Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Truly living out what we believe. That's next on Hope from the Word.

Bill Luebkemann: If your purpose in praying is to convince God to get onto your page, then you're wasting your breath, and you completely miss the point. And one example I can think of that applies today is reaching the lost. Sometimes we pray for our friends and family to get saved, and we do it with a kind of a ho-hum attitude, maybe. You know, I hope they get saved, but if they don't, it's not my fault. Or they'll get what's coming to them. Or, you know, something like that. I hope they get saved, but it's no big deal if they don't.

Or maybe it doesn't matter that much. Look, it matters. It matters a lot, and God loves everybody, and he's not willing that any should perish. He wants all to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, his son. He wants everyone to have everlasting life. That's the page that he's on, and we need to get on his page instead of trying to get him onto ours. George Bernard Shaw, who did not like Christians, I think everybody knows that, one time he said, if Christians really believe, this is not quoted, so I may not have exactly right, but he said this, if Christians really believe what they say they believe about heaven and hell, then they would crawl across hot coals even to reach a single unsaved person.

Now, he was mocking Christians. He didn't believe what we believe, and and he he was saying, you know, I don't believe it, and if they believed it like they really say it is, that they they do way more to reach the lost than what they're doing. And you know what? You can't You really can't blame them too much for getting that message, watching the church not really be too concerned about the lost.

Guest (Male): Hello and welcome to Hope from the Word from Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For the next few weeks, Pastor Bill Lubkemann will be looking at the book of Nehemiah. In the first chapter, Pastor Bill will point out a few principles that will really help us in our prayer lives. Maybe you, like many Christians, pray prayers that are primarily self-centered. Perhaps you throw in a few needs of your friends and family members, too. Well, while there is a place for that, Pastor Bill is going to encourage us to take God's perspective and pray in line with his heart and word.

So let's make our way over to Nehemiah and get started.

Bill Luebkemann: We're going to spend a little time today looking at a few verses in the first chapter of Nehemiah, so you can turn there. It 's hard to imagine how much useful stuff is jam-packed into this book here. And what an upstanding guy this fellow Nehemiah was. So as we begin, we want to refresh ourselves a little bit on the background here, which kind of started Well, you could keep rewinding the clock farther and farther, and you could say, well, it started with Adam and Eve, but for the purposes of what we're doing today, we could consider how it started with David's son, Solomon, who was perhaps the greatest king and certainly the wisest king that Israel ever had.

He 's the one that prayed that God would give him wisdom to rule the people wisely. He didn't ask for riches or fame or fortune or anything like that, and God said, well, I'm because you've asked for that, I'm going to give you what you've asked for, but I'm also going to give you the money and the fame and the fortune and all those other things as well. And he was a great and wise king, but unfortunately, he married too many people. More than one is too many, by the way. And if you can get one right, then you should think about marrying someone else.

He had, of course, 700 wives and 300 concubines, or maybe I have that backwards, and it was 300 wives and 700 concubines. Does it really matter? And trying to keep a thousand wives and concubines happy. And unfortunately, he married too many. The Bible clearly says that two should become one, not the 1,000 and one becoming one. And many of his wives were foreign wives, and the scriptures also says not to marry foreigners. For us as believers today, well, the New Testament says not to marry unbelievers. And unfortunately, his wives led him to sin because they all wanted to worship their own gods, and so he would help them to worship their own gods, even building them temples so they could worship their own gods.

And by the end of his life, he was worshiping all the gods of all of his many foreign wives, leading the Lord to be very unhappy, bringing much sin upon the nation. And it was in the reign of his son that God split the kingdom in two, a northern kingdom which was known as Israel and the southern kingdom which was known as Judah. And the northern kingdom, they both strayed from the Lord, but over different periods of time. I guess the northern kingdom lasted about 200 years, and they were eventually conquered by the Assyrians, not because their army was weak and not because their basic training wasn't as good, but because God sent the Assyrians to conquer them because they weren't following him.

They were worshiping idols. The northern kingdom pretty much did that the entire time. I don't think they really had a single good king. From the first king, Jeroboam, who set up an idol of the golden calf, I think maybe even two of them, because he didn't want the northerners to go down south to Jerusalem, so he said, hey, do your worshiping up here. We'll make it more convenient for you. And from him going forward, they never had a good king in the north. Those tribes were pretty much assimilated. You sometimes you hear about the 10 lost tribes of Israel, like they're living in a cave somewhere, you know, or oh, we've discovered the 10 lost tribes.

Here they are in some country. They were They were lost because they were assimilated. They intermarried with foreigners. They don't exist anymore. They 're not hiding somewhere. But the southern kingdom lasted a little bit longer before they were conquered by the Babylonians sometime around the year 600 BC, starting a little before 600 and ending a little bit after 600. They were carried off to Babylon in three waves. I think around 605 596 or something and 587 maybe. And they were carried off. Only a few of the very poorest Jews were left behind. And the Babylonians carrying them away.

This was during the time of Daniel who lived in Babylon. If you read the book of Daniel, that was while they were in captivity. Eventually, the king of Babylon fell to Cyrus, the king of the Medes and the Persians. You can read about that in the book of Daniel also. The famous handwriting on the wall episode where God said, you've been weighed in the balances and found wanting to the king of Babylon. And Cyrus came in and conquered them. And Cyrus looked favorably upon the Jews, and so the following year, he allowed them to begin to return to Jerusalem.

He pretty much allowed everybody to return, not just the Jews. He He said, well, you go back where you came from and worship your God, and while you're there, say a few prayers for me. You know, when you read Cyrus, it almost looks like he's a believer till you find out from reading the rest of history that uh he he told everybody, wherever they came from, to go back and resume worshiping their God, and while you're at it, remember me and pray for me and my kids here that we'll do okay. And so he was just covering his bases, praying to every kind of God there was.

But the Jews returned to Israel, specifically to Jerusalem. They began to rebuild the temple, and but there was a lot of opposition from the locals who were living in the land at that time. And the project kind of stalled. Some 16 years later, it was gotten going again. And some 60 years later, around the year 458 uh is when Ezra came back with another group of returnees, and some 15 years after that, in the year 444, the third wave of returnees came back. That's the wave that Nehemiah was a part of. So the Jews had been back in Jerusalem at this point almost a hundred years.

The first batch went back in 538. The Here this batch was 444, just six years shy of a hundred years. They've been back in Jerusalem for almost a hundred years, but they were very weak. There were not a lot of them there. There had been millions at one point, but only 50,000 returned the first time, and the subsequent returns were even less. So there weren't that many of them. And they were living in great distress and great reproach. And we see that in Nehemiah chapter one verse three where it says, those who survive the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire. Now, as we begin to look here uh how the Lord is working in the life of Nehemiah, um it gives us an incredible glimpse of the things that God can do, and it gives us an incredible glimpse of this guy uh Nehemiah. And we 're going to see here in these verses, I think, a little bit of a pattern for praying. And I 'm not suggesting that you can get whatever you want from God if you just pray in a certain way.

It doesn't matter if you say in G Jesus name or exactly how you say it. That 's not what matters. Your prayers are not going to get answered if you say it a hundred and ten times, either. But I do think we can learn some things and get some pointers here from this guy Nehemiah. His prayer was thorough and careful and accurate and deliberate. And you might say, well, I understand being careful when I pray cuz And I understand being thorough. That kind of makes sense. We wouldn't want the Lord to miss anything, right? Let's be thorough in our prayers.

And deliberate, that kind of ties in with being thorough, you know. He was really thinking carefully about what to say, but what is this accurate thing all about, you know? How can a prayer be accurate? Well, you stay with us here, and you'll find out in a few minutes. Now, if you thought your mission in life was difficult, whatever it is, consider what Nehemiah is about to do. He has a well-paying government job. He's the cupbearer to the king. He's a trusted advisor to the king. He's in the inner circle here. He knows the king well.

Artaxerxes is the king here, and he's a He's I don't know if I was a He was a friend of his, but he was a close associate, trusted advisor. He was respected and looked up to. He would occasionally be asked for advice. He was like a cabinet officer. He was not a slave or anything like that. This was a trusted position. He has plenty of food. He doesn't go hungry. He has a good place to live, and he's not lacking anything. But here he is about to give all of that up and to go on a 12-year mission, 800 miles or so away to a worn-down, beat-up, torn-apart place called Jerusalem.

They had rebuilt the temple, but apparently they hadn't finished rebuilding the rest of it. This is a trip roughly the distance of going from here to Memphis. Now, I know you can go to the uh you know, Philadelphia airport and get on a plane and be in Memphis in two hours. I've done that a few times. And it's a lot of fun to tell the people on the same plane that Elvis really is dead. You can get into some interesting discussions that way. But he didn't have a car or a plane or a train or anything like that.

This was a trek that he made on foot or on the back of a donkey or something, maybe making eight miles a day, about a four-month journey. Just imagine I like to relate these distances to things that are familiar to us here in America. Just imagine making a four-month journey to get from here to Memphis, hiking through the woods and the plains and the valleys. I don't know about you, but when I got to the Delaware River, I wouldn't know what to do, and if I survived that and got to the Susquehanna River, it'd be even a bigger problem.

But somehow he made it, making eight to ten miles a day, several several journeys there, like an entire college semester spent traveling. You thought learning calculus was hard for 16 weeks, but imagine traveling on foot or on the back of a donkey or something. He wasn't going to be coming home for holidays. This was a long-term trip here. The living conditions were poor. The city was in disarray. The people there were discouraged. The neighbors were making fun of them. But he is all torn up about it. He hears this in what we read in verse three.

He hears this. Those who survive the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. They're made fun of. They're mocked. The wall is broken down. The gates have been burned with fire. They're in terrible shape here. And it seems like Nehemiah knows what God is calling him to do. He's not praying to get out of it here. He's not like Moses saying, I can't do it for this reason, that reason, and the other reason, and oh, by the way, please send somebody else, but not me. Let's read what he has to say.

We're going to be going through verse four to 11 here. When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days, I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. Then I said, oh Lord, God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you.

We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees, and laws you gave your servant Moses. Remember the instructions 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. They are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.

Oh Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of this your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight in revering your name. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man. I was cupbearer to the king. And we see right away here in verse four, I think, one of the first principles of effective prayer. You can buy all kinds of books on effective prayer, and you can buy books that uh follow after the Lord's prayer as an outline for effective prayer, and you can buy books written on Nehemiah's prayer here and probably on a few others.

These are just my principles, what I got out of this by reading it. I call this first principle here the getting yourself on the same page as God principle. Referring to the way we pray today, Alan Redpath said this, quote, most of our prayers are just asking God to bless the work and to bless some folks that are ill and to keep us plugging along, to keep the work going. These are the give-me prayers, the heal-me prayers, you know, the keep-me-well kind of prayers. And I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't pray for those things because the Bible says we should make all our needs known to God.

He hears them all. He cares about our needs. He provides for us, but I do wonder how many times we pray for things that are seriously great things, things that are beyond our capabilities, things we can't do on our own, things that have nothing to do with our own needs and and things where selfishness doesn't even play the slightest role. Henry Blackaby in that book Experiencing God, you know, asked a trick question. Said to somebody, do you think God would ever call you to do something that was just beyond what you could do? And whoever he asked said, well, no, of course not.

Why would God do that? But the answer, of course, is yes, God will call you to do something that is beyond what you can do because then he can work through you. And Nehemiah is not about to ask for more for himself here. He's not looking for fame or fortune or money. He's not trying to be the king himself here. He's praying in accordance with God's word for something that is dear to God's heart and very important. And before he even starts that, he's deeply moved by the present state of affairs. It says he sat down and wept.

The new King James says he wept and mourned over the condition of Jerusalem. It troubled him greatly. He fasted and prayed for God's will to be done. He wasn't asking for his personal needs here. His prayer wasn't selfish, neither was it others-centered. Again, not that we shouldn't pray for others and not that we shouldn't pray for our own needs, but Nehemiah here wanted what God wanted, and he was really all cracked up about it. He wrapped himself about God's will and God's work, and it bothered him so much that he wept and mourned at the condition that Israel was in.

And it seems to me that this shows us that we really need to get on the same page with God where he's at. If your purpose in praying is to convince God to get onto your page, then you're wasting your breath, and you completely miss the point. And one example I can think of that applies today is reaching the lost. Sometimes we pray for our friends and family to get saved, and we and we do it with a kind of a ho-hum attitude, maybe. You know, I hope they get saved, but if they don't, it's not my fault.

Or they'll get what's coming to them. Or, you know, something like that. I hope they get saved, but it's no big deal if they don't. Or maybe it doesn't matter that much. Look, it matters. It matters a lot, and God loves everybody, and he's not willing that any should perish. He wants all to come to the knowledge of Jesus Christ, his son. He wants everyone to have everlasting life. That's the page that he's on, and we need to get on his page instead of trying to get him onto ours. George Bernard Shaw, who did not like Christian, I think everybody knows that, one time he said, if Christians really believe, this is not quoted, so it may not have exactly right, but he said this, if Christians really believe what they say they believe about heaven and hell, then they would crawl across hot coals even to reach a single unsaved person.

Now, he was mocking Christians. He didn't believe what we believe, and and he he was saying, you know, I don't believe it, and if they believed it like they really say it is, that they they do way more to reach the lost than what they're doing. And you know what? You can't You really can't blame them too much for getting that message, watching the church not really be too concerned about the lost. Sometimes churches are more concerned with the buildings and the programs and how many people come out and all that other kind of stuff than reaching a single unsaved person.

What have we done to bring the gospel to the unsaved? Is our heart really with the Lord on this page? This is just one example that I could think of easily. I 'm sure there are many others. Somebody else once said all Christians should be made to hang over the pit of hell for a little while so they could see what was going on down there. After doing so, there would be such renewed energy to bring the gospel to the whole world. You know, in the 1800s, missionaries left England to come to America. You know, now missionaries are leaving America to go to England.

Do you see that things are so bad over there? America got evangelized largely because of England. Now maybe we need to give them a hand and bring them back. But in the 1800s, when a missionary left England to go somewhere, that was it. They weren't going to be you know be texting their family members every day, every ten minutes, sending emails, using Skype and talking on the phone and coming back for holidays. It was goodbye forever. We'll see you in the in God's kingdom. The distances seem so much greater back then. We see another principle in this verse as well, and that is fasting.

Setting aside an important physical need for a short period of time to focus on praying and showing God, look, we believe Here's what we believe. This prayer is very important. We're going to It's so important. We're going to set aside our physical need for a short time. And I'm not talking about giving up meat on Fridays and stuffing ourselves with fish. That's not fasting. What What does that prove? Fasting means not eating anything for some period of time, even if it's just a meal. You you know, you can fast for a meal. You can fast for two meals.

You can fast all day. Look, you do it the day before you have the colonoscopy all day. Why can't you fast and pray for a day? How hard is that? I'm not saying it's it's easy, but, you know. The doctor says you're not going to eat this day. Okay. You know, done for. I liked it better when I was 25. I wish I could be 25 again, but I don't want to give up what I learned since then. I love to tell people who are 48, oh, you know what's coming in two years? Oh, yeah.

But look, you know, we can fast for stuff like that. Putting our physical needs aside and getting on the same page as God here. He sat down and wept. He didn't have to do that. He had a great thing going, government retirement plan, pension, you know. His family was well taken care of. He had good living accommodations there. He wasn't lacking anything. But here was what God was calling him to do. It really bothered him that Jerusalem was in a state of disarray, that the nation of Israel was the butt of jokes. And the first thing he did was get himself on the same page as God, and we all need to do that.

And we We Yeah, we can pray for our own needs as well, and we should. But we also need to look at the bigger picture, I think, and at times we might miss out on that.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in the study of Nehemiah. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkemann by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope from the Word wherever you find your podcasts. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m., and there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00.

To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton, or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives, and we want to pray for you, too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in Nehemiah next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkemann, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.