July 28, 2024: Message: The God Who Answers | Scripture: Nehemiah 2:1-10 | Speaker: Pastor Stephen Choy
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Introduction
If able, please stand as I read from Nehemiah 2:1-10. TWoL: In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. 2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. 3 I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” 4 Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.” 6 And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. 7 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, 8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me. 9 Then I came to the governors of the province Beyond the River and gave them the king’s letters. Now the king had sent with me officers of the army and horsemen. 10 But when Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.
Roughly two weeks ago, I had a regular checkup with my doctor, and, like every physical, he ordered an array of blood tests for me. One of those tests measures creatinine and my calculated glomerular (gluh-mehr-yuh-lr) filtration rate. I don’t know what any of this is, but as the results come back, it showed that everything was off the charts. And, as I’m reading these results, under my score for Estimated GFR, a little blurb is included, saying, “eGFR helps us know how the kidneys are working. They are used to determine chronic kidney disease stages,” and if you are in the range of 45-59, which my test was telling me I was, it meant that you had Stage 3a chronic kidney disease.
Now, like any sane person after finding out this news, I went directly to Google—because Google always gives us the best diagnosis, and it always makes us calmer, and I found out from Google that people who have stage 3 kidney disease have not only lost half of their kidney function, but also that, without a transplant, I had a 50% chance of dying within 10-15 years. To make matters worse, later that day, I get a phone call from my doctor’s office with the lady on the other end saying, “please come in and get a second round of bloodwork done immediately—it’s quite urgent that you do this as soon as possible.”
Now, it’s by God’s grace that that day was a Thursday because Thursdays are my worst days to do anything outside of the office, and I wan’t able to get the bloodwork done. This, of course, caused a good amount of anxiety as I greatly desired to know the severity of my condition, but it ended up being for the better because the next day, I got another call, this time it’s my actual doctor, and he asks, “did you get your blood drawn yet?” And I replied, “No.” “Well, good because I need to ask you something—you said on your intake form that you workout two to three times a week. Do you take supplements?” I responded, “Yes, I usually drink a protein shake afterwards.” “Okay, when did you drink your last protein shake?” “Two days ago.” “Great. I want you to wait until over the weekend to have your blood drawn because it takes at least three days for that stuff to leave your body completely.”
It turns out that taking workout supplements can give false positives for kidney disease, and if I didn’t have this particular job—had I not been forced to work on my sermon that morning and afternoon—I would have gone into that clinic, received the same results, and that Sunday morning here at church may have looked and sounded a lot more different than it did. Now, I don’t consider myself a man of great faith—if anything, I’m a below average faith-possessor on my best days, but I think that ordeal gave me a little perspective for what Nehemiah went through in our text.
Here, Nehemiah is in a real, desperate state, and he’s forced to wait patiently for God to give him an answer in his desperation and anxiety. And what our passage teaches Nehemiah, and what it’s meant to teach us, is that when the answers aren’t forthcoming—when it seems like you are tarrying in the night—alone, overcome, and afraid—we’re to understand that such a night is given to us to grow us in our trust—that God shall answer us and guide us.
We’re given the man Nehemiah here, flaws and proclivities to doubt and fear, so that we might know how to deal with our flaws and our proclivities to doubt and fear. We’re to deal with them by learning to trust more deeply, courageously, and peacefully in a God who is always near, and who always seeks our best. We’re to patiently trust God to guide us according to his perfect wisdom, and he desires us to do this, firstly, by calling us to …
1) Regularly Examine [Our] Emotions [That Come] From [Him] God
What’s particularly intriguing about the account of Nehemiah is that whoever wrote it—whether it was Nehemiah, himself, or Ezra or one of their students, it was written in such a way that reflects, intimately, the personality of this man, Nehemiah. What we find out in the first chapter is that Nehemiah is a deep feeling man. He’s incredibly emotional, but he’s also very intense about making sure that his emotions are a response—a means of worshipping what he knows about his God. In other words, he reacts emotionally in exact proportion to the depth of his theology.
And it’s important for us to know this about him because our passage begins by giving us a lot of context: “In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king.” Let me explain what this means in reverse order of how it’s presented to us. Nehemiah’s taking up the wine and giving it to the king means that his presence would have been directly observable by the king. He would have been standing right there—handing him the cup—providing him with food—interacting conversationally with Artaxerxes. In fact, for Nehemiah to be so near to the king indicates to us, again, how close their bond must have been—like a friend to another.
And this was during a time, “when wine was before him,” which is to tell us that Nehemiah was serving the king during a time of celebration. Nisan is the first month of the year, which means this was very much like a New Years celebration, and the king himself, was in a celebratory mood. His servants, likewise, might have been expected to be in a celebratory mood.
But it’s likely Nehemiah wasn’t celebrating because the first words of verse 1 read, “In the month of Nisan …” and we’re told in Nehemiah 1:1 that this book begins in Chislev—that’s four months before the month of Nisan. And during these four months, Nehemiah, we’re told in chapter 1:4, that, as he hears about Jerusalem’s plight—that the walls are being torn and burned down—he sits, weeps, mourns, prays, and fasts on a continued basis. For four months, he has cried out to the Lord.
Four months of straight crying out to God will change a person. I’ve told you all before—I struggled with my father’s church in that it refused to conform itself to biblical patterns of church governance, and I lamented that fact. It bore on my mind, heart, and soul so much that when I looked for a church, I sought one that might need a similar kind of guidance towards displaying the church order that we see in the Bible. So deep was this inner work upon my own life that this had become my great, pastoral desire—to see the church of God, whichever church I went to, revitalized, brought to order, and made healthy.
Now, I need to be careful here because it’s very easy to hear that my being a pastor and the work I’m trying to do—that it’s all about me, just like you might read Nehemiah 2:1-3 and think that Nehemiah’s making it all about himself. But what we need to understand is that God gives us theology—he gave Nehemiah knowledge about his divine character, his promises, and his love for Jerusalem—so that Nehemiah might respond in doxology—in giving the Lord glory, in pouring out his life for the sake of his people, in submitting his heart and his emotions to the work of God in the world.
This is what our emotions are for. When they’re steeped in good theology—in good prayer—in fasting—in mourning—in the heart for the things of God—our emotional reaction to those good things is meant to spur us—to incentivize and push us into a zeal and desperate pursuit for more of those things—to grow in those things and to help others grow in those things. Nehemiah shows us the effect of this pursuit. For four months, he has been fasting, mourning, and praying, and that needfulness—that desperation has affected the core of his well-being to the point that it changes how he interacts with people.
So changed is Nehemiah by this concerted theologizing and praying that, even though he had never been physically or observably sad in the presence of the king, the king could feel it. Artaxerxes says to him, “Why is your face sad, even though you’re not sick? This must be a sadness from the heart.” And it terrifies Nehemiah that Artaxerxes can detect this. Why?
Because the king trusted him. If Nehemiah was next to Artaxerxes, pouring his wine, serving his food, being there during the happiest time of the year, standing there with a noticeable depression in his spirit, perhaps Artaxerxes is thinking that Nehemiah isn’t happy with the king anymore. Perhaps Nehemiah doesn’t want the king around anymore—doesn’t see him as a friend. Perhaps Nehemiah is plotting something against the king. And if this is so, then perhaps Nehemiah shouldn’t be around the king anymore—perhaps Nehemiah’s life has run its course.
This is how reverent Nehemiah’s concern for God and his people had become—that his most important relationship in life—that life itself—seemed, at least to the king, to have become inconsequential to this cupbearer. Something had become more grievous—more serious—to Nehemiah than the life and love of the king. And let me pause here and ask if the concerns of God are that deep and severe to us—to the point where all things, even our own lives, seem inconsequential in comparison?
This is how God intends to guide us when his answers and his presence seem far from us. It is not that he is actually distant. Rather, it’s that sometimes he reveals his presence by holding back the specific and outward ways he intends to act in our lives so that we might become inwardly oriented and fiercely, emotionally grounded upon him first—that we might rejoice in the things that he rejoices over, and that we might mourn those things that stand against his will and character, even and especially when others don’t understand because then we’re given the opportunity to help them understand.
He brings us closer to himself as we grow in our patient trusting of him understanding that patience isn’t a detached, uncaring kind of waiting. Waiting is, as one commentator puts it, something that we must do when we are not in control—when the circumstance is unfavourable, but patience is a satisfaction that we choose to have in our Father while we wait. Patience is that inward declaration that seeks to be more hopeful in God, even amidst great suffering, than in how he has oriented our circumstances according to our preferences. It’s showing that we love God more than we love what we think God should do for us.
God gives us our emotions, even those really sad ones—he gives us a heart for the things on his heart—so that we might know he is near, that he cares, and that he has already and still intends to answer us when we call upon him. And it is because we know of his faithfulness, even if we are tarrying—even if it seems like he keeps denying us what we know he desires to give us—that we can patiently trust that he is helping us—that our patience, in itself, is meant to satisfy us in him. Regularly examine emotions that are grounded in what he’s revealed about himself to you because those emotions, they’re from God to uphold, keep, and guide you in the face of overwhelming trial and sorrow back to him.
And yet, in your patient trusting, God doesn’t only answer the emotions that he gives you to point you back to himself, but he also means to provide you with courage to move forward and act with him.
2) Courageously Move With God
I might have said it before, but I think courage is the most undervalued virtue of the Christian life. We’re prone to talk about love, humility, forgiveness, righteousness, mercy, grace, joy, faithfulness—really the gambit of spiritual gifts listed in Galatians, but for some reason courage seems to fly under the radar far too often when we speak of godly, virtuous lives.
How do I know this? Well, in all my times of accountability, I can probably count on one hand how many people have asked to be held accountable for their courage. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been in countless groups where people have expressed that they should do something that requires courage, like sharing the gospel with an unbeliever, but the request for accountability isn’t usually courage. Rather, it’s usually a request for prayer—that God might provide “an opportunity,” or for “the ability to articulate the truth,” or for “God to simply work a miracle as we do kind things and display our Christian character.” But courage to speak when the opportunity may not be perfect or courage to act even when you know you’re not the most articulate person or courage to speak about why you’re acting the way you’re acting—these aren’t our default expectations of ourselves.
And the question is: why? Why do Christians, these days, lack the zeal and desire to be courageous? Nehemiah answers it for us. It’s because our sadness and longing for the things of God have not overcome the fear of what pursuing the things of God might mean for us. Right? It’s the number one reason why people have walked away from most major religions in the world—especially Christianity. It’s because it’s not about me enough.
But Nehemiah, when he’s faced with the opportunity to respond selfishly, he can’t do it because for four months, he has sought the face of God unceasingly and asked him repeatedly to do what only he can do. He has made the salvation of God for his people his hope and life. Thus, when the threat of death looms over him for acting too sorrowfully or too suspiciously around the king, Nehemiah cannot act any other way because it would be to deny who he’d become and in whom he had found his greatest treasure.
This is what courage is. It’s an unyielding defence of one’s convictions. It’s the stalwart protection of that which is most precious to you in the face of sure adversity. This is why when faced with death—when the king notices that something is distracting his cupbearer from attending not just physically but emotionally to the king, Nehemiah can do nothing else but tell the king—in absolute courage—the exact reason why he’s so sad.
It’s not that he’s unafraid of death. Rather, it’s that death is a small price to pay to see the glory of God—a glory that he believed to be found in the city of God amongst the sons and daughters of God. They were to be the image of his glory—the imprint of his nature, but that image was being desecrated, and Nehemiah has been patiently waiting—patiently trusting that God would answer—that he would provide a solution.
It’s in this moment that Nehemiah realizes he is God’s answer—that he’s been placed here at Artaxerxes’ side for such a time as this. Perhaps in that moment, this learned, theologian, prayer-warrior, yet wholly incapable man—perhaps he remembers Solomon’s words in Proverbs 21:1—perhaps he has been saying these exact words over the course of the last four months, and perhaps he recites it even now as he faces the shadow of death: The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord; he turns it wherever he wills.
And as he remembers texts like this—as he recalls the promises given to his ancestors—as all those months of patient trusting come flooding back to him—the first thing he does isn’t open his mouth and start accusing the king or yelling at him as we might tend to do when something’s been bubbling up inside of us. He is not overwhelmed by his fear or vexed by his sorrow. He doesn’t even seek to pursue his own glory and exalt himself. Rather, the first thing that he does is he flees, he pleads, he humbles himself and prays to the God of heaven knowing in his mind and in his heart that the Lord’s help is ever present and fully sufficient in our need.
This, dear Christian, is the single most important sentence of our entire text. This is what all of it is leading up to. From verses 5-8a, Nehemiah displays incredible courage asking for specific things—that he might go to the city to rebuild it—that he might receive the resources and the protection for the project—asking the very man who brought it all down to help him rebuild it—this is incredibly courageous, BUT he does not and dares not ask for this alone. He knows true courage isn’t mere protection of that which you value most, but it’s in valuing God and his opinion and his help the most that spurs us on in courage. That’s what moves us forward out of sorrow—that’s what helps us overcome even our fear of death.
If he’s learned anything these past four months, it’s that any answer he gives on his own is hopeless and impossible. But any answer that comes from God, even if it’s not the expected answer in that moment, as long as God is answering—as long as he is with us, then, in our patience, we still have hope—as long as he is with us, the fulfillment of all his intended purposes and plans is still possible. Because if God is for us—if he is with us, who can stand against us?
Has he not given us his full and perfect answer in Christ—who in his self-sufficiency condescended himself and put on flesh. For 33 years, he dwelled among sinners who could not and would not acknowledge who he was—the omnipotent ruler, maker and sustainer of all things—the joy of heaven’s praises, the judge of sinners condemned to hell—the only one in need of nothing. For 33 years, he waited—patiently trusting for his vindication.
This was a man who had every ability and reason to forsake us in his sorrow, in his suffering, and in his right to glory and praise. Here was a man whose fellowship with his Father was and is closer than any fellowship between a king and his friend. Here was a man absolutely righteous in every thought and deed—whose every notion and desire was to serve the will of his Father. Here was a man whose heart yearned for the things of God’s heart in perfect unity and harmony.
And yet, when he had every warrant to escape his sadness—to end his waiting—to refuse his patience—to cast down his adversaries for the inheritance and exaltation that were already his to begin with—when he had every right to take up his life and reject our wrath—he gave himself up for the sake of those most precious to him and his God. When he was in the throes of agony, he looked to his Father, and he trusted his God to guide him, and he did so all the way to the cross. And though his fellowship with his Father was perfect and unbroken in his divine nature, as a man, in that flesh, he suffered, bled, and died alone—abandoned and unable, in his humanity, to look upon the face of his God in heaven. In his waiting, Christ died to save us.
How, then, ought we to respond? As we think of Nehemiah, we see his weakness. We see his fear. We see his very clear and imminent disadvantage. But is this not how God intends to work in our lives and in the world? Through weakness? And does he not do this so that we might know that our God needs no help from men—that our God can humble the greatest powers in the world without any help from us? In fact, does our God not disadvantage even himself in history—does he not send his Christ in vulnerable flesh and crucify him upon a cross—to show us that even in his greatest weakness he is far stronger than all of us will ever be?
Should this not gird us up in our hearts to think no matter how great our sorrow—or how long our waiting—he is laying us low, he is calling us to humility and dependence, so that we might find our joy, our hope, our courage in him—that he might be sufficient for us in our adversity, and that we might trust him to guide us? Should we not give him our unwavering loyalty and worship because of our weakness?
And more than this, should we not feel the challenge in our own hearts and test our spirits in the face of adversity as we read texts like Deuteronomy 20: Let not your heart faint. Be not afraid. Tremble not nor succumb to terror. Yahweh himself goes out with you. He fights with you. He will save you.
Our God does not want your melting, quivering heart. One writer puts it this way, “For those of us who would swallow their tongues, who blush and are ashamed for God and his gospel, who have no stomach for conflict—whether in confronting untruth or killing their own sin, who hold no faith that God can yet bring about the unlikely victory, to those who count their lives more dear than their King’s cause, who prize this world above the next, who roar behind screens yet whimper in person, who mumble at Christ’s promises, and who are ready to fight when society is on their side but shrink when the devil draws his sword against our Master—to you might it be said, sheath your sword and go home.
We desire for you to be courageous—to find your faith in our conquering Saviour—to remain amongst us—it would be your great privilege to do so. We desire to see in you a lionhearted trust in our God—to stand firm as God’s people and believe—to entrust yourself to a trustworthy Saviour and live for him—but if you will not have him decidedly as your guide, your help, and your hope to persevere, we cannot have you.” Go home until God has given you a heart that is greater for the things on his heart than for the things of your own because cowards have no place in the King’s house.
3) Humbly Rest in God
But for those of you whose hearts are unmelting—for those of you who are like Gideon’s three hundred—those who remain standing even after your commander gives leave to those who are fearful and trembling to go home, I pray that you might humbly find your rest in your God for our God is the only God who can fight all his battles at the same time with one hand and do so without losing a single soldier.
When you, like Nehemiah in vv. 8b-10, find yourself under the good hand of your God—it matters not if all the governors and all their friends are displeased with you and desire to thwart you because with God—if you know that he goes before you and follows behind you—they will not and cannot lead you astray. For those who know the hand of God, you know that in your waiting, it was the Lord who brought you to that desolate place to build up your patience. In your working, it was the Lord who brought you, like Nehemiah, to that place for such a time as this. In your position, it was the Lord who established you. In your conversation, it is the Lord who opens your mouth. In your praying, it is the Lord who listens to you. And in your uncertainties, it is the Lord who shall carry you to safety in the strength of his nail-pierced hands.
In all your waiting, patiently trust God to guide you for he has not, he is not, and he shall not fail you. He will accomplish everything he intends, and he intends for your good and his glory. He will see it through, because the blood of his Son has secured it. Trust in him, O people; pour out your heart before him; for our God—he is a refuge, a bulwark, a mighty fortress, the King above all kings, and he is for us.
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