Nehemiah: Prayer Prepares Us to Participate in God's Work
Pastor Fletcher starts our new sermon series with Nehemiah 1:1–11. Discussion points: Nehemiah was a highly trusted and valued member of the king’s court, Nehemiah spent months in prayer over Jerusalem’s situation, confession helps heal our hearts and brings us closer to God and others.
-
Scripture reader: [Nehemiah 1:1–11] The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the 20th year, as I was in Susa, the citadel, that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. And they said to me, the remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire.
As soon as I heard these words, I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. And I said, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses.
Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell there. They are your servants and your people whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. Oh Lord, 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. Now I was cupbearer to the king.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Preacher: Today we're starting a new sermon series through the book of Nehemiah. We will be spending the next 13 weeks going through the book of Nehemiah. And it's one of these ancient history books that we have, and sometimes someone will tell me, you know, Nehemiah is one of my favorite books of the Bible, and it's at that moment that I immediately know that this person is a liar and should not be trusted. Nehemiah is an obscure politician in ancient Persia. He's been given the task to lead a political movement to bring people to rebuild an ancient wall of a city that most of us haven't visited. A few of us have.
And it's really difficult on first glance as you read Nehemiah to see any devotional value whatsoever in this book. You read it and you're like, this stuff happened 2500 years ago. It's really hard for me to understand what is happening here. Yet, Nehemiah remains one of the most popular books for preachers and pastors to preach on week after week and year after year. And the reason why is because Nehemiah was a great leader. He, he really was. There's a lot of great leadership lessons to learn from Nehemiah, and so pastors love to preach on leadership lessons, but that's not the main point of the book of Nehemiah. Even worse, some churches use. Nehemiah as a kind of a fuel for like a building campaign. So someone might say, Nehemiah, was commissioned by God to go rebuild the walls. I want to build a family life wing on the west side of the building. Who's with me?
And that's the way that Nehemiah is often preached, but these are not the point of Nehemiah. These types of sermons reflect actually a deficiency in our ability to read and understand the Old Testament. Because what's happening in the book of Nehemiah is not a story of an ancient hero that we are to emulate. In fact, none of the stories of the Old Testament are really just stories of ancient heroes that we try to imitate with our lives. Rather, the book of Nehemiah is carefully placed by the divine author on high, written by human hands down low, so that we can see that our God is a God who keeps his promises. That is the main point of the book. That is what we're going to see as we walk through the book, week after week for the next 13 weeks, you're going to be seeing a God who keeps his promises.
The book of Nehemiah is really pointing toward the ultimate Nehemiah, the one who would leave his place of comfort in the throne room of God on the on high to be with his people, and at the risk of his own life, and in fact at the cost of it. Would bring his people into the city of God to make them citizens. It's really a book pointing us forward toward Jesus of Nazareth. So let's start our study of Nehemiah. Some of you brought Bibles this morning. I'm proud of you. If you brought a Bible here. I'll just honor you. You can hold it up so that you can be honored here. Some of you are like, no way that is happening for me. Anyways, there's more people than the zero that held up their Bibles just now. I, I do love it when you bring your Bible cause it means that you can follow along and you know that you don't just believe what I'm saying, but you believe what's in, in, in the word as I try to expose it and help us to see it.
This, the book of Nehemiah. If you were to, to look at your Bible, OK, so you've got in your Bible, those of you who are newer to the Bible, there's two testaments. There's Old Testament, New Testament. New Testament is Jesus and after the early church, and Old Testament is everything that happened before that from Adam and Eve all the way to Malachi, which was the last prophet, and then there's a 450 year, period of quiet, of silence. And so, basically your Bible is like mostly Old Testament and somewhat New Testament. I know this is really rudimentary for some of you, but it'll get more interesting here.
Nehemiah, where, so where's Nehemiah? Almost smack in the middle of the Old Testament. And so you might think that Nehemiah is a story in the middle of the Old Testament narrative, but no, it's doesn't work that way. The Old Testament isn't organized consequentially. It's not organized in order like sequentially, not consequentially. I don't know what that, it's not ordered sequentially, like that. The Old Testament is ordered by category. So the first category is the law and the, is the laws, the Torah. You have 5 books Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And so after you get through the law, which is, it is sequential at this point, it's the earliest part of the history of Israel. You move into the histories, and there you have several books that span years and thousands of years of time from the time of the judges all the way to the final kings of the northern and the southern kingdoms.
And so as you work your way through these histories, what you actually find is that some of these books cover the same topics over and over again. You might read the same thing in different ones. Because it's different accounts and different perspectives on the same stories. But then at the end of the histories as we get to Nehemiah, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, then we move into the, the poetic books, and the wisdom literature. You have Job, you have the Psalms, you have the Proverbs. The Job is thought to be written before Genesis. And so in no way are these things sequential. They're, they're taken out of order and taken categorically, and then you move into the prophets. You have the major prophets and then the minor prophets. They're not minor because they're less important. They're just shorter. That's all that means. And so you have your major prophets and your minor prophets. So they're organized in a way, it's kind of sequential as you go through, but it's not completely.
And so when you get to Nehemiah, Nehemiah is not actually in the middle of the Old Testament. Nehemiah is at the very end of the Old Testament. This happened way after the, the events of David, way after the events of Moses. This is almost leading up to the time of Christ. And so, if you're going to really understand Nehemiah, you're going to have to understand basically the entire story of the Old Testament before you get there, OK? So let's go. All right. what, what I'm gonna do for you though, I, I do actually have to give a quick recap, and, but I'm going to make this as painless as possible. It's gonna be, it's, think of this as, you know, that bumper when you start a new series of TV, a new season of a series you love, and you're like, wait a second. This was complicated. I don't remember exactly what was happening, but they give you the little video that has like the tidbits of, of what you need to remember. That's what I'm going to try to do for you, OK, from the Old Testament.
So I'm going to try to give you the pertinent details leading up to the time of Nehemiah in 5 minutes or less, OK? Stick with me for 5 minutes. Here we go. Let's start with Moses. I'm gonna talk fast now. God leads his people out of slavery in Egypt and gives them the promised land of Israel. He establishes a covenant with his people and promises to be faithful to them. God warns that if they turn away from him, He will scatter the people as an act of judgment, but he also promises that when they return to him, he will gather them again. Now this is really important, this covenant with Moses, super important for all the scripture, but especially here in Nehemiah, a very important promise. If you are faithful to me, He, I will be with you always, but when you are unfaithful as a form of discipline, I will scatter you among the nations, and when you return to me, I will return to you. I will bring you back together to be your, to be people again.
OK, so let's fast forward to David. We're gonna skip a whole bunch of stuff that happened between Moses and David. David, he's a great king. most of us have heard of David, but from what I can tell, David is not an awesome dad. He has a lot of issues with his sons and his daughters, and he does not always, live faithfully as a parent. And we see that apparently with Solomon. Solomon, was the king after David, and Solomon, you know, was not the firstborn son of David. It was just the firstborn son of David's favorite wife. So, a little messy history there. there's a lot of stories actually about how Solomon became king, and I'll let you discover those as you go through chronicles and, and everywhere else in the, in the Bible.
It's actually a pretty riveting story. I got really into telling that story to my wife. This doesn't count against my 5 minutes. I was telling. I was, I read it recently and I got, I got so excited. I was like, this is awesome. Like the, the commander of a different, of a different son, he came and anyways, there was like, it, it's great drama. You just have to like slow down and actually read it, pay attention. OK, back into my five minutes.
So Solomon. He is a good king for the most part. He builds the temple to the Lord, but then at the end of his life, he actually builds temples to other gods, uh, from his foreign wives that he had married throughout the years, and he builds temples really close to Jerusalem to gods that aren't Yahweh. And so he's breaking the covenant. And what happens after that? When Solomon dies, the kingdom, it splits. You have a northern kingdom of Israel and a southern kingdom of Judah, and then you're the histories just go on from there. You have a succession of kings from the northern kingdom that are all rebellious, they're all bad. In the southern kingdom, most bad kings, a few good ones, that, that get rid of the high places, that get rid of the foreign gods, and they're faithful to God again. And so you get this glimmer that there might be hope, but then. They, they die and their sons, usually go right back into the same type of sinful behavior worshiping other gods.
And so you have just this repeated pattern of rebellion throughout the scriptures. This is just constant from Moses on that the people are rebelling against God. And so what happens? God completes his covenant and he scatters the people first. The northern kingdom falls to Assyria, and then second, the southern kingdom falls to Babylon a few years after that. And not only do they fall and they then become occupied, but as a way of controlling territory, these ancient kingdoms would actually move the people out of the land, at least the most important ones, would move them out of the land and would move them to their country. Where they're expected to live in a different country. And so in this country, this is what we call exile.
And so the people of Israel, Northern Kingdom and Southern Kingdom have been in exile for several years. Now, another country has come and taken over both Assyria and Babylon and Persia. And so this has all changed a lot over the past 70 years or so that they've been living in exile, and now we're catching up to Nehemiah. So what happens right before Nehemiah, you have the book of Ezra, and, and Ezra, the, the leaders, Zerubbabel and Ezra finally convinced the kings to let their people start returning. So they go back to build the temple, they go back to establish justice and have a cultural renewal, and then we have that, that's already happened. So we have two groups have already returned to Israel, and now we're ready for Nehemiah.
Now, Nehemiah is still living in Susa, is the citadel or the fortress of the nation of Persia. It's a, he is living in the king's palace, and we know that Nehemiah is the cupbearer to the king. Now that might not seem very important. You might think, I would like a cupbearer, someone to hold my cup over here. That's what my son Rowan calls me from time to time. I am his cupbearer, as I follow him around with his water bottle, and, but. The cupbearer is actually a very important advisor to the king. To have that type of proximity to the king means that the king trusts the cupbearer a great deal. And not only that, but. This cupbearer, all the food that would go to the king eventually, the cupbearer would taste. So the cupbearer has to be someone very trustworthy, or you would never get in that position because if they weren't very trustworthy, they could easily kill the king. They could easily betray him.
And so having that type of proximity to the king made Nehemiah a very important person, made him part of the king's court. He may have potentially. been the most important member of the Jewish community at this time. He was a high ranking official in this foreign nation of Persia. And so we're prepared to start Nehemiah chapter one, even though he says that at the very end of Nehemiah chapter one, but Nehemiah chapter one, I just want you to think, OK, let's make this really epic, OK? Let's just think about it as if it's an epic television program that's coming out. It's a dark night. It's a little stormy. It's in the middle of November. It says it actually is in the middle of November here. It's Cheslev, so however you say that, but that's November in the Jewish calendar, so it's a dark, cold, stormy night. There's a mist in the air. Nehemiah is sitting in the, the, the palace. Surrounded by guards, he's sitting, he's lit by candles all around and opens the door. Sir, your brother's here.
Hanani, he walks in, he has his special forces team along with him, a small group that Nehemiah has commissioned to go and spy out the people of Israel and see how they're doing. And they come in, and Nehemiah says, my brother. Bring me good news. What is going on with our people? And Hanani draws near and he says, I fear not my brother. The people of Israel, there is a remnant remaining, but they are in trouble and great shame. The walls are crumbled to the city, and the gates are smoldering as though they've just been burned down. This is a huge deal. Nehemiah immediately, he starts to weep. The wall, it represented safety, it represented security. Not only did it keep all of the bad guys out of the city, but a city without a wall could never have justice, it could never have jurisprudence, it can never have a thriving economy because you require safety to have all of that sort of thing.
Nehemiah, he's broken down at this moment. It says that he prays from the month of Cheslev until the month of Nissan. Nissan, however you say that. He prays for those months, that's 4 months of prayer. And in fact, the entire campaign to rebuild the walls only takes a little more than 2 months. Nehemiah prays for longer than it would take him to actually accomplish what he did. I want you to see what he doesn't do. Nehemiah is an important guy. Nehemiah, he could have done what you or I would have done when we have an emergency or something major like this come. What do I wanna do when we have something important like this? Set a meeting, set some goals, get to action. Nehemiah knows the king personally. He could have gone in to see the king. Instead, Nehemiah falls on his knees and he begins to pray.
It reminds me of the Luther quote, I have so much to do that I shall spend the first 3 hours of each day in prayer. I think that everyone knows that prayer is an essential aspect of the Christian life. But very few of us would say that we are good at prayer. I think that I've never met a, a Christian who wouldn't say, I wish I was better at prayer. In fact, if anyone ever asks you, I'm gonna give you a little tip. If anyone ever asks you, how can I be praying for you? You, if you don't have anything to say, you can just say, you can pray that I would be better at prayer. And that, that's just a great prayer request. There you go. I gave you something you can use at least as we go through Nehemiah when we pray.
I'm gonna spend the rest of our time talking about Nehemiah's prayer because it's the rest of this chapter. And I want you to see these few things here, OK? First, when we pray. God uses our prayers to align his people to his purposes. God uses our prayers. He uses prayer to align his people to his purposes. You cannot use prayer to twist God's arm and get to give you what you want. Prayer is about aligning ourselves to what God wants. Because what God wants is ultimately what's best for us. It is the ultimate fulfillment of your deepest desires, is what God wants.
Now, second, And a mysterious tension with the first. You have to hold both of these together. You can't hold one apart from the other, they have to both be there. The second thing here is that God uses the prayers of His people as the means to accomplish what he wants. So not only does God use prayer to align our hearts to what he wants, but he actually uses our prayers. As the means to accomplish what he wants. Prayer prepares us to participate in God's work. Prayer prepares us to participate in God's work. We're gonna dive into this prayer of Nehemiah.
You're gonna see basically four things that Nehemiah does. What's the amazing thing is that they reflect what we did earlier in the Lord's prayer, that when Jesus taught us to pray, that his prayer looked much like Nehemiah's prayer did in Nehemiah chapter 1, and that as we learn from Nehemiah how to pray, we're learning from Christ how to pray. We're gonna be seeing it as a mirror for all of our prayers. So, let's dive in.
The first thing that Nehemiah does when he starts his prayers, he starts with adoration. Nehemiah starts with adoration. He looks to who God is. And he says this, oh Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments. Remember what I said? The point of Nehemiah is, the point is that we have a God who keeps His promises. And so here he is saying, oh Lord, God of heaven, you see how Lord is in all caps. That is the sacred name of God. Oh Yahweh, God of heaven. He's using God's sacred, holy name to address him personally. He says, great and awesome are you. This word for awesome. This is the same word that we might get for like our fear of the Lord. When you see the, the Bible telling you to fear the Lord, it's talking about our God is an awesome, not like in a cool, awesome, but like in a in a beyond words kind of awe and respect that we might have for Him, who keeps his covenant. And steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandment.
This word for steadfast love, it's a very famous word. It's a word that's used often to describe God's love. It's chesed, chesed. And the word said, it can mean it, it has such a rich meaning, it cannot be translated into English. I think that the best translation, my favorite translation of He said love is, found in the Jesus storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd Jones. It might be because I've read that about 400 times to my children, but, Sally Lloyd Jones puts it like this, that it's God's never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love. That's the type of love that he has for us. And so Nehemiah, he starts with the adoration, and as we pray to God, we start with adoration. We think about who God is and what is true about his nature that we can praise Him for on this day.
And second, what Nehemiah does is confession. So he thinks about who God is and then he says, who are we? Confession. Similar to the Lord's prayer when Jesus says, forgive us our sin as we forgive those who have sinned against us. Which is kind of interesting that he would teach us to pray that way when Jesus never had any sin to be forgiven of, but he was just teaching us to be forgiven of our sin. And Nehemiah spends time confessing his sin. Listen to this verses 6 and 7. Let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant. That I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel, your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father's house have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you have commanded your servant Moses.
I honestly think that confession is the secret sauce to prayer. I think that confession is the hardest part of prayer for most of us. But it is the part of prayer that actually shapes our souls the most. It is hard. Confession requires humility. It requires you to have this ability to say, you know what? I wasn't right. I did something wrong, but it also, here's the other thing about confession, and this is, I think the, I don't think that actually the problem with most of us is pride. I think that most of us would be willing to confess sin if we saw it. The problem for most of us with confession is insight. That we don't take the time to consider our words, actions, thoughts, and deeds, and the impact that they have on ourselves and on others. That we don't really consider. Instead, we're too entertained by short videos, one after the next, or we're too distracted by what's happening at work or with our family or whatever it might be. We, we don't have the insight to confess. We lack the ability.
And this may be why our prayers remain so superficial. Because we lack this insight. I'll give you a personal example. I wrote about this in the newsletter a few weeks ago, and so I'll just tell the story again. A few weeks ago, I had a friend, a well-meaning friend, a, a Christian brother who I trust. he committed to do something, and he didn't do it. And it wasn't a major thing, not a big deal at all, really. It didn't hurt me. It was fine. but he just, he didn't do it. And so I was tortured. Like, what do I do? Like this guy, he betrayed my trust. He said he would do something, but he didn't do it. I think I need to confront him. And so I was kind of tortured by this as I was just thinking, disappointed, disappointed in what does this mean for our friendship, disappointed in him.
And really, as I, as I considered, and, and so this is where it took a different turn, cause I woke up one morning and I sat on my back porch, which is the quietest place in my house, and I Just seethed on this for a little while, like I just felt angry. And then as if a bird whispered it into my ear. It was like, you could forgive him. Because what purpose would it be? If I was to confront him. He didn't do it on purpose, and it's not really part of his character to do this. I haven't noticed it as a repeated thing. It was more just, I wanted him to feel the uncomfort, the discomfort of having betrayed me.
But an alternative is that instead of holding it against him, I could forgive him. Because what was actually happening in my heart is I felt hurt. And then what was happening to the hurt? It was becoming bitterness. And then slowly after that, it started to become resentment, which is what happens to unchecked hurt in our heart. It slowly becomes bitterness and then resentment. And so while I may have been the one who has sinned against, the ugliest effects of that sin were in my own heart. I didn't need to confront him about his sin. I needed to be confronted about my lack of forgiveness. About my ability to hold on to resentment and bitterness, and to not let go and offer forgiveness. I confessed, I confessed my lack of forgiveness to the Lord, and God gave me freedom.
I didn't need to confront this friend. It's no one here. They're not hearing this. I, I'm not subtly jabbing at any of you. But that's the power of confession. It forces us to stop asking what did they do to me and instead start asking what is going on inside of me. If you want to grow as a person. Confession, it requires insight, but here's the beautiful thing about confession.
And here's what empowers us to do it. Charles Spurgeon once said, little sin requires a little savior, but my sin is great, so therefore my savior, my savior is great, so therefore my sin must be great also. Because Jesus has already paid for my sins, I can confess my sins boldly, knowing that my righteousness is not what makes me right before God. And the more I confess my sin, the greater he is made because he died for those sins, and it brings him glory to see me trusting him with each of my sins. Many of us, we bring shame into our confessions, but I encourage you, the Lord already knows, you can't hide it from him, to confess your sins to the Lord and as he empowers you to confess your sins to one another.
When it comes to confession, many of us probably had really bad role models. And I'm committed that we be a church where we stop some of the patterns of generational sin. That we received from our parents. Many of us here grew up in homes where we never heard an apology from our parents for our entire lives. And I am sorry. That's not how it should be. And I'm determined that we will stop the generational sin here, that we will have the insight to confess our sin to the Lord and to one another, and even the humility to confess it to our children, if we have them. Here's something that we say to our kids every day, when it comes to confession is that you can only handle your side of the street. I don't care what he or she did, you can only control what you did. And I think that that prevents us a lot of times from confession as we think, oh, this person actually sinned worse than I did. So therefore, I'm not gonna confess what I did, but that's not an excuse. You can only handle your side of the street.
Here's the most amazing thing in all of Nehemiah's prayer to me, is that Nehemiah is confessing sins that he did not participate in completely. That many of the sins of breaking the covenant as he's confessing those things were done before he was even born. he takes credit for it also. He says, me and my house, we've also broken your covenant, but he is confessing sins from a previous gen generation. Nehemiah isn't claiming pers personal responsibility for every sin committed by his ancestors, but he's identifying himself with the people of God. He refuses to stand a safe distance and say, look what those people did, but I'm good. Instead, he goes to God and he says, we have sinned.
Let's continue. The third thing that we see Nehemiah model with prayer is scripture, what God has promised. We have these monthly prayer meetings and we've done them more often than that, maybe we'll get back to more often than monthly, and one thing that we always say during our prayer meeting is that we want to pray from the riches of God's word, not the poverty of our own hearts. Because when I am left to just pray, what I'm thinking, I don't have good thoughts. But when I study the word, the Lord gives me insight and he gives me the words to say. God loves for us to use his word to shape our prayers, and that's what Nehemiah does. When he's going through this, he points out different scriptures. Nehemiah knows his Bible. He's quoting, he's riffing off of Deuteronomy. He's riffing off of probably some words that Daniel had said just in the previous generation or just a few years before Nehemiah, and he's quoting these important things.
Look, verse 8, remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the people. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them. Though you are outcast in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I've chosen to make my name dwell there. And here he's basically paraphrasing Deuteronomy chapter 4. As we meditate on God's word, it fuels our prayers. And so if you want to grow in your ability to pray, I would encourage you to spend time in God's word and praying God's word back to him. And if you want to learn what that looks like, join us at a prayer meeting. We would love to teach you what that looks like as we do it together.
And then the fourth thing that we see, Nehemiah, and it's kind of the thing that we default to when we are praying is supplication. What we're asking God to do. How many of our prayers look like a request list to the Lord? But that's not how you have a relationship with someone. If my kids only brought their requests to me, it would not be a good relationship between us. Do you, any kids in the room need to hear that? Uh. Instead, they have, we have to relate with God as he is our Father, as he cares for us. We use the scripture to pray back, we confess our sins, but we also ask God to do things. Supplication means it's prayer request, it's an act of asking God for something. And he doesn't get to it until the very end.
Verse 11, 0 Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant and to the prayer of your servants who delight to hear your name. And give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man. Now when Nehemiah says this man. I just want you to know that that is disrespectful and pejorative, because who he's talking about is King Artaxerxes. And King Artaxerxes, when Nehemiah goes in, in just a few verses, he goes, you know, 4 months from this prayer, but a few verses from now, he goes into the king's throne room, and he gets down on a knee and he says, O king, may the king live forever. But here when he's praying, he's just like, this dude, give me a favor. To Nehemiah, he knows that the true king is on high. And that the man next door is just a dude, just a man.
It reminds us of the passage in Proverbs chapter 21, the king's heart is a stream of water in the hand of the Lord. He turns it wherever he will. and so we will see as we move into this next chapter, what happens as Nehemiah goes into the king to get permission to, to lead people back down to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls. It's a story of restoration. It's a story of revival. It's a story of, of recapturing the wonder and what God can do. And it's a story of a God who keeps his promises.
Nehemiah, it's a fantastic book of the Bible that deserves to be preached, even if it's not preached in the same way that many do. Before God uses Nehemiah to build the walls of Jerusalem, he uses prayer to rebuild Nehemiah's heart.
In conclusion, Nehemiah's prayer points us toward Jesus. Jesus sought his father in prayer at all times. As he taught us with the Lord's prayer. He was constantly allowing himself to be shaped by prayer. And in his final hours, and he's found praying in the garden of Gethsemane. Where he says, if there's any way for this cup to pass, Father. May it be He's asking for another way. To accomplish God's purposes, but then Jesus says quickly, but not my will be done, but yours be done. Jesus taught us to pray, not my will done, but yours. And it was the will of the Father for the Son to die on our behalf. Jesus, He is our mediator. He takes our prayers as broken and feeble as they are, and he takes them to God, he prays on our behalf. He makes our prayers worthy of the God Most High.
Nehemiah is preparing to go out of his place of comfort in the palace and to lead the people of Israel into the promised land again to rebuild the wall and give them safety. But Jesus, he goes out of his place of comfort in the throne room of God and leads his people into his place, which is no longer a land, but it is a people, it is a church, and one day we will also occupy. The city of God. We also will be found in the new heavens and the new earth. Nehemiah succeeded at building the rebuilding the wall, but it was only a partial success. Because at the end of the book, spoiler alert, Nehemiah kinda goes crazy. He grows his hair out long and he starts to beat people, for breaking the covenant again. And we see that though Nehemiah can rebuild the wall, he cannot rebuild people's hearts.
And so we need a greater Nehemiah, one who can actually rebuild our hearts and lead his people to His place. And so each week, and this weekend in particular, we take a moment to confess our sins together. And so I'm going to encourage you as we get to confess our sins, as we consider what Nehemiah has shared with us, as we consider what God has shared with us this morning, confession is such an amazing opportunity that we have to allow our souls to be shaped. And so, we're going to be confessing using a, a prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. And so if you would speak these words along with me as we prepare our hearts to confess.
Most merciful God, we confess that we've sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus, have mercy on us and forgive us that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways to the glory of your name. Amen.
The good news of the gospel is this, that though we are sinners, Christ died for us, and that if we confess our sins, First John chapter one. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I'm gonna give you a moment to confess. A moment to have a just an inkling of insight into your life. I don't know what you're struggling with or what the Lord is bringing you to. But it's an opportunity to confess any places of unbelief. Strongholds that the enemy might hold in your life. There's freedom. As we confess. So just where you are take a moment. As we confess our sins, we're reminded that God is faithful. And that as we confess our sins, he allows us to enjoy his presence. But he's faithful, and enough. That your sin has already received punishment, brother and sister. You don't have to be punished for that once again. That Christ has done enough for you.
Each week, God reminds us of this, of what he's done for us through a sacred meal that we call communion or the Lord's supper. As we participate in this meal, we're reminded that Christ's body was broken for us. His blood was shed. On the night that he was betrayed, he took a loaf of bread and he broke it, and he said, this is my body broken for you. And he took a cup, and he said, this is my blood shed for you. Do this remembrance of me. And as we participate in this meal, we're reminded that God is with us in a real kind of way. Though he is not in the bread or the juice or the wine, he is with us. And so I encourage you, if you are a believer here today, to come and receive this meal, if you're walking according to Christ. With that being said, I'm going to invite us to stand as we pray together and prepare our hearts to respond over the next song.
God, as we prepare our hearts for this communion meal, would you bring us life and peace and joy and patience? Would you, help us to connect with you, to hear from you. God, we pray for the sacred meal, that we would enjoy your presence, that we would enjoy the freedom that comes with confession, and that you would teach us to pray as we ought. We ask all of these things in Christ's name, Amen.