The Eschatology of Nehemiah’s Prayer

“Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and so them, though your dispersed are under the farthest skies, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’” – Nehemiah 1.8-9

Nehemiah prays with his Bible open. The promises of God in Deuteronomy 4. 25-31 and Deuteronomy 30.1-5 echo strongly in Nehemiah’s petition. You can preach that! How should we pray? We should allow Scripture to shape our prayers. Take your quiet time reading and turn it into prayer. I have heard lots of sermons on texts like this preached in that way. It is all true and good and wholesome.

But it’s not the point of the passage (sorry, someone from the Proclamation Trust hijacked my keyboard for a moment there) and it misses the Biblical-theological themes which are at the heart of that for which Nehemiah is praying. He is claiming God’s covenant promise for the latter days (when translated into Greek, we get the word whose root also gives us the word “eschatology”) that he would gather his people who turn to him in repentance and faith, and that they would know unprecedented prosperity and security. That promise begins to be fulfilled from the time of Cyrus, when some Jews return to the land. But the promise hasn’t been completely fulfilled, as v. 3 clearly illustrates: “And they said to me, “The remnant there in the province who had survived the exile is in great trouble and shame. The wall of Jerusalem is broken down, and its gates destroyed by fire.” And so Nehemiah prays to God that he would hear the prayer of his servants who have returned to him (he trusts in God’s steadfast love (v. 5), confesses his sins and the sins of the people (vv. 6-7) and there are other servants who delight to fear his name (v. 11)) and would do what he promised when he said that he would gather his people.

But to see that promise filled full, we have to look to the Lord Jesus Christ. “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” – 2 Corinthians 1.20. It is through his death on the cross that the gathering of God’s people following their exile is possible because it is there that he faces the curse of the covenant in the place of his people so that they might receive the blessing. And so when he has ascended into heaven after his death and resurrection, he pours out that which he received from the Father, the Holy Spirit, and Jews ‘from every nation under heaven’, Acts 2.5 (cf. ‘dispersed under the farthest skies, Nehemiah 1. 9) hear the disciples proclaiming the mighty works of God in many different human languages. Peter proclaims the gospel and thousands repent and are baptised ‘into the name’. The scattered people of God are gathered together in the place where he has chosen to make his name dwell, namely the church founded on Jesus Christ. “For where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am among them.” – Matthew 18.20. This is Jerusalem.

Of course, the dispersion of God’s people in judgment is a picture of all people, not just the Jewish nation. We’re all by nature objects of God’s wrath. We are all far off (Ephesians 2.1, 13). But if we turn to Christ in repentance and faith, we are gathered into his city. That promise to gather continues to be fulfilled now as that process carries on.

But like Nehemiah, we haven’t seen that promise completely fulfilled. In many ways, Jerusalem “is in great trouble and shame, its wall is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire”. England had a great Christian heritage. But not now. Churches have left the gospel and are emptying. In many places where the gospel is preached faithfully, the pews are empty. Christians are an object of scorn. The intellectual powers poison people’s minds against Christian faith. In many ways it’s hard to sing Psalm 48 – “As we have heard, so have we seen in the city of the LORD of hosts, in the city of our God, which God will establish forever.” Instead Psalm 79 fits more comfortably on our lips: “O God, the nations have come into your inheritance; they have defiled your holy temple; they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.”

Richard Pratt, in his book on preaching Old Testament Narrative He Gave Us Stories, writes that Ezra-Nehemiah is designed to defend the legitimacy of the Ezra-Nehemiah programme for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the Temple and the need to continue, as we read of the Divine authorisation of Nehemiah’s mission, the human opposition he faces, the continuing struggle for restoration and the need to repopulate and fortify Judah. In the Christian theocracy, we are the remnant of the people of God and this book highlights for us the importance of devotion to building the kingdom of God, and I take it therefore that Nehemiah’s behaviour – his mourning over the state of Jerusalem, his fasting – and his prayer are meant to direct us in our task, just as it would have directed its first readers.

We, too then, having seen the inauguration of the fulfilment of God’s promise in Nehemiah 1.8-9, as God’s redeemed servants and people in Christ through the cross which is the power of God (cf. Nehemiah 1 1.10) are to pray for God to gather people into his city, to pray for gospel to go out and for people to turn to Christ in repentance and faith. That is how God’s city will begin to be rebuilt. It is God’s work. He will build Jerusalem.

And one day his work will be complete. Christ will return and the holy city, new Jerusalem, of which the local church is a real anticipation in history, will come down out of heaven from God and, unlike the situation in Nehemiah 1.4, “he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.” – Revelation 21.4.

(I think I could probably preach a good ol’ Puritan sermon on these two verses. One could probably do a whole series on Nehemiah 1. As it is though, I’m probably going to go all the way from Nehemiah 1.1 to 2.8.)