Nehemiah’s heart was touched by God for Jerusalem. He got a vision to build. He rallied the people and built. Maybe God will help us practically if we can see His bigger purpose. The good hand of God is upon us. Nehemiah 2:1-3, 11-20

Speaker(s): Thomas Schaller, Barry Quirk
Sermon 12372
7:00 PM on 9/14/2022

P. Schaller –

wasn’t that beautiful. It was awesome. Yes, Lord, I believe. Lord, I believe. Wow. Thanks, P. Barry. That was
so edifying. You have such an edifying spirit, doesn’t he? He is so edifying. Thank you, Lord.
Wow. That’s so good. Wow. That’s precious.

Do we have any new folks here tonight visiting us for the first time? We just want to recognize
you and just thank you. Here’s over here. Very nice to have you here. God bless you. God bless
you. Beautiful. Okay. So, we’ll have a message. So, I like you to just stand for a moment and
look around. Maybe somebody is near you. You haven’t seen them or you want to pray with
them for a moment and kind of bless people in the room. Go ahead and do that. Bless people in
the room.

Okay. You may be seated. You may be seated. Yes. It’s great to have Bill Alexson here and
Valerie and Brandon and the family. P. Bill was in Georgia. That’s not the state of Georgia but
the country with a basketball project. Wow. I’m amazed at how you just keep going. Cause
you’re how old? 70 what? 75. You’re putting P. Scibelli to shame. He’s over here! Okay, so.
That’s amazing. You just keep going. Wow. It’s so edifying. I saw somebody else. Just thinking
about, you know, amazing, precious lives of faith.

Here we go. Nehemiah, chapter 2. I want to just stir your heart for a few minutes tonight
because this chapter is a lesson for us. Oh, my daughter Bethany is back. She’s been out with,
been away for a couple weeks. I saw here come in. I forgot who I was thinking of and now I
remember. Bethany, wow, and John and the Odahara family. They are just blessed people. Bob
Colban and Crissy were in France and they’re back from France. Wow. It’s precious.

One of our messages here we said life can be something like this. This is a box. My life is like my
world. My world. It’s Jesse Waters on Fox News. What is it? Jesse’s world or something? Waters
World. But I don’t watch. I don’t know what we are talking about! My world and my world and
when life hurts, when life hurts, it’s so easy to turn inward and feel it and struggle with life in
your world.

But you are born of God and you have the Spirit of God and a new heart and you have God
leads you in the knowledge of God. That is our treasure in life to have the knowledge of God.
This world with God is actually bigger than ours. We have ours in a practical way but we have
the gift of a godly imagination which we’ll talk about in a few minutes. We have the gift of
dreaming. Remember Joseph was in Egypt and his brothers before he went to Egypt he was a
dreamer. They said what will this dreamer say? But Joseph’s dream the particular one was
accurate. It was from God. Sometimes our dreams the things that God puts in our hearts
actually happen. They are from God. They actually are from God. What God puts in your heart
and your life by faith in God and worship him and he will lead you, open doors and close doors.
You might say, yeah, but that hasn’t happened for me. But I want to help you with that because

there is the reality of God’s heart and mind for all of us and it’s bigger than us. It’s more than
us. It’s more than our trouble. It’s more than broken relationships or a broken heart or a sick
child or a problem with my life or my pain. So, that’s what this chapter I want you to see
something in the chapter.

We can say using this picture that Nehemiah was the king’s cupbearer and he had his life. This
is in the beginning of the chapter. We want to truncate the text a little bit because we can’t
read the whole chapter. Look at vs. 1. Why was Nehemiah sad but because of the news that he
had gotten from Jerusalem that the city had been burnt down, the gates had been burnt. The
wall broken down. People scattered. A few poor peasants living in the land. Very little going on.
He had it in his heart. He had something in his heart bigger than his life. And bigger than the
bad news. God put it in his heart. He was sad and the king said in vs. 2-3.

We could in a similar say that we are sad about things that we see in Baltimore City, in the state
of Maryland, in our country. No, in the world. In Afghanistan. In Laos. In other parts of the
world. Third world people living in destitution and poverty. People that have never heard about
Jesus. So, we have things that we can think about. The question is really what this bigger world
is really the Holy Spirit and the Bible, the Word, and the Body of Christ help me. The Body of
Christ help me see. Helps me provokes me in my faith. Because one way to get out of our life is
faith. For we walk by faith. So, we come by faith. We think about it. This is what happened to
him.

We’ll skip down to vs. 11. This is Nehemiah. He was given permission. He got letters. He got
permission to travel through areas where what we would say is over in Iraq in that area. Travel
across what is called the Mesopotamian crescent up through the rivers down through Syria,
down through that area and then into Jerusalem. This is what I want to touch your heart. Vs.
12. He kept it quiet, but he started to walk around the city and look and think about it. This is
where I believe that in our life that this has happened where we started to think about the
bigger picture. Where is God in this world? What is he doing? What does he want to do?
There is the question of our immediate life, but then there is more. What’s happening? What’s
on God’s heart? What does he want to do? He didn’t talk about it. He just went with a few men
at night, at night so nobody could really see him. He went there at night but it was something in
his spirit and in his heart.

I remember P. Tree telling me – we’re talking years ago. He said for me, if I have some free
hours, I like to get a stack of National Geographic magazines and sit in a chair with a cup of
coffee and go through the magazines and look at the pictures of people who don’t have Christ.
People in India and Africa and other parts of the world that don’t have Christ and to pray that
God would send laborers into the fields. Yeah, but P. Tree, – many of us know who he was – isn’t one of your ships sinking in the harbor? You know.

Don’t you have problems of your own? Yes, but this is my faith. This is my godly imagination.
Maybe God could use me. Maybe you and I could somehow get excited in our heart about
praying for sick people and they being healed. Why not? Jesus told us that. So, these are things
of the heart.

Go to the verse there. Vs. 13-14. Everything broken down. Charred, burnt, broken down. I can’t
get through with the donkey. I have to get off the donkey. I think the meaning there is it’s so
bad, but it’s not stopping me because it's in my heart. God has put it in my heart. It’s not
something you can evaluate humanely. It’s something God put in our hearts you know. That’s a
beautiful thing isn’t it?

Lord, please put things in our hearts. They don’t have to be reasonable. Like this world here is a
world of reason and reasonableness and practicality and common sense. This is faith like a
poster on the wall by faith. Like a map of the world by faith. Like National Geographic by faith.
Like googling something by faith and praying and thinking about it and maybe God will do it.
This is what he’s doing here.

Look at vs. 15. He is telling us that he’s relaxed, taking time. He’s heartbroken about it. He’s
thinking about it and he’s looking to God for this thing. Is God in it? Is God in it?
Remember P. Ed Canino who we love very much and he had a vision back in the 1980’s to have
a ship for the Caribbean. He found a ship in Norway and Ulla and a team sailed the ship. It was a
ferry for the fiords in Norway, but they took it across the Atlantic Ocean. They brought it to
Baltimore. It was I think $30,000, not that expensive. It was faith without any money and just
doing it by faith and bringing medicine and wheelchairs to the missionaries to the islands in the
Caribbean. It really happened.

What can happen when we are living with something bigger than us? Maybe God will help us
with our practical life if our hearts could get bigger to contain what he is wanting. Why we are
here. Why are we in the city of Baltimore? Why are we living in the United States of America in
the end days? Why are we in world missions? Why do we have a school? Why do we have a
Bible school? Why do we lead people in faith? Cause God gave it to us. God gave it to the
church, the Body. God gave it to us to think about it and actually walk in it.

Vs. 16. Do you know what they might have done? What are you doing here? Get out of here.
You have no right to be here. Who are you? Go back home. This is the way it is. This is – we’re
in charge. We’re in charge here. Leave us alone. It’s going to stay a ruin.

Like the devil would like to say that about Jerusalem. It will stay a ruin. No Jews here. No Jews
allowed. Go back home. Get out of here, but they didn’t know about it. God doesn’t always tell evil men what we are doing. God doesn’t always let the world understand and know what God
is doing. God is at work in everyday life and very importantly in our hearts.

We will finish in a minute. Vs. 16.-18. Look at vs. 18 and read it to your neighbor. Would you do
it for a moment right now? Vs. 18. Let’s say it together. Vs. 18. Then I told them of the hand of
my God which was good upon me. Then I told them. Hey, don’t ever give up on what God wants
to do with you. Don’t ever give up on what God wants to do with you. This world, this world
that you are in, there’s trouble. But don’t give up on seeing how good God is towards you. The
good hand of God is upon you. It is. The good hand of God is upon you. That’s all you are
hearing from him. The good hand of God is upon you. Then I told them of the good hand of God
that was upon me. Wow! What a word that is.

Carry it in your spirit and in your heart. Carry it in your prayer. Carry it in your heart. Carry it in
your words, what you say, what you are thinking about. Talk in terms of faith. Carry it in your
heart. Then I told them. He got it. He understood it. He was different. He had something from
the Holy Spirit that he knew. As he went he said the hand of God was upon me. It’s a good hand
of God upon me, on my heart and this is what I’m going to do. This is what I believe God wants
me to do.

Notice the whole thing because it’s contrast with the world doesn’t know what he is thinking.
The world does not understand what he’s thinking. I think many of us could tell stories about
these things where you just say in your heart you’re walking the dog at night and you say in
your heart, Lord, I want more. I don’t know what you are doing but I’m with you. I will trust
you.

Remember D. L. Moody was with some disciples and they said you really are obedient to God.
He said, I will obey God with whatever he tells me to do. If he told me “to jump out that
window, I would do it.” It was like D.L. Moody. That surrender, that obedience, Spirit filling us is
a beautiful way of living and so you are saying I’m not going to measure my life by these things
but I’m going to take a three day walk after he had traveled a long distance. I’m going to walk
through Jerusalem and dream about it. We are going to build the wall and it doesn’t matter
what anybody says about it. It’s going to happen because the good hand of God is upon me.
Let’s finish the text. It says in vs. 18. They got it. He got a team.

They were on the same, in the same spirit just like us by God’s grace. We are a team of people. I don’t have the written text in front of me from a book I read today about this subject. This pastor in 1750 he gave a very good
message in Boston about obeying the government and disobeying the government. It was like a
very interesting subject. You are obedient, Rom. 13, but then he argued we are to be obedient
as Christians to the government, thinking about England who was ruling over the colonies. And
he said but we are not obeying tyrants. That went like wildfire through the colonies. Everybody
read the sermon. They said that the average colonist, a resident here, the average resident in the 13 colonies listened to 7,000 messages in his lifetime.

They listened to 7,000 messages in their lifetime. Isn’t that amazing? These people knew the Bible. They learned the Bible. They lived by faith in God and they built our country in those early years. That’s an amazing
testimony with love, with faith, not perfect and surely all the sins that could ever be committed
in the Bible were committed by all men at all times. I’m not saying anything about it like that,
but I am saying there had been people like Nehemiah that moved with God in something bigger
than themselves. And that’s a beautiful thing. I want to just stir your heart about it.

Then there is the next verse vs. 19. Who are the Horonites? It doesn’t sound good to me! Vs.
20. You don’t have anything to do with this. What we are doing, you don’t have anything to do
with it. What we are doing is from the good hand of our God that is upon us. What a beautiful
thing.

So, I hope that would encourage you and stir you as you think about your life. Don’t turn inward
with your life and I don’t believe you do. But we do. But I also say lift up the hands that hang
down. Find the will of God and do it. Lift up the hands that hang down and you have a job. Do
your job but then have a walk at night and have a dream in your heart for something bigger
than your job, bigger than your life. Have a walk with the dog. And have a walk and think about
it and dream about it, and maybe it will happen. Yeah. Okay. Amen. Would you pray with me,
please?

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