Monday Club Sermons Nehemiah 2:5 And I said to the king, If it please the king, and if your servant have found favor in your sight, that you would send me to Judah… The text harmonises with the historic truth that for every great work there must be an inspired leader. Every great revival has hinged upon the deeds of some one man. The success of Nehemiah depended upon three traits, which must be characteristic of every great leader in human affairs. A lack as to either one of the three would render his undertaking a failure. I. HIS FAITH. There is nothing in this world more sublime than the man of faith, and there is no one more truly ridiculed. Faith, dissatisfied with the present, looks into futurity. The multitudes are content with to-day's attainments. Nehemiah pondered upon the Jerusalem which should be. Plans, at the first, were indistinct. It seemed an impossibility. His were the words of faith and not of sight: "The God of heaven, He will prosper us; therefore we His servants will arise and build." II. HIS SAGACITY. Faith incites to the purest wisdom. The intellect of man is made to be the servant his faith. His faith was reasonable, yet, after it had become most perfect, in order to attain its object he was compelled to reason out each step of the way. Thus is it many a man works out his prayers. Artaxerxes had chosen a sagacious man for his cup-bearer, and Jehovah said Artaxerxes had chosen wisely. Jehovah needed not only a man of faith, but a shrewd man, to restore Jerusalem to its former greatness. III. HIS COURAGE. Grant him to have been a man of strongest faith, and of shrewdest mind to reason out the successive steps, yet without courage to take each step, he had failed after all. (Monday Club Sermons.) Parallel Verses KJV: And I said unto the king, If it please the king, and if thy servant have found favour in thy sight, that thou wouldest send me unto Judah, unto the city of my fathers' sepulchres, that I may build it. |
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