The Power of 'No': Lessons from Nehemiah

"Amen we resume our studies this morning where we left off last time namely at the 14th verse of chapter 5 we had been trying to go all the way through chapter 5 and were unsuccessful and so we need to pick it up at that point having dealt with uh chapter 5 and its fullness in preparation for last time and then coming back to chapter six to start aesh for this time I really wasn't sure of how to go at the whole procedure how possibly to try and tie it all together and what I want to do this morning is to focus on the importance of the correct usage of one of the most employed uh words of the English language a word which tiny children learn to say quickly in defiance and most of us as grown up children find difficult to say in discipline and the word is no no what we have in these verses before us this morning as we're going to see is a lesson in how and when and why to say no." [00:01:46]

"When Paul writes to Titus he reminds Titus that one of the distinguishing marks of having come to Faith in Jesus Christ is that the individual will having encountered God's grace in all of its fullness which has appeared to all men they will be taught to say no they will be taught to live out a No statement to certain things he mentions ungodliness and worldly passions the Bible also makes it very that one of the distinguishing marks of the genuine believer is that they have learned to use the words yes and no properly they say yes at the right time and mean it they say no at the right time and they mean it they let their yes be yes and their no be no so it is very very important it may seem almost trivial to think of it in these terms but I don't think so witness for example when we fail to say no when we should for example in the realm of Temptation or or listen to mothers or fathers for that matter exclaiming to their friends as they are out in the in the store in the department store or in the coffee shop or something as their children just create absolute Mayhem all around them and you hear the mother saying I just can't say no to my kids and when you can say no when you should say no you're in trouble so learning to say no at the right time is very very important and no less so in the matter of leadership as we see concerning Nehemiah here if you want a succinct title I'm going to dig it out of verse two of chapter 6 and we'll call it saying no to Ono saying no to Ono because it was this uh location of Ono which represented the distinct challenge to what nemiah was doing and so he said no to oh no he said oh no to oh no actually but that's by the way you see if God's work is going to be done in God's way which is the prevailing emphasis of these studies then leadership needs to be principled enough to rule out other options not because the options are always wrong many times they're not but sometimes just because they are the wrong options in other words they're not best and when we look into the life of this fellow Nehemiah we have a tremendous example of somebody who having put his hand to the plow didn't look back if you asked him what are you doing he knew what he was doing every day of the week every hour of the day he knew what he was on he knew why he was saying yes he knew why he was saying no terrific illustration of all manner of avenues of life it is an illustration to a school boy or a school girl as they set their course towards a successful completion of their Journey it is a lesson to the businessman to the salesman plan it is a lesson to the mother as she awakes in the morning to the multiple challenges of her task that week she needs to know what she's going to say yes to and what she will say no to to apply it in just in a few ways now I want to suggest this morning that there are five areas in which we see Nehemiah saying no and hopefully we can learn from them first of all in verses 14 to the end of the fifth chapter we see nemiah saying no to undue privilege saying no to undue privilege it is clear as you read these verses and you may read them as I speak to refresh your memory that there were obvious advantages to the position in which Nehemiah had been in Souza and now found himself in Jerusalem the fringe benefits of the job were outstanding his pred cessors as he tells us here in around verse 15 or so had established a pattern of taking from the people food and finance to the degree that it had become burdensome to the people now when you move into a new job it's very possible for you just to go with the pattern that has been set by the person who sat in the chair before you after all the people have become aware of it they become used to it and they may safely assume while this character will just go along the journey the way the previous chap did it's very very important if a man is going to be a man of integrity in that business world that he assesses to what degree those individuals have done that which was for the well-being of the firm the company the the employees or whatever it might be and if he is a man of principle then he will be prepared to step back from that which is burdensome and unhelpful and that's exactly what we find nemiah doing in modern Parliament the expense account that Nehemiah had was probably considerably greater than most of the cumulative annual salaries of the people that he was working amongst so he didn't even need to touch his uh principal salary he could just live off his expense account and he'd still be way ahead of where the people were that he was encouraging to be involved with him in the work that I suggest in every context represents a peculiar challenge to the person who finds himself with such a privilege he was justifiably able to eat festar restaurants to live in the best of hotels always to travel first class the job was absolutely silver lined but he said no he said no now why did he say no well the answer is very straightforward he said no because he didn't want to harm the people the demands he says in verse 18 were heavy on the people we know from the study last time that these folks were going through famine were going through deep difficulty and if in the midst of all of that their Sterling leader was actually going to take gouge them for more and more stuff then presumably would just push them over the edge and so he decides to say no to traveling with what is excess baggage he refuses to allow the craft The Vessel of his life to be weighted down by what was obviously unnecessary and as he describes it unhelpful he's moved according to verse 15 to say no first of all by reverence for God he says of his predecessors that they used to take place a heavy burden on the people they took 40 shekels of silver from them in addition to the food and the wine and the assistance that they had also lorded over the people but out of reverence for God I did not act like that you see here's the great challenge you say you know God yes you say that you reverence God yes okay show me why would I ever believe that you reverence God why would I ever know what the phrase I reverence God even means unless it has feet unless it has hands now this is not the only way but this was a way and nehemiah's willingness and ability to say no to what was excess was one of the ways in which he magnified God and he displayed his reverence for him he was marked by a genuine heartfelt life impacting concern for God's glory and as we've alluded to in verse 18 he was moved to say no not only by reverence for God but also by compassion for people now this explains you see why he had all these people over for dinner in verse 17 this is quite a dining room table you've got to admit furthermore Jews and officials ate at my table he said there's no way you got 150 people around a table oh oh yeah you just need a big enough table you ever gone to some of the Palaces in Britain or in Europe and seen some of those dining room tables unbelievable you go to the Palace in Hollywood Palace at the bottom of the royal Mile in edenburgh down from the um the castle uh the Queen's residence when she's in Edinburgh and look at that dining room table it's spectacular it go it goes forever and uh you you never need to talk to your brothers or your sisters or anybody for months on end if you just position yourself properly at the table cuz it's huge I mean put you put the king down there and the queen down there they need a they need a walkie-talkie system just to say could you pass me the salt please I mean you can ask that for the salt at breakfast on a Tuesday and not get it till dinner time on a Thursday that's how big the table is it's immense so don't think for a moment that we've got a nemiah here who's living One Step Above der elction some of us are already beginning to apply it here in terms of the sort of we've got nemiah child of the 60s now neiah The Peasant nemiah living in a cave aha you see nemiah wasn't a capitalist aha there you go nemiah was a man of the people no nemiah was by all accounts stinking Rich you're going to have to be rich to have 150 people for dinner every single day and not take the food given to the governor see he had a lot of stuff but the stuffed in of him that's the challenge we made the mistake of assuming that if someone has the stuff they've got the problem when in point of fact we may not have the stuff and we may have the problem so he has these big dinner parties they kill an ox every day six Choice sheep every day poultry every day and every 10 days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds he did this he told his uh whoever it was that went out for the for the groceries they went to the sort of Jerusalem finest or whatever it was not to advertise but uh he said go down there get an ox six Choice sheep poultry and uh it's the day for the wine and bring it all back he obviously had big bucks from his job in Souza or certainly from his job in Jerusalem he was living with success he was living with popularity he was living with prosperity I would imagine that's Jolly difficult probably a lot harder than most of us believe oh look at those people they got so much they have so much influence so much opportunity must be fine for them in fact the Bible says to whom much is given much will be required and Nehemiah displays his Integrity by saying no to privilege just because it's there doesn't mean we have to use it just because it's there doesn't mean we have to have it just because the previous guy did it doesn't mean we have to do it too it's an immense Challenge and I don't think it matters how many zeros we're talking about it's a challenge to us all all the time take the challenge I certainly must face it saying no then to privilege secondly saying no to Pride saying no to Pride the completion of the project is described for us here in verse one and then in verse 15 of the chapter especially in the light of the speed with which this has taken place we're told in 52 days they had put it all together there's enough in this to pump up the average man's head so large that he need a couple of people to walk around with him just to hold his head up because his neck muscles wouldn't be sufficient for the task there was enough in this to have massaged the ego of Nehemiah to the point of uh almost absurdity but you will notice that he consistently avoided the posture people might justifiably have said to him you know tell me about your wall Nehemiah and he could have waxed eloquent on it all how he'd been in Souza and he'd come 900 miles he came singing and I could walk 900 miles and I could and he came from soua walking 900 miles just to get there just to be on the wall just to do the job and he could have said you know there hasn't been a person in 90 years was able to tackle this project I've been able to put it together it's fantastic we did it in 52 days I'm really very good at this building stuff I'm a I'm a good guy and yeah let me take you around my wall he doesn't do any of that so we learn from the silences of the Bible as well as from the express statements of the Bible and what we learned from the silence in Nehemiah here is that here was a man that said no to a fat head he was a man who said no I will not take the glory to myself I will not allow anyone to believe that this happened because of Nehemiah because I know that it was on account of the hand of God upon my life that made it possible for me to have all of this journey to have all of these Provisions to make this uh reconnaissance mission work and to encourage all these people to go it was all God nemiah knew Psalm 11382 you have exalted above all things your name and your word and he was was not about to foul that one up now if we doubted this at all you only need to look at verse 9 there they were trying to frighten us thinking their hands will get too weak for the work and it will not be completed then you've got a little phrase but I prayed but I prayed there's nothing reveals our hearts more than our prayer life or the absence of it you see if we think that we're really good at talking we'll never pray for God to bless the ministry of his word word will just rely on our ability to talk if we think that we have all the requisite abilities in this church there's no reason to have a prayer meeting all we'll do is just mobilize people according to principle we'll use the management strategies of the world we'll employ the latest marketing techniques of the day and we'll go out and we'll reach the world but if we know that we can't do that then we'll pray and nehemiah's prayers are the key to the absence of his pride and the absence of his pride is on the basis of the presence of his prayers we'll say more about this tonight turn for a moment to First Peter chapter 5 if you would 1 Peter chapter 5 Peter's wrapping it up this letter that he's written to all these scattered Believers and he says you know if you're going to live together in harmony with one another one of the very important elements is going to be an absence of Pride and so in verse 5 he says all of you wear humility towards one another don't be going around bristling with pride and pining your feathers and acting smart don't do that because he says quote in the Old Testament God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble and on the basis of that he then applies it he says humble yourselves therefore under God's Mighty hand and that he may lift you up in due time it means learning to keep silent and allow the work which God has chosen to do in you and through you speak for itself you see neiah lived in the awareness that God was sovereignly involved in his life he was providentially dealing with him and for all of his initiative he doesn't doesn't display the kind of unhealthy self assertiveness which so often marks those who are successful there was none if you like of the spirit of the Olympics 94 inah's response oh what do you mean by that says somebody well I don't know if it's just me but I've picked something up this time around that I don't remember quite before nowhere did they come across more forcefully than the other evening while the whole world watched the figure skating and when the focus of all of America's affections and hopes and dreams finally took her place in front of the camera and was asked how do you feel do you remember her response I am very proud of myself myself excuse me wasn't there something supposed to be about I am greatly humbled by the immense privilege entrusted to me to represent the United States of America in this Arena again what do you think about this I am very pleased with what I have been able to achieve and all the little girls of America down there in that place at Shaker Heights where I have to go with my girls are watching this watching this and they're saying and that's just what I want to be nemiah we just wanted to have a moment with you to interview you about your wall how do you feel about your wall I am very proud of myself and what I have been able to achieve it's the spirit of the age it all spills over from silly psychology manifest in the realm of sports I would want to say in defense of the individual to whom I am alluding that she is speaking out sound bites pumped to her by Sports psychologists who told her you've got to believe in yourself you've got to think of yourself you've got to think of the next thing you've got to believe and all of that's true but all of that is not the essence of it all of that is a means to an end and all of that obscures the overarching purpose we are breathing a generation of brats in a society that is exalted narcissism to the throne but not Nehemiah." 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