If you ever had an unfinished project that at first

it bothered you, but over time you just got used to it being incomplete. Maybe you began to

ignore it all together. That was the prevailing attitude Nehemiah encountered when he returned to

Jerusalem and found it in ruins. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg looks at how Nehemiah

began to rally God's people to action.

I'm turning to the second half here of Nehemiah chapter 2. We pick up the story where Nehemiah has

been successful, not only in securing from the King sufficient provision and materials for him to

make the journey, the right kind of documentation, but also he has been successful in seeing the

King reverse a previously hard and fast-held decision, a quite dramatic intervention that God has

overruled in. And when we come to the 11th verse we have arrived at the point where after these

months of prayer and agonizing over the situation some miles from him, Nehemiah has arrived in Jerusalem.

Now the way in which I'd like to study this this morning is to provide for us eight words

upon which to hang our thoughts. The first word is the word relaxation. You'll find this point

in the 11th verse, a simple sentence which we may be tempted to overlook. I went to Jerusalem

and after staying there three days. Why three days? After all, wasn't Nehemiah

jumping at the bit as it were to get on with the task at hand? Had he not been anticipating this

journey and the opportunity for work over a period of months now and surely somebody possessed

of such vision and keen to be active would waste no time at all in as it were washing up after

the journey and immediately embarking on the task. Well an actual fact, he didn't do that,

but he had this relaxation period of three days. If you doubt that it had to do with relaxation

and rest you can cross reference this in Ezra chapter 8 verse 15 verse 32 and there you will find

that it actually states that the three days had to do with rest. Now this is something that we do

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