Nehemiah’s Ejaculatory Prayer in the Palace
There are various types of prayer, including public prayer, private prayer and fervent prayer (James 5:16-17). In persevering prayer, the believer does not give up, even if, after some time, he or she has not received an answer. Instead, the saint keeps on asking, seeking and knocking. Our Saviour commends this sort of praying many times (e.g., Luke 18:1-8), so let us not give up!
Ejaculatory prayer has especially three features, all of which begin with the letter “s.” First, ejaculatory prayer is spontaneous. This is praying that is informal, unplanned, on the spot. It does not involve bowing one’s head or closing one’s eyes or folding one’s hands or falling to one’s knees. Ejaculatory prayer is offered not at specific times of the day in the closet (Matt. 6:6) but at any time anywhere. Second, ejaculatory prayer is silent. It is not spoken out loud, usually because there are other people around so it would be inappropriate. Third, ejaculatory prayer is short. It is a prayer quickly darted to heaven, a brief petition hurled upwards like a javelin. In fact, the Latin word for a dart or javelin is the source of our English word “ejaculatory.”
The prayer of Nehemiah 2:4 is clearly ejaculatory. First, it is spontaneous. After Artaxerxes asks, “For what dost thou make request?” Nehemiah tells us, “So I prayed to the God of heaven” (4). Second, it is silent. The Medo-Persian emperor did not hear Nehemiah say anything out loud to God (for that would have been weird). Nor did he see any movement of his cupbearer’s lips, unlike Eli who saw Hannah’s lips move in silent prayer (I Sam. 1:12-13). Third, Nehemiah’s prayer was short. Evidently King Artaxerxes did not even notice any pause before Nehemiah responded to his question.
I take it that you, beloved, are not strangers to ejaculatory prayer, that you too speed off brief darts of prayers to your heavenly Father amidst your many daily activities and that you do it often!
Let us consider some very basic points regarding this ejaculatory prayer of Nehemiah, including, first, when he made it. Nehemiah was working, engaged in his gainful employment as an imperial cupbearer. Ejaculatory prayer, unlike closet prayer, is possible while at our jobs, whether we are teaching a class or driving a car, serving customers or trading shares, engaged in computer programming or metalworking, etc.
Second, where was Nehemiah when he offered this ejaculatory prayer? In an imperial palace! If he can dart a prayer to Jehovah from there, so can we, by God’s grace, whether we are at school, in a hospital, at the office, in an aeroplane or at home.
Third, before whom did Nehemiah make this ejaculatory prayer? In the presence of an idolater who was probably the most powerful man on the planet! Yet, even then, who was this earthly monarch compared to the sovereign ruler over all! “Then the king said unto me, For what dost thou make request? So I prayed to the God of heaven” (Neh. 2:4). We too can shoot our prayers to our covenant God in Jesus Christ our Redeemer before our bank manager, teacher, mother-in-law, employer or persecutor.
Notice that, by God’s grace, Nehemiah did not let his emotions stop him from making an ejaculatory prayer. First, he was “very sore afraid” (2) yet he prayed. David declared, “What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee” (Ps. 56:3). Similarly, we could say, “What time I am afraid, I will pray to Thee, even in ejaculatory prayers, in situations where it is impossible to pray out loud or at length.” We must not panic or get flustered or alarmed such that we give way to terror and forget to trust or pray.
Second, Nehemiah’s eagerness did not keep him from ejaculatory prayer. He earnestly wanted to go to Jerusalem to rebuild its walls. But when Artaxerxes asks, “For what dost thou make request?” (Neh. 2:4), Nehemiah does not blurt out, “Please send me to Judah to repair its capital’s perimeter defences.” Instead, we read, “So I prayed to the God of heaven” (4) and then he petitions the emperor (5). Neither fear nor eagerness should keep us back from making our ejaculatory prayers!
Nehemiah 2:4 is striking in that, first, it contains the most famous ejaculatory prayer in all of Scripture, though it occurs in a relatively obscure biblical book. Second, surprisingly, the content of this ejaculatory prayer is not given. Though it is the most famous ejaculatory prayer in God’s Word, its words are not recorded! From its context, however, we can deduce that it was a petition along these lines: “Lord, help me to speak to Artaxerxes so that he sends me to rebuild Jerusalem’s walls!” Third, Nehemiah remembered this ejaculatory prayer years later. He must have darted many thousands of requests to God, but it is this key one that he has recorded here in inspired Scripture.
Brethren, none of our ejaculatory prayers are likely to be famous. We ourselves remember few of them, never mind their precise words. But let Nehemiah 2:4 encourage us to dart more prayers to the Lord of heaven, especially in times of temptation or trial, or when contending with enemies or difficulties, even if it is even merely, “Father, give me patience,” when our children are acting up, or “Lord, help me,” when we are weak and distressed. Remember that ejaculatory prayers are the most versatile of all prayers, and can be made at any time, anywhere and in any situation.
Beloved, “we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace,” whether in public prayer or closet prayer or ejaculatory prayer, “that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15-16)! Rev. Stewart
The Covenant of Redemption (3)
In our discussion of the covenant of redemption, we have emphasized the truth that God’s covenant is never an agreement but a relationship. It is first and foremost the relationship between the Persons of the Holy Trinity. God is, in and with Himself, a covenant God. This truth is very humbling since it means that He does not need us to be a covenant God. He is all-sufficient to Himself.
It is also a wonderful truth in that His covenant with us, established first of all with Christ, is His taking us into that relationship in which He is the eternal Father and Christ His Son through the Spirit. That relationship is sovereignly realized and maintained. God makes us His covenant people and, when we show ourselves unfaithful and disobedient, sovereignly maintains that covenant in Christ. He does not cast off His people whom He eternally loved (Rom. 11:2), whether elect Jew or elect Gentile. He even promises to take the children of believers into that relationship, as the God not only of His people but of their seed (Mark 10:13-16; Acts 2:39). How great are His mercies!
That He establishes His covenant first with Christ, making Christ His “firstborn” (Ps. 89:27), in order to maintain and keep His covenant with His people, is God’s wonderful way of revealing the faithfulness and the graciousness of His covenant with His people. In the last News, we looked especially at Psalm 89 in that connection, for few other passages so wonderfully show what the covenant of redemption is.
We now focus on God’s covenant relationship with us, what we call the covenant of grace, especially in Genesis 15-17. We do this because God’s covenant with Abraham shows beyond doubt that His covenant is not merely an agreement but a sovereignly established relationship. These three chapters are beautifully instructive.
Genesis 15 begins with God’s affirming to Abraham His love and friendship in the face of Lot’s departure: “Fear not, Abram: I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward” (1). In light of Genesis 17:7, this can only be taken as an affirmation of God’s covenant with Abraham. It is really the great promise of the covenant, “And I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee in their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee.”
Having spoken to Abraham of His everlasting covenant, Jehovah predicts the coming of Christ as the One through whom He would be forever the God of Abraham and Abraham’s innumerable seed. Galatians 3:16, a passage mutilated by many modern Bible translations, shows that the singular “seed” is a reference to Christ as the One in whom God would fulfil His promises and not merely to Isaac.
To show His covenant faithfulness and to assure Abraham of it, God tells him to prepare for an unusual ceremony, unusual to us, that is, though not to Abraham. Abraham had to cut several animals and birds in pieces, and lay the pieces of the animals and the birds in two rows, with a walk-way between the rows.
That ceremony was used in those days to confirm a covenant, so that the usual description of covenant making (also in Scripture) was “cutting a covenant.” When used by two men, it was a covenant in the form of an agreement, the two walking together between the pieces of the animals, consenting in some important purpose and showing that they would rather be cut in pieces than break their agreement.
In establishing His covenant with Abraham, God did not make an agreement with Abraham. Instead, Jehovah established His covenant by passing alone through the cut-up pieces of the animals and the birds, while Abraham was fast asleep (Gen. 15:12). Thus God took upon Himself all the penalties and punishments of covenant breaking. This was not, therefore, an agreement or transaction between God and Abraham, but God’s way of sovereignly taking Abraham to be His friend and sovereignly promising to remain Abraham’s friend forever.
Genesis 16 serves as a reminder of the impossibility, humanly speaking, of the establishment and keeping of the covenant by Abraham or by anyone, for Sarah was barren and Abraham’s efforts to see to the covenant by marrying Hagar were in vain. Only when Abraham’s own flesh was “dead” (Rom. 4:19) did God, by a miracle, see to the coming of the promised Seed and the fulfilment of His covenant promises. All this proves that the covenant cannot ever depend on man. It is God’s covenant and He alone is able to keep covenant with His people. The covenant cannot be an agreement.
Finally, in Genesis 17:1-8, before the birth of Isaac, God revealed to Abraham the fact that His covenant would be an everlasting relationship in which He would be Abraham’s God and the God of His seed. He speaks to Abraham of a seed that would include not only physical descendants of Abraham but people of all nations, and also hints of an everlasting inheritance of which the land where Abraham then lived was only a shadow. That seed, however, was Christ above all (Gal. 3:16)
Did Abraham understand these things? Indeed, he did. Jesus told the Jews, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw it, and was glad” (John 8:56). This is what Abraham believed and hoped: “By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise: For he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:9-10).
The sad thing is that many today do not see what Abraham saw. They see God’s covenant with Abraham as a temporal and temporary arrangement. They are so focused on the earthly land, which was only ever a picture of the heavenlies, that they still look for an earthly fulfilment of the promises, whether to the Jews or to both Jews and Gentiles. They think that the salvation of Abraham and his descendants was a matter of law-works. They do not understand that Abraham had the gospel of our Lord Jesus preached to him and that he was God’s covenant friend not by works but by faith in Christ.
Worst of all, many still think that God’s covenant is an agreement, not a sovereignly and graciously established relationship. Not only does this make the covenant a cold transaction, destroying the beauty of the covenant as a relationship with the Triune God Himself through Christ, but it also introduces into the doctrine of God’s covenant something that does not belong to any aspect of our salvation. Rev. Ron Hanko
