A couple of months ago I heard a pastor talk about Hermeneutic moment – those moments in your life or in the life of a community in which something happens that makes you see everything through new eyes, or set about season of reflection and meditation – a refocusing on priorities and vision.  Maybe you have a brush with death and you realize how fragile your life is and its gets you thinking of eternity and priorities.  Maybe you or your co-workers have been laid off and it makes you rethink career priorities.  Maybe your wife tells you she’s pregnant – everything changes! Your view of life shifts.  Nehemiah has one of these moments, and he starts praying like he’s never prayed before.  For days.  We find out in the first verse of chapter 2 that it actually Nehemiah prays for a few months.  And the thing is, this is a bit strange isn’t it?  Did Nehemiah not know before that Jerusalem was in disrepair and the people were struggling?  He had to have – Jerusalem had been destroyed 141 years ago.  We know from the book of Ezra that people had been going back to and from Jerusalem already, and I find it hard to believe that Nehemiah did not already have a fuzzy conception of how the work was progressing.  Yet, for some reason, at this report, it becomes very personal to Nehemiah.  It hits close to home.  See. I believe Hermeneutic moments – Nehemiah moments are a work of God.  Two people can have a brush with death – one brushes it off and one changes his life.  Two people can get laid off – one scrambles and worries, one resets priorities.  Two people can be told their wives are pregnant – one rises to the occasion and one goes on living the way he always has.  God opens the eyes, God gives the burden, and God resets the priorities.  Nehemiah has been granted a special gift – a hermeneutic moment – a vision and burden from God to pray and to work for.  And it brings him to his knees. What is Nehemiah’s burden – well, that’s what we’ll be looking at as we progress through this book, but I want to direct your attention to one verse that sums it up, chapter 2:10.  Nehemiah is recounting of how there are people who oppose his vision because “it displeased them greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel”. Sound familiar?  It should – it is the same phrase that is used in Jeremiah – the only two times the phrase is used in the Bible. So the people in exile were to seek the welfare of the city of Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire.  Nehemiah’s burden was to seek the welfare of the city of Jerusalem, the capital of the nation of Israel. 

I believe God has brought OCBC to a Nehemiah-like hermeneutic moment.