Pastor Marq Toombs • June 20, 2021

Sermon Overview

NEHEMIAH 4:6–16

When Israel sets themselves to rebuilding the wall they immediately face opposition from the outside. How does Nehemiah respond to this external threat to the purposes of God and how should we face opposition? Are we as resolved to see God’s purposes come about in our lives?

Sermon Transcript

Grace and peace be with you from the Lord Jesus Christ.

It's good to be with you this Lord's day. I look forward to walking through this story with you as we continue in our series on the book of Nehemiah, as we look at what it means to return from exile and to rebuild the things that perhaps were lost.

And as we get into the story today, I'd like to share with you a personal story from my family's life that I think will help us find an on-ramp into Nehemiah chapter four.

Several years ago, my in-laws came over to my house to celebrate Christmas and to exchange gifts. My mother-in-law had been telling us kind of behind the scenes that she had ordered our boys some cute little swords that they could use to decorate their rooms. And so when we got around to opening the gifts, the boys opened their gift from Granny. And when they opened their gifts, everyone in the room was like, "Whoa!" because we realized that the cute little sword she gave them was this. So it turns out that the sword was not just a cute little decorative piece. It has sharp points. And it used to have a sharp blade, which is now notched, because, of course, the boys began to sword fight with the swords. So we learned right away that these are not, these swords were not play things that they were in fact weapons. My brother-in-law who is a Marine and a veteran of Desert Storm immediately took his nephews, my sons, out to do battle against all the leftover pumpkins from Thanksgiving, which were rotting in the backyard. But that's a different story.

The story we just heard from Nehemiah four is very much like this sword I just showed you. Some might mistake the story in Nehemiah as a decorative piece of history. Some might see it simply as a black and white fact of Bible trivia. But I want us to treat the story for what it is. It is the word of God. It is the sword of the Spirit. It is a kind of spiritual weapon. And when we handle God's word, we should not handle it lightly, but handle it carefully, which is why we ought to pray “Holy Spirit, help us to rightly handle the word of truth and to faithfully wield your sword today.”

Nehemiah four tells a story of conflict and controversy. On the surface it looks like conflict simply between two men Sanballat and Nehemiah. It looks like conflict between the nations and Israel or conflict between the world and the church. What we see in this story is actually a version of a story that we have seen and heard many, many times before. It's a story that reaches all the way back to the dawn of creation. And so, if you dig deeply and get under the surface of the story, you see that it's a story of the conflict between the children of the Devil and the sons of God, between the seed of the Serpent and the seed of the woman. The Lord God is the one who established this enmity and this conflict between his son and the serpent when he cursed the serpent in the garden. Remember how God said to the serpent, "I will put enmity between you and the woman "between your seed and her seed. "He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." This story of conflict, this curse of enmity establishes the arc of God's story from that point forward.

And we are living in that story even now.

Throughout the story of the Bible we see this enmity show up in one story after another. And so many of the conflicts that we find in the Scriptures are simply reiterations of this same kind of story, the conflict between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman. The story in Nehemiah four is no exception.

Here we find a Samaritan man named Sanballat, who rises up as an enemy of God's people. Sanballat was not from God's people, he was from a different kind of people. He was more like an American. And all I mean by that is he was a melting pot in and of himself. He came from a mixed race of people, and there's nothing wrong with that at all. I only mention this to highlight the fact that Sanballat was not from God's people and did not worship the God of God's people. His name means 'the moon god helps', or 'the moon god strengthens'. And so, what you have here is not simply a clash between Sanballat and Nehemiah, but you have a clash of the gods taking place.

Like Nehemiah, Sanballat was appointed to be a governor by the king of Persia. He was governing lands which were near Jerusalem, but not in Jerusalem. And he was agitated by the fact that all of these returning exiles were given this prime real estate up on a mountain and allowed to rebuild their temple and rebuild their lives in that beautiful city. He became even more agitated when Nehemiah came and brought letters from King Artaxerxes and showed them to all the governors and said, "Hey guys, the king sent me here to rebuild "the wall around Jerusalem." And this agitated them even more, so much so that the governors lost their minds. They hated the fact that the Jews who had returned from exile were given the right to rebuild their life, and now rebuild wall.

Think about that, who in the world would ever think that rebuilding or building a wall could be so controversial?! But there it is in black and white in the Bible.

From the time that Sanballat appears in this story, going back to last week, just a little bit, he is depicted as a jealous and malicious man. It displeased him greatly that someone had come to seek the welfare of the people of Israel. And so he did everything in his power to put a stop to it. And what you see is he has a sort of personal strategy. He's gonna start out by speaking some words by venting, saying a few things, making a few jokes, and then he's going to move from verbal expressions to more physical threats of violence. And this is what we see in the story.

And so every time he applies pressure, Nehemiah responds with prayer. You see this repeatedly, there's pressure; response with prayer. There's more pressure; response with prayer and other things. And we'll see this in just a moment.

So Sanballat applies social pressure. He says in chapter four, verses two to three, "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 heaps of rubbish "and burned stones at that?" And you can hear Sanballat trying to shame the Jews, trying to make them feel small. And why would he do that? Well, any of you who have ever felt shame or have ever been made to feel shame know that shame can be crippling and disabling. And Sanballat is trying to cripple and disable the people of God.

But Nehemiah responds to this by praying to God against Sanballat and his motley crew. And it's a rock solid, rock hard prayer. You go back and read in the earlier portion of Nehemiah four, you see that Nehemiah prays for some serious divine intervention. And to put a finer point on that he calls on God to destroy and to damn Sanballat and his enemies. Why is his prayer so severe? It’s so severe because God's honor is at stake. Nehemiah says, "For they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders." Nehemiah's concerned that if God doesn't act to defend his own dignity then his people will become disenchanted in their life and discouraged in the presence of God.

So Sanballat pushes back. He sees the progress that is being made on rebuilding the wall and he is enraged. And he takes his pressure tactics to the next level. No more words, no more jokes, no more memes. "Sanballat and crew all plotted together to come "and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it."

And so, up to this point in the story in Nehemiah four, we have seen this move between pressure and prayer. We've seen this conflict and controversy brewing, but it's at this point in the story that something troubling happens. The momentum feels like it's about to shift and it's about to change and to go away from Nehemiah over to Sanballat. Why? Because just like the serpent in the garden, Sanballat tries to deceive and disorient and demoralize God's people. He does that first by a barrage of subtle words and messages. And then he does it by show of force. He spreads propaganda, and then he flexes his muscles and he showcases his power and he rattles his sabers and he exaggerates his influence.

This is what enemies typically do, especially the enemies of God. They try to make themselves seem so big and so strong, and to make God and his people seem so small and so weak, it's as if they go around and with their chest sticking out saying, "We're everything. "You're nothing. "We're the winners, you're the losers." And while it might seem silly and you think, ‘I would never believe that, I wouldn't succumb to that. Sticks and stones shall break my bones, but words will never hurt me.’ You know how false that is.

You know how powerful words can be in your own life. You know that they can be power tools that build up or powerful weapons that tear down.

And Sanballat knows that as well. And so he's using his words, his propaganda, his threats to weaken defenses and tear down walls and to threaten the people of God. This sort of psychological tactic can wear you out and grind you down over time. And why is that? It happens because the messenger seems just credible enough. And the message seems just true enough to seem plausible. This is how outlandish conspiracy theories get started and spread throughout a community.

Under such pressure tactics you might even be tempted to think, you might even be tempted to think that maybe, just maybe, serpents like Sanballat have a point. After all he does make a compelling argument. And this is exactly what Sanballat wants to see happen in Jerusalem. Like the serpent in the garden, Sanballat wants God's people to doubt God. He wants God's people to distort God's word, to deny his power and to disobeyed the Lord. In other words, he wants to introduce a little chaos into Jerusalem. He wants to cause a disturbance that will create distance between God and his people, between the people of God and his promises. And believe it or not, his tactics almost worked.

Sanballat threats were like an ear worm that got inside their heads and it was taking root and they just couldn't shake it. They couldn't not hear it anymore. And so doubts and fears and worries begin to set in and Sanballat and his motley crew began to feel the shift of momentum coming their way. Why did God's people feel this temptation? Well, because they looked out and they saw Sanballat armies marshaling for war against them.

Presumably, they were trained and experienced and battle-tested, not like the returning exiles who were just trying to get their feet up under themselves and get their lives back in order. They heard Sanballat's violent threats to kill them and to force them to stop rebuilding. And they believe those threats. And then they looked and they saw their own limitations, their circumstances, they saw their own vulnerabilities. And they saw that they couldn't do all that they wanted to do. And they began to feel the pressure and started to collapse under that pressure. Why? Because in that moment, under all that pressure, they were actually tempted to believe a different gospel, a false gospel, which was no gospel at all.

They were tempted to believe something that wasn't true. They were looking away from the Lord and looking to their enemies and looking at themselves, and they were losing all sense of perspective. But it was here that Nehemiah rises up as the leader of God's people and caused the people of God to resist their enemies in three ways. He leads them in prayer, he leads them in preparations, and he leads them in preaching.

So, Nehemiah is a praying man, both in his private life and his public life. You know if you know anything about him, you know he didn't do anything apart from prayer. Prayer was not for him an afterthought, it was a spiritual discipline that characterized his life. He followed what we would call in in our day and age, the Rule of St. Benedict which was ora et labora, pray and work, pray and work.

And he helped with his work make preparations. He's a practical man. Just as he had equipped the builders with tools for building the wall, he now gears up the builders with weapons for defending and protecting themselves and their families and each other. And so you see in the story that the men take the hard work, the hard decision of strapping on swords, picking up bows and spears and wearing armor and carrying shields, they are locked and loaded. They were there to defend and protect themselves. And while some worked on the wall, others are standing guard. And you see this rotation day and night, as the wall gets rebuilt, there is a guard standing. What are they doing? They are putting up resistance. They are standing their ground.

And I want you to notice in this story that praying and preparing are not mutually exclusive. Sometimes we think it's one or the other, we've gotta go one way or the other. And the super spiritual people say, "Well, we're all about prayer." And then they're really practical people say, "Well, we're all about preparing." And if you're following the Scriptures, you'll know that both go together and you must do both. This is a part of fighting the good fight of the faith.

Now, someone has said, "We ought to pray "like everything depends on God. "And we ought to prepare like everything depends on us." That makes us feel uncomfortable, but there is some truth in it. There is some truth in it. If nothing else, it makes us hold together God's sovereignty and man's responsibility. We hold those things in tension.

But notice also that Nehemiah was a preacher-man. You don't always think of Nehemiah in these terms, but here he is going around preaching truth against the lies that Sanballat and his motley crew had been spreading throughout Jerusalem. He goes around the city preaching the gospel of God to his people. And you can read his whole sermon in one verse, verse 14. And I know what you're thinking, "Why can't our pastors preach a whole sermon in one verse?" But here's his sermon in a nutshell,

"Do not be afraid of them. "Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes." And then later in chapter four, he says, "Our God will fight for us."

So just as God has been a wall of fire around them, so now God will be a warrior fighting for them. And how will he do that? He's going to do it through the power of the truth of the gospel.

The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. And the gospel that Nehemiah preaches does something remarkable for the people of God. It draws their attention away from their enemies and away from themselves back to who God is and what God is doing and what God can accomplish. So it is the power of the truth of the gospel that rallies and inspires and empowers God's people to resist and to fight the good fight of the faith.

Again, you see here an example of the conflict between the children of God and the sons of the Devil. It's another example of the cosmic spiritual warfare that is raging all around us and among us, and even within us. All that to say that what we see in this story is that Nehemiah resisted Sanballat and that God's people resisted the world just as the seed of the woman resisted the seed of the serpent. And brothers and sisters we are called to do the same.

This is how we participate in the story of God and in the life of God and in the mission of God in the world. This is how we engage in spiritual warfare. The more the culture -- cultural pressures increase and intensify against us, the more the tide seems to turn against the church, the more we need to pray, the more we need to plan, the more we need to prepare for spiritual warfare.

And to be very clear, I'm not talking at all about national politics. I'm not talking about the United States of America. I'm not talking about taking sides with any political party. In fact, I'm tempted to say 'a pox on both their houses'!

I'm talking about the struggle of the church of Jesus Christ in the world. Why? Because like Nehemiah and his people, we are exiles in the world and we are called to resist the world, the flesh and the Devil. When I was a little child, riding a brown and yellow Joy Bus, bouncing down the road to Sunday school, sitting on a bus with a bunch of little kids, I learned a silly song that has taken on fresh new meaning. The older I get, the longer I walk with Christ, the more we struggle together as the church, the more I realize that,

♪ I may never march in the infantry
Ride in the cavalry
Shoot the artillery
I may never fly o'er the enemy ♪

But I'm in the Lord's army -- and so are you, and so are you.

When we received the sacrament of baptism, we were enlisted in the Lord's army. At baptism the Lord swore an oath to us, and we received our orders to serve him. And sooner or later we will all be called upon to fight the good fight of the faith, to resist the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

And that is why clergy and laity alike must be strong in the Lord, and in his mighty power. That is why each and every one of us must put on the whole armor of God, that we may be able to resist the schemes of the Devil. Why? For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood enemies, but against spiritual enemies behind those flesh and blood enemies. Against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.

And so, it's in light of all of that, as we come to fighting age, we must learn to take up the whole armor of God that we may be able to resist in the evil day. And when all is said and done, and when the battles end and the smoke clears, you will be able to stand firm.

All this talk about resisting and fighting might come as a surprise to some of you. After all Christians are supposed to play nice and just put up with anything and everything, no matter how good or bad, right? Christians are supposed to make peace not war, right? Christians are supposed to be passive not assertive. We're just pushovers and doormat, right? Wrong!

Jesus and the apostles used military imagery in their teachings in order to mobilize the church and motivate the church to engage in spiritual warfare. And all we're doing today is echoing them. Jesus said in the Gospel of Matthew, "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword." "The kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing "and violent people are attacking it."

The Apostle Paul picks up on this theme when he describes the mission of the church in military terms. And he says in 2nd Corinthians six, "As servants of God, we commend ourselves to you in every way, by the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, and the power of God with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and the left hand."

And the 2nd Corinthians 10, he says, "For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God. And we take every thought captive to obey Christ."

In other words, Paul is saying we fight the enemies that are out there in the world. We fight the enemies that creep in to the church. We fight the enemies that rise up in our own hearts and minds. We are engaged in spiritual warfare.

Well, earlier I showed you a sword that my son received from his grandmother. You remember that it was this shiny flashy pointed and sharp instrument. It could do some serious damage if pointed in the right direction and if someone were to swing it at you, but now I wanna show you another sword. And this sword is plain and simple and it looks harmless enough, and yet it is far more dangerous than any sword forged by the hands of men.

This is the sword of the Spirit, that is the word of God. This sword is alive and active. It is sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates and pierces to the division of soul and spirit, joint and marrow, and even discerns the thoughts and the intentions of the heart. To say that this sword is razor-sharp would be an understatement.

At the fathers and children's canoe trip last week, one of the men shared his perspective on the Bible with me over lunch when he said, "The Bible is not a toy, it should not be handled lightly. It should be treated with care, like a bomb, like a powerful explosive device." And that is so true. And you know why? Because it has the potential to destroy and to deliver, to hurt and to heal.

In order to resist all these cosmic enemies like the world, the flesh, and the Devil, those enemies that we can see and not see, requires us to take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And this is not simply a matter of you carrying around your favorite version of the Bible in your hand, it is a matter of carrying around God's word in your heart so that you can carry out God's word in your life. So read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures as if your life depends ended on it, because your life depends on it. "Man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of God."

Why must we resist in this world? Why must we fight the good fight of the faith? The answer is because we have not yet arrived to the new heavens and new earth. We are not yet members of the church triumphant. We are still members of the church militant.

The church triumphant is made up of all of God's people in heaven who have already fought the good fight and finished the race, and now find themselves resting in God's presence. But the church militant is made up of all God's people on earth, who themselves fighting the good fight of the faith now, engaging in spiritual warfare now, and wrestling with cosmic forces of evil now.

One Reformed theologian [Turretin] express the differences between the church militant and the church triumphant in this very poetic way when he said,

"Here is the place of groans and size of the cross and trials, because we live in a veil of tears where we are continually attacked by enemies and pressed by innumerable evils. There, is the place of joys and exaltation because being delivered from all evils, there will be nothing which can bring weariness or grief to us, nothing on the other hand, which will not contribute to our solid and constant gladness.

Here, will all always be the place for prayers and wishes to avert the evils which threaten us and procure the blessings which are lacking. But There, in the absence of all evil and in the Presence of all good, there will be nothing anymore for us to fear, overcome or desire. There will be no need to weary God with prayers, but only praises, giving glory to him for his manifold wisdom, his invincible power, his perfect justice, his inexhaustible goodness, and his unspeakable mercy."

Until we make our way through this veil of tears through this wasteland of sin and death, through this war zone of temptations and trials, we must take up the armor of God, which is Christ the Lord, and take up the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And take up the discipline of prayer, which is devotion to him.

We must recognize the times and see that enemies threaten and that we are at war. So we must pray and work and we must worship and prepare. And we must gear up with spiritual weapons of grace and truth in both hands. And we must resist with all of our might for our God will fight for us and with us and in us.

So how do we resist? How can we resist?

When you rolled out of bed this morning, and you drove across town, and you gathered for worship to make your offerings to the Lord Jesus Christ, you were resisting the Devil.

And when you turn down that extra drink, you turn off your smartphone and you're present with your family, you turn your eyes away from that super attractive man or woman, you are resisting the Devil.

And when you fight against your own desires to look at porn, and you fight the urge to spread gossip, and you fight against your ego and pride, you are resisting the Devil.

When you gather for prayer with other women in the conference room, or seek justice and mercy for your neighbors in Mobile City, when you make sacrificial gifts to help your brothers and sisters in India, you are resisting the Devil.

When you gather your family in the living room to read the Bible and talk about the story of God and the stuff of life, you are resisting the Devil.

When you struggle against your own sins and come to grips with your own weakness and cry out to God for help, you are resisting the Devil.

When you teach your kids the truth about money, sex, and power, you are resisting the Devil. And when you stand up for the widow and the orphan, the immigrants and the poor, you are resisting the Devil.

When you stop believing lies about yourself and start believing the truth of God about you, you are resisting the Devil.

And when you believe that Jesus died for all of your sins, even the one you just thought of, you are resisting the Devil.

When you rest in the promises of God and stop trying to earn his approval, you are resisting the Devil.

And when you come to the Lord's Table and you eat and drink with Christ in the presence of your enemies, you are resisting the Devil.

And we could go on and on. But the point is that there are many, many ways to resist the Devil. And brothers and sisters, you are called to do them all. And when you resist the Devil, just as Sanballat backed down from Nehemiah, and just as the serpent fled from our Savior, when you resist the Devil, the Devil will flee from you.

When you resist the Devil, the Devil will flee from you.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Let us pray.