NEHEMIAH | How to Live a Life of Influence

as you will have heard we've been looking at a series going through a series looking at characters of the Old Testament and so far we've looked at Abraham we've looked at Joel Jonah Daniel and this week we're looking at Nehemiah now that the book of Nehemiah is the best book I have ever read on the whole topic of leadership it's got everything in it how to discern a vision for your life and your work how to communicate that vision how to recruit a team how to delegate how to ask for things persuasively how to keep going and persevering in the face of opposition it's got everything in it now you might say to me well that's all well and good Myles but I'm not a leader well here's the first thing I want to say to you yes you are leadership has been defined as influenced and the moment that we choose to follow Jesus we become people of influence why because from that point on people are watching you and me to see what difference it makes in our lives to see how we live differently this is how the early church grew in just 300 years after the life of Christ the Christianity spread around the whole of the known greco-roman world without any recourse to violence why because people saw that the Christians lived differently we change the world by our example not by our opinions in your family in your place of work in your community you are a person of influence whether you realize it or not now nehemiah was called to essentially do two things to rebuild the walls of jerusalem and to reform the community there now we might not be called to such a position of national influence as that but we are nonetheless people of influence for God's kingdom and now even if you would say to me well maybe Myles but actually I am a failure as a Christian you don't know what my life's like if people look at me they're hardly going to be inspired well again that that's not the case you see with Christ failure is always an event and never a person once we are in Christ once we are following him our status is changed forever you can't be a failure and be in Christ in fact you're calling your potential is to shine like a star for him wherever he places you so Nehemiah there's so much in it but I want us to look at just the first 11 verses of the book and in doing so I want us to ask this question how do we start where do we begin in living lives of influence quick recap of the story as Dan mentioned last week Babylon had invaded the Babylonians had captured the city of Jerusalem they burnt the temple they pulled pulled down the city's walls and they taken most of the population and marched them off to exile into Babylon then of course worldly kingdoms come and go so fast forward about a hundred and forty years after the exile and Babylon is no longer the world superpower the superpower now is Persia and there's a Jew called Nehemiah and Nehemiah is working in the court of the king of Persia King octazooka sees and this is when we come to the reading so it's Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 1 the words of Nehemiah son of Hokulea in the month of Kislev that's around November time in the 20th year this is the 20th year of the Kings reign so the year is 445 BC while I was in the Citadel of souza so the king's palace is in souza which is in modern-day Iran Han and I one of my brothers came from Judah with some other men and I questioned them about the Jewish remnant that survived the Exile and also about Jerusalem 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 burnt with fire when I heard these things i sat down and wept for some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven then I said O Lord God of heaven the great and awesome God who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and obey his commands 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 house have committed against you we have acted very wickedly towards you we have not obeyed the command decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying if you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the nations but if you return to me and obey my commands then even if you're 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 they are your servants and your people whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand O Lord let your ear be attentive to the prayer 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 cut bearer to the king so how do we begin to live lives of influence well the first thing we see in the life of nehemiah is this start from the heart start from the heart it's hard to be successful at anything in life if we don't have a passion for it my great-grandfather was an excellent pianist and his daughter my grandmother was also an outstanding pianist she could play not only classically but she used to go down to the local cinema as a volunteer there and this was in the days when movies were black and white and they were silent and her job was to sit at a piano by the screen and as the movies played having never seen the film before she would just look at the scenes and play along what she thought was appropriate and then one of her sons was my father also a very good pianist so when I was born as a child my parents understandably thought ah the piano will be miles as instrument so they sent me off for piano lessons but you see there was one problem I wasn't in the least bit interested in playing the piano in fact I hated it I hated the practice and I couldn't stand the lessons I remember very clearly having lessons I would read the notes on the page know exactly what they were but purposefully play the wrong notes trying to convince my piano teacher that I was a lost course but unfortunately she was too smart for that but she did say to my parents look if he's going to improve he did need to practice so my parents gave me a threat what they thought was a very good threat but which was actually music to my ears they said miles if you don't start to practice properly we will stop the piano lessons yes so of course I did less practice than ever and they had to follow through on the threat because they were being good parents so the piano lessons stopped now today do I wish they'd continued of course I regret not applying myself but here's the thing it's really hard to be good at anything if you don't have a heart for it and I believe that today the Holy Spirit wants to give people here a new heart for what he's placed before you in life a new passion this is what happens to Nehemiah he hears from some of those who have come from Jerusalem as to the state of the city and more importantly the state of the inhabitants in that place and the Holy Spirit moves nehemiah's heart although at this stage Nehemiah himself has never even been to Jerusalem when he hears the news in verse four this is how he records his response he says when I heard these things i sat down and wept why don't you ask God today to give you a heart for where he's placed you and importantly for the people he's placed in your life because God's heart is always about people ask him to enable you to see them as he sees them ask him to enable you to feel what he feels now is this risky maybe the word for passion comes from the word for suffering but without compassion it's hard to lead in anything proverbs proverbs 13 verse 12 says this Hope deferred makes the heart sick Hope deferred makes the heart sick have you ever been promised something or have you ever hoped for something have you ever dreamt for something had a vision for something only for it not to happen or at best to be partially fulfilled it hurts and this was named Aya's experience he was fully aware of the warnings are given by Moses and the prophecies by Jeremiah that if the people disobeyed God he would scatter them into exile but he was also fully aware of the promise of God through Jeremiah and particularly the prophet Isaiah that if they turn to him God would regather them in Jerusalem in Zion but this hadn't yet happened a few had begun to trickle back from exile but Jerusalem still lay in ruins Hope deferred makes the heart sick this is the pain nehemiah felt as he wept that day I have a sense that there are some people here you don't have a cold you don't have a cough you don't have a limp but you are sick in the heart hope deferred makes the heart sick and when this happens it's so easy isn't it to close down our heart trying to protect ourselves we no longer feel we shut people out to try and protect ourselves from ever being let down again and we dare not hope the candle of hope snuffed out what a terrible way to live in fact that's not living its just existing but today the Holy Spirit will help us you see the prophet Ezekiel who prophesied during the time of the exile said that God promised something by his Spirit he would remove from us a heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh we are meant to be people with soft hearts and hard feet hearts that feel compassion but with feet hard enough to walk into the challenge of our calling soft hearts and hard feet but so often we end up as people with hard hearts and soft feet feeling nothing going nowhere but let the Holy Spirit in again today and let him perform heart surgery on us and as he does you will find that hope will arise passion will be rekindled vision will be recast Christianity is primarily not about behavior modification but about heart transformation and like Nehemiah let us start from the heart as we begin to be people of influence that's the first thing start from the heart the second thing we see in his life and how we can be people of influence is this pray don't delay when Nehemiah hears the news from Jerusalem the very first thing he does is to pray so verse four he says for some days I mourned and fasted and prayed before the God of heaven then verse 6 he he praised let your ear be attentive and your eyes be open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night and in this prayer which is the first of nine prayers that he prays recorded in in this book he begins his prayer by acknowledging who God is he says O Lord God of heaven the great and awesome God now this term God of heaven was a term that the Persians used for their God who was called a hora Mazda now I know that sounds like a Japanese car but that was their God and and that's the term that they used but here Nehemiah is saying Oh No Lord Almighty Yahweh you are the one true God of heaven then he continues his prayer and it's so telling because prayer is the most eloquent expression of our priorities if you ever wonder what is the most important thing to me in my life then to find out the answer simply ask yourself this question what do you pray about the most what do you pray about most often that's the answer to the question what is most important in your life because prayers are an expression of our priorities and in this sense your prayer journal shows the direction of travel of your life and your character the Gainsborough hotel in the city of Bath in England was recently reopened it's a unique hotel because it has attached to it the only natural hot spring spa in the whole country and this natural hot spring has been used for thousands of years and it was particularly popular 2,000 years ago at the time of the Romans the Romans used it as a place of public bathing but also as a center of worship because they felt the hot spring was a spiritual place and a few years ago when archeologists were excavating the hot spring there in Bath they found these tablets of stone and chiseled into the tablets were prayers you see you could go along to the hot spring you could bathe there but if you wanted to you could also pay for you to have a prayer of your choice chiseled onto the tablet and buried there so they've excavated these tablets and it's fascinating it shows you what the people at the time prioritized as their prayers and you know what the most common and frequent type of prayer is it's a prayer of revenge it's prayers of bitterness and revenge so much so that comically archeologists no longer refer to these tablets as prayer tablets they call them cursed tablets here's an example this is a prayer that was chiseled in for a person called dosimeters dosimeters has lost two gloves he asks that the person who has stolen them should lose his mind and his eyes now I don't care how nice those gloves were that's a pretty harsh prayer but it gives us an insight into the character of man but you see Christians have always been different because we've always prayed yes completely honest and real prayers but we've also always prayed prayers of hope and faith that's why recently we had a didn't we a week of prayer praying 24/7 in the HT bebe prayer room why and we'll do it again in September because we believe that when we pray in faith and in hope things happen in our lives and we begin to influence the world around us the theologian Kolb art put it this way he said to clasp the hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world pray don't delay that is the way to influence the world around you now as I said yes we pray hopeful prayers but also honest and real ones and this leads on to the third thing that we can do to be people of influence and we see it in nehemiah - it's this confess the mess verse six he prays this I confess the sins we israelites including myself and my family have committed against you it would have been easy for Nehemiah to blame the Exile on a previous generation it happened one hundred and forty years before he lived but now Nehemiah takes personal spiritual responsibility he puts his hand up and says yep Lord I am to blame as well me and my family earlier on when Tim key and chichay led us in our prayers they led us in a time of confession because we'll be taking communion later now if you're here and you you're not used to coming to church and you for all what's this all I want to encourage you confession is one of the most wonderful things we can ever do it's not a negative thing let me explain when I was 17 years of age I just passed my driving test and it was one of the first times ever my dad had given me the keys and let me go out in the car on my own it was a big moment and I drove to where I was going to meet a friend and I was parking in a car park and as I was trying to reverse into this space there was a big pickup truck in the space next to the one I was reversing into and I suddenly felt this bang I jumped out the car thankfully there wasn't even a scratch on the pickup trucks bumper but sadly the same was not true of my car there was a big dent in the side of it well later on when I was driving home I was thinking oh I've decision to make here on the one hand I don't want to be banned from using the car again but on the other hand you know it was my fault and deep down I knew that honesty is always the best policy so I thought actually there's not really a decision to be made so I got home and and when I showed my father the the car with the big dent in the side I said to him look I parked the car and then when I came back there was just a dent there and he said well didn't anybody leave a note on the windscreen saying they'd done it well no he said gosh some people are so dishonest I said dad it's a sign of the times well it was not long after that event that I came to Christ I became a Christian and you know when when we come to Christ Jesus he's not primarily interested in making bad people good now what he does is he makes the spiritually dead come alive and when his spirit breathes life into your spirit and my spirit things begin to happen and one of the things that happens is our conscience grows a little and as this happened in me and time past I couldn't bear it any longer eventually I thought God to tell my dad the truth but I was nervous I I knew he was a firm but fair guy but I couldn't bear it any longer so eventually I went to him and I said dad look you know the car actually it was me I bumped it it was my fault I should have told you I'm so sorry and I'll never forget what he said to me he said thank you for telling me I forgive you now those three words I forgive you I don't think any lips that have ever heard any words that have come from my father's lips have ever made me feel closer to him and love him more than those three words at that moment you see how much more when we confess to our Father in heaven when we know the intimate embrace of a father who always forgives us you see repentance that is motivate motivated by fear leads to us hating ourselves but repentance that's motivated by the joy of reconciliation leads to us hating the sin so confess the mess to be blessed the fourth thing that we can do and we see in nehemiah's life to begin to live lives of influence is this don't forget to remember don't forget to remember verse 8 Nehemiah says in his prayer remember the instruction you gave your servant Moses saying if you are unfaithful I will scatter you among the nations but if you return to me and obey my commands then even your exiled people and if they're at the farthest horizon I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I've chosen as a dwelling for my name you see when we remember all that the Lord has done in our lives and we remember the promises that he's made to us it results in us having a fresh compelling vision of what he will do in the future this is why in Scripture the Bible commands us to remember 166 times and we remember not just what God has done in our lives but where to remember what he's done and what he's promised to his people throughout history as recorded in the Bible this is why the Bible is our greatest leadership weapon and this is precisely what nehemiah does he remembers and in his prayer he's paraphrasing the promises of God is given through the prophet Isaiah by saying hey God do you remember what you said to us through Isaiah I remember that you would not just scatter us but we gather us in Jerusalem in other words Nehemiah takes the promise back to the promise sir in prayer and we ought to do the same and he understood that our God is multi-generational and some promises are given to us to temporarily steward until we pass them on to the next generation think of Abraham God promised him that he would birth a nation that through him all people would be blessed there's that old Sunday school song father Abraham had many sons really did he I mean when he died he basically had just one boy but the promise to Abraham is fulfilled in Isaac and in Jacob and so on and so on and we are a continuation of the fulfillment of that promise and we are to remember these promises when Nehemiah eventually goes to Jerusalem he is to rebuild the walls that had been destroyed by the Babylonians and he is to reform the community there and how does he do that well Nehemiah along with his contemporary Ezra Nehemiah and Ezra and the priests the rubble they gather the people in the middle of the city to listen to scripture being read out it's a public reading they read from the law of Moses to remind the people of God's promises to them the name Nehemiah means comforted by God and this is what happens when we read God's Word and we recall his promises to us because we begin to count the blessings and not the cost of our calling you see Nehemiah was called with a cost he says I was cut bearer to the king the historian herodotus writes how the cupbearer in the court of King octazooka sees to you and me sounds like a waiter right he just paused the drinks but no no the cup bearer stood next to the king he was asked his opinion he gave advice into the Kings ear Herodotus explains how after the princes themselves the cup bearer was the most influential person in the court in other words Nehemiah quite literally had the best job in the world and he was in the palace in Sousa at the epicenter of the global superpower of his day he was safe and he was living in luxury he was in a palace I mean this was not hotel homey on Jan and MB 25 regular room this was the Palace of King Artaxerxes and what was he called to do leave the best job in the world leave the security and luxury of the palace and go to Jerusalem that was completely unsafe the walls were broken they were vulnerable to the attacking ammonites and what was he to do what seemed to be an impossible job to regather the people and rebuild the walls he was going to face opposition both external and internal but what does Jeremiah say not worries me now he holds on to the blessings that God has promised him and his forebears and there is power in the promises of God for your life in my life if you remember anything from the message today it would be this lay hold of God's promises and let them lay hold of you and it will radically transform your life a few years ago I was a part of a mission team going for a week mission to a town in the north of England and for a couple of days we were paired up - and - and sent out in in pairs the guy I was paired up with I didn't know him his name was Chris lamb Brioni and you know I was wanting to get to know him so I thought what shall I say oh I know so I said Chris so tell me how did you become a Christian and he said oh I became a Christian when I was in prison I said prison he said yeah prison and I did what you should never do with obviously an ex-convict I then said well what were you in prison for yeah hoping it was speeding or tax evasion or something like that and he goes oh I was in prison for aiding and abetting murder murder somewhat optimistically I said I suppose it was you were innocent he said no completely guilty I was thinking this is not going to go well you know hello my name is miles this is my murderous friend Chris can we tell you about Jesus or else yeah well he told me what had happened you see he had been the henchmen of well actually the most the two most famous criminals England has ever produced since Jack the Ripper they're called the Kray brothers the Kray brothers were the gangster kingpins of London and Chris worked for them and the Kray brothers wanted to get rid of a rival gangster called Jack the Hat honestly this is true it sounds like I'm making it up right this is what happened in England people go round with names like Jack the Hat so they wanted to get rid of Jack the Hat so they did they bumped him off and then they asked Chris to get rid of the body so Chris had disposed of the body but he'd then been eventually caught by the police sentence and imprisoned for aiding and abetting the murder of Jack the Hat and he would told me how you know it was pretty low at the moment when I in this story when he told me this I thought oh my goodness but he then told me how he did encountered Jesus you see he said in prison he was such a violent guy he did often move him some from cell-to-cell he said this one day they just locked him in this new cell and he said miles this rage came over me and I started to trash the room he said I smashed up the chair then he said I went to the bed he said I overturned the bed and he said there under the bed was a box full of books and he said I started to just throw the books all around the room and he said I picked up the very last book in the box he said I went to throw it he said for some reason he said it was like it was glued to my hand he thought was this he said I looked he said I saw it was the Bible he said I opened the Bible I said I'll look down and there he said these words jumped off the page at me he said it was the promise of Jesus in John 10 verse 10 I have come that you might have life and life in all of its fullness he said it was like that promise grabbed him by the heart he said somehow I just knew in that moment that that promise was for me Wow I thought this is going to go well after all claim the promises of God in your life lay hold them today and let them lay hold of you so how do we live lives of influence well we start from the heart ask the Holy Spirit to give you a renewed passion to feel again pray don't delay when we pray things happen confess the mess enter into that intimate accepting love of the Father again and don't forget to remember remember the promises of God for you and your life and then finally we see in the life of Nehemiah this gem however big the challenge that you are facing remember that God is bigger verse 11 he finishes his prayer with these words to God he says give your servant success today by granting him favor in the presence of this man this man was the king of Persia King Artaxerxes the most powerful man on the planet are not particularly pleasant either sort of a cross between Barack Obama and Kim jong-un but Nehemiah understood that King Artaxerxes was just a man and he understood that God is God so in chapter 2 the next chapter he goes to the king and asks him to allow him to return to Jerusalem to rebuild it now this was a risky thing to do because of just a few years previously a small group of people had tried to begin to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem and the King had powerfully stopped them so it was risky but the Lord grants nehemiah favor and the King send Nehemiah to Jerusalem as governor of Judah where he'd served for 12 years and it gives him these papers showing his approval for the project and also giving Nehemiah access to Royal timber so that when he gets to Jerusalem he's able to rebuild the walls of the city in just 52 days in the book of Revelation the city of Jerusalem is a picture of the church which is the body of Christ all of God's promises are yes in Christ Jesus it's all about Jesus he is the fulfill and the fulfillment he is the sum and substance of all of God's promises and whatever you're facing he will see you through with a great big amen amen you

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Keywords: Holy Trinity Bukit Bintang, HTBB, Holy, Trinity, Bukit, Bintang, Bukit Bintang, Church, KL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, God, Jesus, Gospel, Christ, Jesus Christ, Bible, Book Of Nehemiah (Religious Text)

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Length: 42min 39sec (2559 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 21 2015