11th Sunday after Pentecost.
July 31, 2005
Nehemiah 1.

^1:1The words of Nehemiah son of Hacaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, ²Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. ³They said to me, “Those who survived 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.”

⁴When I heard these things, I sat down and wept. For some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven. ⁵Then I said: “O LORD, God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands, ⁶let 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. ⁷We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.

⁸“Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, ⁹but 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.’

¹⁰“They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. ¹¹O 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 favour in the presence of this man.”

I was cupbearer to the king. (NIV).

Thy Will Be Done

  Jesus taught us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Then Martin Luther taught us to understand that petition in this way. “The good and gracious will of God is done even without our prayer, but we pray in this petition that it may be done among us also. God’s will is done when he breaks and hinders every evil plan and purpose of the devil, the world, and our sinful nature, which do not want us to hallow God’s name or let his kingdom come; and when he strengthens and keeps us firm in his Word and faith until we die.”

  Ten days ago, Bill C-38 became law in Canada. That is the controversial bill that redefined marriage as the union of two people to the exclusion of all others thereby allowing same-sex marriage. I suppose if ever there was, here’s a sure sign that the world is “going to hell in a hand basket.” This law is another step in the humanist agenda to throw off the will and rule of God. We may also think that this law is a “done deal” and that there is nothing we can do about it. While that may be true, God can do something about it!

  Accordingly, our Synod’s president has asked all congregations of Lutheran Church Canada to observe a day of supplication and prayer for our nation, to do as the Apostle Paul taught, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness. (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

  As all three of today’s lessons demonstrate, the Scriptures constantly urge us to confess our sins and pray that God’s will be done in our individual lives, in our families, neighbourhoods and nations. We turn to the prayer of Nehemiah this morning because his situation was very similar to our own. His prayer of confession and his plea for God’s help did not fall on deaf ears. God heard and acted proving again that the prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective, not because of the righteous man, but because of the righteous God who hears and answers such prayer.

  Nehemiah was a cup bearer to the Persian king Artaxerxes. He lived about 140 years after the destruction of Jerusalem. There was no longer a Jewish state with its own king making its own laws. Judah was a territory in the Persian Empire. So Nehemiah was born in a secular setting and served in a secular government job.

  Nehemiah’s situation was therefore similar to our own. Judaism was not a major player in the affairs of the Persian Empire. Just so, Christianity in Canada is no longer a major player in the affairs of our government. In fact there is a strong and growing negative bias against anything Christian. Nehemiah was a believer who worked for a pagan king. Almost every one of you is a believer who works for a non-Christian employer, company or organization. Nehemiah was only one man in his place of work but God used him to influence the policies of the Persian Empire toward God’s people. You and I are also often all alone in our places of work. Yet that is not a hindrance to God who likes to work with very small numbers to show that he is the at work behind the scenes.

  So what did Nehemiah do? He prayed for God’s intervention in the political affairs of his day. About 80 years before his time, king Cyrus had given the Jews permission to return to their land and rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus even directed the Jews to pray and make offerings for him! A small temple was built but eighty years later, things were not going well in the land of Judah.

  So under king Artaxerxes, two things happened. First, Ezra was sent to Judah to teach the people the Law of Moses. Up to that point the Jews had not been living according to God’s Word. One particular issue—which Nehemiah also had to address—was that many Jewish men had taken foreign wives. That was a problem, not because of race, but because of faith. As it is to this very day, when you marry a woman she brings her faith—her god—with her. So mixed marriages had to end because it brought idolatry into Judah.

  At about the same time, Artaxerxes allowed Nehemiah to go back and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and better organize the Jewish people. This allowed the Jews to more easily practice their faith. For example, when Nehemiah arrived, people did not observe the Sabbath, the day of rest. People worked seven days a week. But once the walls were up, Nehemiah could shut the gates on the Sabbath and stop commerce so that people could observe the day of rest. In our terms, it allowed them to eliminate Sunday shopping!

  Now in the case of both Ezra and Nehemiah, before they took action and initiated reforms, they prayed. They turned to God for help because they were firmly convinced that God controls history. The Jews went into exile not just because of the military supremacy of the Babylonians, but because God used the Babylonians to punish his people. Likewise, they had been allowed to return to Judah and rebuild not just because of the inclusive political policy of the Persian kings but because God used that policy to restore his people and set the stage for the coming of Christ. So Nehemiah prayed, Give your servant success today by granting him favour in the presence of this man.

  When Nehemiah prayed—as did Moses, David, Solomon, Hezekiah, Ezra and Daniel to name just a few—he did two things. First he confessed the many sins of the Jewish people as well as his own and those of his family. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father's house, have committed against you. We have acted very wickedly towards you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. Then, he called upon the mercy and faithful promises of God. Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’

  Now I’m driving at two points in this history lesson. First, we should imitate Nehemiah’s prayer. The Persian kings accepted God as a god, the one in Judah. They did not think of him as the one and only God whose will was absolute. He was one of many forces with which to contend. However, that did not deter God from working and accomplishing his plan of redemption. The Jews returned home and four hundred years later the Son of God was born in Bethlehem under a Roman government itself preceded by a Greek government. The nature of the government matters little. What matters is that we recognize that God is in control and can use even hostile governments to accomplish his will. It is to this God that we address our prayer praying that his will be done on earth as in heaven.

  Yet we must pray as did Nehemiah. We must confess our own sin and our part in the current state of affairs. Our government does not recognize God or follow his will and so it has ordained unnatural unions between two men or two women. That didn’t just happen overnight by a coup d’état. It happened like the unnatural mixed marriages of Nehemiah’s day. It happened because the people of God slowly drifted away from his Word until they became a minority that could no longer make and enforce law. It happened because the people of God began to accept other views of reality and values and wanted to become inclusive of all faiths and truths. Now we may no longer speak of objective truth, only one’s personal truth, a euphemism for opinion. We and our ancestors have a hand in this law for which we must ask forgiveness.

  Then, like Nehemiah, we must ask God to correct—or use for his purposes—the mess we have made of things. I have no idea what may happen in the next elections and to this new law. But I do know that we need to commit the situation to God! Like Nehemiah, we must call upon the merciful God for help. In Nehemiah’s case, God made the king favourable to his request to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and re-establish God’s authority in Judah. In our case, although the government now sanctions an act condemned by God, this law clearly allows us to practice what we believe. The Church does not have to perform same-sex marriages.

  In his letter to the Romans, Paul asks the rhetorical question, He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? (Romans 8:32). Even now that we and our political leaders have dropped the ball on the question of marriage and family, God—who raised Jesus from the dead—can still preserve them. He may cause the law to be repealed. Or he may simply strengthen marriage and family among his own people for the rest of the world to see. Confident of that we pray, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

  The second point I would like to make from the history of Nehemiah is that we need to set up some spiritual walls or boundaries like the physical walls of Jerusalem he erected. In this particular case, we need to clearly affirm what the Word of God says about marriage and family and let that truth be a wall around us that protects us from error.

  You know as well as I that we get lazy. It’s not just that when the cat’s away the mice will play. It’s that we slowly loose our resistance to the world and our sinful nature. It’s like entropy, the second law of thermodynamics. Without a source of outside power, order gives way to disorder, a state of high energy to one of lower energy. If we don’t have the energy of God’s Word on a regular basis, we wear out. We become numb to sinful behaviour and begin to accept it. Many today consider themselves devout Christians yet see no problem with same-sex marriages or families in which children have two daddies or two mommies. We must not consider these arrangements good, natural and acceptable. Clearly God says otherwise!

  The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him." . . . So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man. . . . For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh. (Genesis 2:18-24).

  On the one hand that is a law. It is the will of our Creator and anyone who does otherwise will suffer the consequences. On the other hand, we see here the love of God for his creatures. He made a man and a woman perfectly suitable for each other. Our first parents fall into sin destroyed that perfect harmony. We must deal with the physical, emotional and spiritual consequences. Our families don’t always work as they should because our bodies and minds have been corrupted by sin. Yet God has done something about it by giving his Son to die for us. Jesus already suffered the eternal consequence for our sin. And by his resurrection, he gave us the promise and hope of our own escape from all the consequences of sin. In the mean time, as we await this redemption of our bodies, we have God’s Word to guide us into what is truly good for us: marriages where one man and one woman become one flesh; families in which husband and wife accept the man’s responsibility to be the head of the family and in which parents take seriously their responsibility to raise their children in the fear and knowledge of the Lord.

  That is the kind of wall the Church must build and maintain for those are the conditions that make for peace, happiness and well-being. Everything else is a broken wall that can do nothing but cause us grief. These are good walls that are not meant to keep people out of the kingdom of God. They are meant to preserve those who by God’s grace are already in his kingdom!

  “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” That’s what Nehemiah prayed. That’s the kind of prayer we and our country need. So today we join with our brothers and sisters across Canada and ask that God forgive us for our part in our country’s problems and that in his mercy he strengthen and establish his people in his Word. “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”