Rebuild Your Life - Admit What Got You There
- Paul Downie
- May 25
- 15 min read
Nehemiah 1:5-11 NIV
[5] Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, [6] let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. [7] We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. [8] “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, [9] but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’ [10] “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. [11] 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. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.” I was cupbearer to the king.
‘How did you get here?’
It’s a question I once asked my leader while I was a missionary. I was working in the city of Tulcea. She had been visiting a team working in the beach resort of Mamaia. I knew there was no direct transport between the two. I was astounded when she arrived to visit the team I was leading.
When I found out, I wasn’t best pleased.
She had taken a ferry, realised it ended up nowhere near to Tulcea and hitched a lift in a truck full of heavy-set Romanian labourers. On her own.
I was quite horrified.
Often how we got into a situation is a question we have no desire to answer. We are in a mess. We know we got ourselves in a mess. We barely want to admit it to ourselves, let alone to other people.
And sometimes, not even to God.
We fear the damage to our on self-esteem, self-image and self-respect. We fear what others will think of us. We fear losing our standing.
Now, all of these have an air of logic and reason, but they are all nonsense.
You see, when I was a child, we used to love going into the hall of mirrors in travelling fairgrounds, to see our image distorted in to something that was taller, shorter, thinner or fatter than we were. It was always a good laugh.
Nowadays people do it on their phone with camera filters.
If we are afraid to see ourselves as we are, we are like someone who wants to fix their hair or shave or do their make-up, but is afraid of their own reflection because they can’t stand their own appearance.
To fix our mess, we have to see ourselves as we really are and our situation as it really is.
Which is what makes this prayer really quite special. Remember: a hundred and thirty years previously, the Jews experienced the exile. At the time, it was the single most traumatic event in Jewish history. They lost their homes, their land, many thousands of their people, the best of their leaders, their towns, cities and villages, their wealth, and, worst of all, their Temple. Everything that made them feel special and unique had been erased.
Their very best people were taken into exile; only the poorest, most pathetic and least capable were left behind.
There could be no greater indignity than this.
Nehemiah, on the other hand, seems to have been a solid, upstanding, trustworthy man. He’d been born in exile. He was not alive when the exile took place. By any stretch of the imagination he could not be held responsible for it.
He reminds me of many these days who see the state of the world as a problem of generation, not a problem of nature. They are very quick to blame others for the state of the world and accept no culpability for their own nature.
Nehemiah could well have done that. He may even have been justified in doing it.
But he didn’t.
What follows is quite a remarkable prayer that teaches us how we can approach God when our own lives are in a very bad way.
As we study this prayer, we need to bear in mind that it follows a form which we should be more familiar with, but over time have forgotten. Prayer, for the ancient Jews, was not just something they did towards God. It was also something that they did towards their superiors – not in the sense that they were elevating them as divine, but that they used the form in approach they would use in their culture to make an appeal to a ruler or a judge, and they then used the same form when they prayed to God. We might find it a little stiff and formal nowadays, but in their mind no doubt they would feel they were giving God the respect and honour He deserves.
The structure of those prayers was as follows:
Invocation – God was named and praised
Justification – God was reminded of His history with His people, and His promises towards them: that is, His relationship with them
Petition – the request is made
Conclusion – the prayers then concluded with some form of praise and thanksgiving, and occasionally vows made to God to try to persuade Him
This is not just something consigned to the Old Testament. We see it used again in the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, albeit the fourth point in the structure is only contained in some manuscripts, not all.
We, in our more democratic systems, don’t have the need to approach government officials in this way. More often than not, we get the help we need by filling in an application form or by speaking to a lower functionary, not by making some grand appeal to a senior boss.
Largely this format of appealing to a higher power has gone out of fashion.
But there is a lot we can learn from it – and not just in an academic or theological sense. There is much in this prayer that encourages us as we approach God, regardless of how good or bad our situation is.
We see firstly, Nehemiah’s Invocation.
Invocation
Nehemiah 1:5 NIV
[5] Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments...
Right away, this verse tells us something very important about our recovery from our situation: it doesn’t depend on us first and foremost – it depends on God. Nehemiah was facing a very demanding situation. He was in the royal court. He could do something about this. He could effect change. He had influence.
But his first port of call is to God and not to the king.
Why? To ‘check the God bit’ off his list?
No.
Because God is greater than the king ever was and ever could be.
And who is this God?
Yahweh. The God who always was, is, and always will be. The God who first declared His Name to the Israelites as He led then out of Egypt (Exodus 6:2).
It is very interesting that Nehemiah uses this Identity to refer to God..
Note that he calls God ‘the God of Heaven’. There is Exclusivity. Nehemiah lives in a polytheistic society – a nation with many other gods. The king himself would have worshipped many gods. But Nehemiah knows only one. He knows no other.
And he has no other hope.
We also see Constancy. Nehemiah is depending on the faithfulness of a God who keeps His covenant of love and will not break it, regardless of what His people have done.
Do you see it?
Nehemiah is not depending on his character or abilities to get him and his people out of the mess they are in. He knows that would never be enough.
No, he is depending on God: His greatness, His power, His strength , His faithfulness. And no-one else.
When you are in a mess, you very quickly find out who you can depend on. More often than not, people you would have trusted no longer want anything to do with you, as if your misfortune was a virus they don’t want to catch.
And that can hurt. Really hurt.
But you can always depend on God. He will not let you down.
Psalms 146:5-6 NIV
[5] Blessed are those whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord their God. [6] He is the Maker of heaven and earth, the sea, and everything in them— he remains faithful forever.
Psalms 145:17 NIV
[17] The Lord is righteous in all his ways and faithful in all he does.
Hebrews 10:23 NIV
[23] Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful.
This is what Nehemiah clung to. This is what he entrusted himself to. In this and this alone he put his hope:
In the faithfulness of God.
But after Invocation, we also see Justification, where Nehemiah reasons and argues his cause.
Justification
Nehemiah 1:5-10 NIV
[5] Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, [6] let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. [7] We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses. [8] “Remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, [9] but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name.’ [10] “They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand.
There are some arguments that are just absurd.
One woman, for example, went to a party in a rural area, got blind drunk and then tried to get a taxi home. On noting that she was out of mobile phone range and there were no taxis nearby, she stole a horse and rode it into a nearby town. A passer-by noted that her riding was somewhat erratic and called the police. The police found the woman unsteady on her feet, slurring her words and reeking of alcohol. When questioned about her state, she told the police that the reason her riding was erratic was not because she was drunk – she said she was sober – but the horse was drunk instead.
The police did not accept her reasoning.
On the first reading of this prayer, it seems that what we have here is a very strange argument to present to God. After all, given the terrible state the Jews were in – and had been in for a hundred and thirty years – surely the strongest argument would be to tell God that they had endured a shocking injustice and to appeal to His righteousness to put it right.
Or so we might think.
Because that is so often how we argue with God for Him to intervene. We think like this:
Psalms 22:1 NIV
[1] My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?
Psalms 44:23-24 NIV
[23] Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep? Rouse yourself! Do not reject us forever. [24] Why do you hide your face and forget our misery and oppression?
We transfer the responsibility for our situation to God, as if we had done nothing wrong at all to deserve it.
But that is not Nehemiah’s approach.
Remember: his generation was not responsible for the exile. They had grown up in a foreign land. It was not their sin that was punished.
Or so we might think.
Yet Nehemiah prays these words:
Nehemiah 1:6-7 NIV
[6] let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. [7] We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.
He confessed his sin, his father’s family’s sin, and, by extension, the sin of the entire Jewish community.
Remember: this sin was not something minor. Not one bit. It had cost them their homes, their land and their place of worship. The punishment was severe because the sin was severe.
Yet Nehemiah accepts culpability for it.
That is extraordinary.
The justification for his plea before God is very simple:
God has a covenant with His people
His people have broken that covenant
God should come to their rescue because they are now repenting of their sin
Nehemiah is asking God to show grace towards a people who have done not one thing to deserve it.
Yet that is the very nature of grace: it is only grace because it is undeserved:
Ephesians 2:8-9 NIV
[8] For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— [9] not by works, so that no one can boast.
This is not just some dry theological belief. This is the same basis on which we come to God.
We have no arguments. We have nothing in our favour. Because of the sin between us and God, we are not being treated unjustly. We deserve much worse.
But we come to Him, repenting and clinging for dear life for grace because that is the only way we can come to God. There is no other way.
Nehemiah asked God to intervene on the basis of the promise He gave to Moses.
We ask God to intervene on the promise of His grace.
So we see that Nehemiah invoked God’s faithfulness and justified his request on God’s gracefulness. Not on the past glories of his people. Not on his own purity. Not even on his position in society.
Purely and completely on God.
Lastly, we see Nehemiah’s Petition.
Petition
Nehemiah 1:11 NIV
[11] 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. Give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man.” I was cupbearer to the king.
And here things take a rather surprising turn.
Because there is a hidden sting in this verse.
Nehemiah has been fulsome in his praise of his God:
Nehemiah 1:5 NIV
[5] Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments.
He served under a Persian king. Persians kings were early ‘kings of kings’ because beneath them were vassal kings from states they had subjugated. They demanded absolute loyalty.
These were very powerful men.
Yet look how Nehemiah refers to him:
‘...this man’.
Consider it for a second. He is planning to speak to the most powerful person in the known world, yet Nehemiah uses the same terminology as we would use for a random guy on the street.
Extraordinary!
But why is that?
Because before appearing before the earthly ‘king of kings’, he appeared before the heavenly King of Kings. Compared to the greatness of his God, the Persian king is nothing more than just another guy: a guy who wears all sorts of fancy clothes and lives in a fancy house and fancies himself as being one rung short of a deity, but, in the end, just a man.
Nehemiah here is not doing something disrespectful or unBiblical. Take a look at other verses elsewhere:
Psalms 118:6, 8-9 NIV
[6] The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me?
[8] It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in humans. [9] It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.
Psalms 49:12 NIV
[12] People, despite their wealth, do not endure; they are like the beasts that perish.
Proverbs 29:25 NIV
[25] Fear of man will prove to be a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is kept safe.
Isaiah 40:6-8 NIV
[6] A voice says, “Cry out.” And I said, “What shall I cry?” “All people are like grass, and all their faithfulness is like the flowers of the field. [7] The grass withers and the flowers fall, because the breath of the Lord blows on them. Surely the people are grass. [8] The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever.”
Now, I want us to understand this correctly. The king of Persia was a very powerful man. In human terms he did hold the fate of Nehemiah, and every Jew, in the palm of his hand.
But God held the fate of the king of Persia in His hand.
And that is what made the difference.
You see, when we are facing a huge problem that has caused us enormous damage, particularly when we triggered it, the temptation is there to view our situation as insurmountable. We see it as big and God as small.
But that is not correct. It is never correct.
It is actually a demonic lie, determined to keep us down and to prevent us from fighting back.
The reality is that God is great, and our issues, no matter how big they seem, are both miniscule and temporary in comparison. That is why Paul can write these words while under brutal Roman persecution:
2 Corinthians 4:16-18 NIV
[16] Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. [17] For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. [18] So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
Nehemiah had the heart to do something about his nation’s dreadful predicament. He was not an architect. He was not a builder. He was a wine waiter – a sommelier. He was not even close to Jerusalem. He was hundreds of miles away.
Neither was he free to take action about it on his own. As a member of a race that had been conquered by the Assyrians and Babylonians, and was now subjugated under the Persians, he was likely in a form of servitude or slavery, with his fate entirely in the hands of a pagan king.
There were very significant obstacles in the way of him being able to do anything to help his nation.
And yet he saw God as greater than any obstacle.
We can learn a lot from his way of thinking.
Conclusion
Nehemiah 1:5-7 NIV
[5] Then I said: “Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments, [6] let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. [7] We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.
Our culture has reached the stage where there is an entire industry wholly dedicated to brand and reputation management – and not just for big companies. Often stars, and would-be stars, turn to these companies to manage how they are perceived by the general public, and particularly by those from whom they will make money – their fans. These companies have an unethical side to them: they are quite prepared to twist and manipulate the truth for financial gain.
But Nehemiah does not do that.
Despite facing a terrible situation, a problem of simply enormous proportions, he is prepared to admit that he, his family and his people are all part of it. They are looking for a solution, but they are part of the problem.
Given the magnitude of the suffering the Jews were facing at the time, this is truly an incredible admission.
And yet, look what was later taught by John:
1 John 1:8-10 NIV
[8] If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. [9] If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. [10] If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
Nehemiah’s prayer is built on a triple foundation of who God is, what his people have done and what they need God to do to save them. It is quite an incredible prayer – short, simple, to the point, but full of wisdom for us.
More than five years ago, I left a job under a cloud. I had a good resume. I was getting interviews. But psychologically I was not ready for them. I was too angry and bitter at what had happened to me.
Until, one rainy day, as I headed home with some grocery shopping on my hands, God confronted me with where I had gone wrong, where my thinking and attitude had not been correct, where I had said and done things that were not right.
It was a painful walk. It felt like I was under an x-ray and God was exposing where I had gone wrong. On that short walk home, I confessed my sins and shortcomings to God. I asked Him to fix my failings.
A few weeks later, I got a job.
What we see here us, yes, a quite typical Jewish prayer, on one hand, with its structure of Invocation, Justification and Petition.
But on the other hand, we see a brave admission of the role Nehemiah and his family played in the single most devastating event in Jewish history at that point in time, and the prolonging of their exile.
Given the scale of their national trauma at the time, that is an incredible admission.
But it paved the way for God to move.
So today, if you are stuck in a very negative situation from which there seems to be no escape, maybe start by being honest with God over your situation and what got you there. It won’t be easy. I can guarantee you that. It may be the most painful thing you have ever done.
But it also might be the first step to freedom for you.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, my situation isn’t great. I have been looking to pin the blame on it onto anyone but me. But there is no point in doing that, because You know. I confess my sins. I confess to You now where I have contributed to my own problem, or have made it worse. Please forgive me. Set me free from it. Help me rebuild my life. Amen.
Questions
What makes Nehemiah’s prayer so significant? Why is that?
Who is the prayer all about? Who are the main characters un this prayer?
Why is his perception of the king so important?
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