The stage is set. The actors are all in place. Nehemiah has finally come to the moment he’s been working towards as he’s prayed and fasted over the previous days or weeks.
Nehemiah enters, stage right, with the jug of wine for the king, as he does every day. But unlike every other day before this, this time his face is downcast. It was, of course, palace protocol that those who served the king should always appear happy in his presence. He had enough to worry about without having servants bringing a cloud of gloom over the royal proceedings. So Nehemiah is taking a big risk by letting his feelings show so openly.
If you were here last week you’ll remember that I talked about how, as Nehemiah had prayed and fasted God had put a plan in his mind; a plan to do something about the situation in Jerusalem. I pointed out that Nehemiah was first and foremost a man of prayer. But what we discover today is that he was also a strategic thinker, a leader who was able to think through the possibilities and come up with an approach that would overcome the hurdles in his way. And enhancing those two characteristics, his prayerfulness and his strategic thinking, was a strong faith in God. There’s been a debate in the church over the past 30 or 40 years about the place of management techniques, strategic thinking, the focus on efficiency, etc., in the leadership of the church. Countless books have been written on Christian leadership using secular management principles. And some people have criticised this approach as being too based on secular principles, preferring a more “spiritual” approach of waiting on God to show us the way. But here in Nehemiah we find that both approaches go hand in hand. Nehemiah prays at length for God’s guidance, but then he uses his mind to think through what steps he should take. In fact we see in this chapter three elements to Nehemiah’s approach to leadership.
1 Forethought in Prayer.
We noted last week that Nehemiah spends a long period of time in prayer and fasting, praying and listening to God. As he does so he comes up with a plan. It’s not a foolproof plan, mind you. As I just said it involves considerable risk. That’s why he prays that God would grant him mercy in the sight of the king. He doesn’t know how the king will respond. It could be the end of his career; but he trusts that God will clear the way for him to make his request.
And so the drama unfolds. “2So the king said to me, ‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This can only be sadness of the heart.’” Suddenly his heart is racing. His ploy has worked but it still isn’t clear whether the king is concerned for him or angry with him. In fact he says “Then I was very much afraid.” No doubt, as he’s tossed this plan around in his mind over the preceding weeks, he’s realised that there are two ways this could go. It could mean the end for him, literally, or it could result in the king giving him what he’s after.
So he says to the king: “3May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my ancestors’ graves, lies waste, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” No doubt these are words he’s rehearsed many times as he’s thought about what might happen here. But notice that there’s nothing manipulative in the way he speaks. Rather he’s straightforward and honest. There’s no political manoeuvring, no appeal to the king’s vanity or political interests. He just says what’s on his heart. There a certain honest integrity in the way he begins to present his case that the king responds to.
He says “What is it you want?” You can imagine Nehemiah taking a deep breath at that point. So far so good, he’s no doubt thinking. At that point he could have jumped in with his requests in a burst of self-confidence, but no, he remembers that his success is still dependent on God and so he prays what we call a bullet prayer to God for his continued help. Then he makes his request.
He asks that he be sent to Jerusalem so that he might rebuild it. If you think about it, it’s an audacious request isn’t it? He wants to rebuild the city that a few centuries before was the major power base of the region, that resisted the power of the Assyrians for years. Yet the king agrees. All he wants to know is how long it’ll take before he’ll be back.
Now at this point it’s worth stopping to think about the way Nehemiah has thought all of this through. He’s worked out roughly how long it will take, so he has an answer for the king. He’s thought out how he’ll get the king to raise the subject in the first place. And he’s even thought about the setting for this little drama.
Notice how he mentions in v6 that the queen was sitting beside the king. This isn’t a moment when the king’s busy with affairs of state, because then the queen wouldn’t be present. No it’s one of the more relaxed moments in the king’s life. In fact he may have decided that the queen would be a softening influence on the king.
But there’s more evidence of his forethought as we read on. He hasn’t been praying mindlessly all this time. No, as he’s prayed he’s been thinking through what’s involved in this major enterprise. He’ll need significant resources to do what needs to be done. No doubt Hanani has told him about the opposition of the surrounding tribes so he knows he’ll need letters of authority from the king if he’s going to succeed. So that’s what he asks for. Letters of safe passage to the governors of the province and requisitions for timber from the king’s forests so he can build a residence and rebuild the city gates.
And the king gives him everything he asks for. Why? Because the hand of the Lord was upon him. He never forgets that it’s God who grants him success.
And so off he goes, accompanied by a troop of the king’s cavalry to keep him safe. He arrives in Jerusalem and as he suspected, the officials, Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite are none too happy about it. They have no desire for Jerusalem and its people to be restored.
2 Research
So Nehemiah has come this far as a result of prayerful forethought. He’s worked out what he thinks is needed and how to achieve it and so far it’s worked well.
But forward planning isn’t enough. He needs to know how things actually stand on the ground. So three days after he arrives, before he’s told anyone what he’s really here for, he goes out on a reconnaissance mission. He does it secretly, in the middle of the night. He goes out with a few of his men and rides around the city to inspect the walls and gates. What he finds must have been discouraging though mustn’t it? At one point he finds he can’t even get past the piles of rubble from the wall and has to go up the valley some way.
You can see the wisdom of this man can’t you? He knows it’s a big job he’s embarking on, long before he gets there. But it isn’t until he’s actually inspected the walls that he can know just how big a job it is. We’ve already seen that he’s a deeply spiritual man, dependent on God for all he does, but that doesn’t mean that he can ignore the facts of the situation. The facts are critical to what he’s about to do. He needs to understand what it is he’s up against.
And it isn’t just for his own information that he does his research. Have you thought about why he goes out in secret? Why doesn’t he invite the leaders of the city to come with him?
Well, let me suggest that he does it in secret because he knows people. He knows that one of the greatest barriers to what he’s about to suggest is getting the other Jews motivated to join in.
3 Motivating the Uncommitted
Have you ever been in the situation where you’ve wanted to make a change and the response has been something like “Yes, but we’ve tried that before and it hasn’t worked”? Or “Last time we tried that it was a disaster.” You can imagine the people of Jerusalem pointing out that the last time they tried rebuilding the walls, the locals had come in the dead of night and pulled them down and burnt down the gates. They’d no doubt point out that the walls were far too long to repair all at once and it’d take far too much in the way of resources to manage it, not to mention the amount of rubble that needed to be cleared away before they could even begin. Besides which they were doing OK without the walls being repaired. And so on.
But Nehemiah understands people. He realises what the immediate response will be. So he first checks his facts. I imagine he’d have made a long list of the sections of the wall that needed to be repaired. It may even be that the men he took with him on his midnight ramble included some who had some knowledge of building.
But then he assembles the leaders of the people and lays before them, first the facts, then his proposal, then his own experience of the grace of God.
First though, he addresses them as fellow citizens. He hasn’t come from Susa as the expert, telling them what they need to do. He’s a fellow Jew who cares as much about the city of God as they do. But neither does he pretend that things are OK. He speaks plainly about their situation: “17Then I said to them, ‘You see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.’” They know this of course, but sometimes it helps to put things into words. Good leadership doesn’t downplay the seriousness of the situation when things are going wrong. That just makes things worse. That school in the western suburbs that’s just gone into receivership has done so partly because the leadership kept its situation secret. Had they admitted that they had a multimillion dollar deficit earlier maybe something could have been done about it, but too often management won’t admit the trouble they’re getting into until it’s too late.
Ironically naming the difficulties you face can actually raise people’s confidence that they can overcome them. If the leader isn’t afraid to admit they have a problem then maybe there’s a way out. He doesn’t give them false hope but he does say there’s a way they can overcome their situation. He lays the situation out before them and then he suggests they work together to do something about it.
He says: “17Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem, so that we may no longer suffer disgrace." The ‘we’ there is significant isn’t it? They’re all in this together. Either they’ll succeed together of suffer together. Good leaders are those who enter into the work with their people; who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty and we’ll hear more about that next time.
But he also reminds them that they’re not on their own. He tells them how he’s got to this stage: “18I told them that the hand of my God had been gracious upon me, and also the words that the king had spoken to me.” Sometimes we need to be reminded that it isn’t just up to us. We need to look back at the way God has helped us in the past. As a child I was taught an old chorus that went like this: “Count your blessings, name them one by one, and it will surprise you what the Lord has done.” Here at St Thomas’ we can look back on so many things that the Lord has done for us. Even in the short time that I’ve been here we’ve seen amazing steps forward: people coming to faith; people growing in their ministry to one another; people caring for one another in times of stress or illness; 2 churches merged into a cohesive parish unit; ministry to a range of ages and cultural groups; we might even have a brand new building by the early next year. It helps to think back on those sorts of blessings when we’re thinking about the future isn’t it?
And that’s what Nehemiah does. He knows how God has smoothed his path so far and he tells them about it.
I remember being at a leadership seminar many years ago and begin told that one of the keys to success in leadership in the area of innovation is a non-rational conviction of success. The people who make the great breakthroughs often do so despite the doubters who say it can’t be done. And Nehemiah is a bit like that. I’m sure there were plenty of people in Jerusalem who would have thought “He’s dreamin’.” But in fact his belief in their success wasn’t non-rational. It was firmly based on what he knew of God and what he’d experienced so far. We saw last week the that his God was the one who created universe. He’d seen what had happened with his approach to the king and so he had the firm conviction that they could do it, no matter how big the task seemed at first.
And his confidence was rewarded by the response of the other leaders. "Let us start building!" they say. And they take their lead from Nehemiah. Just as he’s identified himself with the people of Jerusalem, so now the leaders commit themselves to the common good. And the passage finishes with Nehemiah’s response to Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem: “The God of heaven is the one who will give us success, and we his servants are going to start building; but you have no share or claim or historic right in Jerusalem.” This could almost be their motto couldn’t it: “The God of heaven will give us success.”
As I said last week Nehemiah’s confidence as a leader springs from his knowledge of God and his trust that God will keep the promises he’s made to his people and that sort of confidence is contagious. The people are motivated and the work will start immediately.
