll need to fight for your faith. Fight for your purity. Fight to seek restoration in relationships. Fight to continue being missional. Fight to not quit while facing threats. Fight to honor God even when your family pressurizes you.
I’m not advocating a self-effort Christianity but also neither do I want to swing to the other extreme and use the grace and power of God as an excuse to exempt us from actively “working out our salvation”. God empowers us to obedience, a process in which we’re actively involved as responsive partners.Where specifically in your life is God asking you to be a responsive partner today? What do you need to fight for today?
Where specifically in your life is God asking you to be a responsive partner today? What do you need to fight for today?Let our study on the priority of prayer and the meaning of being in a Promise filled Responsive partnership with God change the way we respond to God this week.
Let our study on the priority of prayer and the meaning of being in a Promise filled Responsive partnership with God change the way we respond to God this week.
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