Hope is more than a feeling, more than a wish. It is more than “the thing with feathers that perches in the soul” (Emily Dickinson). Hope is an objective reality outside the soul which protects the soul. It is an “anchor for the soul, firm and secure” (Hebrews 6:19).
Be encouraged by this minute of Advent Hope. – Shayne
Our hope includes seeing our loved ones again when Christ returns. They will astound us with their glory. It includes being glorified ourselves in the Great Revealing (Colossians 3:3-4). But our greatest hope is in the glory of God (Romans 5:2), for “we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:1-3). This is the beatific vision. Its glory causes us to catch our breath at the humility of God in Christ, who took human form (“the body of our lowliness,” Philippians 3:21 – literal) “for us and for our salvation.”
(Reading time: 4 minutes)
Peggy Noonan’s lede in her Wall Street Journal column from October 15, 2020 read: “Everyone’s insane now. I mean everyone in Washington.”
It is not uncommon for people, even columnists for respected newspapers, to speak of government officials in this way. They are usually referring to the people on the other side of the aisle, but Ms. Noonan advocates for inclusivity: “Everyone’s insane now.”
Note the word, “now.” The implication is that there was a time when not everyone was crazy. Was there less insanity when Ms. Noonan’s boss, Ronald Reagan, was in the Oval Office? Perhaps. But I wouldn’t bet on it.
Craziness in government is nothing new. Had Ms. Noonan been writing in the time of Christ, she might have used the same lede, with this clarification: “I mean everyone in Rome.” The Gospel of Luke lists the names of officeholders at the time Jesus burst onto the scene. This was a standard method for dating events, but it was also St. Luke’s way of reminding his readers that God is at work in the real world.
The people the Evangelist mentions were not mythical. It would be like me bringing up Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Mitch McConnell in reference to something that was going on in our church and community. The men on Luke’s list were real people, exercising influence (for good or bad) in the real world.
God is not working in some ethereal spiritual world while life goes on in the “real” world. The “real” world is itself spiritual, shot through with divine activity. That is as true now as it was when Tiberius was the Roman emperor.
Tiberius was the poster child for insanity in government, though his heir Caligula made him look almost normal. As he grew older, the Emperor became paranoid and cruel. Seneca says that he was positively rude and insulting. Toward the end of his reign, he was executing people for saying things he didn’t like. He started spending less time in the capitol, and more time on the Isle of Capri, which was a hotbed of sexual deviancy. When he died, protestors in the streets wanted his body dumped in the Tiber River, which was how the corpses of criminals were disposed.
Luke also mentions Pontius Pilate. He was the Roman governor of Judea who ordered Jesus’s execution. The Jews hated him, and asked Tiberius to recall him. Pilate used treasury money as if it were his personal account, and when people protested, he sent his troops into the streets in plain clothes with orders to infiltrate the protestors and kill as many as possible. It was a massacre. Tiberius reprimanded Pilate but stopped short of removing him from office.
Herod Antipas also made Luke’s list. He was the regional administrator who had founded the gleaming city of Tiberius on the shores of Lake Galilee. It was he who ordered the beheading of John the Baptist and later attempted to have his own nephew imprisoned. He was sly, power-hungry, and unfaithful to multiple spouses.
If we had lived in Palestine in the year 28 AD, which would have been the 15th year of Tiberius’s reign, we probably would have been saying, “Everyone’s insane now.” Nevertheless, God was at work, accomplishing his purpose. The insanity of Rome – or, for that matter, Washington – cannot stop him.
As we approach Christmas, we must keep this in mind. The God who was at work in the world then is at work in the world now. The God who sent his only begotten Son will send him again.
“The meaning of Christmas,” a New York Times op-ed piece once claimed, “is that love will triumph and that we will be able to put together a world of unity and peace.” Those are nice words, but that is not what Christmas means. Christmas is not about something we might do but about something God has already done: he has entered the insanity of our world through the person of Jesus so that he might redeem it, restore it, and make it beautiful.
Jesus wanted his disciple to be free from the control of fear. Because greed is fueled by fear, he took the opportunity to address it as well (and, in so doing, shared one of his most famous stories). Get out your Bible, open it to Luke 12, and let’s learn from Jesus how to live free of fear and greed.
A class member shared the following Frederick Faber poem regarding the fear of the Lord, which is so good I want to pass it along.
The Fear of the Lord (F. W. Faber)
My fear of Thee, O Lord, exults Like life within my veins, A fear which tightly claims to be One of love’s sacred pains.
There is no joy the soul can meet Upon life’s various road Like the sweet fear that sits and shrinks Under the eye of God.
Oh, Thou art greatly to be feared, Thou art so prompt to bless! The dread to miss such love as Thine Makes fear but love’s excess.
But fear is love, and love is fear, And in and out they move; But fear is an intenser joy Than mere unfrightened love.
They love Thee little, if at all, Who do not fear Thee much; If love is Thine attraction, Lord! Fear is Thy very touch.
Each week in Advent, I will post these minute-of-hope video or audio clips. During Advent, our hope is renewed and invigorated – and do we ever need that!
(Romans 13:8-14) Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law. And do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed. The night is nearly over; the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality and debauchery, not in dissension and jealousy. Rather, clothe yourselves with the Lord Jesus Christ, and do not think about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (NIV)
If you received inside information that the world (as we know it) will end in exactly one year from today, what would you do? Would you stockpile weapons? Would you stockpile food, or move to the wilderness and take up fishing, hunting, and raising vegetables? According to the Apostle Paul, this period of earth’s history is nearing its close, so what should we do? Our text offers an unexpected answer to that question.
In verse 11, St. Paul rings the alarm for Roman Christians: it is time to wake up. “The hour has come” – not the hour for a cataclysmic meteor strike or an alien invasion, but for the return of the Lord Jesus Christ to planet earth.
Does that lift your spirits and excite your hope? It should. It is good news, both for us and for the planet. It heralds the fulfillment of our salvation and the overthrow of evil. It marks the beginning of what Jesus called the palingenesis – the second genesis – and both prophet and apostle refer to it as the new creation. This is not only good news; it is great news.
When Christ returns, the powers that produce evil in this world will be routed and destroyed. The change will be immediate. Listen to what the prophet Isaiah wrote: “He will judge between the nations and will settle disputes for many peoples. They will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not take up sword against nation, nor will they train for war anymore” (Isaiah 2:4).
Think of it. No more war. No three-quarters of a trillion dollar annual defense budgets. No more twenty-year-old’s dying on the other side of the world for a cause they don’t understand. That day is coming.
Not only will there be no more war; there will be no violence. “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall graze; their young shall lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain; for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9).
This is the future. No violence. No evil, No war. There will be a new heaven and a new earth, and “the sound of weeping and of crying will be heard in it no more” (Isaiah 65:19). God himself “will wipe every tear from [our] eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things [will have] passed away” (Revelation 21:4).
Fear, our constant, insufferable companion in life, will be gone. Sin, the burden of it, its clamoring demands, the confusion it brings, and the clinging guilt that accompanies it, will be forgotten like an unpleasant dream. For we shall wake up. The nightmare will be over, the day of the feast for which we have waited will arrive.
As wonderful as all this is – the absence of death and mourning and crying and pain – the best part will not be what is missing but what is present. The new age will not start as a blank slate: “The kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it” (Revelation 21:24). Both prophet and apostle say that the new heaven and earth will be the home of righteousness. Everything will finally be right – including us: We will be strong, glad, capable, joyful brothers and sisters of the great King Jesus!
Our loved ones who have died in Christ will arrive with him on the day he returns: “We … will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
On that day, we will not only see our best-loved friends and family in Christ who have died, we will see them as we have never seen them before. I once sat with a mother who had just lost her daughter in a car accident. She kept saying, “If only I could see her again.” But when we see our loved ones, we will not feel that we are seeing them again but that we are seeing them for the first time. We will recognize them, I have no doubt, but we will think: “What has happened?” That person we loved but always thought a little silly – or dull, or embarrassing, or weak – will appear to us like a god, as if Apollo or Aphrodite had stepped into view. We will not be able to take our eyes off them. But this is no Apollo or Aphrodite; this is our beloved, a human as humans were always intended by the great God to be. The only thing greater than our amazement will be our joy!
But there is more. On that day, we will not just see our loved ones glorified, we also will be glorified. This is the promise of God! “…the Lord Jesus Christ,who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20-21). St. John said, “Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
When he is revealed, we will be revealed in a sort of debutante ball for the entire universe. St. Paul writes, “When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory” (Colossians 3:4). No one will be more surprised at your revealing than you. The biblical descriptions are: “glorious,” “joyful,” “imperishable,” “honorable,” “powerful,” “pure” and “undefiled.” The only One who will not be surprised at the change in you will be God. He has been planning this all along.
You will think that you have seen it all when you see your friends and family, and especially when you see yourself. You will be stunned and overwhelmed. “After this,” you will think, “nothing will ever surprise me again.” And then you will see him – him who made the worlds – and in that moment, you will know why you were made, why everything and everyone was made, and you will know that the making was good, was “very good.” You were made for this. You were made for him. And you will know, in the words Lady Julian said the Lord spoke to her: “that all shall be well; that all manner of things shall be well; that all manner of things shall be very well indeed.”
And do you know what makes all this possible? God our Savior sent his only begotten Son; Christ our Lord was made flesh and dwelt among us; God the Spirit, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance, entered our inmost being. God is our hope; he is our all in all.
The things about which I have been speaking for the last several minutes will happen, and the day on which they will happen is, as St. Paul said, “nearer than when we first believed” (Romans 13:11). History is not, and has never been, pointless. All things in heaven and on earth have been moving toward a predetermined end. Neither the powers of hell nor the accidents of life can prevent it.
So, how ought we to live in the light of this future—that was Paul’s concern. He started off this section of Romans by telling us how to live in the light of the past – of God’s mercies expressed in the sacrifice of his Son – and now he tells us how to live in the light of the future –God’s mercies of expressed in our great salvation.
How should we live in the light of all this? What should we do? Should we go to church five times a week and pray for five hours a day? Should we tell everyone we see about Jesus, about God, and about judgment? Should we find everyone against whom we have ever done any wrong and ask for their forgiveness?
While I wouldn’t speak against any of these things, they are not what Paul tells people to do. Look again at verse 11: “And do this, understanding the present time.” And do what? The surprising answer lies in the preceding paragraph and can be summed up in two words: Love others.
That’s it? Love others? That a little overly spiritual, don’t you think? I listened to a podcast recently that was titled, “Why Christians Keep Losing: Overly Spiritual.” I get it. If the end is coming, we need to do something, like protest, or start a podcast, or go off the grid and become self-reliant—something!
But loving others – God and people – is not something; it is the only thing. As Paul says elsewhere, “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Galatians 5:6). Love: it’s not just a warm feeling. It is sacrifice. It is truthfulness. It is thinking. It is action. There is nothing more demanding – or less practiced – than love. Love is not overly spiritual; it is the most practical thing in the world. Paul says, “And do this” – “love one another” – because the time is short, and this is the most important thing we can do.
Back in verse 8, Paul wrote that the person who loves his fellowman (literally, “the other, the one who is not like us, who has a different religion, speaks a different language, has different colored skin – the person who roots for Ohio State), the person who loves the other has fulfilled the law. He repeats the claim in verse 10: “love is the fulfillment of the law.”
There was an idea among Paul’s Jewish contemporaries that when God’s people finally fulfilled the law, the day of salvation would come. Paul, it seems, agreed. But he knew the way to fulfill the law was not by painstaking piety, but by genuine love. I may keep the law by not committing adultery or murder, but I will only fulfill the law by loving. Love is what God has been after from the very beginning.
It is urgent that we love because (verse 12) “The night is nearly over.” It has been a long night. The powers of darkness have held sway. But that is about to change. Morning is at hand. “Glory, honor, and immortality” await. It’s time to wake up. Do you know how to tell those who are awake from the vast majority of people who merely sleepwalk through life? They are the ones who love.
That’s all? Just love? That’s all. But if you think that is easy, you’ve never tried it. Love is not something you can pull off by personality or willpower. You cannot produce love – that is outside our human abilities – so you need to put yourself in a place where you can be supplied with it. Love has a supply chain, and you need to be in it. That doesn’t just happen.
How can we position ourselves in the supply chain of love so that we are ready to receive and extend it? Paul helps us understand this by a series of three contrasts in verses 12-14.
The first is between putting off the “deeds of darkness” and putting on “the armor of light” (verse 12). We take off the “deeds of darkness” those secret behaviors and thoughts that are a source of shame, and that we know will look ugly in the light of the day that is dawning. Instead, we put on “the armor of light,” the protection that genuine transparency affords, which fits the life of love very well. (As an aside: every Christian should have a secret life with God. No Christian should have a secret life from God – as if that were even possible.)
The second contrast is between behaving decently, which fits the life of love, and partying, getting drunk, and sleeping around (which is a pretty accurate translation of verse 13), which does not fit at all. It may seem odd to us that church people needed to be told this, but they did. They were new to following Jesus, and old habits die hard. Living in the party scene, Paul knew, removes a person from the supply chain of love.
The final contrast (verse 14) is between clothing oneself with Jesus and thinking about how to gratify the desires of the sinful nature, which Paul thinks of as opposites.
What does it mean here (and in Galatians) to “clothe yourselves with” – or as many translations have it, “put on” – the Lord Jesus Christ”? It means to intentionally put on – as intentionally as one puts on a suit of clothes – Christ Jesus’s way of thinking, feeling, acting, and relating. These are the clothes of the new life, which God graciously provides us, but which must we put on. This is discipleship to Jesus.
Christianity has always been a “put-on” job. Many critics have said so, but they have missed the point. Human life is a put-on job; it’s only a question of what you are putting on. For many years, a debate raged among the intelligentsia regarding human development. Is it fueled by nature or by nurture? Do we become who we become because of genetics or because of training? After centuries of debate, most authorities have called it a draw. But they’ve missed the essential point: humans become. They develop; and they do so by “putting on” something – a way of thinking, perhaps, or of valuing, acting, feeling – that they hadn’t had before. All of life is a put-on job; that’s how people develop. Because of what God has done by giving us his Son and his Spirit, there is a way to put on the Lord Jesus Christ.
To put on Christ is to arrange your life around him in such a way that you come to see reality as he sees it, to value what he values, and disdain what he disdains. This can only happen in people who believe in him – who are confident that he is the way, the truth, and the life. This does not happen because a person has learned a few theologically correct ideas about Jesus – as important as that is. It happens because they have faith in him. They trust him. They entrust themselves to him.
The phrase in verse 14 that the NIV translates, “Do not think” is more like, “Do not premeditate…” Once you begin meditating – for that is what it is – about doing something sinful, your foot is already in the trap. When that trap closes, as it surely will, you will be completely out of position to love.
Let’s wrap this up. Salvation with its glory, honor, and immortality is already on its way! Jesus Christ, who came once, is coming again—this time to bring salvation. When he does, the great thing is for him to find you loving others. Whatever you do, whether you eat or drink (or protest or podcast), do it as a way to love—or don’t do it. The way to be ready when Christ returns is to love. The way to change the world before he gets here is to love. There is no substitute. Love is God’s plan.
Have you taken your place in the supply chain of love? To do so, you need to be rightly positioned toward God – “repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ,” was how Paul put it – and rightly positioned toward people. That can’t happen when you are hiding sins or living a self-centered life.
So many people who are looking for love will never find it. But if they would stop looking for love and start looking to love, love would find them.
The point is that when Jesus – who is the point of it all – comes, we want to be awake – that is, we want to be loving. It’s time to wake up. The day is near, there is work – challenging work of love – to do, and we need to take our places in God’s supply chain of love.
For the past five years or so, I have been on a quest to sleep better. I have been sleeping poorly since my thirties, and it has only gotten worse as the years have passed. My three sons all followed suit. When they got into their thirties, they also began to sleep poorly.
The internet is full of advice for us poor sleepers. Exercise, but not too late in the day. Avoid caffeine. Don’t eat within three hours of bedtime. Practice mindfulness. Use breathing techniques like “box breathing.” Increase intake of certain vitamins and minerals. Turn off the TV or computer at least an hour before bedtime. The suggestions go on and on.
I saw my doctor recently for an annual wellness checkup. I reminded him of my quest, and he raised the issue of sleep apnea. That is not what I wanted to hear. Everyone I know who has been diagnosed with sleep apnea has ended up with a CPAP machine. I can’t imagine sleeping with a mask over my face and air being forced into my lungs.
The American Sleep Apnea Association estimates that 22 million people in the U.S. suffer from some form of sleep apnea. That is not good news. Sleep apnea is a potentially serious disorder. Its long-term effects include high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. It is now considered a risk factor for dementia.
The most common form of sleep apnea is obstructive sleep apnea. This occurs when the muscles in the back of the throat relax and the soft tissue they support – the tongue, soft palate, and uvula – close, momentarily sealing the airway. This can happen repeatedly during the night, waking the sleeper enough to reopen his or her airway.
The most widely used device for treating obstructive sleep apnea is a CPAP machine. It pumps a continuous stream of oxygenated air through a plastic tube and face mask into the sleeper’s nose and mouth. The increased pressure of the forced air keeps the soft tissue from closing and allows airways to remain open.
Every adult I’ve known or heard about who was diagnosed with sleep apnea has been supplied with a CPAP machine. Many have benefitted greatly, but some hated it. They experienced claustrophobia and felt as if the pressure of the forced air would suffocate them. They were told that they would get used to it in time, but they did not, and gave up. They reasoned that apnea interfered less with their sleep than that suffocating mask.
There is an interesting parallel to this in the spiritual life. The biblical words most commonly translated as “spirit” in both Hebrew and Greek are also translated, when context demands, as “air” or “breath.” Just as the long-term health of the body requires the regular reception of air, and lack of air causes long-term negative effects, so the long-term health of the soul requires the regular reception of spirit.
Writing to first century disciples in what is now Western Turkey, the Apostle Paul instructed Christians to “be filled with the Spirit.” He had in mind the Spirit that is from God and is God. The regular reception of this Spirit is required for the kind of spiritual stamina that manifests itself, as Paul goes on to say, in healthy relationships with God, each other, and with one’s family.
The unusual choice of a present passive imperative verb for “be filled” makes clear the need of Christians to be continuously filled with God’s Spirit. If this regular, normative reception of the Spirit is interrupted, spiritual disability may ensue and relationships with God and others will be negatively affected.
It is possible that some of us suffer a kind of spiritual apnea. Our reception of the life-giving Spirit is repeatedly interrupted, which impacts our lives and relationships negatively. We may benefit from a spiritual version of the CPAP machine – the daily practice of spiritual disciplines like prayer, Bible reading, meditation, and worship – through which God’s Spirit can refresh our souls.
The practice is but a means, as the CPAP machine is a means. More important is what it facilitates: a regular reception of the Spirit that, as St. Paul wrote, “gives life.”
Jesus was relaxed. He was able to speak truth in very difficult situations. He went through danger with poise and aplomb. How? He never let fear control him. Is it possible for us to be more like him in this? It is! Today’s class begins our exploration of Jesus’s way of dealing with fear and worry.
We are in Nehemiah 1 and 2 today. Almost 600 years had passed since King David led Israel in its golden age. It was after David’s death, during the reign of his son and successor, that the long decline had begun. Worship practices were abandoned. Idolatry crept in. Immorality was on the rise. There were opportunities to stem the tide, under great teachers and good kings and, for a while, things would look hopeful. But then the decline would resume, more steeply than before.
The decline ended with a plunge into exile and disaster. But God gave his people a fresh start. A small number of exiles, a few thousand, returned to their homeland to begin again, and God was with them. Under the wise leadership of Joshua and Zerubbabel, and the good teaching of Haggai and Zechariah, the temple was rebuilt.
But that was ancient history by the time Nehemiah arrived. The return from exile had been close to a hundred years earlier. Joshua, Zerubbabel, Haggai, Zechariah – they were all long gone. Discouragement had settled in, and hostility was all around. They tried to rebuild the city walls, but the government stopped them. People needed a fresh start.
The Lord is a God of fresh starts. He started fresh with Noah, and then again with Abraham, and then again with Moses. If you need a fresh start, the Lord is the one who can provide it.
In our series on prayer, we have seen that when God is about to launch something new, he taps a person who knows how to pray. When Israel needed a fresh start, God found such a person in Nehemiah. He was living almost a thousand miles away from where the action would be, but a thousand miles is like a yard to the God for whom a thousand years is like a day. God did not choose Nehemiah because of his proximity but because of his prayerfulness.
We see Nehemiah praying on twelve different occasions in the course of this short book. God was not concerned about how long it would take to get Nehemiah to Jerusalem because he knew how quickly Nehemiah would get to his knees.
Imagine that God wants to start something fresh and new in our church or community. We know who he will tap for such an assignment: a person who prays. Would you be that person?
There are things about Nehemiah that we should notice. First, he chose to live in God’s world and not in his own bubble. It was a comfortable bubble. He was one of the king’s most trusted men. He had a cushy job: spent summers in the palace at Persepolis and winters in the magnificent palace of Susa. But Nehemiah oriented himself to God’s will, not to his own comfort.
So, when his brother Hanani came to Susa, Nehemiah asked him about the situation in Jerusalem, the holy city. Asking questions is a dangerous thing, for the answers might just pop your bubble. But Nehemiah asked. His commitment to God was stronger than his commitment to comfort.
That Nehemiah asked showed that he had a heart for others. It distressed him that God’s people were, verse 3, “in great trouble and disgrace.” He felt their pain and their shame. He mourned over what was happening to them.
A second thing to notice: after Nehemiah asked, he sat down. How profound is that? But think about it. We rush around. He sat down. Many of us don’t sit down because we don’t want to face the hard stuff. Nehemiah could have kept going too. He had more than enough responsibilities and opportunities to distract himself. But he sat down and faced reality.
A few years ago, The Week published a little piece on a South Carolina funeral home that was opening what it called a “Coffee Corner,” with Starbucks coffee, WiFi, a fireplace, and a television. The funeral director said that he hoped it would help mourners “get their minds off what’s going on.”[1] That’s what Americans do. But we’ll never become people of prayer that way.
Nehemiah asked because he cared about others. He sat because he refused to run from reality. And (third thing to notice) he wept.
When Al Hsu had laser surgery to correct his 20/400 vision, it brought it to 20/40 – much better, but not what he’d hoped. At worship one day, singing with a thousand other Christ followers, his eyes welled up with tears. He blinked a couple of times, and suddenly realized he could see the words on the screen perfectly. His tears, acting like a contact lens, sharpened his vision. Weeping, I suspect, did something similar for Nehemiah’s – and might do the same for us.
Nehemiah asked. He sat. He wept. And (fourth thing) he prayed. And what a prayer! He starts, as Jesus taught us to start, by hallowing God’s name. “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, let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying…” (Nehemiah 1:5-6a).
Nehemiah didn’t start his prayer with his problems. Had he done so, his problems would have eclipsed everything else. Instead, he hallowed God’s name first, which gave him a heavenly perspective and reduced his troubles to their proper proportion. When we see God for who he is, everything else is put in its place. If your problems seem so great that you doubt that even God can handle them, it’s a pretty good sign that you are starting your prayers in the wrong place. Always mount up to heaven first. Start your prayers there. Hallow God’s name.
When Nehemiah remembered the covenant-keeping God, he confessed his and his people’s covenant-breaking sins. He didn’t try to bargain with God, and neither should we. We come to God empty handed, but we don’t come uninvited.[2] Nehemiah stood on God’s word and was confident that God would answer him.
Look at the end of Nehemiah’s prayer, recorded in verse 11: “O 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.” At this point, his prayer takes a sudden turn, from past sins to present opportunities. “Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.”
It is as this point that Nehemiah drops a bombshell. He informs his readers: “I was cupbearer to the king.” To understand why that is important, we need to understand what it means. The cupbearer was an official and important position in the ancient world. He was one of the most trusted men in any kingdom. He had access to the king that filled governors and commanders and satraps with envy. Some cupbearers even served as king’s counselor.
Why is that important? Because the God who sees everything from heaven had placed this man’s family in the Babylonian and then Medo-Persian empires nearly 150 years earlier and had orchestrated things so that Nehemiah would be perfectly positioned to act when the right time came.
I wonder how many people God has perfectly positioned, arranging and orchestrating affairs for centuries, so that they could act when the time came. Perhaps I am among them people. Perhaps you are too. But it will be not enough if we stay in our bubble and don’t ask, stay on the move and don’t sit, keep our eyes dry and don’t see, make small talk but don’t pray. We’ll be in the right place at time right, but we we’ll be the wrong people.
Nehemiah was the right person in the right place at the right time. Let’s read the text, starting with chapter 2, verse 1: “In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; so the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” I was very much afraid, but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” The king said to me, “What is it you want?” Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king…”
We don’t know how long Nehemiah had served the king, but it was long enough for the king to notice that something was wrong with him, and he asked him about it. Nehemiah says that the king’s question made him “very much afraid.” Why? Because Nehemiah had resolved to ask the king to send him to rebuild Jerusalem, but it was on the king’s order that the rebuilding of Jerusalem had been halted.
Nehemiah was about to ask a Persian sovereign to do an about face, a 180 degree turn. The request itself might be taken as an insult. Nehemiah could be fired—or worse. He had good reason to be “very much afraid.”
But the God who had prepared Nehemiah had also prepared the king. The proverb says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord; he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases” (Proverbs 21:1). So, the king, because he trusted Nehemiah’s judgment, asked: “What is it you want?”
What follows is one of the most famous passages in Nehemiah, often referred to as the arrow prayer: “Then I prayed to the God of heaven, and I answered the king…” This is prayer in real time, prayer in real life. What a skill to have: this ability to pray to God at the very moment that you are talking to people – to listen for God while you are listening to people. It’s a skill that takes time to develop.
I remember when I first started to play the guitar. The whole trick is in learning to do one thing with your right hand – strum the strings in rhythm – and to do something entirely different with your left hand – form chord patterns on the guitars neck. I would sometimes get frustrated because I couldn’t seem to do both at the same time. I learned the chord structures, but I still had to think about them. And while I was thinking about my left hand, my right hand would forget what to do. It took practice – lots of it – before I could do both at the same time.
And it takes practice to be able to listen to God and to people at the same time. That brings us back to what we saw a couple of weeks ago when we looked at Colossians 4. If we don’t set aside blocks of time for prayer, our spontaneous prayers will flounder. An effective prayer life requires both regular, dedicated prayer times and spontaneous prayers. They are synergetic; the one energizes the other.
There is something important here that we are liable to miss. It was during this time of the year, in the month of Kislev (our November/December), that Nehemiah first learned about the state of Jerusalem and began to pray. It was in the month of Nisan (our April) that he finally spoke to the king. That means that four months passed during which time Nehemiah prayed. The ESV bring this out in its translation of 1:5: “As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.”
It was Nehemiah’s long private prayers that powered his 0-to-60 prayer in front of the king. We need both kinds. Prayers like the one in 2:4 flow from prayer times like the one in 1:5-11. Think of prayer like an electric vehicle. It can’t be driven until it’s charged. It is those regular, Scripture-infused prayer times that charge our faith so that our spontaneous prayers go somewhere when we need them. Otherwise, like an electric car that is out of power, we hit the accelerator and nothing happens. Our prayers don’t go anywhere.
But surely it doesn’t take four months of praying to get an answer from God – does it? That question betrays a misunderstanding of how prayer works. We are thinking of prayer as something that starts with us and our need. But effective, transforming prayer doesn’t start with us and our need; it starts with God and his plan. Prayer is not our way of enlisting God in our cause but God’s way of enlisting us in his.
The great prayers always start in heaven with the motion of God’s will, then catch us up and carry us on its tide. If we get this wrong, we’ll miss the tide and leave yet another answer to prayer stranded in heaven because we didn’t know to ask.
This way of praying is revolutionary. We talked about it in an earlier sermon, so I won’t go into detail again, only point you back to that sermon on Romans 8:26-28, which you can find on the website under “Media” and dated July 24, 2022. If we will pray in the Romans 8:26 way, we will see answers to prayer and experience God’s power in everyday life.
But what did Nehemiah pray all those months? Did he just say the same thing over and over and wait for God to finally answer? No, he engaged with God through the Scriptures – he quotes Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 30 as he prays – and God’s Spirit guided him in his requests.
Do you know what that is like? Have you had the experience? You are praying and idea comes to mind – this just happened to me on Thursday and again on Saturday. I pay attention to those ideas. I don’t assume they are from God – knowing myself, I wouldn’t dare – but I explore the possibility. I pray about it. And some of those ideas bear fruit – they ripen into something good.
That “ripening” takes time. It might take from Kislev to Nisan, or even longer. As we pray, God directs our prayers into unexplored, previously unthought, places. You can see how this happened with Nehemiah. He asked. He sat. He wept. He prayed. At first, I expect, his prayer was all lamentation. But as he prayed, an idea occurred to him: “the Lord wants me to do something about this.” And so, he redirected his prayer toward that new thought. Then came another idea (v. 5) about asking the king to send him and make it official; he prayed about that. Then came (verse 6) an idea about how long it would take. Then (verse 7) he thought of the opposition he would face from the Trans-Euphrates satraps and prayed about that. And then (verse 8) his mind went to supplies that would be needed, so he prayed about that.
The prayer Nehemiah began in 1:5 kept evolving, and changing, and coming more clearly into focus over the months. Why? Because God’s Spirit was in and with Nehemiah gradually aligning his prayer with God’s will. He was being lifted and carried on the tide.
But remember: Nehemiah was willing to be a part of the answer to his own prayer. He was willing to leave the bubble and face the uncertainty. If we are unwilling – we just want God to do the work for us, as if he were our servant – we will probably not see many answers to prayer. It’s not that God cannot or does not answer prayers apart from anything we do. It’s that he doesn’t answer prayers for people who refuse to do anything. If they are willing to obey him, God is willing to do more than they can ask or imagine.
So, how do we apply? First, set aside a regular time for Scripture-saturated praying. This is how you charge up the battery – faith – that energizes your prayers.
Second, stick with your prayers. One and done is not the way to see answers. God will guide as you keep praying.
I spent a year working at a greenhouse raising tomatoes. At the end of the growing season, we picked every tomato on the vine, even if it was egg-sized, green, and hard as a rock. Those tomatoes would be gassed with ethylene to turn them red and then sold. Instead of letting them ripen, sweeten, and become what they were meant to be, we hurried them. Don’t do that with your prayers. They need to ripen.
Finally, be ready to act. Prayer is not a substitute for, but a stimulus to, action. If you are unwilling to respond to God with obedience, don’t expect him to respond to you with answers.
[1] The Week, “The Week contest—Funeral home cafes,” (7-26-12)
[2] Derek Kidner, Tyndale Commentary on the Old Testament: Ezra and Nehemiah.
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