What makes a man of God is first and foremost his vision of God, and it will help us to know Nehemiah better if at this point we look at his beliefs about God, as his book reveals them. . . . So what did Nehemiah believe about the one whom ten times over, six times in transcribed prayers, he calls “my God”?
[T]he God of Nehemiah is the transcendent Creator, the God “of heaven” ([Nehemiah] 1:4-5; 2:4, 20), self-sustaining, self-energizing, and eternal (“from everlasting to everlasting,” 9:5). . . . God was to Nehemiah the sublimest, most permanent, most pervasive, most intimate, most humbling, exalting and commanding of all realities.
[T]he God of Nehemiah is Yahweh, “the LORD,” the covenant making, covenant-keeping, promise-fulfilling, faithful God of Israel (9:8, 32, 33). . . . The prayerful dependence on God that sustained Nehemiah throughout his leadership career, and that he so often verbalizes as his book goes along, was an expression in his faith in God’s covenantal commitment to him and to those he led, just as was his declaration as he arranged Jerusalem’s defenses, “Our God will fight for us!” (4:20). Nor was his faith in God’s faithfulness disappointed. Nehemiah’s God showed himself to be a faithful covenanter who did not let his servant down.
[T]he God of Nehemiah is a God whose words of revelation are true and trustworthy. . . . God had told his people who he was, what he wanted from them, how he would react should they rebel, and what he would do should they come to their senses and repent after rebelling.
“Remember,” prayed Nehemiah, “the instruction you gave your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations, but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name” (1:8, alluding to Lev. 26, especially verse 33; Dt. 28:64 and 30:1-10, especially verse 4). . . .
The Law that God gave his covenant people to show them how to please him was, for Nehemiah, the unchanging standard of righteousness, just as God’s promises were, for him, the unchanging basis of future hope and present confidence.
These three convictions about God were most certainly the making of Nehemiah. Without them, he would never have cared enough about God’s honor in Jerusalem to pray that the city be restored, nor would he have sought the taxing and terrifying role of being the leader in that restoration, nor would he have had what it took to keep going in the face of all the apathy and animosity that his leadership encountered.
J. I. Packer, A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah, pp. 37, 39-42 (emphasis mine)
