Focused on Our Purpose
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Remaining steadfast and focused on God's purpose empowers believers to overcome distractions and threats, drawing strength from God's will and purpose.
I was reminded during my prep time for this week of the story of Daniel - how he was faced with a night in the lion’s den for worshiping the Lord alone, instead of worshiping an image of King Darius. Daniel chapter 6 details for us how people who had previously resorted to threats and other forms of intimidation used the King’s own inflated ego against Daniel by crossing a line they knew he wouldn’t cross. Daniel refused to bow to the image, and rather continued praying to the One true God three times daily.
These people trying to ensnare Daniel knew that the only way they’d be able to find fault with him was making the law of the land disagree with the law of God - that when Daniel had to chose to be obedient to the King or to God, Daniel would chose to be obedient to God every time. Imagine for a moment having a reputation of such intense integrity that people had to advocate to the King to change the law in order to find you guilty of something.
Today, we are going to be looking at what Nehemiah did in the face of distraction and intimidation by those whose only goal was to see him fail at what God called him to do. Since God hasn’t called any of us (that I am aware of) to go and fortify a city by rebuilding it’s walls, you may be tempted to think that there is little in this passage that you would find applicable to your own life -
Remaining steadfast and focused on God's purpose empowers believers to overcome distractions and threats, drawing strength from God's will and purpose.
Today, we are looking a few ideas that come from the text -
Recognize Real Distraction (6:1-4)
Discern Deceptive Designs (6:5-9)
Fortify Through Faith (6:10-14)
Recognize Real Distractions (6:1-4)
Recognize Real Distractions (6:1-4)
Read with me in…
1 When Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall and that no gap was left in it—though at that time I had not installed the doors in the city gates—
2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me a message: “Come, let’s meet together in the villages of the Ono Valley.” They were planning to harm me.
3 So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing important work and cannot come down. Why should the work cease while I leave it and go down to you?”
4 Four times they sent me the same proposal, and I gave them the same reply.
Nehemiah and his compatriots are just about finished with the wall at this point. Those who hated the Jews from the outset of this project are now at a spot where they are outright trying to set a plot against Nehemiah to cause him harm, much in the same way the Pharisees of Jesus’ day tried to set traps for the Lord. Now, I don’t know if God gave Nehemiah some kind of special discernment to know that it was a trap - or if it was just so completely obvious from their history, but Nehemiah had the best response I can think of - “I am too busy doing what you hate to meet you, and I want to see it through to completion…”
There is an amazing principle at work here that we would do well to consider and apply for ourselves - that the first step to following through with what you aim to do requires that you recognize potential distractions and give them the time they deserve.
That means if something is trying to distract you and has no real value to you or what you are doing, don’t pay them any attention. When I owned my business, I had to spend a lot of time working on bids for cabinets and woodworking projects that I knew in my mind and heart wouldn’t end up working out - I had that pit in my stomach that screamed, “this is a waste of time!” But I knew I wasn’t in the Lord’s position of knowing everything, so I presented my bids in hope to find more work and keep the business afloat and make some profit. However, I had a few people who asked me to do several bids for them and they never worked out. We could never seem to get our numbers to align and I knew it would end up being a complete waste of time. I got to a point where I had to tell them that I would be happy to put in a bid for the job they were asking about if they’d be willing to submit a $50 fee that would apply to the job if it was accepted - that way I could at least make something for the time. They never accepted that boundary and eventually stopped asking me to put in bids when they didn’t intend on working with me anyway - I think they were just required to get a certain amount of bids for every job, but had builders they were working with.
Notice in our passage how the plotters came back four more times asking Nehemiah to meet with him and he never gave them the time of day? Nehemiah knew a few things:
First, that they were planning to harm him.
Second, that they didn’t want to meet for anything productive towards the goal of completing the wall - nothing productive would come out of meeting with them, so he declined.
Based on those two factors, Nehemiah stood his ground by continuing the work. He refused to be intimidated and bullied by these Pagan agitators.
We have an interesting example of this in
21 From then on Jesus began to point out to his disciples that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised the third day.
22 Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, “Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to you!”
23 Jesus turned and told Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me because you’re not thinking about God’s concerns but human concerns.”
Jesus had a goal in mind - the cross of our deliverance! And what was Peter’s short-sighted response? Nothing more than a distraction from the fact that the Lord would go on to suffer and die and rise again - things that had to happen in order for the Lord to accomplish the goal God set for Him.
35 “I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
36 But as I told you, you’ve seen me, and yet you do not believe.
37 Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.
38 For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
39 This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day.
40 For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
Nehemiah’s focus on his goal was with a laser-focus. A big reason he could do this was because he clearly knew what his goal was: to finish the wall. I think one of the things that distracts people today the most is a lack of clarity of what our purpose is. Many of us don’t have a “wall to build” and wander from thing to thing trying to uncover some kind of supernatural sense of purpose that somehow remains elusive. The search for purpose has been the topics of many books, including the Purpose Driven Life that came out when I was in High School.
13 When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: fear God and keep his commands, because this is for all humanity.
It is worded well in the Westminister Catechism that the chief end of man is to enjoy God and glorify Him forever. After that, unless you have a really specific pull in your heart from the Holy Spirit, you have the freedom to do whatever you want - so long as it is glorifying to the Lord. Are you stuck between living in Sprague, Ritzville or Spokane and waiting for the Lord to give you some kind of divine directive? That is a hyper-spiritualized distraction that can serve to keep you from accomplishing your goal. If your plan is to work at glorifying the Lord wherever you live, then you can move anywhere you want. There are many of these kinds of distractions that aren’t even from external sources, but rather from within that would keep us in a state of paralysis by analysis, making it so we can’t make any progress in accomplishing our goals.
In my experience, when God has a specific goal for you to accomplish, He will bring it about no matter what decisions you make about things - of course we want to be sensitive to HIs leadings and to the movement of the Holy Spirit, but I think many Christians allow the possibility of being outside the will of God” to be an internal struggle that is often unnecessary.
He exercises sovereign control over every person, object, and event, and not one molecule in the universe is outside that dominion.
John F. MacArthur
I went to school originally for music production and audio engineering, and that didn’t stop me from going back later for my M.Div for both my own personal development and for the work the Lord prepared for me to do in vocational ministry. I really struggled for my entire life figuring out what I was supposed to do and what I was supposed to be. Oddly enough, it wasn’t until getting my cancer diagnosis that it became so ridiculously clear that I am simply supposed to be faithful to the Lord and to abide in Him. My goal is to press into Him more and more deeply, and I pray that whatever distractions you may be feeling faced with today, whether they be from enemies who mean you harm or from the questions swirling around your own mind, my prayer for you is that you would make your goal to press in to the Lord more and more until you go home to be with Him someday.
Don’t allow distractions to pull you off course! Take, for example, the man whom Jesus healed on the Sabbath -
5 One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
8 “Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.”
9 Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath,
10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”
11 He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’
He was being faithful to do what Jesus had told him to do, yet was met with judgement and condemnation from the religiously zealous and morally bankrupt Pharisees.
Remaining steadfast and focused on God's purpose empowers believers to overcome distractions and threats, drawing strength from God's will and purpose.
Discern Deceptive Designs (6:5-9)
Discern Deceptive Designs (6:5-9)
Read with me again in…
5 Sanballat sent me this same message a fifth time by his aide, who had an open letter in his hand.
6 In it was written: 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
7 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.
8 Then I replied to him, “There is nothing to these rumors you are spreading; you are inventing them in your own mind.”
9 For they were all trying to intimidate us, saying, “They will drop their hands from the work, and it will never be finished.” But now, my God, strengthen my hands.
This brief section highlights what I would call a “Masterclass in standing up for yourself” in the Scriptures. Notice how the threat goes from personal harm that Nehemiah perceived in verse 2 when se said, “they were planning to harm me…” to a political threat in verses 6 and 7 that threatened the ire and rage of the King. I don’t think Sanballat and his friends got the memo that it was the King himself who sent Nehemiah to rebuild the wall and funded it’s construction. Nehemiah knew this - he was the King’s cupbearer and was there when the decision was made.
Nehemiah knew that Sanballat’s threats were erroneous and based in his own imagination. He didn’t allow threats to have more power in his life than what was necessary, so he replied politely and confronted them for the rumors they were creating and spreading, and pressed in to the Lord more for the work set before him.
Has anyone here ever been the victim of the rumor mill? It hurts, doesn’t it? Recently, I had a conversation with someone where a certain level of confidence was assumed, and I was taken aback when I got a call from someone else - who wasn’t involved at all - who repeated back to me, almost verbatim, the conversation I had - packed with several layers of conspiracy and misunderstanding of the circumstances of the original conversation. It hurts to be the subject of people’s idle gossip - and I fear that gossip is an itch that many of us are all too willing to scratch!
Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch Christian during World War 2, who was made famous for her family’s efforts to help Jews escape Nazi persecution, wrote this reminder:
Gossip leads to criticism, and criticism kills love.
Corrie Ten Boom
One of the things that I hope we get from this section of our passage today is that it is 100% vital to a Christian to be able to discern the difference between reality and gossip, and to be willing and able to call it out. Nehemiah knew that Sanballat’s goal was to get him and the Jewish people to stop working - to lose their momentum in hopes that the work would go unfinished.
Sir Isaac Newton’s first law (law of inertia) says that an object in motion stays in motion, while an object at rest will stay at rest. This is the same for people too. It is easier for someone who is active every day to start a project than it is for someone who isn’t active. One of the reasons I wanted to come back as soon after my surgery as I did was because I went from being relatively active to being completely inactive during recovery, and I feared how difficult it would be to get back into routines if I waited any longer. Now, I will admit that I did rush it a bit, and my good friend Tore did an amazing job filling in for me for the last couple weeks so I could take a little bit of time to focus more on my mental health and well-being. But Nehemiah knew that Sanballat and his gang were trying to kill the momentum they had so that the progress on the wall would fizzle out, remaining unfinished.
take out and hold up phone
Ladies and gentlemen - I present to you the instrument of limitless distraction and destroyer of productivity. Have you ever been working on something when you get a notification on your phone that you got a text message or an email, so you stop to take a look and before you realize it, you’ve been on the phone for 15 minutes scrolling on social media or doing anything other than what you were doing before you got the notification? I hate my phone for all the reasons I love my phone - I have so much on here that only serves to kill time - and that is a commodity that becomes more and more precious when you realize it is running out.
Nehemiah was wise enough not only to discern the tactics of Sanballat and his friends, but also, he was wise enough to know that if they stopped the work to meet with them, that it would be extremely difficult to start again.
There is a connection between motivation and momentum - if you take one out, the other is soon to follow.
There is a good little book I would like to recommend to you - it’s called “Redeeming Productivity” by a man named Regan Rose. It looks at the idea of productivity from a Christian worldview. Many of the books I have read like this were written about how to become more successful in business or to conquer specific areas of hardship in life - but were all written from a secular worldview. This book talks about being productive and what that means for us, specifically as believers in Jesus Christ. I think it is an absolutely amazing book and would give it a hearty recommendation for anyone.
For us today, the difficulty isn’t so much in keeping momentum, but it is in clearly defining what the goal or task at hand is. As Christians, we have a call in our lives to walk in relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Our attitudes and behaviors should be molded and grow more and more to emulate Christ’s character - people should see a difference in us and how we live compared to those who don’t have faith in Jesus. I’m not advocating for some kind of manufactured joy where we put on our best fake smiles for church while we are silently dying on the inside - I’m saying that the lives of believers should reflect well on the Lord. Paul knew that this required momentum and purpose, and he reminded the Galatian church not to give up!
9 Let us not get tired of doing good, for we will reap at the proper time if we don’t give up.
The example that Nehemiah gives us in this section of our passage is that discernment plays a big part in identifying potential distractions and disregarding those things that would keep you from doing what God has called you to do.
Remaining steadfast and focused on God's purpose empowers believers to overcome distractions and threats, drawing strength from God's will and purpose.
Fortify Through Faith (6:10-14)
Fortify Through Faith (6:10-14)
Let’s conclude our passage today, read with me in…
10 I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, son of Mehetabel, who was restricted to his house. He said: Let’s meet at the house of God, inside the temple. Let’s shut the temple doors because they’re coming to kill you. They’re coming to kill you tonight!
11 But I said, “Should a man like me run away? How can someone like me enter the temple and live? I will not go.”
12 I realized that God had not sent him, because of the prophecy he spoke against me. Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.
13 He was hired, so that I would be intimidated, do as he suggested, sin, and get a bad reputation, in order that they could discredit me.
14 My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat for what they have done, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the other prophets who wanted to intimidate me.
The creativity of deceitful and wicked men knows no bounds. This Shemaiah character is a prophet who took a bribe to try and detract Nehemiah from seeing the wall project through to completion. Tobiah and Sanballat figured if they couldn’t lure Nehemiah out to kill him themselves, then maybe they could get someone to speak for the Lord, telling him to hide and ruin his reputation with the other workers.
I am tempted to go into more depth as to why a guy like Shemaiah is evil and wicked for what he did - taking a bribe, putting words into God’s mouth He didn’t say, and working against the home of his own people. I am sure it suffices to say that what he did was wrong - someone who claims to speak for the Lord cannot put words into God’s mouth He didn’t say - that makes them, by definition, a false prophet. Do you remember what the penalty was supposed to be for false prophets back then?
20 But the prophet who presumes to speak a message in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods—that prophet must die.’
There are a few other things here to take special note of:
Did you see how Nehemiah was so confident that the Lord had sent him that when someone claimed to speak for the Lord said that he was going to be killed, he took that as reason not to believe the prophet?
12 I realized that God had not sent him, because of the prophecy he spoke against me. Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him.
Also, did you notice that Nehemiah didn’t retaliate against Shemaiah and sin himself, but rather he left it in the hands of the Lord to repay Shemaiah’s evil in verse 14. There have been seasons when I struggled with a tongue that worked faster than my brain. Has anyone here ever experienced anything like that? Instead of responding with rage and anger, Nehemiah presses even more into the Lord and relies on the strength and provision of God to complete his assigned task. He doesn’t let this wicked false prophet take him off his course, but recognizes the situation for what it is and deals with it appropriately.
Sanballat and his gang repeatedly tried methods of distraction, confusion and fear to draw Nehemiah away from the wall, but every time - Nehemiah responded with wisdom and discernment, keeping his eyes on his assigned task. He didn’t let the distraction work, he didn’t let the confusion work, he didn’t let the fear work - his faith was in the Lord and his conviction was that his task was more important than the antics of these hateful and spiteful enemies of God’s people.
My question for us in this: how do we respond in the face of fear? How do we handle threats of different kinds? I don’t assume many of us are getting threats of death all too often, but I can imagine that there are other things being experienced that induce a certain amount of fear or trepidation. For some of us with health problems, it could be the fear of living in continued pain, or even death. For others of us, it could be troubles at work leading to job insecurity or financial insecurity - that is a scary place to be too. There are even the possibilities of social pressures from friends and acquaintances that use peer-pressure to manipulate or control a situation in a way that is contrary to how we want to operate. It induces a fear that if we don’t do “A” or “B” in such a certain way that we will somehow alienate them and we risk damaging the relationship. Fear can be our greatest enemy because it most often lives in the realm of the “what if?” scenarios we create in our own mind.
When we commit to following Jesus, it is very similar to a wedding vow - we follow Jesus through good times and the bad, through sickness and health, til death when we are brought in to His presence forever. There is a certain amount of exclusivity we should have in our lives - the same way marriage has exclusivity in it.
Remaining steadfast and focused on God's purpose empowers believers to overcome distractions and threats, drawing strength from God's will and purpose.
Conclusion
Conclusion
Last week, there was no little stir caused when a group of protesters stormed St. Paul’s Church in Minnesota in protest because the pastor works for ICE in a bi-vocational capacity. Since last Sunday’s circus of media attention and controversy, some of those responsible for and associated with the raid on the church have been charged with various crimes - and since some of the protesters were so outraged against the church because most of their congregation was white, it has been brought up that this may indeed qualify as a hate crime.
This is one recent and modern example of what we are talking about today. The Vice President said in a press conference over the weekend that he is extremely concerned with how the country is drifting further and further toward Paganism, specifically similar in regards to an obsession with abortion and how it is reminiscent of Mayan human sacrifice. In Sprague, I don’t believe we have anything in particular to worry about in terms of being stormed by ANTIFA or BLM activists, given our geographical location and the size of the community in general. However, even within the confines of this little community, the same ideals that sparked the intimidation factor against the church are alive and thriving here as well. And don’t get me wrong, these aren’t necessarily political ideas as much as they are worldviews that stem from a different religious system. But it was brought to my attention recently that Paganism is alive and well in Sprague, that the Wiccan religion is still practiced by some here - which is witchcraft.
The reality is that Bible believing, truly regenerate Christians are a minority in our country. Jesus reminds us that the world will hate us because it first hated Him. If people will hate us, and hate the God we serve, what is to stop them from doing whatever they can to intimidate us to keep us from accomplishing the task God has placed in front of us? Remember, we were commissioned by Jesus to go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to obey all that Christ has commanded. We will be hated when we identify ourselves as belonging to Jesus - and that’s okay!
13 Instead, rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.
If people try to intimidate you, stand your ground, stay focused on the task you’ve been given and remember that it is a great honor to share in the sufferings of Christ. We want to be nice, polite and congenial, but we also don’t have to cave to the distractions the enemies of God would use to keep us from accomplishing our mission. If I were to word this sermon a little differently, I would try to drive home the importance of discretion, discernment and integrity. We can’t be reactionary in what we do - we need to look at everything and weigh it out with wisdom and stand in the conviction that we not only belong to God but we are accountable to Him as our highest authority. It doesn’t matter what other people do or say; ultimately, we answer to the Lord and should operate in life with that conviction at the forefront of our minds.
