Untitled Sermon (2)

Perseverance Through Pressure

In Nehemiah 6:1 we read, Now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it (although up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates) Before we read on, let’s observe here the statement of good progress.

The work is going forward: the breaches are closed, but the gates have not yet been put up. This is a great statement of progress and a realistic notation of the work that remains to be done.

Sanballat & Tobiah & Geshem see a closing window of opportunity. Once the walls are rebuilt and the gates are put in place, the only way to regain control of the city might be through a siege or a direct attack.

As long as the walls are broken down, they don’t have to engage in open combat against other people under Persian protection. Those are Jews in that city, but they have the blessing and protection of the king of Persia, so this is a final crucial opportunity before the gates are reestablished.

We all need what Nehemiah has:

Eyes to see both the good progress and the necessary work that remains to be done.

It’s not time to rejoice that the breaches are closed. The gates still have to be installed.

Sanballat and Geshem go into action in verse 2: Sanballat and Geshem sent me a message: “Come, let’s meet together in the villages of the Ono Valley.” But they were planning to harm me.

Nehemiah knew who these people were, and he was not deceived about their intentions.

Did you notice that back in verse 1 he straight out called them “enemies”? Nehemiah knew what was at stake, the intentions of these enemies, and that they were not pursuing the kingdom of God like he was. He did not give them the benefit of the doubt. He knew they intended to do him harm. Are you realistic about your enemies and their intentions? Do you know that Satan is your enemy? Do you know that the enticements to sin that confront you are put there by those who intend to do you harm?

How do you react when you’re invited by someone to some place where you know the Devil wants to get you in a vulnerable spot so he can destroy you?

Take a lesson from Nehemiah’s response in verse 3: So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and cannot come down.

Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”

Nehemiah understood that the work he was called to do was so significant that he had no time for petty distractions.

Nehemiah asserted that he was “doing a great work.” Compare what Nehemiah was doing in Jerusalem to the work that he had been doing back in Persia, where he was the cupbearer to the king. Being the king’s cupbearer probably meant he had some say in who worked in the palace. He probably oversaw everything that came in contact with the king. Nehemiah was a high level overseer in the capital city at the king’s residence. The king had to trust him. He probably had the king’s ear. Nehemiah left all that to go to this broken-down rubble of a place on the outskirts of the empire, where he was at work rebuilding this wall with maybe one to three thousand Jews living in the city at this point. The walls were broken down, the enemies threatened from outside, and he said, “I am doing a great work.” The work Nehemiah was doing in Jerusalem was not great because the world thought it was significant. The world would have called what he was doing back in Persia “great work.” The world would have told him that he left the great work for something that didn’t matter at all. Who cared if the walls of Jerusalem got rebuilt? What difference did it make? It made a difference, it was a great work, it was an important project because God’s name was at stake in Jerusalem. Those walls were going to protect God’s people. That’s what made what Nehemiah was doing in Jerusalem a great work. What work are you doing? Would you describe it as great work? If you are doing what God has called you to do in the task of making disciples, you are not doing things that the world thinks is of great significance—you’re not even doing something that can be measured like building walls—but God’s name is at stake in your life now just as it was at stake in what Nehemiah was doing. On a trip to Washington DC, my family and I saw a great deal of art and architecture. We saw the beautiful Library of Congress, a great shrine to books. As I looked at the fabulous buildings, considered the magnificent paintings, and read stirring quotations, it struck me that what is being celebrated in Washington DC is the freedom enjoyed by the citizens of this nation. What is celebrated at the Library of Congress is the significance of the printed page, the book. What is celebrated in the art and the architecture is human life. The point is not the glory of the monument, the protection of the books, and the priceless treasure of the paintings. The point of the monument is the joy of life available to humans, neither enslaved nor tyrannized; the point of the celebration of books is the power of learning that can be gained from those books; and the point of art and architecture is that they communicate the depth and grandeur of what it is to be human, made in the image of God. All this to say: God has called you to live out His glory by trusting Him, walking with Him in purity, and thanking Him for what He gives you. That is the way that He has called all of us to live, whether we are also called to do vocational ministry or called to be a barber cutting hair or called to be an electrical engineer or called to be a stay-at-home mom changing diapers and teaching homeschool. The point is much less what we do and much more how we do it and who we do it for. If you are trusting God, walking in purity, and thanking God for what He gives, you are doing a great work just as much as Nehemiah was, even if you’re not surrounding a city with stones. Putting rocks around a small town is not what makes Nehemiah’s work great. A dedication to God’s name, God’s promises, and God’s people is what makes Nehemiah’s work great. That’s what makes our work great as well: God’s name, God’s Word, God’s people. Loving and serving one another and ensuring the proclamation of the gospel from the pulpit and the table will make this work great. If you are doing a great work—trusting God in purity and gratitude—there will be enemies who will want to distract you from the work. They will try to draw us away. They will try to make us think that their delegations and meetings and conferences and messages are more important than the great work we’re doing. Are there things that persistently distract you from what God has called you to do? If you’re a student, God has called you to honor Him in your studies. If you’re an employee, God has called you to honor Him in the way you serve your employer. If you’re a spouse, God has called you to honor Him in your marriage. If you’re single, God has called you to honor Him in your singleness. If you’re a child, God has called you to honor Him by obeying and honoring your parents. Let’s answer the things that would distract us from the great work God has given each of us to do with the same steadfastness we see from Nehemiah here. If your e-mail chimes, if there’s something silly on TV that would rob you of time with your children, or if there’s someone who wants to gossip with you, respond like this: “I am doing a great work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?” (Neh 6:3). Look at Nehemiah’s resolute steadfastness to persevere in the work (v. 4):“Four times they sent me the same proposal, and I gave them the same reply.” Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem, and the enemies persisted, and so did Nehemiah. He was just as persistent as they were in his insistence that he was not going to leave the work to be distracted by them. Again, significance comes less from what work is being done than from whom the work is for and how we do it. You think rebuilding the walls of a small city on the outposts of the empire is more significant than serving as the cupbearer to the king in the capital? Nehemiah thought so, not because the work on the wall was glamorous but because it was being done for God’s name and for God’s people. Sanballat sent me this same message a fifth time by his aide, who had an open letter in his hand. (v. 5) This fifth challenge ups the ante. This is not a letter intended for Nehemiah alone. Sanballat intended this letter to be read in public. This letter issued a challenge by spreading false rumors, as recounted in verses 6–7: It is reported among the nations—and Geshem agrees—that you and the Jews plan to rebel. This is the reason you are building the wall. According to these reports, you are to become their king and have even set up the prophets in Jerusalem to proclaim on your behalf: “There is a king in Judah.” These rumors will be heard by the king. So come, let’s confer together. By putting the rumors in this open letter he sent to Nehemiah, Sanballat tried to bully, intimidate, and manipulate the situation so that Nehemiah would do what the enemies wanted him to do: stop the work to meet with them. The rumors offered a believable, alternative explanation as to why Nehemiah and the returnees sought to rebuild the wall. The rumors had an appearance of truth. The Jews did not intend to rebel, but fortifying the city could be interpreted that way. Nehemiah did not intend to become king, but he did have a messianic hope. He was looking for a king from David’s line, and if one had arisen they would have celebrated his appearance. The rumors had a ring of truth, but they imputed false motives and misconstrued the work on the wall, using it to assert that the Jews were plotting rebellion, led by Nehemiah. The rumors were a malevolent spin on what was really happening. Not only was reality spun in a negative direction, the information that the servant of Sanballat had “an open letter” and that “Geshem agrees” indicates that other people were seeing and hearing the spin represented in claims of the letter. Have you ever had rumors circulated about you? Has someone ever presented you with the ways that your actions and motives are being misrepresented? Have people circulated these false interpretations of what you are doing? How have you responded to the misinformation? How should we respond when such things happen? Should we stop what we are doing and try to track down all the people who may have heard the rumor? Should we allow the rumor-mongers to interrupt what we need to be doing and distract us from our responsibilities? Look at how Nehemiah responded in verse 8: Then I replied to him, “There is nothing to these rumors you are spreading; you are inventing them in your own mind.” That’s exactly right! Nehemiah wasn’t plotting rebellion and wasn’t planning to set himself up as king. The enemies invented this balderdash. Notice how Nehemiah rejected the allegations out of hand. He didn’t dignify their poppycock by working within their warped view of the world, nor should we. Nehemiah rejected the false interpretation of the world and went right on doing what God had called him to do. Nehemiah refused to entertain the rumors; he responded only to deny their truth and state the true origin of the rumors. He addressed them only to dismiss them, then he diagnosed the motive behind these rumors and committed his cause to prayer in verse 9 (ESV): For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.” But now, O God, strengthen my hands. This is why the enemies were circulating rumors. The enemies of God and His people could only intimidate. They could bully. They saw that if those gates were installed in that rebuilt wall, they would have lost the ability to oppress and manipulate the people for their own benefit. Those on the side of truth should respond as Nehemiah did. Keep doing what you’re called to do. Nehemiah did not revise his agenda, stop his work on the walls, or stop talking about God’s promises because wrong-headed people with a perverted view of the world were using what he said and did against him. The fact that people could misinterpret and misrepresent what Nehemiah was doing did not stop him from doing what God had called him to do. The people of God are sometimes tempted to tone down, soften, or back away. We can be tempted to speak softly, if at all. That’s not how Nehemiah responded to this crisis. Persistence in the truth will shine the light on falsehoods and deceits. God’s enemies try to discourage God’s people. When this kind of thing happens, speedy reactions and hasty conclusions are on the side of the enemies. If God’s people will think carefully, analyze deliberately, and seek wise counsel before we react, we will see fallacious reasoning, preposterous theorizing, and unpersuasive argumentation. So when an enemy of God and His people approaches us with some alternative explanation of reality, don’t react too quickly. Don’t be discouraged. Don’t scale back what you believe and what you are willing to say. Stare at the evidence and at the arguments based on the evidence. Analyze the alternative explanation of reality. We will see right through it and be in position to show that the fabrications are but figments of perverted imaginations. We will see that God’s enemies are merely trying to discourage us from the great work we are doing. And don’t miss what else Nehemiah did. Did you see it at the end of verse 9? Nehemiah shows us how to stand firm and pray. Nehemiah stood firm by rejecting the imaginative and wicked spin the enemies put on reality and persisted in what God had called him to do. Then he prayed that, rather than his hands dropping from the work, God would strengthen them in the work. Prayer is a consistent emphasis in Nehemiah (see 1:4; 2:4; 4:4, 9; 5:19). Nehemiah was constantly praying, but he didn’t only pray. He prayed, and he took action. We want to cultivate a disposition of being aware of God and turning to Him when in need, and we want to take action where we can. So in 6:1–9 we have seen the overt opposition, and in verses 10–14 we see the covert opposition.

James M. Hamilton Jr. et al., Exalting Jesus in Ezra-Nehemiah (Nashville, TN: Holman Reference, 2014), 136–142.