| “And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire … O Lord, I beseech Thee, let now Thine ear be attentive to the prayer of Thy servant … and grant him mercy in the sight of this man [the king of Persia]. For I was the king’s cupbearer” (Nehemiah 1:3, 11). |
| We now come to Nehemiah, and he was quite a different man from Ezra. Nehemiah came back to the land of Israel a little later than Ezra, in 455 B.C. As we see from the first verse today, he was upset and felt sad because of the condition of the people back in Israel, and also because the wall of Jerusalem was broken down. It had been broken down for a long time, for the city of Jerusalem had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar away back in 588 B.C., more than 130 years before Nehemiah’s time. Nehemiah was so concerned that when he came into the presence of the king, the king noticed his sad face, and asked him about it. |
| Nehemiah was frightened, for the kings in those days had a rule, that no one was to come before them with a sad face. They wanted to see only happy faces. Also, Nehemiah had a very important place as the king’s cupbearer. That meant that he brought wine to the king on a regular basis. In modern times we do not have such a person in government, but in those days, it was a high position to be a cupbearer. His job was to taste all the wine that the king was to drink, and to make sure that no one had put poison into it. The king had to be able to trust this man completely, for poisoning was a favorite way of assassinating a king in those days. The king often confided in a man like this, and asked his advice. |
| When the king asked Nehemiah why he was sad, Nehemiah told him about the condition of things in Jerusalem, and the Lord gave him favor before the king. As a result, the king sent him back to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall, and to be the governor of that area. |
| Ezra was a humble, careful man who waited on the Lord before doing anything, and who faithfully taught the people from the law of Moses. Nehemiah was more of a man of action — a man who wanted to get things done. If you read the book of Nehemiah, you will find that the Lord used Nehemiah to get the wall of Jerusalem rebuilt, in spite of many difficulties. Yet as we read the book, we find that sometimes Nehemiah thought a little too much of himself, and what he was doing. He wanted the credit for being faithful to the Lord, which is not good. However, he was a very faithful man, and the Lord really used him. |
