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This week, be encouraged as we look upward to the one who raises up godly leaders, who is in the business of rebuilding, restoring, renewing, and raising up. A God who is for us and not against us. Join me, Pastor Richard, as we travel through Nehemiah chapter two, verses eleven to twenty.

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This morning's scripture reading is taken from the book of Nehemiah from the Old Testament, chapter two, verses eleven to twenty. Nehemiah chapter two verse eleven. So I went to Jerusalem and was there three days. Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me, but the one which I rode. Sorry, but the one on which I rode. I went out by night by the valley gate to the dragon spring and to the downgate, and I inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire. Then I went on to the fountain gate and to the king's pool, but there was no room for the animal that I was under me. Again sorry that was under me to pass. Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the valley gate, and so returned. And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing, and I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work. Verse seventeen. Then I said to them, You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned? Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision. And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also of the words that the king had spoken to me, and they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for the good work. But when Sembalad the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant, and Gashem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, What is this thing that you are doing? Are you rebelling against the king? Then I replied to them, The God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build, but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem. This is the word of the Lord, thanks be to God.

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Before we dive into our passage today, there's one verse that uh I felt the Lord putting on my heart to share with you this morning. This is from Proverbs chapter 29, verse 18. It says, Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. Where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. Um where there is no when the Lord is not speaking, if there's nobody hearing the Lord's voice, the people cast off restraint. What do we mean by cast off restraint? It means that there's no there's no boundaries in place to keep sin in check. And so, church, I just want to encourage you, even as we uh look into the word together today, let's have our ears sensitive and ready to receive from the Lord, to receive vision from the Lord. And if you're in a place where perhaps you you feel you've been a bit dry in this area, you you haven't been hearing the Lord like you have in times past, let today be the day where you hear the Lord's voice. Because where there is no prophetic vision, the people cast off restraint. But blessed is he who keeps the law. Amen. Church, shall we pray? Precious Lord. We worship you this morning, we lift you high this morning, we recognize you for who you are in all your majesty this morning. As we look to your word, Lord, would you speak to each one here this morning? Lord, that we will have a fresh sense of vision from you, Lord, that we would know our place in this world and our identity in Christ and the good works that you have in store for us to do. Lord, would you have your way this morning? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. The book of Nehemiah, it reads almost like an action suspense movie. It's really action-packed, I find. We have Nehemiah, this charismatic leader. He was cupbearer to the king of Susa, uh, the king in Susa, the king of Persia, and there's this daring request, right? And we heard about this. He allows his countenance to be downcast and he goes before King Artaxerxes and he makes this request. And then the king says yes, and he makes this dangerous journey. And we we know from going through the book of Ezra what a dangerous journey it was to go all the way to Jerusalem. It was a long journey, and then there's this dramatic setting. The walls have been uh destroyed, and the gates have been burnt, and then there's actually a spy game going on, and we'll we'll look at that a little bit today. And there's this huge rebuilding effort, and then there's opposition, and then there's this assassination uh plan that's in place, and then we see the hand of God, the favor of God upon Nehemiah, and we see this incredible feat of rebuilding in less than two months. It's really like I'm surprised. Perhaps there is a movie out there, I'm not aware of it, but it's really an action-filled book. It's an amazing piece of history that we see God at work in. So today uh we start off with a recce, all right? And in verse 12, Nehemiah chapter 2, verse 12, then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me. I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for Jerusalem. There was no animal with me, but the one on which I rode. And so, despite being a bit of a big shot, all right, the cupbearer to the king of Persia, that that was a very privileged position. But despite that, he's come all the way to Jerusalem, and Nehemiah, he sneaks out in the middle of the night for a recce of the walls, taking only a few men with him and only one animal. Why is that? Why is he doing things in such a funny way? Well, one animal is because animals make noise, and so he wanted to be a bit stealthy for this recce. It's in the middle of the night, and a few men because he wasn't sure who he could trust. He had just come in three days ago. It was a long, many months' journey. He had rested for three days, and he didn't know who he could trust yet, because there were, in a sense, there were spies in Jerusalem. Spies from this, uh we read about them later. Uh Tobiah, Sanbalat, Heshem. And so Nehemiah in Susa, the capital, he was he had been a VIP, but he understood that Jerusalem was a long ways away, and that the opposition would be significant. There's this well-known uh Chinese saying that kind of captures an idea here. Right? Which means the sky is high and the emperor is far away. And it's kind of a poetic way of saying, you know what, you're far enough from the capital that you can get away with things. The emperor is far away. And so Nehemiah, he was far away from Susa now. And he suspected, rightly so, that the moment, the very moment he announced plans to rebuild the walls, that there was going to be opposition. And we we read, if we were to go back to verse 9, that Sanbalat and Tobiah, they were already quite displeased just by his arrival, just by the very fact that he had come. And so Nehemiah, he just took a few trusted men, ones that he knew he could trust, under the cover of darkness, so he could get a realistic assessment of what needed to be done to rebuild the city walls. And so we come to the ruins, right? Uh Nehemiah, he did his stealth recce that night, and we just need to use our imagination a bit. Just picture the middle of the night, you know, there's no electricity, there's no televisions or music, there's no traffic going by, there's no planes overhead. In the stillness of the night. And if he was smart, he knows probably 3 to 4 a.m. is when the human reactions are at the slowest, we're in the deepest part of sleep, and he's quietly moving through the night. Perhaps they have a few clay or ceramic lanterns with them. And at one point, the condition of the perimeter, it was so bad that his mount couldn't even continue on. And the city was in very poor shape. The walls were ruined, the gates were burnt. And likely we've we've all seen images on the news before of a war-torn city somewheres. But it's really hard to grasp the scale of a destroyed city if you're not there. Uh quite a bit time back, I experienced firsthand what it was like uh in Kosovo. And when you are living there, and I I just just for a short time I was living there to see buildings that have been demolished, just piles of rubble. The streets were in many cases unusable. And as you're there, you you get a sense of despondency, of despair. And so we think of Nehemiah and these few trusted men in the middle of the night, in the stillness, where any sound sounds so loud, because it's the the quietest part of the night, and he goes around and he sees the state of things, and it's really bad. It's perhaps worse than he expected. He'd heard news of it when he was living there in Susa, but he perhaps he had no idea just how bad it was. But here's the thing he wasn't disheartened, he wasn't dismayed. Nehemiah, he was ready. That's because he had resolved. He already had resolve on the inside. Nehemiah responded with resolve and faith to this situation. Why? Because verse 18, it tells us he knew that the hand of God was upon him. He knew. He had God's favor, he had God's direction for him. In verse 17, it said, He says, Come, let us build the walls of Jerusalem. And then into 18, I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good. And they said, Let us rise up and build. And so, as we've noted in the last two weeks, Nehemiah was placed there for such a time as this. It was God's divine timing. Under normal circumstances, if an outsider travels in, and we know that Nehemiah, he had never been to Jerusalem. He'd grown up in Persia in exile. But if when an outsider comes and then tells people that they are going to do this huge, difficult rebuilding project, uh, the response would not normally be a favorable one, right? If I were to announce today at church, we're going to start a new building project, we're going to add on three stories over there, we're going to have to give till it hurts, and we're going to have to give even more. Right? And yet when Nehemiah came and he shared, the people responded favorably to him. They said, Let us rise up and build. Why? Well, because first, Nehemiah, he was filled with conviction that God was leading him. He had it inside. He knew that, he knew that he knew that God was at work. He had that conviction. Secondly, he had taken the time to Rece the situation. He wasn't just coming in and then immediately saying, uh, this is what we need to do. Firsthand, he did his recce. He understood the situation. He understood the challenge. He understood what it was going to take to rebuild. And third, Nehemiah, he had secured a letter from the king to have timber provided from the king's forest for the purpose of rebuilding. So all this added up to Nehemiah being filled with resolve and the people responding favorably. But there's this rebuke or ridicule that comes in verse 19. When Sanbala the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Gishem the Arab heard of it, they jeered at us and despised us and said, What is this thing that you're doing? Are you rebelling against the king? Anytime you do anything worth doing, there will be opposition. Anytime you do anything worth doing, there will be opposition. And Sanbala, Tobayah, and Gashem, they represent uh these much larger areas surrounding Jerusalem. Um excuse me, this is a map where I tried to roughly, roughly highlight the different areas. And so we can see Jerusalem is just such a small area compared to its neighbors. And these neighbors, they did not want to see Jerusalem become strong. They didn't want to see the walls rebuilt. They didn't want to see the gates repaired. See, the enemy, Satan, the spiritual enemy, did not want to see the city of God to be redeemed and restored. And it's always the way of the enemy to steal, to kill, and to destroy, to try and ruin wherever possible. And so Sanbala, Tobiah, and Geshem, they sent this message of reproach or rebuke to Nehemiah, intending to intimidate him and dissuade him from God's purpose. They wanted to ridicule, they wanted to slander Nehemiah, they wanted to sow seeds of doubt to stop the work before it even began. Who was Nehemiah to lead a rebuilding project? Was he an engineer? No. Did he have experience in building? No. He had just come down from the palace in Susa. Who was he to lead things? And who was going to do the work? Ordinary people, shopkeepers, the priests, the Levites, farmers, tradesmen. And so they wanted to use all this to mock them, to discourage them, that they wouldn't do the work. And they tried to use that same tactic that was used in Ezra's time: an accusation of rebellion. And normally we can understand the accusation doesn't even have to be true. The accusation itself is often powerful enough to stop things in their tracks. But Nehemiah has this rebuttal. He comes against the rebuke. He comes against this argument, against this mocking, against this uh ridicule, and he said to them, The God of heaven will make us prosper. He didn't start off with his letter from the king, which meant he didn't have to worry about this accusation of rebellion. The king himself is the one who had sent him. He starts off, the God of heaven will make us prosper, and we his servants will arise and build. But you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem. They wanted to swallow up this city, to swallow up this territory, but he said, You have no claim. The God of heaven will make us prosper. And Nehemiah recognized this threat of accusing them of rebellion for what it was. It was an empty threat. He had that letter from the king. So Nehemiah's rebuke, it was firm and it was clear. God had ordained this work. They, the Jewish people, would be the ones to rebuild. Outsiders, including Sanbala, Tobiah, and Geshem, had no portion, no right, and no claim to the holy city. In this rebuttal, it left no ambiguity. They were not intimidated, they were not dissuaded. The hand of God had strengthened their hands. They would rebuild. And church, I want to just alert to you, the key to all this was the vision. God had placed the vision in Nehemiah's heart is the start of things. And so I think in response, there's a number of lessons we can learn from Nehemiah. The first is let God's vision become your burden. Let God's vision become your burden. Nehemiah, he didn't act on impulse. Through prayer, he acted upon what God had put on his heart. And he allowed God's vision to become his burden. And so, church. We have to make time. We need to have the habit, we need to have the discipline of making space for the Lord to speak to us. We need to make a habit of in our own quiet time, personally, reading His Word. We need to have the habit where we're going to take time to pray to the Lord outside of mealtime. Okay, we're we're moving past just mealtimes and giving thanks. But where we regularly come to the Lord in prayer and we pour out our heart and then we pause and we listen. So we need to let God's vision become our burden. Let God's vision become your burden. We also learned today from Nehemiah about speaking with clarity and courage. Nehemiah, he rallied the people with a very clear call. Come and let us rebuild. And the power of that vision came from the conviction that he knew that he knew that he knew this is from the Lord. And sometimes it takes time to come to that place, time to have that conviction. We have to press in and know that yes, the Lord has spoken. And Nehemiah, he was sure of the vision and he was bold in stating it. We also learned that anytime you do anything worth doing, there will be opposition. And if you are following Christ, if you are walking out your faith, you know that there is ridicule that we do so. Today many people will say, in such an age of science, how can you believe such fairy tales? Right? We are ridiculed for our faith because science has been so developed, and science can only measure and recognize physical things. And God is more than that. He is spirit, he transcends the physical realm. And so as we follow Christ, we will face ridicule. Anytime we do anything worth doing, there will be opposition. But we must learn how to respond to that opposition, whether by faith or by fear. We need to learn to respond in faith. One other thing I hope we can learn and take away from this passage today, from looking at Nehemiah, is that we church need to commit to working together in unity. Big vision takes big efforts, bigger than any one person. And God's design for us, his church, is for unity. And so we need to be ready to work together for something bigger through unity, setting aside our not just our individual preferences, but we need to we need to look and see what is God's vision and move towards it together. And so, church, the truth is we are either growing in spiritual maturity or we're sliding backwards. There's no static state of being, there's no there's no middle ground. We're either walking closer to Christ or we're walking away from Christ. Now, part of our church vision is to grow spiritually by investing time and effort in deep formational relationships with one another. This is part of how we grow spiritually. This is how we become more mature as believers. And on a church level, we're we're we seek to create pathways for this. We're looking for ways to become a more intergenerational church, where we're not silo. We have the young people here, and we have perhaps the middle-age ones here, and then we have elderly here. We want to be one church in unity. And we're looking as well, uh assessing how we can facilitate small mentorship groups, and that's something we'll be hearing more about as time goes on. We're moving towards this vision, growing in spiritual maturity, investing time and effort in deep formational relationships with one another. God's plan for YCCA is that we continue growing in Christ-likeness, that we pursue the way of discipleship, that we live out what the Bible says, that we confess our sins one to another, that we pray for one another, that when someone is in need, someone else will be able to provide, that we feed regularly on his word, that we pray without ceasing, that we reach out to the lost, to the foreigner, and to the destitute, and that we worship God by day and by night. And so, church, I want to ask God this is God's vision for us. Are you in or are you out? Is this something that we can do? Is this something we can come in unity to get behind this? Journeying through Nehemiah reveals a truth about God. He is in the business of raising up godly leaders. He's in the business of rebuilding and restoring. He's in the business of renewing his sons and his daughters. Man may tear down, but God is in the business of building up. And does God raise up just anyone to do his kingdom work? No. He raises up those who have demonstrated faithfulness, who have demonstrated integrity of character. He raises up those who are grounded in his word and who know how to come before the Lord in prayer. He raises up those who say yes to the things of God. God is in the business of rebuilding and restoring, and our God is a God who rebuilds and he restores broken families. Amen. God is in the business of rebuilding and restoring broken families. Our God is a God who rebuilds and restores faith communities that have been divided. That's who he is. He loves to rebuild and to restore. Our God is the God who rebuilds boundaries and restores gates in our lives where we've stumbled. He's one who renews his sons and daughters. He's the father who welcomes back the prodigal son. He's the father who reminds his daughters that they are valuable and lovable. He's the father who says to the drunkard and to the drug addict, come to me. Let my Holy Spirit renew you from the inside out. The God that we worship, He speaks today. He speaks through his word. He speaks through his Holy Spirit. He speaks through nature. And our God challenges, not condemns. Our God is holy, our God is just, our God is righteous, our God is patient, our God is kind. Our God is love. And he loved us so much that he sent his son to die in our place. That's our God. That's the God that we've come together to worship today. That's the God who gave us his word, the Bible, that we might know him. That's the God who created every good thing. He is the God that we worship today. Church, do we know him? This is our God. Worship team, can you can you come forward at this time? I believe that God is speaking to hearts and minds today. He's speaking vision that will become our burden. That we will have that conviction that we've been spoken to by the Lord. He's rebuilding lives within our church. He is renewing us. He is restoring us. Though we stumble ten times, he will continue to lift us up again and again. He is for all those who call on the name of Jesus. He is the faithful one. He's the reliable one. And as we put our faith in him, we have become his sons and his daughters. He is speaking to his sons and daughters today. And as we embrace the hope we have in Christ Jesus, as we allow God to give us vision for our families, for our church, for our community, for our workplace, let's allow his vision to become our burden. That we will not be a people without vision, but we will all have heard from the Lord that we will know our identity, that we will know our purpose, that we can glorify God with our good works, that when we are ridiculed, our faith will not be shaken. Because we know our God.com. Have a blessed day.