Nehemiah 1 Devotional
by Pastor Lawrence
Similar to Esther and Mordecai serving under King Xerxes a few decades prior, Nehemiah also is serving in the same capital city of Susa in Persia but under Xerxes’ son, Artaxerxes. He is a cupbearer to the king and also stood in the presence of the queen which suggests that he likely was also a eunuch. The events recorded here in the first chapter took place in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes or 445 BC a full thirteen years after Ezra arrived in the Promised Land. As he is standing in the palace, a Jewish envoy arrives and gives a very discouraging report concerning the state of the people and the city gates in Jerusalem. Greatly moved by this report revealing how the Jews were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, Nehemiah turns to the Lord in prayer.
Similar to the prayer accounts found in Ezra 9:6-15 and Daniel 9:4-19, here we have a great model for prayer in terms of how to address God, how to confess our sins and how to offer up our petitions unto the Lord. You’ll notice that Ezra refers to himself and his fellow Israelites as God’s servants eight times in this prayer. Similar to the way he would approach the king of Persia, Nehemiah drew near to the King of Kings with great humility and reverence addressing him as “the Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God.” Clearly, Nehemiah understood that he was coming before one vastly superior to himself and phrased his words accordingly. Yet he also speaks to a very loving and covenant-keeping God who has made many precious promises to His people, and Nehemiah draws near to this God with confidence based upon that covenant and those promises that God would hear and heed his request accordingly.
Notice also how in approaching a holy God in this manner, Nehemiah is immediately cognizant of his own sinfulness and of the sinfulness of his people for whom he prays. Unlike the covenant-keeping God he is addressing, Israel has broken her covenant with the Lord on numerous occasions which has led to the many miseries they are now experiencing. So coming under that conviction, Nehemiah confesses his own sins along with the sins of his father’s house and the sins of the whole nation of Israel expressing how they all have acted corruptly in breaking God’s commandments. Although we probably don’t speak of our own corruption much, this is a very common word used in reference to sinful practices that speaks of our crookedness, depravity, and perversion. When we truly can appreciate the purity and holiness of God, we likewise have a much better understanding of our own corruption and grow in our hatred of it.
But notice how Nehemiah also claims the covenant promise of God in terms of renewal and restoration when God’s people turn away from their sin, so he takes hope here in God’s Word that the Lord will not only forgive but refresh His people with the many blessings that they enjoyed before in a right relationship with Him. He then reminds the Lord of how He had redeemed them out of the land of Egypt, once again claiming the covenant promises of God to protect and provide for His people in the past. So he pleads for a new display of this covenant love in the midst of their current miseries.
I love the way Nehemiah ends this prayer in terms of Israel’s identity. They are not merely a redeemed people or those who have entered into some contractual obligation with the Lord, but they are “servants who delight to fear your name.” Clearly, this prayer is an appeal based on so much more than mere debt or duty but one based upon a mutual love between God and His people and a mutual desire to see God and His people glorified in this generation.