Kingdom First… Safety Fourth

Nehemiah 1:1–2:8

1 The words of Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah. Now it happened in the month of Chislev, in the twentieth year, as I was in Susa the citadel, 2 that Hanani, one of my brothers, came with certain men from Judah. And I asked them concerning the Jews who escaped, who had survived the exile, and concerning Jerusalem. 3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” 4 As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. 5 And I said, “O Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, and the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. 8 Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, 9 but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ 10 They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand. 11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” Now I was cupbearer to the king.

In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. 2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. 3 I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” 4 Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. 5 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ graves, that I may rebuild it.” 6 And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. 7 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, 8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.” And the king granted me what I asked, for the good hand of my God was upon me.

This summer on our family vacation we decided to go whitewater rafting. I thought it would be a great way to make some memories as a family. I am all for that, but I have six people to buy tickets for, so I'm all for saving a little money.

I found a company on Groupon and talked with them; they were significantly less expensive than others and also gave me a little extra discount for being nice. Well, when we arrived we had a little trouble finding their headquarters. It wasn't much of a headquarters—more of an old insurance office converted into a rafting company. Their changing room was a large room with PVC pipe and a couple of curtains in the middle. Their transportation bus was not a rafting bus with the business name on it, but a forty-year-old local high school wrestling bus that the owner also coached in his spare time. It was run by a young couple who had recently graduated from college and their friends who grew up on the river and decided to start a rafting company. They were great, but they liked to play up the simplicity of their business.

One of the best lines that got repeated often came from our raft guide who, while handing out helmets where some didn’t fit quite right, would simply say, “Hey man, it's OK. It's good enough. Here we believe in safety fourth”—which is exactly what you want to hear before you head down a raging river!

"Safety fourth" became our catchphrase for the trip. Safety is not unimportant, but it's also not first.

For our raft guide, he wanted to have fun. He wanted to have a thrill on the river. Safety would come later.

I realize some of you may be on the verge of hyperventilating. We live in a culture that prizes being safe, doesn't take a lot of risks, and certainly doesn't take risks for the kingdom of God. "Be safe" is the motto we are told to believe. Nehemiah tells us safety fourth; Kingdom of God first. He turns our values upside down. Nehemiah is first about the kingdom of God, and he is willing to lose everything for the sake of the kingdom.

Look at his prayer.

A Desperate Time

If you ever find yourself in a desperate time and wonder, “Why, God?”, don't think that you are out of step with the way God works in the world and in His people.

We are going back to the fifth century BC and the Persian Empire. Remember the story of Moses (1500 BC) and God delivering His people from bondage in Egypt and taking them to the Promised Land. Then you also need to remember God called the people to honor Him in the land and said if they rejected Him they would be exiled. In 605 BC Babylon conquered Jerusalem, utterly destroyed it, and God’s people were exiled from the land. But in 539 BC something dramatic happened: King Cyrus of Persia conquered Babylon and set free the Jews to go back and rebuild Jerusalem. Nehemiah occurs about 60 years after the edict of Cyrus. The temple is rebuilt, but Jerusalem still lies in ruins, its walls are broken, and people are not going back to it. Nehemiah is in Susa, the capital of Persia, not Jerusalem.

This is why Nehemiah asks people who came from Judah about the condition of things, and they say:

3 And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates are destroyed by fire.” (Neh 1:3)

It's not looking good. Nehemiah is an Israelite—not just one in name, but one who desires to see his nation, his people, and his God restored. He has been praying and fasting for about four months for the restoration of Jerusalem, and from the way things play out in chapter 2, we will see that he has also been making preparations.

He prays:

1:5 “O LORD God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments...”

He knows the God of heaven. He may be outside the promised land, but he is in the presence of God. You may not be where you want to be, but you can still find the presence of God. You can have adversity and setbacks and still find the presence of God. You can have everything in ruins and still find reason to hope and rejoice.

He prays to the God who keeps covenant.

In verse 6, he confesses the sins of the people. They are not blameless. They are not righteous. They have neglected their relationship with God and suffered for it. Nehemiah is praying for change. He petitions God, and his main petition is to have favor in the sight of a man—the sight of the king.

11 “O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of your servant, and to the prayer of your servants who delight to fear your name, and give success to your servant today, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.”

Nehemiah is the cupbearer to the king. As cupbearer, he likely tasted everything that went to the king before the king partook, but that doesn’t mean Nehemiah was an easily expendable employee. The cupbearer didn’t just taste the food beforehand; he oversaw the entire royal household.

The cupbearer was a trusted royal official and adviser. Cupbearers frequently held political influence well beyond their formal title. He would probably have overseen the security and administration of the royal house, household access, protocol, logistics, communications, and even the king's harem. He was responsible for guarding the king against poisoning and often advising him in private settings. This role placed Nehemiah close to the royal family with daily interaction among key leaders. He was a key person—something like a personal aide or chief of staff.

A Bold Request

Nehemiah is bold before God. He is also bold before his king. He has a plan. He has been praying on this, and he is about to put bold actions behind his bold request.

You need to note this is a king who is suspicious of others. He would have all his food tasted and sampled before eating to make sure it was not poisoned. This tells you something about how the Persian kings lived and ruled. They were dictators with a capital D. Nehemiah fears the king. He is about to do something that has taken him months to pray through.

That brings us to Nehemiah’s request of the king:

2 And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid.

Nehemiah was afraid. He feared for his life. The king’s power was absolute. Let me give you some examples of how these kings ruled. It is much different than what we think of as a king today.

We know King Xerxes was estranged from his wife for asking her to dance before them with her royal crown on—and it's presumed that when he asked her to do that, the crown was the only thing she was to wear.

Historian Will Durant’s first volume, Our Oriental Heritage, in his epic series The Story of Civilization, brings a little more insight to Persia and its kings. He speaks of the absolute authority of the Persian kings, stating:

“Few even of the greatest nobles dared offer any criticism or rebuke [to the king], and public opinion was impotent. The father whose innocent son had been shot before his eyes by the king merely complimented the king on his excellent archery.” (p. 359, Our Oriental Heritage)

“[Emperor] Cambyses improved the integrity of the courts by causing an unjust judge to be flayed alive, and using his skin to upholster the judicial bench—to which he then appointed the dead judge’s son.” (p. 361)

“Every [Persian] man from age 15–50 was required to enlist in the army on any declaration of war. When the father of three sons petitioned King Darius to exempt one of them from service, all three were put to death. When another father, having sent four sons to the battlefield, begged King Xerxes to permit the fifth son to stay behind and manage the family estate, the body of this fifth son was cut in two by royal order and placed on both sides of the road by which the army was to pass.”

These are presumably but a few of the orders of Persian kings. So Nehemiah, do you want to tell the king you are having a bad day at work? Do you want to tell him all is not well in his kingdom? Do you want to be so bold?

Nehemiah is willing to risk it all. He is not worried first and foremost about his own safety. He is captured by the glory of God. He longs to see God’s plan fulfilled, and he is willing to lay down his life for his people and for God’s work in the world. He has been praying, but at some point, you have to step out in faith.

Bold prayers lead to bold actions. Either that or they simply dry up.

The great missionary to China, Hudson Taylor, said, “Unless there is an element of risk in our efforts for God, there is no need for faith.”

Great prayers require action. He is asking for God to move and act, and at some point, you have to step outside the boat.

Bold Prayers and Bold Plans

6 And the king said to me (the queen sitting beside him), “How long will you be gone, and when will you return?” So it pleased the king to send me when I had given him a time. 7 And I said to the king, “If it pleases the king, let letters be given me to the governors of the province Beyond the River, that they may let me pass through until I come to Judah, 8 and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king’s forest, that he may give me timber to make beams for the gates of the fortress of the temple, and for the wall of the city, and for the house that I shall occupy.”

Nehemiah is not flying by the seat of his pants.

We pray. We plan. We pray. We act.

Nehemiah can give the king an amount of time that the journey and rebuilding will take (v. 6); he knows exactly what kind of authorization he needs (v. 7); and he knows exactly what materials he will need for the temple, wall, city, and his own dwelling (v. 8).

Nehemiah asks for the moon. Why not? He learned from Ezra. Ezra prayed and fasted for safety in making the journey because he was ashamed to ask (Ezra 8:22):

22 For I was ashamed to ask the king for a band of soldiers and horsemen to protect us against the enemy on our way, since we had told the king, “The hand of our God is for good on all who seek him, and the power of his wrath is against all who forsake him.”

All who are to follow Jesus are to take up their cross and follow Him. It is a path that leads to glory, but it goes by way of suffering. If you are going to follow Jesus, it will require letting go of the world.

Nehemiah is not worried about trying to move up in rank or moving to the coast to get a nice house. He is not praying for God to give him the American dream. He is living for something completely different than what everyone else is living for. He is willing to lose everything for this purpose. He knows where God is working, and he is sold out for that. He is willing to give it all up.

The world makes God the fulfiller of its dreams: "God, do this for me. Give me the promotion." We have dreams, and we will use God to acquire those dreams. The God of the Bible says He is greater than anything the world has to offer, and to have Him means turning from the dreams of the world.

Risks for the Kingdom

Everything he does is for the restoration of the Holy City, the Holy Temple, and the Holy Land. He wants to see the work of God furthered:

9 "...but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there."

Nehemiah is doing all this because Jerusalem—the city, the place of his fathers' graves—lies in ruins. Nehemiah is not just homesick. He is not just patriotic. Jerusalem was the place God chose for His temple, for His presence to be with His people. The temple was the center of God’s ministering activity in the world: the king, the law, the priesthood, the sacrificial system. It was essential for His people to know, experience, and walk with God. Nehemiah wants to see all that the faithful before him had labored for come to fruition. He is willing to lay it all down to go back to a city in ruins.

The message you need to hear isn't simply to be more like Nehemiah. One greater than Nehemiah has come. Nehemiah is a bold forerunner of Jesus. He, like Jesus, is one who is positioned with great power, yet is willing to lay it all down for the good of His people and the glory of God. Jesus restores people to God, and they are to take this message to the ends of the earth. We are not merely rebuilding a physical temple; we are proclaiming salvation in Christ and access to God through Him. Our ruined lives find restoration in Christ.

How does this apply to us today? Let me start with a broad application. We could ask the question: What are the ruins in your life that God is calling you to see restored?

It could be your marriage. God redeems what is broken.

It could be yourself—you messed up so bad you don't even know what to do or if anything is possible. Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more. It is possible. We could go through a number of things: career, parenting. It’s amazing what happens when you humble yourself.

But let me say this: I think those would be secondary or tertiary applications of this passage. The most relevant application is our desire to see God’s church thrive.

Jesus is the new temple. He is the way we access the presence of God. Jesus is the place of salvation. The church is the instrument He is using to make known what He has done. The church is His Plan A. People find life in the church.

The doctrine of the church is under attack today—so much so that I believe many pastors avoid the central application of this passage: to commit to Christ and His commission to build His church. So many in the church will lament, "All pastors want to do is talk about building their church." I get how that can look, and I get that many pastors just want to build their own kingdom. But we can’t let that gaslight us into thinking that there is something wrong with talking about the priority of the local church. Read the New Testament and you will see that the mission of Jesus went forward by planting churches. The letters of the New Testament instruct churches on the gospel they are to proclaim and how they are to live. We need to see just how important the church is to God's mission. We need to see it, we need to feel it, and we need to have a burden to see it thrive.

Do you have any of that desire in you? Jesus gave His life for the church. Nehemiah was willing to lay it all down for a rundown city for the word of God.

Consider his example of sacrifice: Who asked him to do this? Who asked Nehemiah to go to such lengths? He is reading his Bible, sending his tithe... isn’t that enough?

He is reading his Bible and looking at the world, and God is working in his heart! How can he enjoy the things of the world when the house of God is in ruins? He sees a discrepancy between what he is reading in the Word and what he is seeing in the world and among his people, and he chooses to act. We need this attitude today. He was even mocked for his work: "If a fox were to jump on it, it would fall down!"

He saw the need and he met it. People often say things like, "Well, I just don't see any opportunities. No one has asked." We have needs all around us. Churches are struggling today. We need help to push the mission forward. Do you see it? Have you asked? Are you concerned to the point of doing something about it? Every church has issues, but not every church has people who want to do something about them.

I had an older pastor I used to work with who would teach on marriage and how God calls men to be servant leaders in the home. He would tell a story about a macho man who stood up and said to everybody, “Hey, I’m the leader of this house. I wear the pants, and what I say goes! Here is how it works in my house: I’m the leader and I make all the major decisions, and my wife follows my lead and makes all the minor decisions. And in 25 years of marriage, she has made it clear to me that there has never been a major decision for me to make!” Brother, how well are you leading? Because it doesn't seem like you know the first thing about it! You claim to make all the major decisions, but you haven't made a single one.

We are fine with the idea of laying down our lives for Jesus... but man, is it hard to show up to church! Man, is it hard to commit to serving! I might have to forgive people for not meeting my expectations; I might have to become like Jesus. "Man, I keep thinking maybe I should tithe, but then for my new car I might have to settle for the base model instead of the luxury trim. I might not be able to afford the 96-inch TV and have to settle for the 70-inch." Those are very real choices. Are you doing the very basics?

By our actions, we are telling our kids and the rest of the world that Jesus isn't that great—that He's not really worth doing a whole lot for.

If the church is the center of God’s plan for furthering His redemptive work, then we should be willing to pray bold prayers and take bold steps. We should be willing to make great sacrifices instead of having a "sit back and watch" attitude to see if anyone else will do it. Thinking "they must not need me" is often just a mask for "I don't really want to do anything."

Is your commitment to Jesus one of convenience—happening only when possible—or is it a commitment of devotion and sacrifice? Does your commitment limit you? Do you feel the constraints?

Nehemiah’s prayer and actions led to a shifting tide in the rebuilding of the temple and city. Might we be in a time when Christians start feeling the weight of the work that needs to be done to reach the lost, build the church, and make great sacrifices? Are you putting the Kingdom first, or are you putting it fourth?

Discussion Questions

  1. What were the challenges Nehemiah was facing personally and as a member of God’s people?

  2. How does he demonstrate great boldness in prayer? How does he demonstrate wisdom in what he asks for?

  3. How does Nehemiah willingly accept risks for the kingdom of God? In what ways are you taking risks for God’s kingdom?