When Nehemiah gets bold
Nehemiah 2:1-30
Last week, in chapter One, we saw that, on hearing the news, Nehemiah hit the mat in prayer.
Now, in chapter two, it’s probably four months later. For a whole term, a third of a year, he has sat with the heaviness of the news – and prayed, and prayed.
Now it was time to act. Nehemiah was about to become the answer to his own prayer. He’s prayed to God and, in response, God is sending.. Nehemiah!
The same happened with the disciples. Jesus called them all together at the end of Matthew Chapter Nine and said, “Look, the harvest is plentiful, it’s ready. But it’s the labourers, the workers, that are in short supply. So pray, pray to the Lord of the Harvest, to raise up more workers.”
So they prayed.
Chapter Ten begins, “He called the Twelve together and gave them authority to do the things they’d seen Jesus doing – setting people free, healing – and then he sent them out, in pairs. 
There was a need, so they prayed. God answered their prayer by sending them. They became the answer to their own prayers.
It’s not that they were helping God out (as if He couldn’t work it Himself). Rather it was, by praying, that got to experience God’s heart, see things has God sees them. And then act in the way God acts.
Has that ever happened to you?
What are you praying for? What are you wanting to happen? Could you be the answer you’ve been praying for?
First, we’ve got to deal some more with this ‘cupbearer to the king thing.’
Chapter One ended with Nehemiah dropping in, “I was cupbearer to the King”
The Good News Translation, with it’s slightly blurry lens, puts it as a ‘wine waiter’. But here in Chapter Two Nehemiah says, “When wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king.” There were wine waiters, Sommeliers, with their ‘notes of dandelions in baked beans’, but Nehemiah wasn’t one of them. Nehemiah the Emperor’s personal protection, his bodyguard. Close maybe, but still totally expendable. 
And, as we began to see last week, he was probably a ‘eunuch’. For whatever reason, whether by choice or birth, he was different. How was he viewed? How was he treated?
In Secondary school, I was bullied. I was bullied pretty much every day, sometimes multiple times a day, every day, from the age of 11 to 18 years. 
And I’d hear, make the most of school, it’s the best days of your life. It used to fill me with horror. You mean, this is as good as it gets? Life is only going to get worse?
But when I was fourteen, I became a Christian – a follower of Christ. My world was turned upside down. Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.
I discovered that I was loved. And that I was made in the image of God; like you, one of God’s precious works of art. And, what’s more, God could see things in me – things that He had preloaded me with. Its just the same with you.
Nehemiah knew what it was to be treated badly. Trafficked from his community, taunted
But now he was going to speak up.  Up till now, Nehemiah had clearly never gone out without first putting on his ‘jolly face’. He wouldn’t let people see the pain, sorrow, he was carrying underneath. But this time, when the Emperor asked why he looked so down, Nehemiah answered honestly and boldly.
“The city where my ancestors are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
That’d be the fire that the Emperor had ordered; Nehemiah’s people, his ancestors that the King had had killed.
Is it time for you speak out? For you to say, enough, No more. I will no longer be a doormat, I am not a victim, I don’t deserve that treatment. My Father in Heaven thinks I am worth everything.
Maybe taken aback by Nehemiah’s knew-found assertiveness (not passive, not aggressive, just positively assertive), the Emperor asked him what he wanted?
How do you answer that question? Give the perfect response in that split-second moment? Nehemiah shoots up a rapid prayer and then speaks.
Again, prayer leads to action.
Send ME. Not someone else. Me!
“Let him send me to the city in Judah where my ancestors are buried so that I can rebuild it.”
Not just so I can visit the graves of my distant relatives – so I can rebuild it. Rebuild Jerusalem. Rebuild the city that you had a hand in destroying.
This is a tense moment. This is speaking to the bully.
Instead of doing what the King asks, now Nehemiah is asking the King to do what he says.
It seems to matter that the Emperor’s wife was present. She gets a mention, though not a name. Maybe, being a ‘eunuch’, Nehemiah had formed a close, non-sexual friendship with her? Whatever, the Emperor, against his usual form, agreed to all that Nehemiah wanted.
Yes, you can leave my Court and your duties
Yes, you can return ‘home’ to Jerusalem
Yes, you can take as much raw materials as you need to rebuild Jerusalem
Yes, you can have documents to prove all this.
I’ll even send you, my Bodyguard, with your own bodyguards.
This was not the time for wishy-washy, vague, maybe, perhaps, just a few’ statements. Now was the time to be bold.
Nehemiah may have temporarily escaped the oppression of always having to be the ‘jolly one’, the different one. But the torments were about to continue, passed on from person to person, as they usually are; this time through three abusive individuals. We’ll see much more of them later, but, for now, they are:
1.	Sanballat –  ambitious, married into a powerful family and became the Governor of Samaria  He represents politicians. He saw Nehemiah as a political threat
2.	Tobiah – Ammonite
3.	Geshem – Arabian (the only Arab mentioned in the Bible?)
At first, they were disturbed by Nehemiah. Why? Because he had come to seek the welfare of the people. There’s far worse things to be accused of. If that’s a crime, let me be found guilty of it.
When Nehemiah arrived in Jerusalem, he went out secretly at night to inspect the damage. And it was significant. You see this? Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.
They then moved on to ridicule; laughing AT him, not with him. Trying to humiliate him. Later, they would turn to be more violent means.
Now Nehemiah has found his mojo. “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.”
Are you starting to regain your mojo too?
Despite the opposition, despite feeling different, or that you have very less control over your circumstances, is God nudging you to speak out? To seize the next opportunity that comes along, either for yourself or on behalf of others?
This week, be like Nehemiah!
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DannyBrierley@ChesterRoadBaptist.org.uk