When George Campbell was five years old, he
made a momentous decision.
He decided he was going to leave home.
He had had enough of restriction, loss of
liberty, too much discipline, no freedom to do
what he wanted to do.
So he announced to his mother at 3
.30 in the afternoon that he was leaving.
She received the news with equanimity, just as
if it were one of the usual things
in life.
She made no protest and did not urge
him to stay.
So little George left, and silence reigned in
the home.
At five o'clock, the door opened.
The usual supper time, and George walked in.
His mother said nothing.
The silence continued to reign.
The supper was placed upon the table.
George sat down.
Not a word was spoken.
Then the household cat rubbed against George's leg.
He broke the silence.
He said, I see you still have the
same old cat.
Now, why did I tell that story?
Because some of you are probably thinking, I
see they still have the same old evening
speaker.
I know Vic Cherniak is thinking that.
Well, if you feel that, you should say
something to the CMML board.
I have said it.
You better say it in a loud voice,
because I've said it, and they didn't hear
me.
I'm kind of glad they didn't.
It's really nice to be back.
Again, the same old evening speaker.
Would you turn in your Bibles, please, to
Nehemiah?
And we're going to just look through the
book and draw some lessons that might be
profitable for us, especially in connection with Christian
missions.
And I'd like to read chapter one, Nehemiah
chapter one.
The words of Nehemiah, the son of Hacaliah,
it came to pass in the month of
Jislep in the twentieth year, as I was
in Shushan, the citadel, that Hanani, one of
my brethren, came with men from Judah, and
I asked them concerning the Jews who had
escaped, who had survived the captivity, and concerning
Jerusalem.
They said to me, the survivors who are
left from the captivity in the province are
there in great distress and reproach.
The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down,
and its gates are burned with fire.
So it was, when I heard these words,
that I sat down and wept and mourned
for many days.
I was fasting and praying before the God
of heaven, and I said, I pray, Lord
God of heaven, O great and awesome God,
you who keep your covenant and mercy with
those who love you and observe your commandments,
please let your ear be attentive and your
eyes open, that you may hear the prayer
of your servant which I pray before you
now, day and night, for the children of
Israel, your servants, and confess the sins of
the children of Israel which we have sinned
against you.
Both my father's house and I have sinned.
We have acted very corruptly against you, and
have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor
the ordinances which you commanded your servant Moses.
Remember, I pray, the word that you commanded
your servant Moses, saying, If you are unfaithful,
I will scatter you among the nations.
But if you return to me and keep
my commandments and do them, though some of
you were cast out to the farthest part
of the heavens, yet I will gather them
from there, bring them to the place which
I have chosen as a dwelling for my
name.
Now these are your servants and your people
whom you have redeemed by your great power
and by your strong hand.
O Lord, I pray, please let your ear
be attentive to the prayer of your servants,
and to the prayer of your servants who
desire to hear your name.
Let your servant prosper this day, I pray.
Grant him mercy in the sight of this
man, for I was the king's cupbearer."
Obviously, we cannot do a verse-by-verse
exposition of this book, but just let me
bring certain subjects out of it that may
be helpful to us.
And the first, of course, is the subject
of leadership.
I don't think there are very many seminars,
Christian seminars, held on leadership without the mention
of the name Nehemiah.
And I would just like to pick out
about 11 things that we can see about
him that we might apply to ourselves tonight.
Nehemiah had a vision of a great work
to be done.
It's great to be a person of vision.
I look out over the audience and I
see men and women who have had a
burden from the Lord, who have had a
vision from the Lord, and they've gone and
they've pursued it.
They've given themselves to it and they've made
history, and some are making history today for
God.
Perhaps there are others of us and the
gold has become dim.
Perhaps the vision has faded somewhat.
Perhaps that initial spasm has drifted off into
a chronic lethargy or inertia.
And we need to renew the vision.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if that took
place at this conference, where some of us
and the work has become kind of routine,
kind of dull, and we don't see our
service crackling with the supernatural anymore.
How wonderful it would be to just get
along with the Lord under the trees somewhere
and seek a renewal of that vision, so
that we can go forth from this place
with the words of F.
W.
H.
Myers on our lips.
Only like souls I see the folk there
under, bound who should conquer, slaves who should
be king.
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder,
sadly contented with a show of things, then
with a rush the intolerable craving shivers throughout
me like a trumpet call.
Oh, to save these, to perish for their
saving, die for their life, be offered for
them all.
It would be wonderful if that could be
one of the results of this conference, where
the Lord would in a new and fresh
way bring our vision into focus.
And of course, there are some here who
are going out for the first time.
They're wonderful, isn't it?
I think that's one of the greatest experiences
of life, when our hearts are aflame for
the Lord Jesus Christ, and when he has
spoken to us and planted a burden in
our hearts, and we see the gears meshing,
and we see him leading us forward.
I think I have a word for you
tonight.
One statesman said to his friend, for the
love of God, gentlemen, buy Big Maps.
That's what we want to do.
We want to buy Big Maps in the
work of the Lord.
We don't want to think small thoughts.
Thou art coming to a king, large petitions
with thee bring, for his love and power
are such, thou canst never ask too much.
I'm sure you've heard that little poem.
It says, if you had been living when
Christ was on earth and had met the
Savior kind, what would you have asked him
to do for you, supposing you were stone
blind?
The child considered and then replied, I suppose
that without doubt I'd have asked the Lord
for a dog with a chain to lead
me daily about.
How often thus in our faithless prayers we
acknowledge with shame surprise, we've only asked for
a dog with a chain when we might
have opened eyes.
Let's go forth like Nehemiah with a vision
of a great work to be done.
He saw a work to be done for
the glory of God and for the good
of his people.
That's still the vision today, isn't it?
To see God's cause carried forth on earth,
see his name glorified, and see his people
built up in their faith.
The second thing I see about him, and
this is what distinguishes his leadership from what
we might call secular leadership today.
Sometimes I think that Christian seminars on leadership
parrot leadership according to the world.
They're quite different, aren't they?
It would be quite unthinkable for the chief
executive officer of a large industrial corporation in
the United States to polish the shoes of
his janitor.
It wouldn't go over big in any secular
seminar of the subject, but it's the way
the master went shall not his servant tread
it still.
The second thing is, Nehemiah depended on God
as evidenced by his prayerfulness.
I'm sure you noticed that most of the
chapter we read was prayer, Nehemiah's prayer to
God, and all the way through he was
depending upon the Lord to show him the
way.
And you know that's very, very important.
It's possible to do work for God that
isn't necessarily God's work, isn't it?
I might have all kinds of schemes in
my mind of things that I can do
in Christian work, but of what avail is
it if these are not the plans that
God has for his kingdom here on earth?
Nehemiah wanted to be so in touch with
God that he could hear the Lord's pulse
beat and know exactly what the Lord wanted
him to do.
The other day a friend of mine and
I were walking by Lake Chabot in California
there, a lady came the other way and
she had a little shelfy dog, and that's
always good for a conversation, so we stopped
to talk.
She said, this dog only wants two things.
He wants to know what you want him
to do, and he wants to do it.
And that was Nehemiah.
That should be us, too.
He wants to know what you want him
to do, and he wants to do it.
I want to know what the Lord wants
me to do.
I don't care about all my fancy plans.
I don't care about my own empire building.
What does the secret of fruitfulness, isn't it?
Moving in tune with the Holy Spirit of
God, doing the thing that he wants me
to do, and doing it with a true
heart.
That's the second thing I see here about
Nehemiah.
And his prayers were blood earnest, weren't they?
I don't think I read them with the
vehemence with which Nehemiah prayed them.
He meant business with God, and when he
stopped praying, you have the definite feeling that
he had touched the throne of grace, right?
He depended on God as evidenced by his
prayerfulness.
Chapter 1, verse 11, O Lord, I pray,
please let your ear be attentive to the
prayer of your servants, and to the prayer
of your servants who desire to hear your
name, and let your servant prosper this day,
I pray, and grant him mercy in the
sight of this man.
Praise to be a man who can pray
like that.
The third thing I see is that he
planned the work.
He planned the work under God.
Chapter 2, and verse 12.
It says, Then I arose in the night,
I and a few men with me.
I told no one what my God had
put in my heart to do at Jerusalem,
nor was there any animal with me except
the one on which I rose.
He started out making his plan, so the
first thing was an inspection of the city
at night to see the walls that were
torn down.
He wouldn't get along very well today.
Today, a man like that would probably get
in touch with the news media and make
a big splash.
It's interesting when people are really working with
God, they're not looking for publicity.
Publicity is generally bad in the work of
the Lord.
It creates jealousy and conflict and reveals our
strategy to the enemy.
I feel kind of strange standing here and
saying like that, but it's true.
Publicity is generally bad in the work of
the Lord and causes more harm than it
does good.
I love my Savior who went about performing
miracles and then he would say, tell no
man that's beautiful.
Today, Christians will do anything to get on
television or in the newspaper.
They'll do anything.
They'll even get on television and watch the
church's dirty linen in public just to get
on the TV.
Publicity.
Nehemiah did it quietly.
He went about his work quietly.
He wasn't revealing his strategy to everyone who
would like to know about it.
He planned the work.
And then in chapter 2, verse 17, he
shared the vision.
That's beautiful.
I said to them, you see the distress
that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste
and its gates are burned with fire.
Come and let us build the wall of
Jerusalem that we may no longer be reproached.
He shared the vision with others.
He wasn't a loner.
He didn't have to do it all.
He never could have done it all himself,
could he?
It's greater to train preachers than to be
a preacher.
It's greater to train teachers than to be
a teacher because you multiply yourself in that
way.
He realized that in order to see the
work go ahead, this is the way it
must be.
And this reminds us of Ephesians chapter 4,
doesn't it, where we read that the gifts
were given for the purpose of the saints
unto the work of the ministry.
Don't find any clerical system in that verse.
You find the ministry of God being carried
on by the saints.
A wonderful vision.
And you see it exemplified here in the
book of Nehemiah.
He shared the vision.
And he not only shared it, but he
motivated others to become involved.
That's a great thing.
Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem
that we may no longer be reproached.
Why did people follow him?
Why do people follow certain leaders?
Well, I believe in the spiritual realm it's
because they detect the power of the Spirit
of God in the leader's life.
I don't think it has anything to do
with education or training or anything of the
sort.
But you see a man coming forth like
a burning bush, burning but not consumed.
And people are attracted to him as they
want to follow him in the ways of
God.
I think they detected that in Nehemiah.
He was burning with zeal for God.
Spurgeon said, got on fire for God and
the world will turn out to see you
burn.
Well, they'll do more than that.
They'll follow you too as you lead them
in the path of righteousness.
He motivated others to become involved.
The next thing I see, I think it's
so important, he was aware of the hand
of God in his service.
He was aware of the hand of God
in his service.
Chapter 2, verse 8, the last part of
the verse, it says, The king granted them
to me according to the good hand of
my God upon me.
And then again in verse 18, it says,
And I told them of the hand of
my God, which had been good upon me,
and also of the king's words that he
had spoken.
A wonderful thing, isn't it?
In the service of the Lord, every so
often to have some token of his presence
with you in a special way encourages us
to go on in the midst of trial
and conflict and difficulty and all the rest.
Good to see the hand of God.
Are we seeing the hand of God as
we serve the Lord?
I like to tell the story, I'm sure
I've told it to some of you before,
about a young fellow named Greg Livingston.
He had been serving the Lord over in
Europe and he came back to the States.
I was in Oak Park, Illinois, and he
came to visit me and he told me
about a very serious discipline problem that had
arisen overseas and he felt I should know
about it.
And I said to him, Greg, you're going
to a Midwest city from here and there's
an elder there who should know what you
told me today.
And I gave him the name and address
of this elder and I said to him,
I'd like you to go and you tell
that elder what you told me today.
But before he left, I thought I'm going
to ask this fellow a provocative question and
see what he says.
I said, Greg, what makes you tick?
Here you are, you have a graduate degree
from an acknowledged institution, you go overseas and
you throw away your life with a bunch
of nobodies over there.
What's that all about?
And he knew that I was just trying
to draw him out.
He said, brother, he said, I see that
it's very hard to live a life of
faith in the United States.
He said, you have to put yourself in
a position where if God fails you, you're
sunk.
But he said, if you do that, there'll
be a power in your life and when
you touch other lives, something will happen for
God.
That's good.
I'm going to write that down so I
get it right.
Brother McDonald, I see that it's very hard
to live a life of faith in the
United States.
You have to put yourself in a position
where you have to trust God, where if
God fails you, you're sunk.
And if you do that, there'll be a
power in your life and when you touch
other lives, something will happen for God.
Greg went to this Midwestern city and then
he came out to Los Angeles.
He had two weeks of meetings in Los
Angeles and he wrote me a letter.
He said, dear brother, he said, I went
to that city.
He said, I had appointments.
He said, I had conferences.
I had meetings and I never did get
to see that elder.
And God knows that I was willing.
God knows that I wanted to get to
see him.
But the time just got away and he
said, God knows I'm still willing.
So Greg got on a Greyhound bus to
travel from Los Angeles to Midland Park, New
Jersey.
And the bus was fairly empty.
And it drove along through Los Angeles, picking
up customers at various points.
And when it got to Riverside, there was
only one empty seat on the bus.
And so he bowed his head and said,
Lord Jesus, lead on some young person to
whom I can speak for you.
And he opened his eyes and an older
man was getting on board.
And the older man came.
There was only one seat.
It was the seat next to Greg Livingston.
And this man sat next to Greg Livingston
and Greg said, young or old, Lord, I
have my duty to do for you.
And so he started to witness to the
man.
And the man said, well, that's a strange
thing.
You should talk to me about the Lord,
Jesus.
He said, I happen to be a Christian.
Greg said, you are?
He said, my name is Greg Livingston.
And the man said, my name is.
And he gave the name of the elder
from that Midwest assembly.
That man and his wife had a daughter
married in Phoenix and they had taken a
drive away car from the Midwest to Phoenix.
He dropped off his wife in Phoenix and
drove on to Riverside to deliver the drive
away car.
Got on the bus to come back to
Phoenix to be with his wife.
And he sat next to Greg Livingston.
He talked to me three months later and
he said, nothing has ever spoken to me
so loudly in my Christian life that God
would arrange the seats on the Greyhound bus
and the schedule and where the people are
sitting to bring us together.
He said, we had a wonderful time of
fellowship all the way to Phoenix.
And then I remember the words of Greg
Livingston.
It's hard to live a life of faith
in the United States.
You have to put yourself in a position
where you have to trust God.
Where if God fails you, you're sunk.
And if you do that, there'll be a
power in your life.
And when you touch other lives, something will
happen for God.
That's the kind of man Nehemiah was.
When he touched other lives, something happened for
God.
And he knew how to motivate others to
become involved and he was aware of the
hand of the Lord in his service.
That's wonderful, isn't it?
Wonderful to think that he arranges.
When you think of all the Greyhound buses
in the United States and all the cities
they serve and all the hours of the
day and all the minutes of the hours
and all the seats on a bus, it
would never happen according to the laws of
chance or probability, would it?
But God would never put two people together
on a bus like that.
But God cares.
That's what we want, don't we?
We want a power in our lives.
We want to touch other lives and see
God doing something.
Isn't that what Hudson Taylor said?
Learn to move men through God by prayer.
Good.
Learn to move men through God by prayer.
Chapter 3, he divided the work into achievable
units.
I like this.
I think we're talking about four miles of
walls that had to be rebuilt.
No.
Well, modern Jerusalem, I mean the old walled
city of Jerusalem today is a mile square.
So I think we're talking about four miles
of walls.
What's too much?
Too much.
But a big job is composed of many
little jobs, isn't it?
People get discouraged with Bible studies.
I mean they open a Bible in such
a voluminous work and there's so much there
that you can't possibly do.
Of course you can't do it.
You can do five verses, can't you?
You can study five verses intensively or maybe
even a chapter intensively and over the period
of the years you can go through and
become fairly acquainted with the English Bible.
So Nehemiah divided the work into achievable units.
The next thing I see here is that
he gave recognition to what the people were
doing.
This is very important too.
The people working in the service of the
Lord Jesus Christ is so easy to take
them for granted, isn't it?
And you say, well I'm just working for
the Lord's well done and I don't care
whether people take notice of it.
Well, Nehemiah wasn't like that.
He gave recognition to what the people were
doing.
Chapter 3.
Chapter 3 is like a miniature judgment seat
of Christ, isn't it?
It really is.
Isn't it marvelous to think that God recorded
the names of these people who were working
on the wall.
Nothing misses his notice and nothing will miss
his reward in a coming day.
I thank God for verse 12 where special
attention is given to the ministry of the
women.
Next to him was Shalom the son of
Halosheth, leader of half the district of Jerusalem.
He and his daughters made repairs.
And we pay tribute tonight to those valiant
sisters, many of whom are with us tonight,
who've gone out to the barnfield.
God knows all about it.
God knows the sacrifice that was involved.
God knows the loneliness at times.
He knows all about it and it's all
written in his book.
And not only what's favorable, but what's not
quite so favorable.
Verse 5.
Next to them the Tekoites made repairs, but
their nobles did not put their shoulders to
the work of their Lord.
It seems to me that what is inexcusable
in the work of the Lord is to
do nothing.
To just take the talent and wrap it
in a napkin and bury it.
Some of the harshest words are spoken for
that type of behavior.
It's okay to make mistakes.
It's okay to fail at times and bounce
back again.
But it's unforgivable to do nothing as far
as the service of the Lord is concerned.
He made the people accountable to him.
You see that in chapter 5, verses 1
through 3.
And how important is accountability?
There should be accountability in our assemblies.
There should be accountability on the barnfield.
No freelances, no loose cannons in the work
of the Lord.
And then in chapter 5, verses 14 through
19, he sets a noble example.
He set a noble example of generosity.
And this is what really speaks to people.
Let me just read those verses.
Moreover, from the time that I was appointed
to be their governor in the land of
Judah, from the twentieth year until the thirty
-second year of King Artaxerxes, twelve years neither
I nor my brothers ate the governor's provision.
But the former governors who had been before
me laid burdens on the people and took
from them bread and wine, besides forty shekels
of silver.
Yes, even their servants bore rule over the
people, but I did not do so because
of the fear of the Lord.
Indeed, I also continued the work on this
wall, and we did not buy any land.
All my servants were gathered there for the
work.
Moreover, there were at my table one hundred
and fifty Jews and rulers, besides those who
came to us from the nations around us.
Now that which was prepared for me daily
was one ox and six choice sheep.
Also fowl were prepared for me, and once
every ten days an abundance of all kinds
of wine.
Yet in spite of this I did not
demand the governor's provisions, because the bondage was
heavy on the people.
Remember me, my God, for good, according to
all that I have done for this people."
The power of example.
I've heard it said that when the Marines,
when the United States Marines go into battle,
an officer never commands his men to go
into battle.
He leads them into battle.
The officer goes first.
You can't teach what you don't know.
You can't lead where you don't go.
And then finally he saw the work through
to completion.
He wasn't one of these persons who starts
something, is a cloud of glory, and then
it peters out and he never does see
it finished.
Nehemiah stuck with it through thick and thin,
through opposition from without and opposition from within,
and he saw the wall completed, as we
shall see in a later meeting.
Eleven things about the leadership of Nehemiah.
Things that I think speak to us today
in the service of the Lord.
Second thing I want to notice in this
lovely book is the very last words of
chapter one.
It says, For I was the king's cupbearer.
What are you?
If I ask you, what are you?
You say, I'm only a missionary.
That isn't what Nehemiah said.
He said, I was the king's cupbearer.
What is it?
A position of dignity.
A position of responsibility.
A position of intimacy with the king.
How that speaks to my heart tonight.
A position of dignity.
There he was next to the king, sampling
the wine before the king ever got it.
A position of responsibility.
Attempts were made on the lives of those
kings, poisoning their food and poisoning their drink.
A responsible thing, a life was at stake.
Position of intimacy with the king.
And we see that as the book goes
on.
What are you?
Remember what Spurgeon said, My son, if God
should call you to be a missionary, I
should not like to see you dribbled down
into a king.
One of our interns a couple of years
ago was a returned missionary, and just back
temporarily.
And he had children going to the local
school.
And one day in the local school, the
teacher asked the children all to go around
and tell what work their father did.
And when this dear little girl was asked,
she said, My father doesn't work, he's a
missionary.
And I'm afraid that because sometimes of the
way we talk about our calling, people might
get that idea.
Do we recognize tonight the glory of the
ministry?
And I mean that sincerely, the glory of
the ministry.
One of my favorite authors is J.
H.
Jowett.
And I'd like to read you what he
says.
This makes me proud to be in the
service of the King of Kings.
I wish I could write like this.
He said, I have been in the Christian
ministry for over 20 years.
I love my calling.
I have a glowing delight in its services.
I'm conscious of no distractions in the shape
of any competitors for my strength and allegiance.
Is that good?
He says, I have had but one passion
and I have lived for it, the absorbingly
arduous yet glorious work of proclaiming the grace
and love of our Lord and Savior, Jesus
Christ.
I would affirm my own conviction that in
all genuine callings to the ministry, there's a
sense of the divine initiative, a solemn communication
of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of
commission, which leaves a man no alternative, but
which sets them on the road of this
vocation, bearing the ambassage of a servant and
instrument of the eternal God.
Now a man who enters through the door
of divine vocation into this ministry will surely
apprehend the glory of his calling.
He will be constantly wondering and his wonder
will be a moral antiseptic that he has
been appointed a servant in the treasuries of
grace to make known the unsearchable riches of
Christ.
You cannot get away from that wonder in
the life of the apostle Paul next to
the infinite love of his Savior and the
amazing glory of his own salvation, his wonder
is arrested and nourished by the surpassing glory
of his vocation.
His calling is never, I like this, his
calling is never lost in the medley of
professions.
Get it?
His calling is never lost in the medley
of professions.
The light of privilege is always shining on
the way of duty.
His work never loses its halo and his
road never becomes entirely commonplace and gray.
He seems to catch his breath every time
he thinks of his mission and in the
midst of abounding adversity, glory still more abounds.
Therefore, this is the sort of music and
song that we find unceasing from the hour
of his conversion and calling to the hour
of his death.
This is what Paul said unto me, on
less than the least of all things is
this grace given that I should preach among
the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.
For this cause I, Paul, the prisoner of
Jesus Christ for you Gentiles, if you have
heard of the dispensation of the grace of
God which is given to me, to you
it is.
And then again he says, whereunto I am
ordained a preacher and an apostle, a teacher
of the Gentiles in faith and verity.
And Jowett asks, do you not feel a
sacred burning wonder in these exclamations, a holy
exulting pride in his vocation, leagued with a
marveling humility that the mystic hand of ordination
had rested upon him?
That abiding wonder was part of his apostolic
equipment, and his sense of the glory of
his calling enriched the proclamation of the glories
of redeeming grace.
Listen to this, if we lose the sense
of the wonder of our commission, we shall
become like common traders in a common market
babbling about commonwares.
That's magnificent.
If we lose the sense of the wonder
of our commission, we shall become like common
traders, t-r-a-b-e-r-s,
common traders in a common market babbling about
commonware.
This sense of great personal surprise in the
glory of our vocation, while it will keep
us humble, will also make us great.
That's a wonderful thing, isn't it, that when
God is using us and working through us
and things are being accomplished for God, it
doesn't create conceit.
How can God do that?
You know God is using you, yet you're
not proud.
You say, what does the man have but
what he's been given?
He could do nothing except if it were
given to him from above.
I guess there's a greatness about the calling.
This is good.
It will save us from becoming small officials
in transient enterprises.
Small officials in transient enterprises will make us
truly big and will therefore save us from
spending our days in trifling.
Emerson has somewhere said that men whose duties
are done beneath lofty and stately domes acquire
a dignified stride and a certain stateliness of
demeanor.
And preachers of the gospel whose work is
done beneath the lofty dome of some glorious
and wonderful conception of their ministry will acquire
a certain largeness of demeanor in which flippancy
and trivialities cannot breathe.
Once Sir Christopher Wren was building St. Paul's
Cathedral in London, a visitor went to observe,
a sidewalk supervisor went to observe.
And he saw a man just beyond the
barrier and he said, what are you doing?
And he said, I'm moving this dirt from
here to there.
And he saw another man with a wheelbarrow
working, said to him, what are you doing?
He said, I'm helping Sir Christopher Wren build
St. Paul's Cathedral.
To one it was a despising, to the
other it was a dignity.
I was the king's cup bearer.
Both men were doing the same work.
But look at the different attitude in them.
John Hunter asked, is your Christian life drab
and seemingly pointless?
Are you disillusioned and discontented?
Are you shoveling dirt?
Or are you building the eternal house of
the Lord?
Good question.
I was the king's cup bearer.
The glory of our vocation.
The glory of our calling.
And then of course you can't study the
book of Nehemiah without noticing the tremendous emphasis
on prayer.
It's interesting to me, the Bible is really
the greatest textbook on prayer, isn't it?
Scratch it anywhere and prayer will come out.
That's the wonderful thing about the Bible.
Almost any subject of divine value, you can
trace it right through the scriptures.
And here you have some wonderful insights into
prayer and the prayer life of Nehemiah, a
man of God.
Let me give you some indisputable facts concerning
prayer.
Man, number one, man never comes closer to
omnipotence than when he prays in the name
of the Lord Jesus.
You and I will never be omnipotent, only
God is omnipotent, and even in heaven we
won't be omnipotent.
We'll never have those attributes of God.
But let me say it, we never come
closer to omnipotence than when we pray in
the name of Jesus.
Why?
Because when we truly pray in the name
of the Lord Jesus, it's just exactly the
same as if he was making those prayers
to God the Father.
Exactly the same.
An old English bishop said, when I pray,
things happen.
When I don't pray, they don't.
I think that puts it very complexly.
When I pray, things happen.
When I don't pray, they don't.
I don't know who wrote this, but listen.
What has prayer done?
Prayer has divided seas, rolled up flowing rivers,
made flinty rocks gush into fountains, quenched flames
of fire, muzzled lions, disarmed vipers and poison,
marshalled the stars against the wicked, stopped the
course of the moon, arrested the rapid sun
in its great race, burst open iron gates,
recalled souls from eternity, conquered the strongest devils,
commanded legions of angels down from heaven.
Prayer has bridled and changed the raging passions
of man and routed and destroyed vast armies
of proud, daring, blustering atheists that fire to
heaven.
What has prayer not done?
Good.
As is one of the great secrets of
the work of Nehemiah in this book.
He was a man of prayer.
He knew what it meant to come, and
did you notice the way he talks to
the Lord?
And the Lord loved it.
He loved it.
I often think of that, of the boldness
of some of the greatest men of God
in the Old Testament.
They were reverent.
They were bold.
Bow down your ears.
Why don't you stretch forth your arm to
help us?
God loved it.
And God answered those prayers.
Number three.
Christians hold the balance of power in the
world through prayer.
We can change the destiny of nations through
prayer.
And some of you sitting here today could
give living testimony to that time.
To changes in government, to military coups, to
release of prisoners in answer to prayer.
God is there, the sovereign of the universe,
and he's moving the checkers on the checkerboard,
the chess men on the chessboard, and he
does it in answer to the prayers of
his people.
Number three.
God seldom, if ever, does anything except in
answer to prayer.
I'm going to get some sparks on this
one.
Some of you see a lotion afterwards.
Sure.
Well, I like to say it again.
God seldom, if ever, does anything except in
answer to prayer.
Every once in a while I meet some,
let's say, some young fellow.
He's been saved, you know, not from a
Christian background at all.
And I say to him, who prayed for
you?
And he says, well, I think I had
a grandmother who knew the Lord.
Sometimes grace skips a generation, you know.
And oftentimes I find that response.
I love to ask that question to a
new convert.
Who prayed for you?
Yes, I think I had a grandmother who
knew the Lord.
You know, years ago Donald Ross used to
pray that not one hoof of his family
would be left behind.
He liked to borrow scriptural phraseology.
And that's what he used to pray.
As he looked down through the ages following
his own time here on earth, he prayed,
not a hoof be left behind.
It's remarkable what's happened in that family.
I remember a man, a descendant in Elgin
years ago, and he had been an alcoholic
most of his life.
And just before he died, he trusted the
sinner's savior.
And I thought Donald Ross's prayer is being
answered.
Still being answered there.
God has, this is another quote, this is
from R.A. Matthews, born for battle, and
with this I quote, God has limited certain
of his activities to responding to the prayers
of his people.
Unless they pray, he will not act.
Heaven may will something to happen, but heaven
waits and encourages earth's initiative to desire that
will, and then to will and pray that
it happens.
The will, this is good, the will of
God is not done on earth by an
inexorable juggernaut omnipotence out there overriding or ignoring
the will of man on earth.
On the contrary, God has willed that his
hand be held back while he seeks for
a man, an intercessor, to plead, thy will
be done on earth, in this or that
specific situation.
Without God, man cannot.
Without man, God will not.
Wow, sobering, isn't it?
Without God, man cannot.
Without man, God will not.
He bids his own work wait on man's
prayers.
Makes me want to get down on my
knees and pray.
How about you?
We'll just continue with these thoughts on prayer,
Lord willing, tomorrow night and press on in
the book.
Shall we look to the Lord in prayer?
Father, we praise you tonight for the word
of God, a mine of wealth to us.
How it speaks to us in all the
circumstances of life.
How it guides us in our service for
the Lord, keeping us back from pitfalls, from
acting in the energy of the flesh.
Oh God, we pray for each of us
here tonight that we might be men and
women of prayer.
Men and women who want to see God
working in their lives day by day.
Who, when they touch other lives, will see
something happen for God.
Refresh the vision in our soul tonight.
Give us a new sense of the glory
of the ministry.
We ask for the Savior's sake.
Amen.