This article is based on Pastor Adrian Rogers' message, Calling America Back to God.
In Nehemiah’s time, the people of God had been carried away to a foreign land. Nehemiah was a government official in that land. He met a brother who had recently visited Jerusalem, and asked him, “How is the city of God?”
And they said to me, “The survivors who are left from the captivity in the province are there in great distress and reproach. The wall of Jerusalem is also broken down, and its gates are burned with fire.”
Walls are for protection, separation, and identification. Gates speak of freedom and liberty, and the gates of Jerusalem were symbolic of the glory of God. Now the gates were ash.
Can you apply that to America today?
Walls of separation and protection are broken down and it is open warfare on American Christians.
But the Bible says, “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you” (2 Corinthians 6:17). Freedom by freedom, truth by truth, we are losing the legacy that our founding fathers bought for us.
What do we need to do about it?
What did Nehemiah do?
Ask yourselves: What did it mean then? What does it mean in our day? What does it mean for you personally?
Nehemiah wanted to know the truth. Pray that the Holy Spirit will help you to see the truth today.
Because the walls have fallen, Hell is leveled against the homes of America. Decency has decayed. Every corner drugstore is an outlet for pornography. In our schools, prayer, the Ten Commandments and the Bible are out, and evolution, humanism, illicit sex, and abortion are in. That’s the United States of America.
We have ceased to be shocked. What was horrible yesterday is acceptable today and a stepping stone to something worse tomorrow.
Do we want the blessing of God on our nation and our leadership? Can God bless debauchery? We cannot tolerate that which is intolerable.
The first thing Nehemiah did was get this picture—Jerusalem’s walls broken down, God’s people living in survival mode—and it broke his heart.
So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
It is not enough to see the ruins; we need to weep over them.
Today, we are more interested in money, football, vacations, etc.—but America and the Church have forgotten how to weep.
Jeremiah wept over the people of his day. Jesus convulsed in sobs as He saw Jerusalem under impending judgment. (See Luke 19:41.) Your children, your city, your nation, the souls of men, and the trampled glory of God are worth weeping over.
The things that break the heart of Almighty God ought to break your heart.
Both my father’s house and I have sinned. We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses.
Nehemiah confessed both national sin and personal sin.
Many of us are glad to confess others’ sins. But God says:
“If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land” (2 Chronicles 7:14; emphasis added).
“For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God” (1 Peter 4:17a).
This has happened under our watch.
Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, “If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.”
All true prayer is based on confidence in the promise of God. Nehemiah is reminding God of His own Word. With God, there is always hope.
“Let Your servant prosper this day, I pray, and grant him mercy in the sight of this man.” For I was the king’s cupbearer.
Nehemiah was the king’s companion. He was about to take his job—even his life—in his hands, to ask the king for a favor. He was not content to just see the ruins and weep.
“Faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17b). Prayer should energize us to action.
“Now I had never been sad in his presence before. Therefore the king said to me, ‘Why is your face sad, since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart’” (Nehemiah 2:1b-2a).
You did not go into the king’s presence with tears. He had enough problems of his own.
So I became dreadfully afraid, and said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers’ tombs, lies waste, and its gates are burned with fire?” Then the king said to me, “What do you request?” So I prayed to the God of heaven.
Nehemiah is going to get help from King Artaxerxes, but he is really getting help from Almighty God. Nehemiah knew he needed three things. These are the same three things that you need, and America needs.
1. The King’s permission. “And I said to the king, ‘If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my fathers’ tombs, that I may rebuild it’” (Nehemiah 2:5).
Pray that the King of Kings would use you. God has chosen you. Come to the King and hear Him say, “I send you.”
2. The King’s protection. “Furthermore I said to the king, ‘If it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the River, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah’” (Nehemiah 2:7).
Nehemiah was going to be passing through hostile territory. So are we. We are pilgrims living now in Hell’s domain, and we desperately need the protection of God.
Nehemiah said to the king, “Would you write something for protection over me?” God has given us the same thing: His Word.
3. The King’s provision. “…And a letter to Asaph the keeper of the king’s forest, that he must give me timber…” And the king granted them to me according to the good hand of my God upon me” (Nehemiah 2:8).
That is, it was not Artaxerxes, but Almighty God who gave him provision. God’s work is never stopped because of insufficient funds, but because of insufficient obedience.
When we get serious about serving the God of Heaven, the King of Kings, we will have the King’s permission, protection, and provision for Christian America—and we will be able to get back to the job of rebuilding the walls, resetting the gates, and reclaiming that which the devil has taken.
Nehemiah 1, 2:1-8; 2 Corinthians 6:17; Luke 19:41; 2 Chronicles 7:14; 1 Peter 4:17; James 2:17
Yet the house of Israel says, ‘The way of the Lord is not fair.’ O house of Israel, is it not My ways which are fair, and your ways which are not fair? Therefore I will judge you, O house of Israel, every one according to his ways,” says the Lord GOD. “Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel?
“Now, therefore,” says the LORD, “Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning.” So rend your heart, and not your garments; return to the LORD your God, for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness; and He relents from doing harm.
Therefore bear fruits worthy of repentance, and do not think to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.
