Rebuilding the Ruins
Nehemiah 1:1-11

Imagine that a devastating earthquake absolutely leveled South Hadley and Granby. About 22,000 people live in South Hadley and Granby. Imagine that 20,000 of those people are trapped, or injured or somehow need rescue. If we were among the 2000 people who were somehow spared, wouldn't our task be absolutely clear? No need to bring in consultants. No need to spend months figuring out what we should be doing. Our job would be to pull people out of the rubble wherever we can find them, to bring them to safety and to care for them. We would rescue as many as possible, using whatever resources we can get our hands on. Our only questions would be how to do it most effectively. We would have no doubt about the goal. And we would have no doubt about the urgency of the work.

This time of year is a time when we tend, as a church to take stock of our direction and vision. The fall is upon us -- it is in many ways the beginning of our church year. Students will be back. We'll have our annual meeting. Small Groups will be meeting more regularly and we begin a new Sunday School year. And in all of these areas we want to be sure that we are pursuing a vision that is meaningful and that accords with the purpose of the church.

What is the task of the church? It is not mysterious: The task God has given the church is just as straightforward as the task of rescuers after an earthquake. Thousands around us are trapped by sin, in need of rescue. And the job of the church is to use every resource God gives us to search for them in the ruins around us. ("Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel" 9:16 "I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some." 9:22) And when we find someone who (by God's grace) responds, we bring him into the family of God, we care for him, we equip him and we send him out to search for others. That's the task God has given the church. We are God's search and rescue operation in the world.

It is a simple task, it's an urgent task, and it seems just about impossible. (It's so daunting a task that the church is constantly tempted to focus on easier goals. It's much easier to just run programs -- a Sunday School, a worship service, small groups -- and hope that the trapped people will somehow free themselves and walk in.)

Where does one begin on such an impossible task? Over the next three weeks, I'd like us to look together at the life of a man who faced such a task. That man is Nehemiah.

Nehemiah 1:1-11

Nehemiah is faced with an impossible set of circumstances. The wall of Jerusalem is in ruins. God's people are vulnerable an in disarray. But Nehemiah was hundreds of miles away. He had a job that he could not easily leave. (One doesn't just resign from a position in the Court of Persia!) And he was just one man.

How does he respond? There are three stages to his response.

1. He weeps.

"When I heard these things, I sat down and wept." His immediate response is to sit down and cry.

Now if Nehemiah went to a grief counselor, the grief counselor might patiently explain to him that this reaction was a perfectly normal stage in the grieving process. So he should just go ahead an cry his heart out. Later he should expect to experience other stages of grief -- anger, guilt and so on until finally he comes to a place of accepting the loss of his homeland and getting on with his life.

Nehemiah never gets to the acceptance stage. Nehemiah's tears are not just one stage in a process of letting go: These are the tears of the follower of God who is facing a heart-wrenching conflict between the reality of the world and what he believes about God. He sees a dissonance between what is and what should be. He hears this news from Jerusalem. The walls are torn down, the people of God are vulnerable, weak and in disgrace. On the other hand he knows that God loves his people and has promised to restore them. The two things don't fit.

There is another reason for Nehemiah's tears: These are also the tears of a man who feels the weight of sin. He feels his own responsibility and the responsibility of his people for the devastation of Jerusalem.

Jesus said in his sermon on the Mount, "Blessed are those who mourn," and I think Nehemiah might have understood what he meant. It is one of the marks of the people of God to mourn. If we don't mourn it is because we have gotten so used to living amidst the ruins of broken lives and lost people that we have grown complacent and hard hearted.

When you drive through your neighborhood, or the Holyoke Mall, do you ever feel like weeping? Do you ever feel like collapsing in the dairy aisle of Big Y in tears? Probably not. But perhaps we should. There is reason to mourn because so many around us are in rebellion against God, because those who desire to serve God are so few and weak, because evil seems stronger than good, and because we are so entangled by our own sin.

Here's the first step in developing a vision for the task God has given our church: We need to be convinced in our hearts that the way things are right now is not the way things should be. If we are comfortable with the status quo. If we are quite happy to be a small, cozy fellowship that has only minimal impact on our community, then there will be no need for vision. We have already arrived.

That isn't Nehemiah's response. Nehemiah he sees an unacceptable gulf between the ruins of Jerusalem and what he believes about God. And he weeps. But he doesn't stop there.

2. The second stage of his response is prayer.

What I want you to see in this prayer is how Nehemiah confronts God's character. On the one hand Nehemiah has the news from Jerusalem -- the reality of his circumstances. On the other hand he has what he knows about God. The battle of faith is always between these two things. Which will we act on? Which will win over our minds? What we see around us? Or what we know to be true about God?

How we pray often reveals the level of our faith. Nehemiah's prayer reveals a whole set of convictions about God's character. I want to notice two.

God is almighty. Throughout his prayer, it is obvious that Nehemiah has absolutely no doubt that God is able to do whatever God chooses to do. He has no doubt about God's power and ability. Right from the start he appeals to God's power an might: "O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God . . . "

The full significance of God's almightiness is often hard to grasp, so I want to offer you two images to choose from. Neither are perfect images, but I want you to ask yourself, which one is the better depiction of what it means to call God almighty.

The first image is from Shakespeare: all the world's a stage . . . etc., etc. We are actors and actresses on that stage. And God is the director of the play -- sitting in the front row and watching from a distance. Now if we put Nehemiah onto this stage, when he cries out to God and says "O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God . . ." he is appealing to the director to intervene. He is saying, Lord, there seems to be a departure from script here. You are the director -- you have the authority to step in and change the way this scene is going. Do something! And there is some chance that the director will actually intervene -- but not very often. Most of the time the director just sets the play in motion, and watches it unfold, letting the actors do their stuff.

Here's another image. Think of a child, playing with toy people. First he creates the world in which they live. Then he places them where he wants each of them. The words that they speak to each other come from his imagination. They move only when he causes them to move.

Do you see the difference from the first image? Here every circumstance, every decision, every speech is directly controlled by God.

Which image comes closer to a real picture of what it means to say that God is almighty?

Nehemiah's conviction about God comes closer to the second image. He really believes that it is God who is directly in control of every detail. And so we will find that he talks repeatedly through the book about how the "gracious hand of God is upon him." And when he goes to talk to the King it is with the conviction that the King has been placed there by God and that his heart is

This conviction that God is in immediate and direct control of people and events in the world has a profound effect on Nehemiah's prayers. When he prays, he prays not to a God at a distance who is watching the show but will only intervene on occasion and reluctantly. He is praying to one who controls all the players -- who needs to move his hand just the slightest bit and the King will jump.

It makes a huge difference to our prayers if we really believe that God is almighty in this sense. Not just potentially almighty, but really almighty.

Think about our town. Do you believe that the school superintendent, the police, the selectmen, and all the business owners are placed in their positions by the hand of God? Do you believe that God can move them around at will, and that he has ultimate control over their decisions?

From Nehemiah's perspective, the King of Persia was at God's disposal, and if God was perfectly able to use him to rebuild Jerusalem. The authorities in our world are no less at God's disposal.

God is willing. God is able to do what he chooses. About that Nehemiah has no doubt. The second great conviction about God that comes across in his prayer is the conviction that God is on his side -- that God is willing to do what he asks.

It wouldn't have made much difference God to be mighty and powerful if he is unwilling. If God somehow has other plans and isn't interested in Jerusalem being rebuilt, then Nehemiah is wasting his energy. But Nehemiah is convinced that God more about Jerusalem than he does.

So Nehemiah makes two appeals. He appeals first to God's love: (5) "O Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him . . ." Then he appeals to God's specific promise: (vs. 8) Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, "If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my name."

Because of God's love and because of God's promises he knows that God is not only able, but willing to take the pile of rubble that is Jerusalem and restore it.

I said there were three stages in Nehemiah's response to his impossible challenge. First he weeps, then he prays, finally . . .

Step 3: Nehemiah acts

After he prays, Nehemiah goes to the King and asks to be made governor of Jerusalem. He goes to Jerusalem under the authority of the King and in just 52 days he rebuilds the walls. In less than two months he takes a pile of rubble and transforms it into a city again.

It is an amazing achievement of leadership and vision. And he did it with a small rag-tag group of people, and in the face of fierce opposition from powerful enemies.

What was the secret of his vision?

He was unwilling to accept the status quo
He was convinced that God was able to come to his aid.
He was convinced that God was willing to come to his aid.

So he set out to do the impossible.

I'd like to encourage you to learn from Nehemiah's response in two ways.

First, as individuals. Consider some impossible situation. Some difficult circumstance, or besetting sin -- something that is like a pile of rubble in your life. Then approach it as Nehemiah did.

Second, as a Church. Think about the task God has given us together. It is a massive task and a massive responsibility. Are you dissatisfied with how things look now? Do you believe that God is able to change that? Do you believe that God is willing? That is the foundation of our vision and our action together as a church.