A Personal Crusade.

“Remember this good deed also, O my God! Have compassion on me according to your great and unfailing love.” – Nehemiah 13:22b NLT

After 12 years in Jerusalem assisting with the rebuilding of the wall, Nehemiah returned to Persia. He had completed his assignment of rebuilding the walls and had taken part in their dedication ceremonies. He would later return to Jerusalem, and when he did, he was disappointed in what he found. Once again, the people had begun to follow in the steps of their ancestors by disobeying God and forsaking His law. Imagine Nehemiah’s shock upon finding out that Tobiah, the one man who had done more to try and undermine the efforts to rebuild the wall, had been given his own room in the Temple compound. Not only was Tobiah an enemy of Israel, he was an Ammonite and should not have been allowed anywhere near the Temple. But his daughter had married Eliashib the priest, and so Eliashib had converted one of the storerooms in the Temple into private quarters for his father-in-law. Nehemiah wasn’t about to put up with that, so he threw all of Tobiah’s things out and had the room cleansed.

Nehemiah also found people working and selling on the Sabbath – right inside the walls of Jerusalem. So he confronted the leaders of Jerusalem and reminded them that it was this very thing that had caused God to punish them in the first place. Nehemiah took personal responsibility to see that the holiness of the Sabbath was preserved by having the gates of the city locked on Friday nights and not opened back up until the Sabbath was over. He put guards on the gates and personally confronted the merchants who camped outside the gates, demanding that they leave and not return. Nehemiah also dealt with the many men who he discovered had married foreign wives. He reminded them that was the very same sin that had caused the fall of Solomon’s kingdom. Solomon had married many foreign wives and as a result, had ended up worshiping their gods.

Nehemiah was not willing to sit back and watch the nation fall back into complacency and compromise. He was committed to God and determined to see that the people of Judah live in obedience to the will of God. He spoke out and openly confronted sin in the city. He dealt with the leaders of Jerusalem harshly. He put high expectations on the religious leaders. He purged, pleaded, confronted, and worked tirelessly to see that the people of God lived in compliance to the will of God. The role of a godly leader can be difficult at times, requiring hard decisions and resulting in isolation and misunderstanding. Godly leaders are not always popular or well thought of. But Nehemiah was more concerned about the holiness of God than he was about his own popularity. He would rather please God then men. He was not willing to compromise God’s standards to improve his own lifestyle. He could have said nothing. He could have ignored the sins of the people. But for Nehemiah, that would have been unacceptable. So he stood up and spoke out. He did what needed to be done. He made a difference.

Father, make me a Nehemiah. Open my eyes so that I see what You see. Give me a heart for holiness like Nehemiah had. Then give me a boldness to say what needs to be said and to do what needs to be done, regardless of the consequences. May I love serving You faithfully more than I love the praise of men. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

Our Great God.

“But you are a God of forgiveness, gracious and merciful, slow to become angry, and rich in unfailing love. You did not abandon them.” – Nehemiah 9:17b NLT

The Temple had been rebuilt. The wall had been completed. Now Ezra, the scribe and priest, gathered the people together and read out loud to them the Law of God. The people stood and listened for three solid hours as he read, then they stood another three hours crying, confessing and worshiping God. Then they prayed. And their prayer is a wonderful snap shot of the character of God. It reveals who He is, what He has done, and how He interacts with His people. It describes His majesty, power, grace, mercy, sovereignty, holiness, and love. It reminds us of His transcendence – His otherness and distinctiveness. But it also comforts us with His immanence – His nearness and approachability. Their words focus on God and His involvement in their lives. They look back and see that He had been intimately involved all along the way. From the day He had chosen Abram and promised to make him a great nation, God had been with them.

…you saw…you heard…you displayed…you knew…you divided…you hurled…you led…you came down…you gave… you instructed…you commanded…you did not abandon…you sent…you did not stop giving…you sustained…you helped…you made…you brought…you subdued…you handed them over…you heard…you sent…you rescued…you let their enemies conquer them…you listened…you rescued…you warned many times…you allowed…you sent…you showered…you gave…

The people look back and review their history with God and are blown away at His grace and mercy. In spite of their disobedience, sin and rebellion, He kept giving, rescuing, forgiving and restoring. He had shown extreme patience with them over the years. “But in your great mercy, you did not destroy them completely or abandon them forever. What a gracious and merciful God you are!” (Nehemiah 9:31 NLT). It is amazing that the people reached these conclusions about God by listening to the reading of the Law of God. As they heard the words of righteous decrees of God, they got a better idea of who God was and is. They came to recognize God through the Word of God. They saw His holiness and righteousness. They understood how serious He was about sin and how adamant He was about obedience. They recognized that God had set them apart and expected them to remain that way. “You alone are the Lord!,” they prayed. “You are the Lord God!” They heard the Word of God proclaimed and they comprehended for the first time in a long time the nature of their God. Their eyes were opened and they saw the beauty and majesty of God. God wants us to see Him as He is. He wants us to recognize His character and to worship His nature. He desires for us to see Him as He is, and one of the places we get a glimpse of God is through His Word. It is the revelation of Himself to man. As we study the Word, we see God. But too many of us read the Word to gain academic understanding. We study the Scriptures to get knowledge. But we rarely spend time in the Word just to get to know God. We are more intelligent than we have ever been before, but in many ways, we remain ignorant of God. “While man has never had so much knowledge about the world as he possesses today, perhaps he has never had so little knowledge of God. That is why our times are marked by a singular lack of understanding, appreciation, and genuine insight into the need of the hour” (Sinclair Ferguson, A Heart For God).

May we determine to know God better. May we decide that our greatest need is not more intelligence, but more intimacy with God. Knowing God is everything. Not just knowing about Him, but truly knowing Him. How He thinks, what He loves, what He expects, how He relates, what He has done, and what He is going to do. Make it your goal this coming year to know God as you have never known Him before.

Father, let me get to know You better. Open my eyes and help me to see You as I have never seen You before. When I read Your Word, let me see You. Give me a growing appreciation for who You are. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

We Do the Work. God Gets the Glory.

“So on October 2 the wall was finished—just fifty-two days after we had begun. When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.” – Nehemiah 6:15-16 NLT

Against overwhelming odds and facing intense opposition, Nehemiah and the people continued to work on the walls of Jerusalem, and just 52 days after they began – they finished. This rag-tag group of returned exiles were able to accomplish a project of herculean proportions, a job that should have taken years even under the best of circumstances. And when the last brick was put on the wall, the enemies of Judah were frightened and demoralized. Why? Because they knew that God had been involved in this project. There was no other explanation. They had done everything in their power to stop the work, but it continued unabated. They had tried their hardest to discourage Nehemiah and the people of Judah from finishing their work. But they failed. And they knew that it was because God had been a part of the entire process. They could recognize that the completion of the wall in just 52 days was the result of divine intervention. This had been no ordinary construction project.

On how many occasions does our work bring God glory? Do the projects we take on reflect the power of God or simply our own initiative and self-sufficiency? God is always about revealing His glory through His people. He wants to show His power in the midst of our weakness. He wants to display His might through us as we accomplish His will. God is not interested in seeing what we can do. He is not impressed with our strength and organizational abilities. That doesn’t mean we don’t have to be organized or do our part. But we always have to remember, that at the end of the day, when all is said and done, God is the one who should receive the glory. The rebuilding of the wall was God’s idea. He had predicted it long in advance through the words of Daniel (Daniel 9:25). God had arranged for the people to return. He had led Nehemiah to request permission from King Artaxerxes to lead a group of exiles back with the sole purpose of rebuilding the walls. God had protected and provided for them all along the way. And now the work was done. Yes, the people had worked hard. They had the sore muscles, aching backs and blistered hands to prove it. But all their efforts would have been nothing without the help of God, and even their enemies knew it. Nehemiah had led well, orchestrated the work of the people flawlessly and encouraged their efforts successfully, but without God, none of it would have mattered.

We do the work. God gets the glory. That’s the way it’s intended to be.

Father, never let me forget that it is only through You that anything worth accomplishing gets done. You are my strength. You are the one who makes the impossible possible. You give me all that I need to do all that You want me to do. And when it is done, You get the glory. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

Godly Leadership.

“But because I feared God, I did not act that way.” – Nehemiah 5:15b NLT

Leading others is difficult in the best of times. But when things are going poorly, leadership can be nearly impossible. It is difficult to get others to follow when they are faced with opposition, difficulty, and trials or feel as if they are getting the short end of the stick. Either real or perceived inequality and inequity make it extremely hard for people to want to follow. If they feel like they are getting the raw end of the deal, they will resist and sometimes even rebel. Nehemiah found himself in the non-envious position of leading a people who were surrounded by opposition and who faced a nearly impossible task of rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. Their enemies were constantly taunting and mocking them. When that failed to deter them from building, their enemies began to threaten them with physical violence. On top of that, the construction project they were tasked with was seemingly insurmountable, requiring around-the-clock effort and robbing the people of much-needed rest. It wasn’t long before they began to lose heart. “Then the people of Judah began to complain, ‘The workers are getting tired, and there is so much rubble to be moved. We will never be able to build the wall by ourselves'” (Nehemiah 4:10 NLT).

In the midst of all this, Nehemiah was charged with the responsibility of leading the people and ensuring that the construction of the wall continued, in spite of persistent opposition and the waning hopes of the people. So Nehemiah did what any godly leader would do – He prayed. But he also did one other thing. He took action. He turned to God for help, but he also did what he could do. He organized. He encouraged. He prepared. He took steps to ensure that the work could continue and the people were safe. In other words, Nehemiah relied on the grace of God, but he understood that God’s grace is opposed to earning, but not effort. The steps he took to organize the people and defend the wall were not an attempt to earn favor with God, but to ensure that the work of God could continue uninterrupted. Nehemiah knew that the job they had to do was difficult and it was going to require even more work on the part of the people. He knew that their enemies were real and the threats they were making were not idol. So did what he had to do to make sure the people were safe and the work could continue. They worked in shifts. Some built, while others guarded. They all carried weapons and were prepared to fight at a moments notice. But Nehemiah also knew that they would not be fighting alone. “Then our God will fight for us!” (Nehemiah 4:20b NLT).

But as if their enemies were not enough, Nehemiah also found himself dealing with some significant problems within his own camp. Bickering began over inequities taking place. Some people were mortgaging everything they had just to buy food. Others had been forced to sell their own children into slavery just to pay their taxes. And the sad thing was, the culprits who were profiting from all this were the nobles and officials of Judah. The haves were taking advantage of the have nots. So Nehemiah took charge once again and demanded that the greed, graft and corruption come to an end. And all along the way, he set the example for godly leadership, never drawing his official food allowance, even though he was entitled to it. He worked as hard as anyone else, never claiming exemption from labor due to his role as governor. Nehemiah was a model of godly leadership. Why? Because he feared God. He had a reverence and respect for God that would not allow him to live in a way that brought shame or dishonor to the name of God through his actions. Nehemiah was motivated by his love for God and his belief that he worked for and was responsible to God for the people, the wall, and his own attitudes and actions. For Nehemiah, leadership was not about power, position, authority, or respect. He was not interested in lining his pockets or padding his resume. He simply wanted to use his God-given position to lead the people through exhortation and example. He would trust God for whatever reward God chose to give him for his efforts. He performed for an audience of one – God.

Father, may I be more like Nehemiah – a man who knew who his true boss was. Give me a growing understanding that godly leadership begins with a healthy fear of and respect for You. Let me be a constant example of integrity to those around me, never shying away from hard work or taking the easy way out. Leadership is hard work Father, and it requires effort and energy. But also never let me forget that it requires a dependence on You. Never let me work independently from You, but always in full submission to and reliance upon You. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org

God’s Man With The Plan.

“O Lord, please hear my prayer! Listen to the prayers of those of us who delight in honoring you. Please grant me success today by making the king favorable to me. Put it into his heart to be kind to me.” In those days I was the king’s cup-bearer. – Nehemah 1:11 NLT

Nearly a century had passed since the first group of exiles returned to Jerusalem to restore the Temple and rebuild the city’s walls. A second wave a exiles had returned under the leadership of Ezra just years later, but the walls of Jerusalem still remained un-restored and the gates of the city burned and broken. News of this sad state of affairs reached Nehemiah back in Susa, the capital of Persia, where he was serving as cup-bearer to the king. His reaction? Shock and sadness. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. And he knew he had to do something about it. So he took the issue to God in prayer where he confessed the sins of the people and appealed to God’s mercy and grace. He asked God to give him favor with the king because he had already come up with a plan to do something about the problem. Nehemiah was a take-charge kind of guy who was not willing to sit back and enjoy the relative safety of his royal position when he knew he could be of help back in Jerusalem. In fact, Nehemiah used his position as the royal cup-bearer to request of King Artaxerxes his permission to return to Jerusalem to oversee the rebuilding of the walls and he even asked the king to help fund the project by providing timber for the construction.

God graciously answered Nehemiah’s prayer, giving him favor with the king and seeing to it that Nehemiah had everything he needed to accomplish what was on his heart to do. Less than a year later, Nehemiah made the long trip to Jerusalem and, upon arrival, made a late-night inspection of the walls. What he found was disappointing, but not discouraging to Nehemiah. He had a job to do and he knew that God would honor their efforts to rebuild the walls. Nehemiah was well aware of the fierceness of the opposition and the magnitude of the project. But he also knew the faithfulness of his God. “The God of heaven will help us succeed. We his servants will start rebuilding this wall” (Nehemiah 2:11 NLT). And that’s exactly what they did. Nehemiah organized the people into teams and assigned them sections of the wall to work on. The effort was community wide, with everyone involved. This cup-bearer to the king had showed up in town on a mission to make things happen and in a short period of time had rallied God’s people to take action and do what they had neglected to do for over 90 years. His enthusiasm and planning turned the apathy of the people into action. Nehemiah saw a job that needed to be done and determined to use his God-given abilities to do something about it. There is no evidence in this passage that Nehemiah was “called” by God. He had no dream of vision. He received no direct word from God. He simply heard about the situation in Jerusalem, was burdened because of it, and determined to do something about it. He simply asked God to bless his plan and graciously provide favor with the king. And that is exactly what God did.

What do you see that needs to be done in the kingdom of God today? Where is the work of God being neglected in our community? In what ways do you see the people of God neglecting their God-given responsibilities and allowing the work of God to go undone? Perhaps you are the Nehemiah God is calling into action to do something about it. Maybe God is waiting for someone like you to see the need and step up to meet it. Nehemiah’s efforts all began with a burden. He saw the need, then came up with a plan to meet that need. He asked God to graciously provide a way to bring his plan to fruition. And God did. What is God giving you a burden for today?

Father, there is so much that needs to be done in the world today. The body of Christ, Your Church, is not making the impact on the world that You have called it to make. We are not the salt and light You have commanded us to be. We are not the ambassadors we have been commissioned to be. There are so many unfulfilled tasks that need to be done. Raise up some Nehemiahs who would be willing to drop what they are doing and pick up the mantle of leadership required to lead Your people into action. Amen

Ken Miller
Grow Pastor & Minister to Men
kenm@christchapelbc.org