9/17/2011 8:20:57 AM
SPIRITUAL DIARY
As I mentioned in yesterday’s SD (9-16-2011) that I did not know if I would do one more as a wrap up of the book of Nehemiah, but after beginning to read the last chapter in “Be Determined” I have decided to do one more from Nehemiah.
Dr. Wiersbe entitles this last chapter in “Be Determined” “Looking For Leaders,” and in his last chapter he lists twelve qualities that made Nehemiah a successful leader, so in this final SD on Nehemiah I have decided to list these twelve qualities with a brief statement about each of them. Dr. Wiersbe points out that the Church today is in great need of leaders so it is good to realize exactly what the qualities of a good leader are.
1. A good leader is called. I remember reading a biography of the late President Ronald Reagan and in it I learned that he truly believed that he was called by God to rid the world of communism and I would say that bringing the end to the cold war showed that he truly believed his call was from God. Nehemiah was truly called by God to go to Jerusalem and to make sure the walls were repaired and the people were following the Law of God. He received this call while praying about the situation in Jerusalem. It is so important that in the Church that leaders are called by the Lord for there will be times when that are all that they have to keep them going. Jeremiah is a great example of this for as he went through the awful things that he went through he had to rely upon the call of the Lord and upon the Lord that called him. Nehemiah was a man called by God.
2. A good leader depends on prayer. Nehemiah hears from his brother who had been to Jerusalem and had just returned to Babylon with terrible news about the people and the city. This pricked the heart of Nehemiah and he began to fast and to pray for the city and the people. This began in our months Nov./Dec. and ended in March/April, a period of around four months. Prayer is very hard work and the book of Nehemiah is filled with prayer, and it also has many “telegraph” prayers in it, short prayers that came from the heart of a man who made prayer a vital part of his life. Phillips Brooks wrote “Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, pray for powers equal to your tasks.” Dr. Wiersbe writes “One mark of true spiritual leaders is their honest acknowledgement of their own inadequacy and their humble trust in the power of God.” R. A. Torrey writes “Pray for great things, expect great things, work for great thing, but above all pray,” and we have seen that Nehemiah was a man of prayer.
3. Nehemiah had vision and saw the greatness of the work: It is not only important for a leader to be called by God and to pray but having a vision is also very an important quality of a leader. Nehemiah had a vision and it was not just repairing the gates in Jerusalem, what he was doing was setting the stage for the Messiah to visit Jerusalem. Dr. Wiersbe writes “If you lose the greatness of a vision, you will begin to cut corners in your work, stop making sacrifices, and start looking for something else to challenge you.” Nehemiah never had this kind of a problem. When he was challenged to do something else in chapter six he replied “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down.” This next quote from Dr. Wiersbe is something that I believe is needed to be listened to by all members of our local churches: “No matter what God has called you to do, it’s great work because it’s part of the building of His church; and that’s the greatest work in the world.” I have a sign on our refrigerator that reads: “We are not human beings going through a temporary Spiritual experience. We are Spiritual beings going through a temporary human experience.” I truly believe that Nehemiah knew this.
4. Nehemiah submitted to authority. As believers we are under the authority of our government, as Paul writes about in Romans 13. Nehemiah knew that he was under the authority of the king, and he also knew that he was under the authority of the Word of God and the God of the Word. I have heard a statement that goes along with this quality of leadership and it goes “A good leader always knows that he is second in command.” Now I suppose that this quote would go along with a President, or a CEO, or even a Pastor, but once a leader forgets that he is under the authority of God he will find himself in a great deal of trouble. Dr. Wiersbe writes “In recent years, we have seen the sad consequences of religious leaders refusing to submit to authority and be accountable. When you read the Book of Nehemiah, you meet a man whose work prospered because he submitted to God, the Word, and the king.”
5. Nehemiah was organized in his work. One can see the calling that God had given to Nehemiah and that he had a vision of what God wanted him to accomplish, but more than that he was organized in the work that he was accomplishing for the Lord. When he first got to Jerusalem he took a late night ride to see what needed to be done and then he spoke to some other leaders that would be working for him to give his plans to them. He encouraged the workers as he knew where all of them were working. When the work was finished his plan was to dedicate the walls and have a revival meeting. Nehemiah’s priorities were right and his work was organized.
6. Nehemiah was able to discern the tactics of the enemy. The apostle Paul wrote in 2Cor. 2:11 “so that no advantage would be taken of us by Satan, for we are not ignorant of his schemes.” This was true of Nehemiah as seen in the first part of this book on many different occasions. Satan can be seen as an angle of light or a roaring lion and Nehemiah saw both of these while building the wall. Nehemiah understood the wiles of Satan’s attacks and all good leaders should have this quality as well.
7. Nehemiah worked hard. Charles Spurgeon said the following to his students “Do not be afraid of hard work for Christ; a terrible reckoning awaits those who have an easy time in the ministry, but a great reward is in reserve for those who endure all things for the elect’s sake. You will not regret your poverty when Christ cometh and calleth His won servants to Him. It will be a sweet thing to have died at your post, not turning aside for wealth, or running from Dan to Beersheba to obtain a better salary, but stopping where your Lord bade you hold the fort” (An All round Ministry, p. 197).” One can see this quality in the life of Nehemiah for he could have stayed back at the king’s palace and lived the good life, but he chose to work hard with his fellows Jews in Jerusalem.
8. Nehemiah lived an exemplary life. You never saw any lying, stealing or cheating going on in Nehemiah’s life. Sir Walter Scott wrote these famous words “O what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.” This was surely not true in the life of Nehemiah. Nehemiah was not sinless, however his life was sinless. Look at Philippians 2:15, “so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world.” That was Nehemiah! Now look at the first qualification of a Pastor (Elder) “An overseer, then, must be above reproach,” “if any man is above reproach,” (1Timothy 3:6 & Titus 1:6).
9. Nehemiah sought to glorify God alone. Nehemiah realized that the city of Jerusalem and the people who lived there were not bringing glory to God and that was the purpose of why they existed. When we go back to the creation of this world that took place in six twenty-four days we see that at the end of each day God pronounced that “it was good.” There was nothing wrong with it and so it was good and it also glorified God. Psalm 19 speaks of the heavens declaring the glory of God that is one of the purposes for all of the stars and planets that are in the sky to bring glory to God. During the sixth day of creation God created man and then He declared at the end of that day “it is very good.” God took over five days to create the earth and the stars and everything we see in preparation for His most awesome creation, and that was man, and the reason that it was so awesome was that man is made in the image of God, man walks upright and can look at the heavens and see the glory of God in those heavens. The catechism says that the chief purpose of man is to bring glory to God and that is what Nehemiah was doing when he went to Jerusalem. Nehemiah was not doing this for his glory, but to glorify the Lord, the King of Glory.
10. Nehemiah had courage. Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter to him the following, “For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and discipline.” There seems to be evidence that Timothy was timid or in some translations fearful. That is what the word in the Greek means fearful or timid, and Nehemiah was neither. We see throughout this book that he stood his ground and did not back down. When things got tough he would pray one of his short telegraph prayers to the Lord to give him strength and courage, for he had a sure calling from the Lord, knowing that what he was doing would bring glory to the Lord. Dr. Wiersbe points out that someone said that success is never final and failure is never fatal: It’s courage that counts.” The ancients Greeks said that courage was the master virtue because without it you could never use the other ones.
11. Nehemiah enlisted others to work. One of my favorite passages on the church and on the Pastors of the church is found in the epistle of the church and that would be the book of Ephesians. Ephesians was not actually written only to the Ephesians, but was meant to go to all of the surrounding churches and its theme is how the church should be run. Paul writes that one of the duties of the Pastor is to equip the saints to do the work of the Lord. The church is like a station where you can come to get filled up on the Word of God in order to go out into the world to tell others that you meet about what the Word of God has to say. Some think that it is the Pastor’s job to tell others about Christ, and that is true in the sense that all believers are to tell others about Christ, but his job is to make sure that we are equipped to tell others about Christ and to be able to disciple others once they too have become believers. When one reads the book of Nehemiah they will see that Nehemiah enlisted others to be part of the work that he was called to do, that he prayed over and that would bring glory to God. Dr. Wiersbe point out that in his study of Christian biographies that there were certain people that were like magnets to others who would follow their leadership to do the work of the Lord. D. L. Moody is a man like that. I have read several biographies on Moody and this can surely be seen from those books. Nehemiah was like this.
12. Nehemiah was determined. Dr. Wiersbe entitles the “Be” book “Be Determined,” and I suppose that this is the reason that he saved this quality of a leader to last. The Polish labor leader who would later become their president, Lech Walesa said the following as quoted from “Be Determined,” “To be a leader means to have determination. It means to be resolute inside and outside, with ourselves and with others.” “If anybody lived up to that description, it was Nehemiah.” We find this quality throughout the book of Nehemiah as one of the main themes of the book. Dr. Wiersbe quotes Dr. V. Raymond Edman who was the president of Wheaton College in Illinois as saying to his students “It’s always too soon to quit.” Luke 9:51 speaks of Jesus determination as He set his face like a flint towards Jerusalem in order to accomplish the will of His Father.
Dr. Wiersbe concludes his commentary on Nehemiah with some words that are very meaningful to the church today. “The church today needs leaders, men and women and young people who will determine under God to accomplish the will of God, come what may. The church needs leaders who will say with Nehemiah “I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down!”
“So the next time you feel like quitting, remember Nehemiah and stay on the job until the work is finished to the glory of God.”
“Be Determined.”
9/17/2011 11:23:54 AM
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