Rebuild Your Life
- Paul Downie
- 20 minutes ago
- 14 min read
Introduction
Nehemiah 1:3 NIV
[3] They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
Around ten years ago, we returned to the Philippines for a holiday. We had planned for a visit the year before, but Typhoon Haiyan had struck in November 2013 and we thought it would be better to wait until the infrastructure had recovered before returning.
We had wanted to visit the quite wonderful Sohoton Caves on the neighbouring island of Samar. We had found a hotel that seemed to be big enough, and cheap enough, to accommodate us all (there were fifteen of us) in Tacloban but for some reason, we couldn’t book it. So we found somewhere else and pressed ahead with the trip, knowing that the money we would spend would help the locals recover.
As we approached Tacloban, my daughter and her five cousins were laughing and joking and bantering among themselves, having a quite brilliant time.
But then, with no warning, silence fell on their vehicle.
We were passing an area that had been blasted by the extreme winds from Typhoon Haiyan and had not yet recovered. Smashed up buildings were on our left and right. It was haunting.
Not long after, we passed the location where the hotel we’d wanted to book should have been.
All that was left was one wall.
As we passed through the city towards the San Juanico Bridge, we caught sight of the M/V Eva Jocelyn Shrine: the prow of a large vessel that was tossed by the typhoon into a residential area and kept as a remembrance to the 6,300 people who died in that huge storm.
Tacloban has recovered quite a bit from that deadly day. Of course, emotionally, many people may never recover fully. But cities have a way of bouncing back.
Something that, as I write these lines, people hope for Myanmar, Thailand and Yunnan Province in China, which have all been struck by a devastating earthquake.
Many of us will never have to live through a disaster like that – and we should thank God for that.
Many of us, unlike Nehemiah, will never have to live through a time when our country has been devastated by war – and we should thank God for that too.
But there is a personal disaster that we might have to live through, personal devastation that we may have to endure, and that is the pain and hurt caused by sin.
And – it will do us no good to not admit this – sometimes that sin is our own.
Our society says it is tolerant, but in reality transgressors are harshly, and often hypocritically, punished by removing their possibility to continue their livelihood and the use of their abilities.
Now, I am definitely not saying that justice should not be served. Of course it should. That is the right thing to do.
However, the Jews had also severely transgressed God’s laws, in ways that not even the pagan nations before them had done (Ezekiel 16:44-48). And so the punishment they endured during the Exile was equally as severe.
In fact, despite their serious sins against Him, God said this about those who meted out their punishment:
Zechariah 1:14-15 NIV
[14] Then the angel who was speaking to me said, “Proclaim this word: This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘I am very jealous for Jerusalem and Zion, [15] and I am very angry with the nations that feel secure. I was only a little angry, but they went too far with the punishment.’
This is often the case nowadays, when transgressions might be relatively small, but hysterical reactions mean that punishments often do not fit the crime.
So is there any hope for those who have been punished for their sin?
Is there hope for those whose lives and livelihoods have been torn apart?
Can someone whose life seems utterly ruined ever recover?
The book of Nehemiah answers those questions.
It is very uncompromising. It does not shirk the painful reality of the sin or the punishment that got the Jews into this position.
Neither does it look for shortcuts through the painful processes of their recovery.
But the message of this book is that their is hope. A broken life can be rebuilt.
Even if it is far from easy.
We’ll start by looking at the first step, which is to Know Your Situation.
Know Your Situation
Nehemiah 1:1-3 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, [2] Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. [3] They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
Kazbegi Mountain in Georgia is one of the country’s most spectacular sights. It’s a sharp alpine peak, half-covered in snow and ice much of the year as it’s over five thousand feet tall.
However, for all that it’s one of Georgia’s most famous sights, it isn’t seen very often. It’s so high that low cloud and fog are often an issue.
We met a fellow traveller who had been there and not seen this famous peak, which, when he’d travelled around three hours from the capital Tbilisi to see it, was more than a little disappointing.
We, however, had taken a very simple precaution to improve our chances of seeing the mountain:
We checked the weather and booked our tour when it seemed to give us the best chance of seeing it.
And out plan worked. We had an unusually perfect, unobstructed view of the peak.
If you know about something, you can do something about it. If you don’t, there us nothing you can do.
Taking an interest in people and places can often help us to take good decisions that affect both ourselves and others in a positive way. Indifference often has precisely the opposite effect.
Here in this passage, although it might not be immediately obvious, Nehemiah, despite being a Jew, had every reason not to take an interest in the plight of his fellow Jews in their ancient capital of Jerusalem.
That might sound like a strange thing to say, but as we go through this short message, I’m sure you will see why.
Firstly, I want you to simply notice that Nehemiah cared.
Nehemiah Cared
Nehemiah 1:1-2 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, [2] Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.
Where my wife is from, people take a genuine interest in you. Timekeeping can be quite poor because people are not so self-absorbed: they take the time to ask you how you are doing and they start a conversation.
She finds the somewhat colder Northern European ways more challenging. There people will ask you how you are because they want to seem to be polite, but aren’t really so interested, and will sometimes walk past you for several metres before you even have a chance to answer.
Here, in these verses, Nehemiah’s brother returns – for whatever reason – from the city of Jerusalem. It’s situation could not be worse, as we will hear later.
But the interesting thing for me is that Nehemiah was bothered enough to ask.
In these verses we see little details that point to him having a very comfortable, privileged life. For example, in verse 1:
Nehemiah 1:1 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa,
Susa was the capital of Persia. The citadel at the centre of it was secure: only people connected with the king and his nobles would have been able to be there.
So already we see that Nehemiah was a man of some substance.
Later on, we read these words:.
Nehemiah 1:11 NIV
[11] I was cupbearer to the king.
This made him a kind of ancient sommelier: a highly knowledgeable wine expert and waiter. If we consider the fact that he had access to a substance that could potentially intoxicate the king, as well as a means of poisoning him, we realise just how trusted Nehemiah was.
And this despite (not because of) being someone whose family had been exiled for a hundred and thirty years, from a minority that had been the victim of a vicious attempt at ethnic cleansing, not once, but twice (during the Exile and the events recorded in the book of Esther).
It was extraordinary that he was in that position at all.
The Bible doesn’t tell us how he got there. It simply says that he was there.
However, just the simple fact of His position, power and influence tells us that he didn’t have to care. Like many who lived in exile, he could have simply kept his head down, made his money and lived a quiet life. After all, committing himself to a ruined city was a huge thing. It would lead him to leave his comfortable position and live within the ruins of a city that had been ripped apart by war.
It would also put him physically at risk. A city without walls or watchtowers was vulnerable to attack. Jerusalem was surrounded by hostile forces, as we will see as we progress through Nehemiah. Caring about the situation there enough to do something about it often places people such as Nehemiah at risk.
Let me give you an example. When I was eighteen, someone stood up in my Christian Union at my university and said they were leading a team to Romania. I cared about people there. They had been my inspiration. They had stood up to a Communist government that had been much more powerful in human terms than they were. That government had been overthrown. Their courage gave me the steel to face down my own problems with bullying while I was in school.
To me, it was the most natural thing in the world for me to go there, at least to say ‘Thank you’ to them.
I had no idea that it would lead to me spending three years there as a missionary.
But then, caring about a situation enough to do something about it usually does lead to bigger commitments than we ever imagined.
And it almost always involves some form of sacrifice.
So we see that Nehemiah cared, even though he didn’t have to; even though he already had a nice life for himself; even though caring would threaten and challenge that nice life.
But he didn’t just care: Nehemiah asked.
Nehemiah Asked
Nehemiah 1:1-2 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, [2] Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem.
Caring about something is one thing; doing something about it is another. We can all have an emotional reaction about terrible situations we see around us, whether on TV, on news websites, on social media reels or simply through word of mouth. It doesn’t take any skill whatsoever to laugh or cry or scream or shout. Anyone can do that.
But Nehemiah does something different.
He asks.
He is not interested in second-hand gossip. He wants to know the facts.
And so he moves from caring about the situation to asking someone to share it. He moves from superficiality to intimacy.
This is where our culture in the UK is profoundly lacking. We like the superficial. Superficial is where we feel safe. If no-one knows about our struggles, our sins and our pain, then no-one can use it against us.
We live as hermits in a crowd. We don’t ask so others won’t tell.
And then we wonder why we feel so deeply alone.
But Nehemiah is not like that. He asks.
There is another Bible character who asks, and what he asks is a deeply searching question for which he also has no ideas where it will lead.
That person is David:
Psalms 139:23-24 NIV
[23] Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. [24] See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
I read recently that a trend has been noted where self-centred people guide conversations by asking questions so they appear to be engaged, but the questions are phrased in such a way that when it’s their turn to contribute to the conversation, they can do so with a boast or a brag. In other words, they seem like they are interested, but they are only interested in themselves.
That is not what is happening in either passage.
While living a safe, comfortable life, Nehemiah is taking a genuine, heart-felt interest in the lives of his fellow Jews living in the Promised Land.
David is also taking a genuine interest in how God sees his own spiritual life.
Both of these must be aspects of our lives. We must, and should, take a genuine interest in the lives of other people – both as Christians and human beings. However, this quality is rare, as Paul notes:
Philippians 2:20-21 NIV
[20] I have no one else like him, who will show genuine concern for your welfare. [21] For everyone looks out for their own interests, not those of Jesus Christ.
Even fewer are prepared to as God how they are doing, and to check if, from His perspective, their spiritual lives are fine or are as wrecked as a ruined city.
That is what David was brave enough to do, and I’m in no doubt that he gained from it.
But I’m also in no doubt that it would also have been painful, as standing before God and asking this question would have been like asking a doctor for an x-ray or a scan because you know something isn’t wrong but you don’t know what it is.
However, we cannot fix a problem if we do not know what the problem is. That us why we should care – like Nehemiah did for Jerusalem and the exiles living there – for our own spirituality.
So we see that Nehemiah cared, even though he had good reason not to care, and he asked, even though he did not know the implications of doing so.
We also see that Nehemiah heard.
Nehemiah Heard
Nehemiah 1:3 NIV
[3] They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
I wonder if Nehemiah had expected a better response. After all, the renowned priest Ezra had been there before him. He had brought with him a letter providing safe passage, a guarantee of support and his clear approval for the Temple to be rebuilt (Ezra 7:11-26). He had led a second wave of returnees (Ezra 8). He had tackled the messy and emotional subject of intermarriage with people who were from forbidden races that opposed Jewish purity (Ezra 9, 10).
There had been something of a mini national revival.
Yet thirteen years later, Nehemiah’s people were still living in shame and disgrace, in weakness and vulnerability, because they had not strengthened their defences and lived among a host of hostile forces.
Does that sound familiar?
Do you feel hemmed around by those who wish to destroy you, by temptations and trials that beset you, by mockers who deride you?
Do you feel like those trouble-buffeted citizens of Jerusalem?
Do you feel like you live in shame and disgrace?
Do you despair of your situation and feel like it will never change?
Are you afraid to admit that this is the truth?
Often bad news can be the catalyst to a fightback. Illnesses that we are afraid of can be beaten if caught early. Behaviours that beset us can be nipped in the bud. Weeds that can ruin our garden can be uprooted while too small to do damage.
It’s the same with this information.
Yes, it’s bad. Awful, in fact. But for something to be done about it, the truth must be known.
In our world, we have created a context when truth is what we want it to be, or what is convenient, or what suits us. That enables us to hold to beliefs that are unrealistic and have no actual basis in the real world. It enables us to hold to extreme beliefs that contradict at the same time.
I recently had an experience of this while being guided to a museum on the life of Joseph Stalin by a man who had lost several of his relatives to the Soviet death camps in Siberia. An hour and a half later, he led our group to a grand monastery, which had been defaced by Soviet vandals, with whitewash and lime being thrown over centuries old frescoes.
Yet the people of his country have no issues with venerating Stalin as almost a saint, despite having murdered more people than Adolf Hitler.
The truth can often be thoroughly inconvenient.
Yet if we want to turn our life around, we must know it, even if it makes us feel downright uncomfortable.
Nehemiah had to know the truth.
So do we.
Conclusion
Nehemiah 1:1-3 NIV
[1] The words of Nehemiah son of Hakaliah: In the month of Kislev in the twentieth year, while I was in the citadel of Susa, [2] Hanani, one of my brothers, came from Judah with some other men, and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that had survived the exile, and also about Jerusalem. [3] They said to me, “Those who survived the exile and are back in the province are in great trouble and disgrace. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates have been burned with fire.”
Some friends of ours bought a house. They were very glad to own it as it suited them perfectly. It was an older building with great character, close to amenities, and the price was just right. It had been surveyed and had come back with a positive result. So they moved in.
But there was a problem.
A rather serious one.
An angle of their roof was broken quite severely. It was leaking. Water came into their house whenever it rained, which, in Scotland, tends to happen a lot.
They spoke to the surveyors. The surveyors hid behind legal language and politely, but firmly, informed our friends that if they had only paid double for their survey, then the fault would have been discovered.
This was not the news they’d wanted to hear. After all, a perfunctory email won’t stop water coming into your house.
They had other experts look at it. The roof was bad. Repairs would cost thousands.
Money they didn’t have.
Winter was approaching.
Yet, by the grace of God, they were able to fix their roof before the worst of the winter storms came in.
The news of the repairs they needed to make was distressing and hard to hear. However, they needed to be told. Otherwise, how could they know? How could they fix the problem?
The news Nehemiah received was tough. Hard to hear. Yes, distressing. But he had to hear it, hard though it was.
However, this faithful man, who sacrificed so much for his people, already showed some signs of the character that made him such a hero for his people. He cared, when so many did not. He asked, when so many would not.
And the information he received became the catalyst for action.
There are two huge challenges in these verses for us, all those thousands of years later.
Firstly, are we, like Nehemiah, prepared to allow our comfortable life to be jolted in order to help others?
Secondly, are we prepared to ask God how we are doing? Are we prepared to ask Him to examine us, to find out the state of our heart and our soul?
The news we receive may be good, or it may be bad.
But there is no way we can rebuild our life without it.
Prayer
Lord Jesus, I ask You to search me and know me. See if there is any anxious or offensive way in me. I want You to lead me in the way of everlasting, no matter what it takes. Shine your light on the darkest places in my life and help me to clean them, I pray. Amen.
Questions
Why is it so significant that a man like Nehemiah cared about the situation of his fellow Jews, even if they had done wrong?
What does this teach us about how we should react to people in a similar situation?
What does it teach us about how God reacts to us as sinners in need of grace?
Comentários