May God be pleased to bless us
together this morning as we meditate in his holy word. Let's turn
to the book of Nehemiah and the second chapter and we'll read
verse four. The book of Nehemiah and the
second chapter and reading verse four. Then the king said unto
me, for what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven. The Book of Nehemiah, you young
people might realize that it's one of the easiest books to actually
read and to understand. There are some books in the Bible
which are not so easy, but Nehemiah is really a very easy book to
understand and Ezra is very similar. And so we should be thankful
that we have recorded in this book of Nehemiah great truths
and wonderfully simple and God-glorifying prayers. And we've just read
in this fourth verse a statement that we don't know what the prayer
was. But we're just told very simply,
so I prayed to the God of heaven. Now, the relevance of that simple
statement is this. Whatever condition, whatever
situation you and I may find ourselves in, there is always
the opportunity to pray. Because we might think this is
a reasonably extreme situation. Here was Nehemiah in the presence
of the king being asked a question and before he answered in that
very brief space of time he prayed to the God of heaven. We should
remember that in our little lives that there's no situation that
you and I come into that we can never pray to God, because God
is in every place and God never sleeps. God always has been and
always will and always is that one who is alert and alive and
always ready to hear and to answer our prayers. So never think that
you don't have time to pray about something. especially you young
ones at school and college and perhaps the workplace. You may
find yourself sometimes into coming to difficult situations.
It may be you've got examinations. You don't know how to answer
a question. Maybe in a workplace, you don't
know how to solve a problem. Well, there's no situation which
occurs in our lives when we cannot pray to the God of heaven. And be assured of this, if you
and I come in a right way, praying to God, that he will hear and
answer our prayer. It may not always be with the
answer that you and I want, because God knows what's best for us. And sometimes we may want something
perhaps very badly, and we may pray for it, and it may not come
to pass. And we may think, well, what
happens to my prayer then? What you've got to remember is
that God doesn't always answer yes. Sometimes God answers no. And it may be on occasions like
that. You have prayed, you prayed in faith, and God has not answered
you in the way that you expected, in the way that you anticipated. But nonetheless, God does hear
and answer prayer. Well, in this particular instant,
God did hear Nehemiah's prayer and God did answer and give him
the wisdom to ask the king boldly for that which he needed and
it's quite remarkable really. The whole situation with regard
to Israel is very remarkable because You may remember that,
of course, Israel had, or Judah especially, had disobeyed God. Now, you and I disobeyed God
at our peril. Don't think that you and I can
disobey God easily. They disobeyed God, and God had
told them through the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel that if
they disobeyed God and didn't follow his commands, they would
go into captivity. Well, they ignored those words
and they thought it wasn't true. But what God says is always true. And therefore, remember, what
God says in the Bible is always true. Don't think that there's
some escape route specially devised for you and me. We have the word
of God which directs us precisely in the right way. Well, Israel
of our old day disobeyed God and therefore that which had
been prophesied so many times came to pass and they were taken
captive and they went down into Babylon and it wasn't just for
a few minutes or a few hours or a few years they were there
for 70 years as had been told them by the prophets but 70 years
came to pass the Lord came and did then deliver them in a very
remarkable way really because he encouraged the kings of Chaldea
the kings of Babylon to encourage the Israelites to go back to
Jerusalem and to rebuild the temple and especially most amazing
really when you think that there were apparently heathen kings
who were willing to do that and support Israel to return and
so they did and first of all of course the temple was rebuilt
and that was the the centerpiece the place where they worship
the essential part and so wonderful it was that God granted that
so the temple was rebuilt, but the walls around Jerusalem had
not been rebuilt. And that's what Ezra and Nehemiah
were commanded to come and do. And so we have in this book of
Nehemiah how that came to pass. And the Lord then directed Nehemiah
to come boldly to the king and to ask for that which was needed. He said, if it please the king,
And if thy servant have found favour in thy sight, that thou
wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my father's
sepulchre, that I may build it. Yes, he wanted the king to grant
him that, and he then asked for letters from the king, and then
also asked for timber to be supplied from the king's forest. You see,
all these things were granted. And looking at it naturally we
would think well that's very surprising because here they
were in a heathen land with a heathen king and yet you see under the
influence of almighty god such people were made willing to help
and to support Israel in their return to Jerusalem and so it
came to pass well these accounts are really for our encouragement
and they are there for our encouragement and our direction in the day
and age in which we live because we don't have a physical Jerusalem
but we do have a spiritual Jerusalem. We do have a spiritual situation
which as I'm sure we realise is in a very low state. The Church of God worldwide is
in a very low state and we need God to appear and we need God
to come and grant, and there may be, if it could be His will,
a building up again of the Church, a building of the as it were
the walls of Jerusalem. Well we have many statements
in the Word of God, many prayers of the people of God historically
which were put up and granted and sometimes from very evil
and very wrong and very sinful people and yet God was very gracious
and very merciful. You may remember There was that
King Manasseh, who was a most evil king. And yet the Lord came
and touched his heart and brought him to that place of repentance
for all his sin. And he did come and he did indeed
pray to God. And God did hear amazingly and
answered his prayers and we can read in the second book of the
Chronicles the account of God's goodness and mercy and it's just
interesting because also we have an account of Manasseh previously
in the book of the Kings and if you read that there's no evidence
of any repentance and no evidence of any mercy towards Manasseh
but in this account in the Chronicles there is and We're told this. The Lord spoke to Manasseh and
to his people, but they would not hearken. Wherefore the Lord
brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria,
which took Manasseh among the thorns and bound him with fetters
and carried him to Babylon. And when he was in affliction,
he besought the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before
God of his fathers and prayed unto him. And he was entreated
of him and heard his supplication and brought him again to Jerusalem
into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord,
he was God. So such an account is very encouraging. to realise that the very worst
of sinners God can be gracious to. He was to Manasseh and he
gave him that spirit of repentance to come to his God and to pray
for mercy. And God was entreated of him
and brought him deliverance and blessed him. What a wonderful
truth that is. And so here we have then in Nehemiah's
day, then the Lord hearing his prayer, because we read in that
11th verse in that first chapter, O Lord, I beseech thee. It wasn't just a mere prayer
of words with no desire and no earnestness. He says, O Lord,
I beseech thee. let now thine ear be attentive
to the prayer of thy servant and to the prayer of thy servants
who desire to fear thy name and prosper I pray thee thy servant
this day and grant him mercy in the sight of this man well
that was a a prayer indicted by the Holy Spirit of God. And in our little lives today,
we live many years later, don't we? But we come to the same God
who can give us prayer. You see, you can come to God
in prayer and not pray. You can just utter words. But
what a blessing when God comes and gives us a real desire to
pray, a real desire to pray to God that he will forgive us of
all our sins, a real concern that God will bless our soul,
a great desire that God will prepare us for that day when
we shall leave this earth to be found ready to go and to be
with Christ, which is far better. What this is, in the life of
every believer, the glorious work of the Spirit of God. And it is a very sure and certain
evidence of God's mercy when he gives to you and me that true
spirit of prayer. So we bow down and worship the
Lord. acknowledging that he is that
one who is to be worshipped, he is to be obeyed, perhaps we'll
have to confess our sins and confess our shortcomings as indeed
we're told in the Word of God how often Israel disobeyed God,
how often Israel were blessed with prayer and forgiveness.
What a mercy it is to realize that we have such a God, such
a God who is faithful, such a God who is merciful. You may remember
there was the case of Jehoshaphat, again recorded in the Chronicles,
where he had a great enemy against him and he didn't know what to
do. What should he do? But he tells
us, or at least it's recorded, he prayed unto God that he would,
as he came and said, neither know we what to do, but our eyes
are upon thee. Now you may remember in that
account of Jehoshaphat that there was a great and wonderful deliverance
and the result was this. In fact, they didn't need to
fight in that battle. The enemy fought against themselves. It was an amazing deliverance. God heard the prayer of Jehoshaphat
and he was in a very difficult situation. And these examples
in the Word of God are given us for our day and age in which
we live. Because there will be times when
we come into situations where we don't know what to do, what
a mercy to come to a God who hears and answers prayer and
doesn't deal with us as our sins deserve. And come back to the
words of this text, so says Nehemiah, I prayed to the God of heaven. He didn't pray to a false God. He didn't pray to the unknown
God. You might remember when Paul
was in Athens, he saw a statue with a plaque on it saying
to the unknown God. And Paul told the Athenians,
that's not the God that I preach to you. He told them about the
true God. Well, my friends, Blessed be
God if you and I pray to the true God, not to the unknown
God. And here we have Nehemiah praying
to the God of heaven. The God of heaven, my friends,
is not a false God. He's not a God of wood and stone. He's not an idol. He is a God
who does hear and answer prayer. And it's a great blessing that
we should be constantly reminded that this God, great as he is,
is mindful of us and doesn't deal with us as our sins deserve. Now, the great situation was
in Nehemiah's day and Ezra's day, the rebuilding of the wall,
and God was gracious to them and granted them the ability
so to do. And it's just very interesting.
If you go on and read this account in Jeremiah, how the people came
together And there were groups of people. Each group had a certain
job to do in the rebuilding of that wall. It wasn't haphazard. It was organized and they all
came together and they rebuilt the wall and it was rebuilt in
a very short time. A very short time. God was very
gracious to them and granted that it was rebuilt. There was,
of course, opposition. there was opposition. And in
our Christian lives there will be opposition. And in that account,
you might like to read it when you go home in Nehemiah, you'll
find that they gave the instructions that some of them were to be
there with their swords to defend those that rebuilt the wall to
take care of them. Others were to build it. And
they were working so hard. They were only able to stop really
and to sleep and to take their clothes off, to wash them. Otherwise,
they carried on nonstop in the building of this wall. They had
a will to work. They had a will to do the work
of God. And what a blessing for us today
if you and I in our lives have a will to do the will of God. It wasn't easy. And as we read
of the enemy who was there, Sambalas and Tobiah and all those people,
they were very keen to stop them building, but they weren't able
to. and at one time they wanted to
have a discussion with Nehemiah and they invited him to come
and to meet in the temple and Nehemiah rejected he realized
that he was wasting his time he was being sidetracked and
he would concentrate on the work of God and that's good for us
to realize in our lives today that we mustn't be sidetracked
from the things of God but that we must concentrate on them and
realize the relevance of them. And so all this came to pass
because of Nehemiah's prayer. So I prayed to the God of heaven
and God gave him favor. in the eyes of the king. What
a blessing it is if today God gives us favour as we come and
pray to God. As he gives us, we might say
it like this sometimes, the spirit of prayer. The spirit of prayer. Well, you young people may not
always understand what this is, but prayer is the gift of God. True prayer is the gift of God
and it's a great blessing if you and I can come to God believing
that He is a God who hears and answers prayer. We are to come
to God believing. We're not to come to God doubting
that we come to a God who may answer prayer. We are to come
to a God in faith believing. that this great God is one who
answers prayer. And of course we have a wonderful
favour that we can come and our prayers be presented to our Father
through the merit of our Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes we perhaps fail to
realise that God is holy. and God the Father cannot look
upon sin and therefore He cannot look on us as we are sinners
but He looks on us through the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why
in our prayers it is important to conclude our prayers with
this very simple statement for Jesus Christ's sake. Our prayers
are accepted through the Lord Jesus Christ and he takes and
presents our prayers to our Father in heaven. It's a great blessing
if you and I are blessed with faith to believe this, that we
do come to a God who is a God who hears and answers prayer
and that we have a great and wonderful Saviour who presents
our prayers And we need to go back, really, to the glorious
life of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because he lived on this earth,
that perfect life, to die upon that cross at Calvary, to take
away all the sins of his church, and to be our High Priest. You may ask, well what does that
mean? If you read the Old Testament account, you will notice that
in the tabernacle and then in the temple, there was a very
special annual event. That was the Day of Atonement. And on that day, the high priest
had to go into that holy place in the tabernacle or the temple,
and in that holy place, he couldn't go in there, unless he took with
him the blood of a slain lamb or animal and sprinkled that
blood upon the mercy seat. And then he was able to present
his case to Almighty God, who was there in that holy place.
He wasn't able to do it without blood. Well, what was the relevance
then? of the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. The great blessing is that when
the Lord Jesus Christ died upon the cross at Calvary, something
very significant happened. In the temple, in the tabernacle,
there was a veil, a very heavy veil, which separated between
the most holy place and the holy place. And the high priest was
only able to go through that veil into the holy place on their
annual occasion and not without blood. That was that which the
high priest did. Well, when the Lord Jesus Christ
died upon that cross at Calvary, you may remember the last words
that he spoke, it is finished. That means his work on the earth
was finished. And at the same time, we're told
the veil in the temple that separated the most holy place from the
holy place was rent in twain, torn in two from the top to the
bottom. The wonderful significance of
that was this. There was now no need for a natural
high priest. because the way into the holy
place had been brought about by the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ. And he had shed his blood so
that he was able to enter into the holy place. Let me just say
this. The holy place represented naturally
heaven. And now we have the Lord Jesus
Christ who has entered into that eternal heaven above and he is
there now to intercede for you and me to our father in heaven
present our prayers that's the great glorious truth of the gospel
now i hope you're able to understand that because it is very relevant
to us today as we come to God we have a wonderful and glorious
high priest, the Lord Jesus Christ, who is always available, who
is always ready. He never sleeps. He's always
there to take our prayers. So whenever we come to God, come
to our Father in prayer, we come through the merit of the Lord
Jesus Christ. What a mercy then for us today. You see, we live in a gospel
day. The Old Testament people didn't
have this great and wonderful benefit. They walked by faith
the same as we do, but they came not realizing the great benefit
that is ours today. Well, we have Nehemiah here. He tells us, So I prayed to the
God of heaven. Well, Perhaps we ought to ask
ourselves the question, have we prayed to the God of heaven? Have you prayed to the God of
heaven? I don't know. Do you know who
does know? You as an individual know if
you have prayed to the God of heaven. If you've come believing,
You come to a God who does hear and answer prayer and you come
not because you're a very clever person, not because you're able
to formulate a lovely, wonderful prayer. It's because you come
with a need. Nehemiah, in his day, had a great
need that God would appear for him and his people. therefore
he came and he prayed to the God of heaven even in that she
might say split second before the king well sometimes perhaps
you and I may come perhaps almost in a split second and we may
have to pray a very simple prayer God be merciful to me a sinner
it doesn't take very long does it to say and you could be in
the presence of the King, couldn't you? And before you answer, you
could pray like that, couldn't you? God be merciful to me, a
sinner. What a great blessing it is to
know that we have a God who we can come to in exactly the same
way that Nehemiah did. And God heard Nehemiah's prayer
and God answered Nehemiah's prayer. And God is the same today, although
he's so great and so powerful, And never get the wrong impression. Never think you come to God as
a little God. Because God is a great God. He's
an almighty God. Today we live in an age when
people think nothing of mocking and blaspheming God. And yet,
we worship today, here this morning. That same God that spoke the
world into being. That same God who always has
been. That's an impossible consideration
for us to understand. You and I can only understand
the things of time. We are time people. We're born
in time. We can't understand eternity. Something that never had a beginning. And something that never has
an end. And yet it's very true. And that
is the great God that you and I worship. The God who never
had a beginning. The God who will never have an
end. the God who always exists. It would be a great blessing
for you and me if God gives you and me faith to believe in that
great God. Nehemiah believed in that great
God. He tells us, I pray to the God
of heaven. Not the God of stone or wood,
but the God of heaven. And that God of heaven consists
of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Again, a mystery which is beyond
your and my natural understanding. To have a God who is three in
one, a God who is so great, so powerful, is something you and
I cannot naturally understand. But bless God if you and I are
given faith, and it is a gift. God does give faith. It's not
something that you and I can work up or produce. God gives
faith, faith to believe the great and wonderful truths that are
contained in his holy word. And you may say, well, what is
faith? And it's a good question to know
what faith is. Well, the apostle Paul tells
us what faith is. He gives us a definition. It's
good, isn't it, to have a definition. And it's in the 11th of Hebrews
and the first verse. And this is what it tells us.
Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things
not seen. That's the definition of faith. And the truth is that every true
believer is given this gift of faith to believe the truth of
God. Nehemiah believed the truth of
God. That's why he came and prayed
to this God in the way that we read together this morning, prayed
in this wonderful way that he did. He came and he said, I beseech
thee, O Lord, God of heaven, the great and terrible God that
keepeth covenant and mercy for them that love him and observe
his commandments. And you and I should realize
that when we come to God in prayer, We come to this great God, not
a little God, not an unknown God, a great God. And what a
mercy, therefore, if we come in faith, believing that this
God does hear and answer prayer. And then and then when God does
answer our prayer. Well, again, let's come back.
I've asked you, have you really prayed to God? Let me ask you
this question, has God Answer any of your prayers. Because
if he has, what a wonderful evidence you have that God has been mindful
of you and God has looked upon you. We don't deserve God to
look upon us, do we? But what a blessing if he has
and if he's come and shown us What we are as a sinner has shown
us what we need, and that is the mercy of God. And what we
need is that mercy of God shown to us in the glorious work of
the Lord Jesus Christ. All of you here, I'm sure, have
heard very much about the Lord Jesus Christ in your life. And
that's wonderful and we should thank God for it. But you see,
true believers are blessed with faith to believe the Lord Jesus
Christ came in this world to save sinners and like the Apostle
Paul said, of whom I am chief. To have that true belief that
Jesus came to save us, from all our sins, and to give us that
assurance that our names are written in the Lamb's Book of
Life, and if they are, to believe that it will be well with your
soul and my soul eternally. You and I are in time. Soon we
shall be in eternity. And what a blessing it will be
then to know that when that comes to pass, we shall be with Christ,
which is far better and there forever and ever. Well, may it
be our concern today to remember this very simple statement. So I prayed to the God of heaven. There's no occasion in our lives
when we cannot pray to the God of heaven. And do remember that
and do desire that you may be found truly praying to the God
of heaven in faith, believing he hears and answers prayer and
wait and watch for answers to those prayers. And when they're
answered, to be able to praise and honor and glorify our God. We should not receive answers
and never thank God for it. We should always thank him and
praise him and acknowledge what he's done and for his great grace
toward us. Grace is unmerited favor. None
of you and I deserve any favor. What a blessing it is if God
blesses us then with that favor to believe. the great and glorious
truths of the gospel and look forward to that day when we should
have finished our life in time and then be in eternity forever
with the Lord. Amen.