Reading:
Nehemiah 1:4-11.
It seems to me as though
this prayer can be gathered up in six different features,
or characteristics, and you may discover what they are as
we read together. "And it came to pass, when I heard
these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned
certain days; and I fasted and prayed before the God of
heaven". Wept; mourned; fasted. That is
certainly anguish, passion, travail; but it is the first
feature of intercessory prayer. That is where all
intercessory prayer begins, in a state of heart like
that. We have spent some time in seeking to make clear
that everything in the Book of Nehemiah is a result of
this passion, this concern for the Lord's interests; that
it all comes out of prayer; and that prayer is the prayer
of travail. We have to stop every time and ask ourselves
first of all, 'Does the spiritual state amongst the
Lord's people give us deep heart sorrow? Have we ever
wept for the testimony? Have we ever mourned over
spiritual conditions of the Lord's people?'
Knowing
the Lord
Now the next thing,
verse five: "And said, I beseech Thee, O Lord, the
God of heaven, the great and terrible God, that keepeth
covenant and mercy with them that love Him and keep His
commandments". What does that represent? Here is a
very important law operating in true intercessory prayer;
a knowledge of the Lord; that is, knowing the Lord;
knowing what kind of God we are dealing with. You will
find that as this prayer develops, that knowledge of the
Lord comes out much more fully, for Nehemiah takes the
Lord back to His own word in the Book of Deuteronomy, and
shows that what the Lord had said then to His people has
literally come to pass here, and he bases his prayer upon
that. What the Lord said in effect was: 'If you forsake
My commandments I will scatter you among the nations, and
you shall be no people to Me', and Nehemiah says: 'You
keep covenant'. 'Moreover, You said that if we came back
to Your commandments You would re-gather us' (Deut. 28:64
to 30:13). You see he knows the Lord. There is passion,
anguish, travail, but he knows the Lord; that is the
background.
Persistence
"Let Thine ear now
be attentive, and Thine eyes open, that Thou mayest
hearken unto the prayer of Thy servant, which I pray
before Thee at this time, day and night, for the children
of Israel Thy servants, while I confess the sins of the
children of Israel..." (Neh. 1:6). Let us look at
the central clause: "... which I pray before Thee...
day and night". That is persistence in prayer,
perseverance; if you like - importunity. It represents
the unwillingness to let this matter pass lightly, to let
it be taken without seriousness; it means that he is
holding on to God about this thing. Of course, much more
may gather round it, but intercessory prayer is not a
thing which is fulfilled by rushing into the presence of
God, saying something, and rushing out again.
Intercessory prayer which brings in the Lord's purpose is
something which is a continuous burden, day and night.
Here, again, our hearts
are greatly challenged I am sure. I do not know how many
will be able to stand up to this challenge. That is for
us to decide before the Lord, as to whether, in waking
moments in the night, spontaneously our heart goes out to
the Lord; it may be only a sentence, only a cry, but it
represents the fact that that is our ever-present burden,
that that thing is there all the time. You might think of
a thousand and one other things when you wake up in the
night, but the first thing is a heart travail to the Lord
concerning His interests, His testimony: "... which
I pray... day and night"; this thing is ever
present. There is persistence, continuation. That is a
feature of true intercessory prayer, that we have
travail, and we have understanding or knowledge of the
Lord, and then we have persistence or importunity.
Vicarious
Repentance
Now we go to the next
thing in verse 6: "... while I confess the sins of
the children of Israel, which we have sinned
against Thee. Yea, I and my father's house have
sinned" (6b). Identification is in confession of
this kind. When a man is found confessing what is not
wholly his responsibility, something for which many
others are responsible as well as himself; when he is
confessing it as though it is his sin, that is
identification; and when it is confession of this kind,
it is acknowledgment, and it is repentance. So I think we
may speak of this as the feature of confession. If we
were using a phrase instead of a word, we would speak of
vicarious repentance, repenting in the behalf of others.
But confession is sufficient, it carries with it all
that.
We have tried to tell
ourselves in this message that we must not regard
ourselves as something apart from the rest, some thing
that is detached, and that looks on at things in any kind
of judging, condemning, critical way, as though we had no
part in it; but, being members of one Body, if one member
suffers all the members suffer with it, and the suffering
is the suffering of the whole Body. With Christ I am
quite sure that is true, that He suffers in the measure
in which any part of His Body comes short, because He
needs the whole Body, in fullness, for the fullness of
His expression and realization. So that He suffers, and
if the Body is in any part coming short we are suffering
in the suffering of Christ. Is not that what the Apostle
meant when he said he was filling up that which was
lacking of the sufferings of Christ? That is real
intercession; prayer of confession and identification.
Faith
in God's Word
"Remember, I
beseech Thee, the word that Thou commandest Thy servant
Moses, saying, 'If ye trespass, I will scatter you abroad
among the peoples: but if ye return unto Me, and keep My
commandments and do them... yet will I gather them...
bring them unto the place that I have chosen, to cause
My name to dwell there"' (Neh. 1:8, 9). What
I saw in this word was faith, because it is bringing
God's Word as the basis, taking up a position in God's
Word and saying: 'I believe that, I stand on that'. You
find so often that is the ground of effectual prayer.
I was impressed the
other day in reading Psalm 119, and underlined the
occurrence of that phrase: "according to Thy
word". "Quicken Thou me according to Thy
word"; "Strengthen Thou me according to Thy
word"; and so on. David was pleading with God on the
ground of His Word, and fastening his faith in God. God
and His Word are alike, they are immutable; they are
unchangeable; they are established and faithful, and if
we can come with the Word of God under our feet, we have
a ground of confidence; the ground of a sure faith, and
it would be a very good thing for us to be more exercised
along that line - "Quicken Thou me according to Thy
word". That is faith in God's Word; the Lord honours
that, and when we come to Him we should have a ground of
confidence.
Now Nehemiah is simply
bringing the Lord to His own Word, and oh, how true it
was to the Word of God! Turn to Isaiah 58. Now Isaiah
lived long before Nehemiah's day (the arrangement of
books, of course, may throw you out in that, but he was
long before Nehemiah's time) and Isaiah spoke this word:
"If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke,
the putting forth of the finger... If thou turn away thy
foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy
day", etc. Then what? "... thou shalt be
called, The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths
to dwell in". That is Nehemiah. Well, Nehemiah
brought the Lord to His Word, and the Lord actually
fulfilled Isaiah 58, through Nehemiah. You see that is
the ground, pleading the Word in faith.
Utter
Surrender
Now finally in verse 11:
"0 Lord, I beseech Thee, let now Thine ear be
attentive to the prayer... of Thy servants... who delight
to fear Thy name..." The fear of the Lord, when you
study it in light of the whole Word of God, simply means
that you utterly yield yourself to God's will; that God's
will takes pre-eminence; and when the Lord Jesus said:
"Father... remove this cup... nevertheless not My
will, but Thine, be done" (Luke 22:42), He "was
heard in that He feared" (Heb. 5:7b). That was utter
and absolute surrender to the will of God whatever the
cost; that is the fear of the Lord, the beginning of
wisdom.
Here then, as the
central thing in this eleventh verse, you have delight in
the Lord. You can use one word, either abandonment or
consecration, whichever you prefer. Hear the prayer of
Thy servants "who delight to fear Thy name".
That is abandonment to the Lord, consecration to the
Lord; and we know quite well that in intercessory prayer
we never get through until we come to that place where
everything that is personal, our own delight and
satisfaction, is set aside and the Lord's interests alone
govern our hearts.
There is, I think, a
transcendent cry in this prayer; and for true
intercessory prayer we must come to that place. You have
prayed, you have been importunate, persistent,
passionate, travailing, and you have stood upon God's
Word, and yet withal there may be some little fragment of
your own desire that gives heat to the travail. However
right your position may be as to the Word, the Lord has
to wait until every bit of personal interest has been
ruled right out, and then when we come down to the
place where it is true that it is only the Lord's good
pleasure that is in view and that the Lord can do what He
wills, all the desire is that His will shall be done and
our delight is in Him, to fear His Name, to be utterly
abandoned to His will, then we have a clear way with the
Lord, we are then through in the spirit of prayer.
You see we get so far
and the last thing the Lord has to say to us is: 'Are you
in this? Have you some personal interest in this matter?'
Then our hearts have to be searched as to whether it is
our own desire or whether after all it is only the Lord's
personal pleasure and delight, and if the thing we ask is
not for the Lord's pleasure we do not want it. When we
come there we have a clear way and the prayer is
complete.
So you see we have a
model prayer of intercession here, and you will be able
to understand by this little analysis what we meant when
we said that in order for the ejaculatory prayers to be
effectual - those ejaculatory prayers that come out later
- there must be this deeper background of prayer where
everything is like this. You construct all other prayer
upon this foundation, and because this is the foundation,
all other prayer is here. Everything has been sifted out
beforehand.
I trust this meditation
will bring to our hearts anew the Lord's desire that the
instrument to be used in a peculiar way for His
satisfaction shall be a prayer instrument after this
sort. Everything that is brought to us by way of light
has to be prayed in and prayed out; prayer has to be
behind and before in the fulfilment of our ministry.
The Lord write that
in our hearts.