Nehemiah 5
Notes
Transcript
Did you ever hear the story about the magic sandwich? Nevermind, its a bunch of bologna.
Nehemiah is a fantastic book on leadership and moving forward to the plans God has for us and wants us to accomplish. Last week we were faced with asking ourselves the question of how we fit in to that plan in our lives and realizing that no matter what job or talents God has given us in our lives it plays a huge purpose in the overall scheme of what God is trying to accomplish. None of us can look at the work we are doing and think to ourselves, man all I am is a guy that gets to cook a few meals to help people, man all I am is a guy that works in retail I am not really that important, or man all I am is a mom, all I am is a dad, whatever we think about ourselves what we saw last week is God has a purpose for us in all of our lives to reach the world and glorify Him. The question is, will we do it, will we allow him to use us for his purposes in the places he has prepared for us to go, are we going to allow our zeal, or our love for the Lord to move us forward, or are we going to allow our doubts and insecurities to keep us out of what God truly has for us.
The thing is, God’s work never goes without opposition, there is never a time when you will be doing the work of the Lord where the enemy doesn’t try to run against you. I heard a pastor along these lines say one time, if you haven’t felt like the enemy is pushing back against the work you are doing lately, it may be because you are going in the same direction as him. I am not quite sure I believe that completely, but it is enough to make you stop and pause and look at the work you are doing in your personal life, and for the Lord and question, is this exactly what God wants me to be doing?
At one of my first places I was able to be a youth pastor God was doing an amazing work through us in the church. We had been hired to be the youth pastor at a church in my hometown that had a great group of about three kids when we started - unlike today when we show up we didn’t grow the youth group just by taking the position, because all we had was Josiah at the time. While I was working as a youth pastor I was also working in the High School as an instructional assistant and over the first year of that ministry God had grown that ministry from those original 3 to we were having almost 70 kids show up on a weekly basis. It was amazing, I was driving the church bus on Sundays and Wednesdays to pick kids up and I would drive for about an hour and a half before service and after just picking people up. I got in trouble one time because we had a fifteen passenger bus and I showed up to church one night and I had 20 kids get out of the bus and the board president came and asked me what I was thinking driving them all around. I told him, “I was thinking I couldn’t leave kids that wanted to come to church standing on the side of the road and not bring them with me.” He told me I couldn’t do that anymore because it wasn’t good on the church insurance, but to his credit, and I hope you listen carefully to this part, he didn’t just tell me I couldn’t do it, he said, “I’ll follow you in my van next week and pick the rest up.” I just want to encourage more of us to be that guy, to guy who doesn’t just have issues, or even just issues and solutions, but is willing to put in the work to be the solution; That’s a huge part. Anyway things were going really well, but there were some things going on in the life of the senior pastor that I was unwilling to invite kids parents to church, and I will never forget the board meeting when a man said about the youth group growth, “Well, thats all good and well but, why aren’t any of their parents showing up, are you inviting them?” And I of course said, No, and when asked why I told them to ask the Senior Pastor. But there was this opposition coming right, things are going well, but on the other side, “what’s it doing for us?” Lets not think about the 25 kids we baptized in a year. Just the enemy trying work a foothold.
I’m sure many of you have stories similar, maybe not in ministry related, but just in your life when you know you are doing exactly what God wants you to do, but right before you get to the ending, the big prize, it seems like the enemy takes a swing at you and stand in your way. It could be with a person who tells you you are unqualified, or questioning where you are now in relation to the life you used to live, it could be a diagnosis, or any number of ways there is just this opposition to the work you are doing as you are moving forward.
This is exactly where the people of God find themselves as they are rebuilding the wall in Nehemiah 4 this morning.
1 Now it came about that when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became furious and very angry and mocked the Jews.
Nehemiah records the situation very well with what is going on, Sanballat hears and probably at first its not a big deal, but as he sees Nehemiah is serious, he begins to become angry about the whole situation. He obviously was feeling threatened by the work Nehemiah and his people are doing - threatened people normally react in one of three ways, they either become so fearful of the situation they go away and hide and you never hear from them again, or perhaps they become extremely angry and get in your face and tell you everything you are doing is awful. However, most often, what happens is the same thing we see with Sanballat, its a mixture of those two. Sanballat didn’t immediately use the power of his army to come against the people, he took a step back because he was scared but he still had to listen to the ridicule.
This could be the addict who is trying to get their life clean who hears nothing from the outside world but how awful they used to be and everything they have ever done wrong, you know, because they don’t beat themselves up enough, so they need to hear it. Though, thats not the only place I have seen it, in ministry I see it all the time with people who have given their lives to the Lord and are beginning to live in a new way, they may not have it all right, they will still make mistakes. I see all the time well meaning family members, who want their family to be a good christian, tell these new believers, “you’re never going to do it, I’ve heard it all before about how big changes you are going to make, nothing is going to change.” And we are just killing people and tearing them down; progress is being made, and the enemy doesn’t like it, so he uses well intentioned(and I say this, because I want to give people the benefit of the doubt) people to knock people down and be a discouragement.
2 He spoke in the presence of his brothers and the wealthy men of Samaria and said, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Are they going to restore it for themselves? Can they offer sacrifices? Can they finish in a day? Can they revive the stones from the dusty rubble even the burned ones?”
Listen, I just want you to understand, this really shows the character of Sanballat as he is very insecure with himself and where he finds himself. Here, he is doing what we call garnering up position for himself. He is going to anyone who will listen and trying to speak bad of them. He wants people on his side, he is trying to get people with him feeling like he does. I want you to see that, and listen this is an awful thing for us to do. We don’t need to try to get people garnered up with us when we don’t agree with people or when things happen.
Just because someone made you mad, or did something to slight you, doesn’t mean you have to go and tell everyone about how bad a of a person they are just to make yourself look better. Sure, there are some people you can talk to, but when we go telling everyone just to make ourselves feel better and get people on our side, that’s just called gossip and has no place in our lives.
And look what happens, Sanballat gets some people to believe in him and his cause, because we have another guy getting himself all worked up.
3 Now Tobiah the Ammonite was near him and he said, “Even what they are building—if a fox should jump on it, he would break their stone wall down!”
Tobiah jumps in with the, “Oh yeah, that’s right, have you seen it? Its pathetic, its barely even being held together, there is no way this is going to work out for them, if a fox, a small one were to jump on it, the whole wall would come down.” And so he is taking shots at the work already done playing it off as insignificant.
With our previous examples, this would sound like “Yeah, he says he’s a christian, but last week I was at his house, and we were building this flower bed for his wife, and he swung the hammer and missed, and do you know what he said? Well, I can’t even tell you what he said, because I am too good of a Christian for that, but it started with a ‘D’ and ended with a ‘T’” Right, they are just playing off the work being done by saying its not enough - he cant be what he says he is, he still has these problems, its not big enough yet.
“Oh, he’s been sober 10 days, good for him, that’s like the tenth time for him.” Right, the work is not quite enough.
So when this happens what do we do? We pull one of the rocks from the wall and throw it at their head as hard as we can, right? No, look at what Nehemiah does.
4 Hear, O our God, how we are despised! Return their reproach on their own heads and give them up for plunder in a land of captivity.
5 Do not forgive their iniquity and let not their sin be blotted out before You, for they have demoralized the builders.
The first thing Nehemiah doesn when he hears all this talk, when the opposition comes in is he gets to prayer. Now we have to deal with a few things in this prayer, because there is a lot going on, and these are some really bold words by Nehemiah. He starts with look at how everyone is talking about us, and within this, it is how bad everyone is talking about us as we are doing YOUR work. Then, Nehemiah, says, “Take everything they have said about us and turn it back on them, all the work we are doing and they are despising, hoping our lands will be easy for them to continue to plunder, instead turn it around on them - make it easier for their lands to be taken over.” As if that is not a bold enough prayer, God, save us, wipe them out, he goes even deeper and he says, “God, don’t even think about forgiving their sin, because they have come against those of us doing your work.”
This should makes us stop for a second because I know what some of you are thinking, “Praise the Lord, there are so many people who have come against me and I want to pray this exact same prayer against them.” I want us to pause for a minute because this seems to go completely against Matthew 5:4
44 “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,
So how do we handle this, and really I think it is quite simple, Nehemiah, and also David when he prayed against his enemies, is praying for the will of God. God had revealed to them both through prayer and fasting the work that needed to be done to completely the plan he had, and as he is praying these things, this is exactly what God wanted, God had made it very clear that Jerusalem belonged to the Jews, and this was exactly what Nehemiah is doing, he is praying along those lines. I still believe had Sanballat come to his senses and realized the Jews having Jerusalem was the will of God he would have been afforded the same luxuries you and I are when we respond to the truth of God, but that was not in the cards here.
So when the opposition comes against him, we see him praying and again, he is pretty specific in his prayer. Is this the first place you go when the enemy comes against you in opposition, through people or circumstances?
When the people tell you, you aren’t really turning your life around because you are still doing x,y,z, do you go to the Lord in prayer, and say “Lord, I know how you see me, I know who you say I am, now give me the strength to lay the person they are accusing me of being behind me. Help them to see me in the same way you do.” Or do we run to people and try to start a figurative war. I’ll get these three people to agree with me, and then nothing you can say matters and we can all argue about it.
So what is the result of this work?
6 So we built the wall and the whole wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.
They worked together, and they got the wall to halfway where it needed to be. Let me ask you this morning, who are the people you can count on to work with you, not just the people you can get on your side, but the people who will walk with you through it? Remember, I told you these people need to be the ones who love you, and love Jesus. Explain again.
No matter what it is God has called you to there are going to be moments of opposition as you are doing his work, its just part of it. The question is are you going to stop, get up in arms, cause fights and break down what you have already built; wasting time on something God never called you to in the first place, or are you going to go to God and ask him to continue to do something in you to get you to the place he wants you?
Nehemiah as kind of been a background to the work I believe God is calling us to as a church, and so I want to just take a few moments this morning to stop and talk about that because I think this relates. When we talk about doing the work in our community to make our church a light house that reaches into the community to give light, to nourish, continue to build and give life, and help Georgetown return to its splendor you love to talk about, we have to understand there are going to be people the enemy is going to use to try to stop us.
We will talk about doing outreaches or ministry events, and there will be people who scoff, “is that it? That’s so small its not going to change much in this community at all, what a joke,” and it will be up to us to go to the Lord and pray, because we could allow that to hit us, we could fight back and stop everything we are doing and spend all of our energy on that place, or we could seek the Lord and get back to work, and realize working together, one small step at a time we will work together we will see it is halfway built, and continue to work.
Maybe you are here this morning and you don’t know Jesus…
Maybe you are here this morning and you are dealing with some crazy opposition and discouragement in your life, I want to offer you the opportunity to come and pray and seek him this morning…
Maybe you just want to come and worship. Sure you can do it at your seat, but I think all throughout the Bible there were amazing things that happened when his people came and worshiped at the altar.
Lets pray.
