WWUTT 739 The Return of Nehemiah?

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Nehemiah had heard that the people of Judah were living in sin and the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins.

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So he asked the king of Persia if he could go back and rebuild, and the king gave him everything he needed, because this was

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God's will when we understand the text. This is

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When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible commentary to help encourage your time in the Word. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we feature

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New Testament Study, an Old Testament book on Thursday, and our Q &A on Friday.

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Now here's your teacher, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. We come back to our study in the book of Nehemiah and today reading chapter 2.

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If you want to open up your Bible and join with me there. Last week I read through chapter 1 and did my introduction to the book of Nehemiah.

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I mentioned that these events pick up right where Ezra left off. Nehemiah arrives in Jerusalem, which we'll read about today in chapter 2, 13 years after Ezra came to Jerusalem.

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Ezra focused mainly on the reconstruction of the temple and reinstituting proper temple worship and order.

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Nehemiah is going to concern himself with the reconstruction of Jerusalem's walls and its gates.

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And this is quite an adventure story. The Jews face a little bit of adversity on the way to trying to reconstruct the city walls.

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We saw them face some antagonism in the book of Ezra as well, as they were trying to reconstruct the temple.

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And that's going to come up in Nehemiah also. Just like Ezra, the narrative will be interrupted sometimes with lists of names.

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And I may kind of breeze over some of that for the most part, but you are certainly welcome to try to enunciate those

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Hebrew names on your own. Impress your friends. It would probably impress me also. Now, these events that we read about in Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther, this brings to a conclusion the chronology of Israel's history that we've been reading about ever since the book of Genesis.

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Now, when I started the Old Testament study on the podcast, I began with judges, but at my church for the last five or six years,

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I've been teaching through the Old Testament and that started with Genesis. So it's kind of exciting that I'm coming up on Esther pretty soon and I'll finish that entire

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Old Testament history of the Jews that's covered from Genesis to Esther.

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Then we enter into the silent age, which actually happens after the book of Nehemiah concludes. For about 400 years,

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God is not saying anything through his prophets until the birth of Christ, which we then read in Matthew.

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So after we get through Esther, we finish that narrative history of Israel and we get into the wisdom books,

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Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon. And then after that, you've got the major prophets and the minor prophets.

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Now all of those books, everything after Esther was written during the period of the kings that we have been reading about.

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So you had David in 1 and 2 Samuel, who was the writer of many of the

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Psalms. You had Solomon that either wrote or chronicled many of the

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Proverbs and also Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon. And you have,

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I think the one exception would be Job because that was a book that was written during the patriarchal period,

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Genesis through Deuteronomy. If it was written after that, if it wasn't written by Moses and it was written after that, it was at least writing about something that happened to a man that probably would have lived during that period of time in the patriarchal period.

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But then when we have the prophets, the major prophets and the minor prophets, all of that was being written during the time leading up to the exile and then during the exile and coming out of the exile.

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So because in the book of Ezra, we read from a couple of those prophets who were telling the people that the

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Lord was with them and he was blessing their efforts to reconstruct the temple. So we bring to a conclusion the narrative story of Israel's history once we get to the end of the book of Esther, which, you know, that might be here in a couple of months.

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So let's get back to what we've been reading in the book of Nehemiah. And I'm going to come back to the end of chapter one because this flows right into the events that we read about in chapter two.

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If you will remember, Nehemiah was working in Susa, which is one of the capital cities of Persia, when it was told to him that the walls of Jerusalem were in ruins and the people were in great trouble and shame.

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That was in chapter one, verse three. And so Nehemiah mourns. And we've got this long prayer of Nehemiah's that we read from verses four through eleven when he is is asking for God's grace and mercy to be upon the

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Jews, that he would forgive their sins and forgive their sin even now as they are back in the land that they were exiled from.

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And they're still sinning. They're still not obeying God. And this grieves Nehemiah's heart greatly.

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And the fact that Jerusalem doesn't have any walls protecting it just kind of symbolizes to Nehemiah that because the people are not obeying

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God there, they have no protection from their enemies. God could just do again to them what he did the first time and turn them over to the hands of their enemies because they will not honor

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God. So Nehemiah is asking that God would show grace to his people.

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And we read in verse eleven. This is at the close of chapter one. Oh, Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant.

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And for even Nehemiah to say that at the close of his prayer is significant to his current situation because he is a servant in the house of the king of Persia.

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So 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 who is this man that Nehemiah is referring to.

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Well, it's the king specifically. It's King Artaxerxes, who is over Persia, because Nehemiah, even though he worked in the king's service, he wasn't permitted to just walk up to the king and have a conversation with him whenever he wanted.

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If the king did not grant him permission to speak to him, the king could have him killed because he thought so bold of himself that he could address somebody as high and as mighty as the king over the empire of Persia.

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Remember that Esther faced this same dilemma. If you are familiar with the story of Esther, she couldn't just walk into King Xerxes presence even though he was her husband.

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She had to be summoned by the king. And if she walked into the throne room unsummoned and he did not extend his scepter to her, she could be executed even as the queen.

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So not anybody could just walk up to the king and talk to him. And that was the situation here with Nehemiah.

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So he's asking God to show him mercy in the sight of this man, in the sight of the king.

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If God's providential hand is on Nehemiah to be so bold as to speak to the king, may it be that the

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Lord would protect him and that he would not be struck down by this powerful man that he worked for. And it says at the very close of chapter one,

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I was cup bearer to the king. So Nehemiah carried his cup.

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That was his job. He was he was the guy that served wine to the king and only to the king.

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It wasn't like he oversaw the service of wine to everybody else and at the king's table made sure everybody was getting their wine.

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His job was to give the king his wine and he would carry the king's cup and he would taste the king's wine first before he would give it to the king to see that it was safe.

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This was a person who was generally very lighthearted. He was someone cheery. He was someone the king valued and wanted in his presence.

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And there was probably no one else in the king's service that was in his presence more regularly than the cup bearer, even more than the king's own advisers.

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The cup bearer was right there with him. This is somebody that was trustworthy and they were modest.

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They were courageous. It was a position for which that man would receive a lot of riches and have some influence in the kingdom as well.

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Oh, and this guy was also very good looking as somebody who was going to be standing in the king's court that the king had to look at on a regular basis and even be a representative of the king standing there with him in all the affairs that he dealt with.

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It was expected that the cup bearer was supposed to be a good looking guy. So you can imagine that Nehemiah was probably among the most handsome of the

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Hebrews that lived in the Persian Empire. But like I said, one of the expectations of him was that he was supposed to be generally upbeat and happy.

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He wasn't supposed to be sad. So it alarmed Nehemiah when Artaxerxes noticed that he was sad.

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I'm going to read this again. Verse two, the king said to me, why is your face sad seeing that you are not sick?

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This is nothing but sadness of the heart. So there's something clearly going on with Nehemiah.

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Again, they spent a lot of time together. So the king's able to pick up on some visual cues. And here, the sorrow that is in Nehemiah's heart is so great.

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He is not able to hide it from the king. And then here's Nehemiah's reaction. I was very much afraid.

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Why is that? Why would Nehemiah be so afraid of the king? Well, because this was a man of power.

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Like I said, it's somebody who could put him to death. If Nehemiah displeased the king, hey, off with his head.

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Remember that Vashti displeased Xerxes so much that he threw her out of his presence and decided to look for another wife.

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And that's how Esther ended up becoming Xerxes' wife. But here for Nehemiah, he does not want to displease his king.

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He knows the expectations that are upon him as a cupbearer. And he has a lot of loyalty to this man, not just fear of him and the power that he holds.

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So then verse three, I said to the king, let the king live forever. Why should not my face be sad when the city, the place of my father's graves, lies in ruins and its gates have been destroyed by fire?

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So the reason that Nehemiah gives to Artaxerxes is not the same reason his heart was filled with sorrow and drove him to prayer.

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He was mostly grieved over the the sinfulness that the Jews had been doing in rebellion against God.

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But he did not expect the king, a pagan king on top of that, to understand sin against the

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God of the Hebrews, since Artaxerxes worshipped all these other different kinds of gods.

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So instead, he said that he was filled with sorrow because Jerusalem, Zion, and we have

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Zion spoken about with such praise throughout the Psalms. So, of course, it is a city where Nehemiah's heart is so closely knit.

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But he says the city, the place of my father's graves, it's in ruins.

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The gates have been destroyed. There's nothing protecting the people. They're sitting ducks out there.

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Then the king said to me, this is verse four. What are you requesting? So I prayed to the

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God of heaven. Now, likely, when it says here that Nehemiah prayed, it wasn't like he stepped away and had another long prayer that we read in chapter one, but just silently prayed in his mind and in his heart.

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He prayed to God and asked for wisdom in verse five. 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 father's graves, that I may rebuild it.

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And the king said to me, the queen sitting beside him, he probably, you know, kind of looked over, glanced at the queen, turns back to Nehemiah and says, how long will you be gone and when will you return?

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Because this is a man the king really liked. He wasn't just about to say, oh, yeah, sure, go ahead. Go back to Jerusalem.

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That's fine. He liked Nehemiah. He wanted Nehemiah back in his presence again, but because he so liked this man, he also wanted to give him whatever would delight his heart.

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So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. 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 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.

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And the king granted me what I asked for. The good hand of my God was upon me.

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Now, we talked about this when we were in Ezra, but all of these events transpire in this way because it is

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God's will that they would happen. Let's say you have an aunt who gets really sick and she goes into the hospital and while she's there in the hospital, she gets better and she comes home again and you get on social media and you say, hey, praise the

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Lord. He healed my aunt while she was in the hospital. And you have some sort of critic or cynic out there that speaks up and goes, well,

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God didn't have anything to do with healing your aunt. That was the doctors that did that.

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It was the medicine. It was medical science that healed your aunt. Well, yeah, sure.

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But it was by the hand of God, providentially working through those means to heal your relative so that they would be brought back to health.

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God uses secondary means to accomplish his will. We absolutely should give God credit and glory for every great blessing that we receive.

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And so Nehemiah does that here. When the king granted these things to him, he knew that the good hand of my

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God was upon me. The ultimate praise does not go to the king, although Nehemiah was surely thankful.

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He was surely grateful to the king. Thank you, king, for letting me do this and blessing me with with all of these provisions that I may have all that I have asked you for.

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Surely he was thankful to the king in that way. But ultimately, his praise was going to God, for it was the hand of God that so moved in the heart of the king of Persia to give

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Nehemiah what he was requesting, that he may go home and be able to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and even have a house for himself, where he says there at the end of his request, and for the house that I shall occupy, let me have timber that I may build my own home.

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It may have been like a family home or a family dwelling that he was familiar with there in Jerusalem that had belonged to his ancestors.

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So when he got there, he was going to rebuild his own house so that he would have a place to stay in addition to the work that needed to be done there in Jerusalem.

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Asking King Artaxerxes for these letters to the governors, this may have been because Nehemiah knew that the effort to try to rebuild the temple that we read about this in Ezra was halted by the king of Persia.

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The king said, nope, stop. We don't want the Jews to rebuild their temple and become a powerhouse the way that they were before.

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And and they would not obey the king anymore. They would not give their their taxes to Persia.

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We don't want that. We don't want an uprising. So please stop the construction of the temple. And because Nehemiah knew about that, he was asking for letters that he may receive safe passage and no one would try to stop him.

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He would be able to show it's by the king's blessing that I am on my way and allowed to do the building that I am going to do.

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So then we read about Nehemiah returning to Jerusalem and inspecting the walls. And that's what comes up next in verse nine.

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Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.

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Now, the king had sent me with officers of the army and horsemen. But when Sanbalat, the

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Horanite and Tobiah, the Ammonite servant, heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

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So I went to Jerusalem and was there for three days. Ezra, same sort of story. He goes to Jerusalem.

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He was there for three days. Then I arose in the night. I and a few men with me.

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And I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem.

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There was no animal with me, but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by the valley gate to the dragon spring and to the dung gate.

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And I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.

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Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool. But there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass.

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Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall. And I turned back and entered by the valley gate and so returned.

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And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing. And I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials and the rest who were to do the work.

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So this is kind of sneaky. This is what's going on here. Because even though Nehemiah has come with these letters, there are still these guys here that want to stop them.

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And there's kind of some foreshadowing going on here because we're going to see this antagonism that's going to come up a little bit later on.

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And so Nehemiah, very wisely, in order to get started on the work that he came there to do, after all, he gave the king a timeline as to when he was going to return.

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And he wanted to honor that. So he needed to get right to work. So so not to be hindered from this work that he needed to do.

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By night, he went out and he's going around the walls and he's inspecting everything. He's seeing what's been torn down.

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He's starting to formulate in his mind what needs to be done, what needs to be reconstructed. What's the first thing that we need to get started on here?

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And some of this destruction of the walls was so thorough that that with all of the debris that was around,

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Nehemiah couldn't even get his animal through there. So he's he's trying to be very careful. He didn't even tell the

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Jewish officials who were going to help him what it was that he was going to do. So then verse 17.

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Then I said to them, you see the trouble that we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.

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And this is the the priest, nobles, officials and the rest who were to do the work. That's who Nehemiah is talking to.

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Now you see how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned. Come, let us build the walls of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

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And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good and also the words that the king had spoken to me.

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And they said, let us rise up and build. So Nehemiah comes with a story of of how

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God had been providing for him. And this enlivened the hearts of his of his fellow

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Hebrews. And the Lord is with us. Let's do this. Let's get to it. So they strengthened their hands for the good work.

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But when Sanbalat, the Horonite and Tobiah, the Ammonite servant and Geshem, the

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Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, what is this thing that you were doing?

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Are you rebelling against the king? And then I replied to them, the God of heaven will make us prosper and we, his servants will arise and build.

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But you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.

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So Nehemiah's answer was basically, no, we're not we're not rebelling against the king.

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In fact, we're here to serve the true king, he who sits enthroned over heaven and earth.

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And you have no portion with him or his kingdom because you are rebelling against that king.

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May we have a heart that's like Nehemiah's, who feared the name of the Lord, who desired to serve him and keep his commandments, who repented of sin.

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He asked for God's mercy and God showed him favor and has blessed him.

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We are servants of the most high king. If you have repented of your sin and you believe in Jesus Christ, his savior, who died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the grave and is presently seated at the right hand of the throne of God, then you are an inheritor of his kingdom.

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We're not looking toward an earthly kingdom. We're looking forward to a heavenly kingdom.

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For Jesus said in the book of Revelation that he who endures to the end will be given the crown of life and a place to sit with him on his throne.

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What a beautiful promise that is. And so remain steadfast in the faith to the end.

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Amen. This has been When We Understand the Text of Pastor Gabriel Hughes. For all of our podcasts, episodes, videos, books, and more, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. If you'd like to submit a question to this broadcast or just send us a comment, email whenweunderstandthetext at gmail .com

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and let your friends know about our ministry. Join us again tomorrow as we grow together in God's word when we understand the text.