Bible Guys Classics: Nehemiah 1:1–11

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Well, good morning. Good morning. We talk the whole night through. Good morning. Good morning to you and you and you. That's it. You were born for this. Yeah, my little jingle. You know, I can't believe that just became a thing. Yeah. I don't know. It just somehow happened. I think that's only second to what made Chris mad. I don't think so. What made Chris mad is the top. People literally wait on the edge of their seat. That is so not true. You're just like Jeff. You're just like Jeff. You're just like trying to puff me up. So, hey, well, hey, good morning. We are the Bible Guys. This is Wesley. I'm Chris. And today we're your Bible Guys because Jeff... is out there actually traveling. Where is he at? Mexico? No. Well, he was. He came back. Now he's in Africa. Now he's in Africa. Holy Christmas. That is just crazy. A short flight, you know, a couple of hours. Yeah, just a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But he works also for an organization called the Timothy Initiative, which focuses on planting churches around the world that don't know the gospel. They focus on regions that have never heard. It's pretty unbelievable. Yeah, I think that's amazing. Yeah. So anyway, so this is two weeks in a row that we have a guest, but that's okay because Platinum Edition is, people love Platinum Edition. So, hey, today we have a segment that has a jingle. Do you know the jingle with me? It's called Mailbags. And Mailbags is where people write in. So if you have a question or something that you want us to talk about, you can always email us at info at thebibleguys.com. Or you can always just type in... Like on a YouTube comment page or any of your, any of your devices. Yeah. So you want to, you want to tackle it? It says, what's something you thought, and this is from Sarah K by the way. So Sarah K, if you're watching. Hi Sarah K. Thank you for this question. What's something you thought was totally normal until someone told you it absolutely wasn't. Yes. Yeah, do you have anything for that one? I have a small one. I have so many. I have so many. Yeah, do yours. So mine is super small. The first thing that comes to mind is ketchup. Yeah. So when I first got married, okay, don't judge me. I just want to say this. When I grew up, we put the ketchup just in the cabinet, in the cupboard, in the kitchen. After you opened it. After you opened it. Wow. Yeah, we never put it in the refrigerator. And when I got married, my wife is like, what are you doing? Are you trying to kill us? This has got to go in the refrigerator. Are you trying to kill us? That's so good. But it's like, no, we always just put the mustard and the ketchup just in the cupboard. That's just what we did. That's so funny. So, yeah, I discovered that was not a normal thing. No, no, not after you open it. Yeah. Yeah, because you can put it in there beforehand. Yes. So that is so funny. So I got one for you. So I grew up Italian. Well, I mean, obviously I'm still Italian. Let me clarify that statement. Yeah. My dad's German. My mom is Italian. Yeah. There was zero German culture in our family. Yeah. The only culture was Italian. Yeah. I no longer am a part of that culture in my normal household. So that makes sense that I said I grew up Italian because I'm still Italian, right? It's like, you changed? Yeah, but it was so Italian in Youngstown, Ohio. Yeah. And it so is now, right? I mean, just, you know, but anyway. The point is, is that, you know, it was always all Italian all the time. So for, consequently, all through the entire city of Youngstown, for Christmas, people make Italian food. And so there's so many Italians, it's so normal to say, oh, what'd you have for Christmas meal? Well, we have ravioli or we had manicotti or gnocchi, whatever it is, right? Yeah. So that was just a normal thing. And then I went to college and I remember being, you know, in Missouri and the Midwest and And I remember somebody saying something like, oh yeah, for Christmas we had like ham and turkey. And I said, what are you talking about? You're like, what is this? I said, that's Thanksgiving food. Yeah. And they said, they said, what do you eat for Christmas? And I said, ravioli. And they go, what? And I was like, doesn't everybody? I was like, but it's because everybody, I knew all my friends. Yeah. That would be a normal thing. Right. And, uh, and not saying that everybody's Italian from Youngstown, cause that's not true. But a lot of the Italians hang out with Italians. Yeah. So for my group of people, it certainly was. Yeah. Right? So anyway, I thought it was normal until it wasn't. Yeah, that is hilarious. But I got a funny one too. It's very quick. Yeah. My youth pastor used to sing very famous songs that everybody else across the nation knows. You know, in my little youth group growing up, we always had the same jingles. Yeah. And most of them now you would sing with kids ministry. Yeah. But back then with high school ministry, that's what we used to do. Like for instance, you ever heard the song, Oh, you can't get to heaven on roller skates. You ever hear that? No, I've never heard that one. Oh, you can't get to heaven on roller skates. Oh, you can't get to heaven on roller skates. Oh, you roll right past those pearly gates. All my sins are washed away. Praise the Lord. No, I don't know that one. So anyway, in my group of church people, they sing that, right? So anyway, for some reason, my pastor used to take very popular songs and he would change them how he saw fit. I see what you're saying. And there would just be a little bit of change. Yeah. And so we would know them, we would know all the songs, but the rest of the world knew them like that. Yeah. They would know the normal way. So this song that I just sang to you has on the third chorus, it goes, can't get to heaven on, there's a pause, can't get to heaven on roller coaster. skates is a pause, right? For some reason, my pastor's saying, oh, you can't get to heaven on roller skates. Oh, you can't get to heaven on roller skates. Instead of on roller skates. He got theatrical with it. Yeah, he's like on roller skates. I don't know why, he just changed it. And apparently I'm the only human and the people in my church are the only humans who know that song, but know that version of that song. So I'm at Baptist Bible College, We're sitting around with a group of like 200 people. And he's like, hey, everybody know this one? Oh, he's going for it. And he goes, and he gets to that part, he goes, on roller. And everybody pauses. It's really quiet for a second. And I'm going, on roller skates. And everybody looks at me like, what is this guy doing? What is he saying? Yeah. And I'm like, what? And by the way, I found out that it's like 10 different songs. I learned 10 different major songs wrong. And it's like, what? Oh, that's good. Whenever I'm singing them with people, I realize I'm like, he did it again. He embarrassed me again. Yeah? Oh, man, that's good. Changed it. There it is. So there's my thing. Oh, that's good. Yeah, that was super embarrassing. And you know what else was embarrassing? What was that? This moment where Nehemiah had to go before the king and ask him this really dangerous thing. Ding! There it is. We're going to say it worked. It worked. We're reading Nehemiah. Yep, Nehemiah. Chapter one. Which, by the way, Nehemiah is, in a lot of ways, a pretty obscure passage for a lot of Christians. Yeah. Right? I mean, there's not a ton of sermons on Nehemiah. There's not a ton of history. So if you don't know who Nehemiah is, he was a cupbearer to the king. Just to give you a little bit of context before Wesley reads. So like Babylon had taken over the world, right? Remember the story of Daniel where they had stolen all the goods from the temple and they had taken all the princes and everything. And then they took people all the way up to Babylon and And so there was like this exile of the Jewish people and this whole captivity thing. Well, it was over. Everything was over. And so they had allowed people to go back to Jerusalem in waves. And some people had gone back, but they had discovered that Jerusalem was in ruins. In fact, the city walls were down. It was unprotected. And of course, the city that's unprotected is open for siege. And so these people who are trying to rebuild their lives Uh, you know, we're talking like a whole generation or so later, uh, you know, for them trying to get their footing and their culture and their people. And so Nehemiah was a Jew and, and, and he was, uh, he was, you know, uh, he knew and remembered, uh, as a boy, uh, you know, his, his great city and his father and his, his family and everything else. And, uh, and so now he's an older man and he has favor working for the king as a cupbearer. And, and he had, he's about to learn something about Jerusalem. And he ends up basically going to the king saying, will you please allow me to go back and rebuild the walls around my city? Will you please allow me to do that? And so that's the story of Nehemiah. Yeah. That's it. Yeah. So let's dive in. That's Nehemiah chapter one, verses one through 11. It says, in late autumn, in the month of Kislev, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes reign, I was at the fortress of Susa. Hanani, one of my brothers, came to visit me with some other men who had just arrived from Judah. I asked them about the Jews who had returned there from captivity and about how things were going in Jerusalem. They said to me, things are not going well for those who return to the province of Judah. They are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem has been torn down and the gates have been destroyed by fire. When I heard this, I sat down and wept. In fact, four days I mourned, fasted, and prayed to the God of heaven. Then I said, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant, of unfailing love with those who love him and obey his commands, listen to my prayer. Look down and see me praying night and day for your people Israel. I confess that we have sinned against you. Yes, even my own family and I have sinned. We have sinned terribly by not obeying the commands, decrees, and regulations that you gave us through your servant Moses. Please remember, that you told your servant Moses, if you are unfaithful to me, I will scatter you among the nations. But if you return to me and obey my commands and live by them, then even if you are exiled to the ends of the earth, I will bring you back to the place I have chosen for my name to be honored. Verse 10, the people you rescued by your great power in strong hand are your servants. Oh Lord, please hear my prayer. Listen to the prayers of those who... Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you. Please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me. Put it into his heart to be kind to me. In those days, I was the king's cupbearer. So first of all, what a great way to start a chapter. Yeah. Right. I mean, just an unbelievable, uh, you know, epic setup to what is about to unfold. And if you want to go back and read the rest of Nehemiah, uh, what a great story and what a great accomplishment that God has done through Nehemiah, which by the way, did you know that the wall of Nehemiah is still there today? Yeah. And, and, uh, they've uncovered this wall and honestly it, it looks like children built it. It is not a work of architecture. It is thrown together with rocks and mud and mortar, and it does not look flat or polished. It's like, how is this thing still standing? And it has to be that God wants to preserve this unbelievable symbolism, what this represents. Everything done in the Old Testament is a model for us on how to behave, or it's a foreshadowing of what God wants to do in our lives. And so this importance of Nehemiah's wall that he ended up building in such a small amount of time is a great accomplishment, but God's still today, 2,700 something years later. In fact, I think it's even more than that, isn't it? Nehemiah is a couple thousand years old, isn't it? No, no, no. Isaiah, Nehemiah... Wait, I don't actually have my Siri on because I don't want the buzz. Yeah. All right. I'm doing this in the microphone. Hey, when was the book of Nehemiah written? Here's an answer from BibleHub.com. Okay, 445 B.C. So 2000... 400 years ago-ish, right? Yeah. So, and that wall still- It's still there. It's still there. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. There are two things early on that I want to dissect a little bit as we get into this. In verse five, it says,' Then I said, O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant.' And I like that line right there. The fact that God is a God who will do what he said he will do. If God said he will do it, we can take that to the bank. It's certain, it's sure, doesn't matter what it looks like. There have been times in the Old Testament where God may have told a group of people to take a village or to take a town. And they're like, well, God, we're outnumbered. If God told you to do it, he will equip you to carry out what he told you to do. So God is a God that will keep his covenant. So when you're reading the Bible, keep that in mind. I think that's super important to know that if God promises us something in the Bible, he will do what he said he would do. And that gives me great confidence. But the other thing in there in verse six, it says, I confess that we have sinned against you. And I absolutely love that. Pastor Kevin here at Heritage Church where we both attend, he says, when you mess up, fess up and fess up fast. Don't try to hide it. God saw you when you did it. So there's no hiding it or trying to put it away or no, that wasn't me. Yeah, everyone knew, all of heaven knows that it was you. Just fess up, come clean to God. And if you confess your sins to him, he is just and faithful to forgive you for your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Yeah, that's right. So I love that. That's great. 1 John 1.9. First that was ever quoted to me, by the way. Yeah. By my wife, nonetheless. You know, it's some context to that prayer as well. So the two things you mentioned in that prayer that were awesome is the fact, the first thing that Nehemiah said was, I want to recognize God that you're a God that keeps your covenant. Well, think about the context. So, excuse me, Nehemiah is among a group of people that were most likely very discouraged because their whole people were exiled. Yeah. We're talking people were captured, kidnapped, slaughtered, killed, imprisoned, chained. I mean, just all these different wicked things. Yeah, they've lost everything. They've lost everything. Yeah. And yet... What Nehemiah is acknowledging is his responsibility. And he's acknowledging his people's responsibility because he's a God. He's a, yeah, our whole people, some of them are mad at you. Some of them are mad that, you know, our lives are so terrible. But understand that I'm recognizing you warned us. Yeah. Right? This is you keeping your covenant. You said... that if we dishonored you, that we would be scattered among the nations. And guess what you did? You kept your promises. And then he says, we have sinned, and he's acknowledging his responsibility. Now, I think that's important because the context is he's acknowledging the fact that even his family had their part in dishonoring God, right? Like he's responsible part in part for the exile and the capturing of Jerusalem and the walls being burned down So when he hears that the city walls are destroyed by fire, he's thinking, I did this. These are consequences in part to my sin and my family's sin. So he's like, God, even though I can complain, I can look at how bad my life is, we can all do that. We have to acknowledge our part in it. You warned us. We didn't obey. So you're a covenant keeper. You did exactly what you said. And guess what? I own my responsibility. We are sorry for what we've done. And then what does he do is he sort of capitalizes on God's faithfulness. He capitalizes on then God's promises. And he says, God, you said this, but God, guess what? You also said this. Yes. Right? So you said this as a warning, but you also said this as a promise. If we came back to you, then you would be with us. Look at me. I'm praying for my people. You see me, you see my earnest prayer. You see my sincerity, my heart. I'm weeping because I'm broken over this and I am coming to you and I'm asking you to keep your promises. And so therefore God, here's my request. And then he goes to God with his request, right? Ask the kingdom to be favorable to me. And what an unbelievable request. But Nehemiah backs it up with scripture. And he reminds himself of God's promises. Yeah, and I would say, Chris, that's super important, and it's very subtle. He had to know the promises to bring the promises up. That's right. Which means that... He had to know the scriptures, which is why it's so important for us to read the Bible daily, to know what those promises are, to know what God said he would do, and to know what God said to avoid. Because it's, yeah, it's good to know what blessings he will give you, but it's also good to know what to avoid. But you only get that from reading God's word on a consistent basis. That's right. Yeah. I have a motto that I've always lived by. So my number one spiritual gift is faith. which is odd for a skeptic. I'm a skeptic at heart. But actually it's true. Every time I take the spiritual gifts test, there's a spiritual gifts test you can take online. Actually several versions of it, but you can Google it and find a free one. But I took a spiritual gifts test actually on and off throughout my whole life and almost always. Faith is either number one or number two. But it manifests itself in my life during struggle. So like whenever I wrestle with something, whenever I'm having a hard time with something, whenever something very big is going through my life, faith just rises to the top. And I have a lot of faith and confidence. So God has given me that as my gift. And sometimes it's hard when the struggle is small. When it's bigger, faith seems to be more prominent. When it's smaller, I get caught in the weeds. And so yesterday, I was actually talking with someone on our staff, and I was very discouraged and disappointed in some things. And I always want to focus on my part. Whenever I feel like God has called me to do anything, I feel like if I've not done my very best, then I feel like I've let God down, right? And so I was talking about, you know, it doesn't matter, but I was just talking about how I feel like I have not done my best. And these are mistakes that were avoidable. And these are mistakes that should not have been made. And I was a part of it. And the person I was talking to, I said, he was a part of it and we were all a part of it and we should have done better. And, and God asked us to do this and we didn't do our part, you know, and I was just super discouraged. And I'm like, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? You know, And just like you said, you have to know the promises, right? You have to know the promises. So last night I went home and I'm praying. I'm like, okay, God, like, okay. I vented. I had some discouraging moments. It's like, okay, God, let's pray through this. And God reminded me of all the promises that I already know. And through the years, I have formulated a motto from these promises. And I love this motto. And so I texted it to him this morning. Yeah. And I said, hey, God reminded me. And I said, here's my motto. God is bigger than, not surprised by, and in control of all circumstances. Yeah, that's true. And so you take all those promises and lump them in a big bowl of stew, right? You can call that pot that God is bigger than, not surprised by, and in control of all circumstances, right? So think about how that applies to your life. And that's good, Chris, because I think sometimes because we're surprised by it, whatever it is for the listeners, we think that it caught God off guard. It didn't catch him off guard. He's God. He's all-knowing. One of my best friends made fun of me one time when I was worried about something. And he goes, Chris, do you actually think God's on the throne? Going, oh, no. Yeah. Oh, no, I didn't expect this. Yeah. How am I going to get out of this? Like, oh, man, how did that happen? And I don't know what I'm going to do to fix it. Yeah. It's like I always laugh when I think about that. And since then, he's passed away. He's in heaven laughing with me now. But yeah, think about how that applies to your life. God is bigger than, not surprised by, and in control of all circumstances. So which means bigger than, means your problem is not bigger than God's ability to solve it. Yeah. Right? Not surprised by means he's not on the throne worried like you are. And it's not like he's trying to figure out a solution in the same way that you are. Yeah. And then in control of means that God can and is able, and in a lot of cases wants to do great things to fix these things, if we just align with his will, go to him, trust him, depend on him, lean on him. And eventually you got to get to the point to where you open your hands and say, okay, God, that's it. I recognize at this point, regardless of how we got here, which, you know, again, I can talk about my part, my ability or inability to do, you know, what I should do or didn't do what I didn't do all that. You know, you can talk about that all day. Yeah. But the reality is in every circumstance of our lives, we have to recognize only God can do what God's gonna do, right? So only God, I can't manufacture, you know, hearts being changed as a pastor, neither can you. You can't manufacture miracles. You can't manufacture, you know, blessings. And in great things, none of us are in charge of any of that. Yeah, that's God's side of the fence. That's his job responsibility. Yes. And so you just sort of, you're reminded and you say, okay, God, remind me, this is all you and it has been the whole time anyway. Yeah. Right? I mean, I'm doing my part only because you asked me to, but in the end, you're in control. So anyway, it's a great reminder for all of us. Yeah. And I would say if we could leave the listeners with a challenge, I challenge everyone watching just to take five minutes, five minutes per day reading God's word. And start in the New Testament. Start with the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Yeah, I would even go further and say start with John. Yeah. Start with John and move your way forward. Yeah, yeah. And that's a great place to dive in, to begin to soak in God's Word and get His Word on the inside in your heart. Yeah, that's great. That's great. But hey, that's a great place to end. That's our time. And hopefully we'll see you again on The Bible Guys.