Nehemiah's prayer
“They are your servants and your people, whom you redeemed by your great strength and your mighty hand. 11 O Lord, let your ear be attentive to the prayer of 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 cupbearer to the king.
Nehemiah’s deep feelings, which may be hard for us to understand, were based on the fact that God had chosen a specific people, a specific land, and a special city as the scene of his actions to provide salvation for the whole world. There was only one chosen people from whom the Savior could be born as the seed of Abraham and David, namely, Israel. Jesus himself referred to this when he said, “Salvation is from the Jews” (John 4:22). There was only one Promised Land—God’s plan had to
Bethlehem and Jerusalem as the prophets had foretold (Micah 5:2; Zechariah 9:9). There was only one city— Jerusalem—where the sacrifices that pointed to the coming Savior could be offered. Nehemiah’s love for the Lord and his hope of salvation could not be separated from his loyalty and love for the people, the land, and the city that God had chosen.
Today the true worship of God is no longer limited to one people or to any special place. “A time is coming,” predicted Jesus, “when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem . . . when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth” (John 4:21,23). There still is a special people of God, the church of all believers. This church is sometimes called God’s Israel, his new Jerusalem. We should feel the same bonds of love for God’s people today, as Nehemiah did in his day. We can no more separate our love for God from love for his people than Nehemiah could. After all, “since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11).
Nehemiah’s prayer also reveals that he was a student of Scripture. The language of his prayer reflects the history of Israel and the promises of God as they were revealed in Scripture. The exodus, when God redeemed Israel from Egypt with his mighty hand and made them his chosen people, was the basis for Nehemiah’s hope in the present difficulties. The middle part of his prayer echoed the warnings and promises recorded in Deuteronomy. The book of Deuteronomy must have been especially meaningful to believers in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah because it not only threatened the exile but also promised the return that they were experiencing. For example, Deuteronomy 30:4 states, “Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the LORD your God will gather you and bring you back.”
In his prayer Nehemiah showed that although he was a servant of the king of Persia, he was first of all a servant of God. The king of Persia was a powerful world ruler, but in this matter he was no more than “this man.” For all his power, he was still a man, not a god. Like everything else in this universe, he was subject to the God of heaven and earth. Nehemiah put his trust not in men but in the one true God, who always cares for his people.
If this prayer tells us a lot about Nehemiah, it also reveals a lot about God. He is the God of power, who rules and controls everything. The God of heaven, who rules the stars and planets, would have no trouble controlling a puny king, whose vast empire is like a drop in the bucket compared to the vastness of the universe. The Lord is great and awesome in his power. He is also awesome in his holiness. The threats of his law are not to be trifled with or despised. Israel had ignored the warnings given through Moses and had suffered the threatened devastation and exile. Now the nation was again flirting with disaster. The people needed to take warning from the way in which God had fulfilled his threats in the past, lest they provoke the awesome God by continued sin and impenitence.
In the 2,500 years that have passed since Nehemiah’s time, God has not changed. Nor will he ever. He is still holy and awesome. He still threatens those who despise his Word. “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31), “for our ‘God is a consuming fire’” (Hebrews 12:29). We need to take warning so we don’t repeat Israel’s ingratitude and disobedience. But, above all, we need to remember that God is faithful to his covenant of love. He has made a covenant—that is, a promise, a commitment—to forgive our sins. “This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel. . . . I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:33,34). God will never break that promise; it rests on his own truthfulness and on the completed work of Christ. When in weakness we sin, we can confess our sins as Nehemiah did. And we can enjoy the same confidence of forgiveness he had. This is possible because our confidence does not depend on our own achievements but on the promises of God.