Sermon Tone Analysis

Good morning, if you are new we have been studying the book of Nehemiah over the last three weeks and this morning we find ourselves in .

This is an exciting text to dig into,

When God’s People Do God’s Work in God’s Way, there will always be opposition.

Now one of the wonderful things about the Word of God is that it warns us.

The Bible not tells us we will face opposition but it also tells us a little bit about our opposition.

2 Corinthians 2:

If we dont forgive one another what we read is that we become outwitted by Satan and we fall into his design for us.

Isn’t that true when we withold forgiveness from one another then seeds of bitterness begin to grow, and thats exactly what Satan wants.

Notice it is spelled out for us, we can see our adversary do you see that word devices?

It literally means forethought premeditated, when a designer sits down to create a device they have to plan and they are thinking what is the outcome gonna be, what is the purpose for what I am designing.

Satan is a designer he has a design and a device especially for you, to break you to force you into his mold, to make you behave like him not the Lord.

Now Satans ultimate purpose is to thwart the plan of God and the way he does that best is by opposing the people of God.

Now he is very subtle some translations use the word scheme instead of design/device.

He is a schemer he is not all knowing, only God is all knowing.

But he has been around a long time and he can observe and notice trends over the course of your life and he has a rough idea and is able to predict what you or I will do in certain circumstances.

He has seen us fall before, he knows where our weak spots are.

He is a schemer he is designing things to destroy you and slow down or stop the plan of God from happening.

Ephesians 6

So heres how it goes if you and I put on spiritual glasses that allowed us to see the spiritual realities behind this verse we would be terrified.

We would be terrified, at the things which are taking place behind the scenes in the spiritual world.

The spiritual realm

There is an interesting chapter in Daniel where Daniel prays to God 21 days goes and God does not respond to his prayer.

Do you ever pray and feel as though God has not responded at all to your prayer?

Your thinking hey um God it would be really nice to get some kind of answer I have been fasting and praying but no answer.

Well pay attention the prophet Daniel got no response, but then all of a sudden an angel shows up and the angel says:

From the first day you began praying Daniel God heard your prayer but I could not come and give you Gods answer to your prayer because I was waging war against the prince of the kingdom of Persia.

Now thats really interesting isn’t it?

That tells you that there are powers, rulers even in the Heavenly realms, highly structured very organized, they got their game down.

Then he says once Michael the archangel came to relieve me in battle then I was able to come to you, but heres the thing when I am done giving you God’s answer to your prayer, I have to go back, and when I go back I will be waging war against the prince of the kingdom of Greece.

Which is interesting because this means that these demonic forces have rulers over certain areas of the world.

If this is true you think about it he says he has a ruler over the kingdom of Persia.

There has not been peace in the middle East since the garden of Eden, these demonic forces are highly structured and very good at what they do.

Relentless they dont give up or fight fair, they are sneaky and crafty.

“The quickest road to Hell, is the one with the gentle slope.”

CS LEWIS

No sharp turns or twists just that gentle slope donward soft underfoot.

CS LEWIS wrote a book called the screwtape letters and essentially it was a story about an older demon who mentors a younger demon, his advice to the younger demon is this:

“you dont have to turn those Christians into murderers hey you dont have to do that.

All you have to do is make them believe we dont exist.”

Isn’t that interesting just make them think we dont exist, because if they dont believe we exist then they wont know how to fight, they wont know where the real battle is.

So if you can just get them to think that they are their own God’s make them live for their own selfish desires and we have won!

Their very good at what they do, so the reality is this many of us go through this life thinking that the battle is here when really there is so much more going on.

Then Jesus comes on the scene and He says this

What were going to see is this our man Nehemiah is about to actually put his hand to rebuilding the wall, the city of God. the moment he begins to do that fierce opposition comes his way.

Now I can remember a time when I was a young Christian when I determined that I was going to tell my friend the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ and it was like the reality of thee verses became true for me.

I was reviled and mocked and shamed, and it wasn’t long after that i realized you cannot walk in obedience to God and be loved by men.

People are going to hate you when you stand for the Lord.

Just like they hated Jesus Himself they are going to hate you.

Jesus went to the cross and was put to open shame and He was God in the flesh.

The first three chapters our man Nehemiah he comes on the scene he gets a knock on his door it was one of his brothers.

Nehemiah had a very high position he was cupbearer to the king.

So Nehemiah gets this knock on the door and it is his brother from Jerusalem and Nehemiah says tell me how is Jerusalem it has been 150 years since King Cyrus issued an edict that allowed the Jews to go home and rebuild their city, so he is thinking the city must be in repair right, so he hears from his brother

um actually the wall is broken down which means that you have no city, because without the wall you have no protection, some had gone back but they had done nothing.

When Nehemiah hears this it breaks his heart and he begins to weep.

God gives Nehemiah a burden, and Nehemiah has this ability to look beyond himself to the people of God and so he sits down with his head in his hands and begins to cry as he thinks about the people of God.

Then he prays a very simple prayer “God forgive us of our sins” which is huge because he goes back to what had gotten them into this mess in the first place right, they had turned away from God and the people were scattered and Nehemiah says Lord I get it were here because we turned our backs on you!

He repents and confesses his sins, he has a spiritual burden and then God grants him a vision of how to fix the problem, and he waits for the right time and acts on it.

The King notices he is depressed the King asks why, He says to the king I wanna go back and rebuild my city not only does the king allow him to go back but he gives him the recources neccesarry to make it happen.

Nehemiah is on the scene and he tells the people that God has put it in his heart to rebuild and fix this massive problem.

But there are these 2 guys Sanballat and Tobiah and they look at Nehemiah and they dont like that he is going to rebuild the city because they have a significant amount of power and influence and they see Nehemiah as a threat, while they should be rejoicing that someone is there to rebuild their city they stand opposed to Nehemiah because they dont want to lose their power or position.

We get to chapter 4

The reality is this, you can talk all you want about doing something for God but the minute you ste your hand to doing it, thats when the opposition begins.

Christian we can be notorious for talking and not acting.

We talk and sometimes in our minds we think, well you know what if I do this thing, even though I know god is telling me to do this thing, then I know whats coming, so I just wont do anything.

We do this because we love our saftey, we love our comfort and security and we just choose to not borrow trouble.

There is only one problem we never do anything god asks us to do.

so even the though of taking action, the though of encountering oppostionstops us in our tracks, so notice what Nehemiah does:

He starts making fun of them, alright we were introduced to Sanballat in 2 and when he heard about he thinks I dont really like this idea too much...

Sanballat was the governor of Samaria this is the guy who the forces of darkness are gonna use to attempt to stop what Nehemiah is trying to do for God.

Notice when he heard that we were building the wall he became angry.

When he understands they are actually going to do this He gets angry and the oppositions set in.

Theres been 100 years worth of trash that has been piled up around the city, when the Babylonians rolled into the city they set fire to it, the stones were made of limestone and limestone and fire dont mix, it makes limestone very brittle in other words they are saying they dont have the materials to do the job.

Was beside him- of course he was, because critical people love to run together.

have you ever noticed that?

Critical people like to hang out with critical people, so he mocks them as well.

their wall is going to be so pathetic a fox will break down their wall.

So what do you do when you face this ongoing opposition?

Well Ill tell ya what Nehemiah doesnt do, He doesnt form a committee and say let’s find some guys who can put an end to all of the false accusations they are making against us.

Let’s form a team of men who can argue and shut them up, he doesnt do that.

You know why?

In other words these people are foolish enough to oppose what God wants done!

Are we gonna some how win them over?

No

If we do that, we end up engaging with fools and we become fools ourselves....

Do you know how hard that is? Do you know how hard it is to “I know what Im thinking, I know what I wanna say, but how do you have the restraint and not engage with the fool?

Nehemiah does speak but listen to what he says:

Nehemiah 4:

Nehemiah engages with God not men.

When Nehemiah says WE are despised I think he is including God in that.

TURN BACK THEIR TAUNT ON THEIR OWN HEADS, AND GIVE THEM UP TO A LAND WHERE THEY ARE PLUNDERED AND WHERE THEY ARE CAPTIVES.

He is saying God allow them to experience what we experienced when we were in exile allow someone to tear down their wall so to speak…

Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out!

Wow what a bold prayer.

For they have provoked YOU

Nehemiah understands that when you are doing what God wants you to do, you cant take it personally, thats a really important thing to remember you cant take this personally.

He says God this is your project you told us to do this, so when they mock us and oppose us they are really mocking and opposing you!

When you face persistent oppostion what do you do?

You Pray and Ask God For His Justice

God will bring His justice and He will make things right, is you stand on the side of god it will be evident and if you are not that will be evident as well.

This is for God to handle, I love this Nehemiah isnt tryingto take matters into his own hands he just lays his problems in the lap of his Heavenly Father.