The Joy of Opposition - Part A
Scripture Reference: Nehemiah 4:1-23
Visit the series page: Exiles: A study in 1 Peter
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Sermon Series: Spiritual Exiles
Message: The Joy of Opposition
Airdate: 9/18-9/21/26
Programs: 2360 and 2361
Morning, Bethel Church, and this is our challenging weekend with Daylight Savings. I said, or I just was thinking about our first service people today, that those are the really early risers to show up at the 815 on the spring ahead weekend of Daylight Savings. You're sort of more the hoi polloi, the sort of the normal folks, and we'll see who comes to the next service. I stand before you as a tired man. My daughter was up throughout most of the night, and I'm running on fumes today. So I say that to you in some way to mitigate my guilt for something stupid that I might say, because my eyes are like rolling in my head, I feel like today. So we'll get through the morning and go home and take a really good nap. And you parents who've been there, you know how I'm feeling today. I do want to greet our Cedar Lake campus this morning, and thank you so much for joining with us. Our Hobart Portage campus, which is not in this service with us, but are next week celebrating their... grand opening. I can say our grand opening. We're just one church. Really excited about that.
So if you happen to just remember that in prayer, we've got a lot of work that's gone into kind of kicking that off, and I've seen the plans, and it's really going to be a great weekend next weekend over there. And how often do you, you know, grand open a new campus? You know, like, well, we've done it twice in the last six months, but we don't know how many more ever in the future, so we want to celebrate that, and we're going to next week. Today, we're going to stay in the stream of our teaching in 1 Peter without being exactly in 1 Peter. We've seen in 1 Peter this focus on trials. That trials are meant by God to reveal and to refine us. We look at them often as being bad things. God looks at them as being good things because of the effect that they have. And 1 Peter is written to people that are in exile, that are experiencing opposition.
They're experiencing... ostracization, and Peter encourages them to see even those things as being part of God's refining fire, that work that he works in us, and to embrace them, not as being bad things, but in the end ultimately good things. So today I want to take a little break from 1 Peter and to look at one particular kind of trial that we so often run into as individuals and as a church. And that is just the trials of opposition, the trials of opposition. And my title is The Joy of Opposition, which sounds oxymoronic, right? Who looks at opposition and goes, yay, we don't naturally do that. There is from Scripture and from the teaching of Scripture every reason for us to even look at opposition as being something that we can rejoice in. James, of course, says, “count it all joy when you fall into various trials and temptations”, and that includes the trials of opposition. We all face opposition, don't we? Maybe as I say that, names come to mind. Perhaps that person is sitting next to you today. and try not to be poking them throughout the sermon, especially if you're married.
But we all face opposition, and we have to know how to respond to it if we're ever going to make it through these trials that God brings our way and these people that God puts in our path. How should we respond to opposition? And Nehemiah is just a fantastic... book and a fantastic story about a man who suffered great opposition and who not only endured it, but who goes down in history as a great example of somebody going through it in a way that honors the Lord. And so... is that Nehemiah hears that the walls of Jerusalem were broken down and remained in that condition. He was serving King Artaxerxes in Susa, the capital of Persia, and he hears that Jerusalem is still in ruins, the wall is still in ruins, and he has a burden for that. He offers a prayer, and God blesses that prayer, and King Artaxerxes says, Nehemiah, you can go, and I'm going to... the thing. I'm going to provide what you need for this thing. I'm given a letter that ought to get you all the way there. And he was the most powerful man in the world at the time. And so that was like a huge endorsement.
And so Nehemiah, he goes to Jerusalem and he inspects the walls and he gathers the Jews and he says, listen, my friends, let's rise and let us rebuild this wall. And Nehemiah is this amazing story of how a people that, you know, they weren't naturally masons and builders, but they come together and they accomplish this amazing feat of rebuilding the walls of the city of Jerusalem. And in the midst of all of this success, there is chapter 4 where there is trouble. There's trouble. Even in the midst of a great success, there's trouble. And it seems to me, my observation would be, and even my own experience, that whenever God is really doing something, whether that be in somebody's life, a new Christian, or maybe some victories that you've had spiritually in your life, or maybe it's your small group, or even a church or a mission work, wherever God is really moving, so often when there is a lot of momentum, something will happen or somebody will come or there'll be some sort of criticism that steps into that moment and can so easily derail the entire thing. And that's what Nehemiah faced.
And I'd like to begin in our little study here of chapter four by looking at the strategies that the opponents of Nehemiah employed against him. So let me introduce you to the bad guys, okay? These are the bad guys. And their names are notorious, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. These were three kings of small kingdoms that surrounded Jerusalem. And they represent the opposition to the Jews rebuilding this. wall. We're introduced to them in chapter 2 verse 10 where they first hear that Nehemiah has come to rebuild the wall and the text tells us that they are displeased greatly. And they begin then to wage a kind of psychological war against Nehemiah. That continues throughout the story. Even after chapter 4, it's not the end of it, because as the story unfolds, they write an open letter, you know, a kind of assassination of Nehemiah's character. They post it on Facebook for everybody to see what this guy was really all about and what his motives were and questioning those. Later, they want to meet him in the fields of Ono. And when your enemies want to meet you in the fields of Ono, you say to them, Oh, no, I am not going to go there.
They wanted to kill him. And so these guys were serious about this. And Sanballat is the ringleader. Tobiah is kind of... his sidekick, and Geshem was the schemer behind the scenes that was doing his scheming. This might help a little bit. Sanballat was the Sith Lord, Tobiah was Darth Vader, and Geshem was General Grievous, just to give some communication to some of you. Now, these guys surrounded Jerusalem. Their kingdoms surrounded Jerusalem. Maybe you're in a situation like that right now as I talk about opposition. You feel like you've got it on all sides. I got nowhere to go. There's no safe zone for me. There's no green zone for me. Everywhere I look, it seems like I've got opposition against me. That's what Nehemiah was facing. Everybody around them wanted them out of there. Now, these men couldn't attack Nehemiah directly because, remember, Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, the king of really the world at that time, had endorsed the project. So to come out overtly and to say, we're going to take you on, we're going to take you down, would have been in opposition to Artaxerxes. And even these guys didn't want to mess with Artaxerxes.
So their strategy really is one more of cloak and dagger. All right, this is espionage. This is insinuation. It's the psychological guerrilla warfare that they employ against God's people in the rebuilding of this wall. So what are the strategies that they employ? Well, notice, first of all, that they begin where every schoolyard begins, and that is with taunting and with ridicule. Look at verse 1. “Now, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, He was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burn ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what they're building, if a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall.” Emphasis added for effect, okay? So here you have Sanballat now. He's the ringleader. He's the spokesperson. He's the Sith Lord. And he begins by ridiculing the effort that these Jews are doing in rebuilding the wall.
And the text literally says this. It says that he became very angry. Literally, his nose became hot. This is a Hebrew idiom for when somebody is really mad. It's like the blood. They get red in the face all the way to the end of their nose. Like if you see a guy who's red all the way to the end of their nose, he's mad, right? And that's Sanballat. He's mad to the end of his nose, mad. And so he begins by taunting them. And visualize this with me. He gathers his cronies, he gathers the army of Samaria, and he begins to jeer the Jews in a way that he knows they're going to hear what he is saying, and he begins to mock them. And this sounds like, you know, the local elementary schoolyard, or maybe an IU-Purdue football game, because he begins by saying this. He says, these feeble Jews. Okay, what's that? Name-calling, right? They're wimpy. They've got nothing. He derides their ambition. Will they restore the wall? In other words, this project's a joke. Come on. Putting this whole thing together. He ridicules their optimism. He says, what are they going to do? Pray the wall up? They can't build this wall.
All they have is their prayers. He mocks their enthusiasm. He says, well, they finish in a day. Word had gotten out that they were busy little beavers working so hard on the wall. All of their enthusiasm. Do they really think they can do this thing? I mean, come on. He undermines their confidence. Can they bring the stones back to life? In other words, they can't do it. They can't. Do it. And if you can visualize this, here's all these people, and they hate the Jews. They're not for this wall going back up. And every one of these that he says, all the guys, you know, they've been drinking. Think of a sort of a drunken sort of mob scene where they're all, wow, no Jews, and they can't do it. And so it kind of is building a Sanballat, kind of does this and does that. And I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where somebody tells a really good joke and somebody else thinks it's a great time to pile on. Or jump on the bandwagon. There's not a lot of humor in the Bible, but this is one of them, actually.
Sanballat very effectively rolls out these ridicules, and there's Tobiah. He thinks it's a great time to jump in, and he goes, yeah, if a fox ran on the wall, it would fall down. I hear everyone going, oh, Tobiah, that's so stupid. Why would you say something like that? And we know from history and archaeology that it is stupid. They've done studies of the wall that Nehemiah built. It was nine feet thick. That would be a big fox. Knock that wall down. The point here is that he wasn't saying this for the armies, and he wasn't saying this for his cronies. He was saying this hoping the Jews would hear it, hoping they'd hear the mockery and the laughter. You know, the old adage in the schoolyard is, sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. You've heard that before. You've probably said that. And the fact that you have to resort on the schoolyard to poetry ought to say that words are effective at discouraging us, aren't they? And even as adults, a little contrary word, a little criticism, a little taunt, a little mockery, and inside we can suddenly become so fleshly, we can be discouraged.
And that is always the case. Words are effective. Now, why do you suppose Sanballat began with ridicule? Why not just march the armies out there and just take them all on? Because what is Satan? He's known as the father of what? Lies. Satan is the master of the subtlety. He's the master of the insinuation. We see that with Adam and Eve, or with Eve specifically in the garden, as he just twists the words and he plays with the mind. Those that Satan controls and follow his path, they do the same thing. Satan knows that he doesn't have to get a good Christian to deny the virgin birth or the fact that Jesus is coming back. All he has to do is discourage him a little bit. And with that discouragement, the good work that God's doing in them or the good work that God's doing through them, all of a sudden, it can come to a halt. Why? I'm so discouraged. And maybe you're there right now. You're rejoicing in what God's done in the past, but right now you're discouraged and somebody said something. Something's going on.
This person's in my life. I got a Sanballat. I got a Tobiah. And you're just thinking, oh, that's the way the enemy operates. How should we respond? Notice how Nehemiah responds in verse 4 and verse 6. I won't read them, but in both cases, he prays. Now, I never saw anybody in the schoolyard do that. I'm going to pray for you. I'm going to pray over these words that you've said. It's not our natural response, is it? have an example here from Nehemiah, I'll come back to this later, in how to respond to criticism and opposition. Go to God in prayer. And notice what he adds after verse 6. He says that the response of the people was that they worked even harder. And the text says they worked because they had a heart to work. I love that little phrase there. And as I read that, you know what I think about? I honestly think about Bethel Church.
One of the qualities of this church that I love so much is that this is a church that has a heart to work. And I've seen that over the years. I can think of just even recent examples of moments where it just comes pouring out. A year ago right now, we said, hey, we bought this building in Gary. We got a clean 30 or 40,000 square feet. Y'all come out now. And I know a terrible cold, I mean, I-65 was a sheet of ice. I know because I drove down it. You know, we had 400 people, volunteers that showed up and we scrubbed every inch of that building. And I saw the way that people were working and laboring and sweating and all of that. No pay for God, you know, that kind of a thing. And I just admire that so much. And like the, you know, a month ago we said, hey. somebody's given us two gym floors, come pull planks. Nobody wakes up in the morning and goes, I think I'm going to pull planks today.
But we had all these people that showed up and they pulled planks all day and they got blisters and sore backs, but they did it to the glory of God. Why? Because they had a heart to work. And I just think about our church and even the day-to-day kind of week-to-week ministries, I think it's a wonderful quality of our congregation. We're good at building walls. and projects, and just having a heart to work for the Lord, and I commend you for it. So look at that verse and go, that's us right there. We're just like them. Encouraged? I want to be encouraging. The second thing that we find the enemy doing is, and you see how these escalate, okay? Escalates. Ridicule doesn't work, the people just work harder. So they amp it up now in verse 7 and 8, and they just seek to make trouble. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. Now before they were greatly disturbed, greatly upset, now they are really mad. And what do they do?
And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. The second thing that opposition will do when the ridicule doesn't work is they will just seek to do mischief. They will seek to do something that can frustrate the plans. They'll plot. They'll come together and strategize against the work of God. They will gossip. They will slander. They'll do whatever they can to create trouble. It's a kind of verbal terrorism that takes place. And of course, again, God's enemies do this because their Sith Lord Again, notice Nehemiah's response in verse 9. But we prayed and we posted a guard. That little verse I find to be one of the most helpful and insightful with a common problem amongst God's people. When opposition comes or trouble comes or some conflict comes, whatever it might be, there are really, it seems, two kinds of Christians. There are the kinds of Christians who say, we're just going to pray about it. We are going to pray about it. And indeed, they do pray about it. And then you have another group of people. They say, you know what? We're going to post a guard, right? We're weaponizing. We're getting the guns out.
They want to do battle. Bring it on, okay? We are going to take practical steps. to take them out. They're more of the sort of practitioner type. So you have the kind of praying types, and you have the kind of post-a-guard types. And what I've seen pastorally, this plays out this way, where you have some people say they're just going to pray about it. I have seen in my ministry, I've seen people, they'll get like, I have cancer. And their response is, I am simply going to pray about this. And I have urged them, I'll say, pray about it, but why not get some medical help and do whatever you can medically as well as praying in order to take care of this problem? And I've seen people who have refused to seek medical advice because in their minds, I think, they think it's more faithful to simply... pray about it. At the other side of this, I have seen often, and I have done this myself, a problem arises and I skip the praying and I go to the posting of the guard stuff. Well, let's just think about how to make this happen.
And we're going to do this and we're going to do that and we're going to take care of this and we're going to take care of that. And there's no regard for seeking God. It's like Israel when the Gibeonites faked him out and Joshua said, eh, we won't go to war with you. And then they find out they're the next country over. Why? Because they did not seek the Lord in the matter. And so it seems like there are those two kinds of Christians. And Nehemiah shows the beautiful balance of embracing both of those. What ought we do when we come to some trouble or trial in our life? First thing to do is to pray about it. And we see Nehemiah over and over again. He prays. His instinct is prayer. And for us as Christians, that ought to be our first thing. Hey, let's pray about that right now. Let's seek the Lord about this right now. But when we say amen, it doesn't mean now I don't have to think about anything else. There are all kinds of wisdom and prudent matters that the Bible also talks about.
Read through the wisdom literature of Psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes, and it's filled with practical advice for faithful living in the real world. We live in a real world where real things have to be taken care of. And the wise Christian and the wise church We'll do both of those. So maybe ask yourself, am I a I'm going to pray about it and then sort of take my hands off kind of person? Or am I a forget about praying about it, get right down to fixing it kind of person? And maybe Nehemiah could inspire us to be both of those. Okay, both of those. An example of both of those would be a dear woman in our church a few weeks ago had a very, very difficult surgery. According to James 5, she asked if the elders would pray over her, and we did. We anointed her with oil, we prayed over her, we prayed over that surgery. And then she went and she had the best medical care that she could possibly find. And to me, that is Nehemiah. Praying about it, posting a guard. A great example, I think, for prudent and prayerful living.
The third thing we find happened now, again, an escalation, okay? Taunting, troublemaking, and now we see threats. Look at verse 11. “Also, our enemy said, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to the work.” Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us ten times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Wherever you turn, they will attack us. Over. The language here in the Hebrew means over and over and over again. They were saying, they're going to get you. They're going to get you. They're going to kill you. Now, how fun would that be? Right? There you are. You're building a wall. You're hewing out stones. You're piling them up. You're making a wall. And at the same time, you've got some of your own people, cronies of your enemies, who are saying to you, you're going to die. Now, these people realize they didn't know they were Bible characters. Right? They're not in there, oh, this is a Bible story. We're going to be fine. They have no idea. They're living life like you and I live our lives.
Would that be an effective, fearful tactic? I mean, what if, as you came in, there's all these people outside of the church going, you walk in there, they're going to kill you. How many of us would go, oh, no problem? No, it would have its effect, wouldn't it? And indeed, it did in that day. It had an effect of discouragement. Word gets out, they're going to kill us. In fact, let's look at that effect. What is the effect of the taunting? And what is the effect of the ridicule? And what is the effect of the troublemaking and the threats? of opposition in this story at this point is discouragement. Look at verse 10 of chapter 4. “In Judah it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” What Nehemiah is recording there is what is the word on the street. What were people saying as they were building the wall? They're looking at all the rubble now and they're saying there's so much rubble. This is weeks after, or days after, Nehemiah said, let's rise and build.
Was there more rubble now than there was before? No. But when we are discouraged, everywhere we look, there's rubble, right? Oh, yeah. I'm a little discouraged right now. My whole life stinks. There's rubble everywhere. When we're encouraged, there's no rubble. When we're discouraged, everything's rubble. Are you with me? Remember, I didn't have a good night of sleep, so I have no idea what I'm saying right now. I just hope it's connecting somehow. These words were having their effect in spite of the amazing progress that was being made. This goes down as one of the greatest and most unified team efforts that God's people have ever done. And in spite of this amazing accomplishment, and in the midst of it, You have all of this turmoil and opposition and drama and people actually saying, we're never going to make it. We can't do it. There's too much rubble and too much trouble. The danger, I think, in verbal attacks is we begin to believe what's being said, even when it's not true, right?
Do you think, how likely is it that Geshem and Tobiah and Sanballat are going to take their armies against people that the most powerful man in the world said had permission to build this wall? Not very likely that they would do it. But if you hear something enough, you believe it to be true, don't you? If somebody tells you that you're nothing enough or somebody tells you that you can't do it enough or somebody tells you that, you know, your faith is a bunch of hooey because I know the kind of person that you are enough, you begin to believe it and discouragement kind of creeps in and now the progress that you were making, it slows down or stops, right? And you're like, oh, there's so much rubble. Why are we even trying this? We're never going to make it. I wonder if you've lived. In verse 10, have you had your face flush as your nose gotten red all the way to the tip as a colleague or a family member or a neighbor or a former friend or a former spouse tells you what a terrible person you are and questions every character quality in your life?
Have you been, in verse 10, discouraged? As a pastor, you know, as a leader of any kind, if you take on any responsibility, expect that you're going to deal with this. I can tell you, I've been a pastor for 22 years. I can think of names that come to my mind of Sanballats of Tobias and Geshams over the years that have said this or that and questioned this or that and on and on and la la la. It's just, it's part of what it means to be a leader. But I know well that sense of discouragement, that deep down thought that I'm a failure or my faith isn't real because this person says they don't think I'm a good Christian, etc. I don't want to ruin the ending here again, but they rebuilt the wall in 52 days. They're halfway done. They're only like three weeks away from the time that Nehemiah said, let's begin rebuilding the wall. This is one of the greatest projects and team efforts in history, yet it was criticized. It was mocked. And this is the danger, I think, of criticism is that it can sap the energy from the most spiritual and noble of efforts.
These people were rebuilding the wall to the glory of God. They heard from Nehemiah earlier all the things that Artaxerxes, all the things really that God had done. I mean, what are the chances that the most powerful man in the world is going to come to the aid of the Jews in rebuilding the wall of a city that had rebelled against his predecessor? Why would a king do that? And yet that king came to Nehemiah and the Jews' aid and provided the resources and gave the letter and made all the provisions. I mean, you look at all of that and what can you say? This is a God thing, right? This is a God thing. And yet, in spite of it being a God thing, a little bit of criticism just takes the wind out of the sails. This was tough for Nehemiah. opposition outside, discouragement within. Maybe you're in verse 10 right now, and you can relate to this. It's like, man, you're describing my life here, where I am today on this Sunday. I'm discouraged.
And here's where Nehemiah, I think, provides an inspiring and helpful example of how to respond when life brings opposition. to what God is doing and what God wants to do in our life. And I've got four things, four responses that Nehemiah has here and four ways that we can actually experience these oppositions and turn them into actually a kind of joy. And I share these with you not because I do this perfectly or even 75%. This is as much for me as it is for anybody. And we have to be reminded of this because it happens so often in our life. But how do we respond when opposition comes to us? First of all, I think it is so critical that we expect it, that we expect opposition to come. There are some people that think mistakenly that to be a Christian or to be a part of a church, I mean, it's like... where it never is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. I mean, that's every local church, isn't it? To go there would be just a blissful experience of happy Christians all the time.
I'll never have anybody tell me anything but something that's uplifting and encouraging to me. Nothing will ever happen in the church that I don't walk out of there going, I'm so glad I'm a part of that church. I mean, it's just gonna be, it's like heaven on earth. Well, nobody amen'd that. And that's because you all have been in churches and in this church. The reality is, no matter what God is doing, there is always going to be negative opposition, criticism, a discouraging person, a Sanballat, a Tobias, somebody like that. J. Oswald Sanders, great Christian man, wrote a classic book on leadership, said this, “no leader is exempt from criticism, and his humility will nowhere be seen more clearly than in the manner in which he accepts it and reacts to it.” Do you think that Nehemiah thought to himself as he was on his camel or donkey or walking or however he got from Susa to Jerusalem, you know what, I'm just going to show up there. I'm going to give an inspiring speech. And not only are the Jews going to rally to the cause, but everybody around Jerusalem, they're all going to be happy about this. It's going to be fantastic.
My speech will do it. No. He knew what was coming. He knew there would be trouble. Chuck Swindoll, many of you know Chuck Swindoll, says this, “there will always, always be opposition from those who are by nature negative and critical, but the work must go on. Progress should not stop because of a few who were critical of the plan.” I think it's a falsely idealistic perspective on the Christian life to think that it's going to somehow be easy. that I'm going to skate along and everyone's going to be happy with what God is doing in my life. It won't happen. And we can look at examples in the scripture, not just Nehemiah, but Jeremiah certainly faced that. Paul faced that. Well, how about Jesus? I mean, if there was ever a leader who was such an awesome leader that, I mean, everybody would have loved everything that he did and just rallied to him. I mean, everybody would just applaud him and be like, you know, be like Palm Sunday every day of his life, right? No. What happened to our perfect leader, Jesus?
Not only were there many people that opposed him, famous now, men like Caiaphas and Pilate and the Pharisees, but even within his own circle. Judas betraying him. The greatest leader who's ever walked this earth, beginning the greatest organization that has ever been begun, the church, faced trouble, didn't he? And opposition. So who are we to think that in our... smaller context and in our own lives that we are going to be able to follow the Lord, fulfill his will for us, and somehow think everybody's going to love it and everybody's going to applaud it. It simply won't happen. In fact, I think if there is a key truth here, it is this one, is that God's will didn't allow the wall to be built without opposition. I mean, could God have rebuilt this wall without Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem? You bet he could have. Could he have rebuilt this wall in some way where everybody thought it was great? You bet that he could have. But it was God's will that there be a Sanballat. It's God's will that there was Tobiah and all the rest. God included that in the plan for Nehemiah and the plan for the rebuilding of the walls.
It included the conflict. It included the slander. It included the threats that were made. And I wonder today if you might have a Sanballat in your life. Even as I've been talking about this, there's been somebody coming to mind. And in your heart, you're like, you know, God, if you love me, you will destroy them, right? Because you're not the author of evil, and you don't like evil people, and yet this evil person is in my life. And it seems to me that... this whole thing to work the way that, in my opinion, it ought to work, that person needs to be eliminated. And we try to pray the Sanballats out of our life because we think something's wrong, that they are in our life. And too often we think that with even criticism, right? We think, I must be out of God's will because somebody said something negative. Mrs. So-and-so said something. And so we look at and we listen to so-and-so who says such-and-such about this or that, and we think, well, I must not be a good Christian, or maybe this faith thing isn't true, or maybe I'm out of the will of God.
Joe Stowell III, his dad was the first pastor of our church, and he was longtime president of Moody Bible Institute, once said, “in every church I have pastored, God has placed difficult people around me to keep me dependent on him.” Now, I have no idea what he's talking about there in my own personal experience. But there is truth there, isn't it? That opposition is not out of God's will, but it is a part of God's will. And that indeed, God gains greater victory when his people trust him in the midst of trouble and overcome in spite of opposition. that there's a greater glory that comes from that why do you think God created Satan? Did God know when He made him the highest archangel? Did He know the whole story? Indeed, did He purpose the whole story, that Satan was going to rebel against Him and take a third of the demons, or the angels, with him, and that all of this would ensue? Why? Why does God do that? As Luther said, even the devil is God's devil, right?
That God uses The taunts and the ridicule and the criticism and all the rest to gain a greater victory and a greater glory. God thought it best that there be a Satan. And we have to look at these kind of situations and realize that apparently God thinks it's best that there's a Sanballat in our life. Now that's a hard thing, isn't it? Because we want them out of there. But God has them and sovereignly places them. in our life. Now, if I might make a very quick tangent here, you may be here and in an honest evaluation, you're not Nehemiah in the story. You're Sanballat. And maybe you're like, you know what? This vindicates my role in this church. Somebody's got to do it. And that somebody is me. We have to realize that while it is God's will for there to be Sanballats, it is never God's will for us to be a Sanballat. And I would call you to change. In fact, you could ask the question, why was Sanballat so upset about this? And this is where conflict reveals the opportunity. of our hearts, doesn't it? Was it about the wall for Sanballat? No, it wasn't about the wall.
It was about influence. It was about economy and money. It was about power. And Nehemiah and that wall being reconstituted represented a threat to Sanballat. And that's why he wanted them out. So don't be a Tobiah. Don't be a Geshem. Don't be a Sanballat. We need to expect there to be opposition. And maybe next week, one of you will come up to me and say, I didn't think that sermon was very relevant, but boy, the week I had. And I'll say, good. I don't know if I should say it that way, but hey, you're applying God's word. That's a good thing. Second thing we see here is that Nehemiah provides this wonderful example of prayer, of prayer. Look at verse 4. Look at the first thing that Nehemiah does. It says, Nehemiah prays this, “Hear, O God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives.” Now that doesn't sound like a very loving prayer.
And if you read through the Psalms, there are Psalms that are known as imprecatory Psalms where David writes psalms that sound sort of like that, you know, where he is praying God's justice and wrath down upon his enemies. I'm not into the content of the prayer as much as I am in the fact that he prayed. And we see that pattern. Verses 6 through 8, there's troublemaking and scheming. What is Nehemiah's response? Verse 9, but we prayed to our God. When we face opposition, that has been sovereignly brought into our life by God, why would prayer be an effective strategy? Because if this person or this opposition is in my life by the sovereign hand of God, when I pray, I'm talking to the right person about the issue. I'm talking to the person who has the power to mediate the situation and to mitigate it and to take it away if he wants or to do whatever, but I'm praying to the right person. I'm praying to God. I wonder, the Sanballat in your life that I referred to earlier, have you prayed about this person? Have you prayed about this situation? Have you gone to the Lord in prayer?
The example of Nehemiah throughout the whole story is that trouble comes, trouble comes, trouble comes. Nehemiah's response, he prays, he prays, he prays, he prays. It's a book on prayer. And that prayer in response to trouble. And we don't, I think, naturally do that. Naturally, we want to post the guard, right? We want to man up. We want to soldier up. We want to go take care of business. We want to take care of this person. We want to fight back. We want to sort of Mike Tyson in his prime. But Nehemiah begins with prayer. I would call you to pray. You say, ah, it's just Nehemiah. What did Jesus do? What did Jesus do the week of his passion when he knew what was coming? You say, well, he knew it was coming. Why pray about it, right? I mean, if you know it's coming, you can ask God all you want, but it's coming anyway, so what's the point? And yet he prayed. He prayed in Gethsemane. He prayed even on the cross. His last words were prayers.
And if that doesn't eloquently show us the importance of prayer, especially when we are in trouble, and we have people in our church who are in trouble. Life has brought trouble. Life has brought pain. And prayer sometimes is like, oh yeah, we prayed. No, this is a key part of how Christians respond to trouble. We go to God. We open our hearts to him. We ask for his help. We pray about the Sanballat. We pray that that good work that God wants, may that refining work be done. I want to be that goal that is purified. I don't want to waste this trial. I don't want to waste my cancer. I don't want to waste this. unemployment. I don't want to waste this conflict with a fellow Christian. I want it to have its good effect and to embrace that and to tell God that. I wonder, do you do that, friend? One thing I've noticed when I've been dealing with a kind of Sanballat situation, you know, my natural instinct is to pray that God would take them out, right?
But I find that when I pray for that person, especially if they're a fellow believer, When I pray for that person, I find a little impulse of charity towards them. Have you noticed this? It's hard to pray for somebody and hate them at the same time. I find that when I pray for that person, it's a little step towards the command to love your enemies and to do good to those who despitefully use you, Romans 12. Give that a try. You're like, I don't want to pray for this person. Try it. Pray that God's will would be done in their life. Pray that even their taunts and their ridicule and their criticism, whatever 1% gain that your spiritual life could have from it, say, God, I want that 1% gain. What they're saying is evil and their motives, I believe, to be bad. But whatever good can come from it in my life, I want that. And I find that when I get my heart around to praying that way, it has a way of restoring some encouragement. And when you're discouraged, what do you need? You need encouragement. Pray. Keep praying. The third thing is to prepare for it.
And I've said this before, but notice that even in this chapter, Nehemiah, he doesn't simply pray, but he takes actions to meet the opposition. Back to the text again a second, verse 9. But we prayed and posted a guard. In verse 13, it says that Nehemiah armed the workers so they could respond to an attack. Now, there might have been someone going, you're not a man of faith. Why are you giving us swords? And he's like, I prayed and I'm giving you swords. In verses 16 through 18, he had workers work with a chisel in one hand and a sword in the other. Does that mean he wasn't a man of faith? He brought a trumpeter with him. And the idea was that if there was attack anywhere on the wall, they would blow the trumpet and everyone would rush to that place in order to engage the fight. He had people work in the low spots in the wall in verses 12 through 15. Now, why do you think Nehemiah would have people working in the low spots? Where do you think an attack would most likely happen? In the high spots or in the low spots?
It seems to me it'd be the low spots, and that's what Nehemiah thought as well. And he had people in verse 22. He said, everyone stays in the city until the wall is done. What do we see there? Practical wisdom, okay? He got prepared for the opposition. I think we ought to expect it. We ought to pray for those who oppose it. Oppose us, but we also must be prudent and wise in responding to it. And the fourth thing here, and this is really, I would say, the most helpful, is that after we've prayed about it, after we have prepared for it, we've expected it, we know it's coming, here's the final point. Look at verses 19 and 20, what Nehemiah says. “I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread and we are separated on the wall for far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there.” Here's the key phrase. “Our God will fight for us.” Nehemiah was a practical man. Nehemiah was a prayerful man.
But Nehemiah was also a man who understood that in the end, the battle is the Lord's. And that bottom line for us has to be our bottom line, because all of our praying and all of our prudency, and I don't know if that's a word, but all of our, you know, sort of strategizing, in the end will feel superficial to us if our anchor and if our sort of our bottom line is not the God who has made promises to us. that he will fight for us, that he will come to our aid. And of course, as Christians, what do we know? We know the end of the story, don't we? You can read Revelation. At the end of the story, there is no opposition, there is no authority, there is no power that stands against the king of kings and lord of lords who comes riding out in that white horse. And he is going to return, and every enemy, Satan, included is going to go under his feet and in the end, Philippians 2, every knee will bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
We know the end of this story is that God wins, and because we are God's children, we win with Him. And our walls may build or not, our troubles may come or go, our critics may say or not, but in the end, we know that with the Lord, we win. Our God will fight for us, and faith is the victory that overcomes the world. But we are living now in this time where we have to We have the tension between what we know to be true by the promise of God and the realization of that. And the Bible says that in this world, you're going to have trouble, right? You are going to have trouble. New Christian, it is going to be hard. Do not be discouraged by the trouble that comes and the critics that come and the opposition that comes. You're going to have people that are going to say things to you. You might even have people in this church that are going to discourage you in some manner. But we cannot have our hope in the people of this church or in the critic changing his mind or coming around and saying, you know what, I was mistaken.
You really are a wonderful person. Can I hug you? It's not likely to happen. Our hope is in the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. “Where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord.” Psalm 121. And as God's people, when we face these temporary trials, which are achieving for us a glory that far outweighs them all, we look at that trial and we look even at that person, that Sanballat, and we see them as temporary in light of the big picture. And “though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us.” Martin Luther. A mighty fortress is our God. And on and on. I mean, there's songs and verses. This is where real life is lived. It's in the trenches and in the troubles. And this is how God refines us. And when I can see that this is how God does it, then I can even embrace the tough times and to see that there is good that comes from it. You say, oh, that's not true. Let's look to the cross of Christ. I've got one behind me.
If there is one great example of how God uses the taunts, the ridicule, the betrayals, the enemies of God and all of their schemings to do an ultimate good, it is the cross of Christ, the perfect person, the perfect leader, the perfect sacrifice, killed at the hands of Satan and all his minions, and yet the greatest wrong producing the greatest good and glory. And our lives are little microcosms of that grand narrative. And you might not have a Caiaphas, you might not have a Pilate, it may not even be a, it's not the Sith Lord you're dealing with, it's General Grievous, or some lesser situation. But all of them are a part of a temporary trouble, but an ultimate victory. I heard somebody one time say, You know, for unbelievers, this life is the best that they'll ever experience. But for Christians, this is the worst that we will ever experience. The future is bright. The future is glorious. And we live in light of that in the troubles and the trials of today. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” That wasn't in the Bible when Nehemiah lived, but I think it might be today his favorite verse.
And he lived it out very well. And I hope that we will as well as a church. And those are just some words from a tired pastor. I don't know if they connected at all. And when I get up from my nap, I'll wonder what I said this morning. But maybe God will use them, and I hope that he does. Let's stand together. I'd like to pray and give a final benediction.
This transcript was generated using AI transcription technology and reviewed for accuracy but may contain errors. Please refer to the original audio for precise wording.
