Good morning. My name is Fran Dixon, and the word of the Lord today is going to be in Nehemiah chapter 4 verses 1 through 15, and in the Bibles underneath your seed, it's on page 474 or 475. And this is the word of the Lord. Nehemiah 4 verse 1 through 15. When Senbalah heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews. And in the present of his associates and the army of Samaria, he said, what are those feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rebel burned as they are? Tobiah, the Amarite, who was at his side, said, what they are building, even a fox, climbed up on it, he would surely break it down. Here is O God, O our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity. Do not cover up their guilt or blood out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown in sale insults in the face of the builders. So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their hearts. But when Senbalah and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Amarites and the men of Ashtod heard that their repairs to Jerusalem's walls had gone forward, they were very angry. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Meanwhile, the people in Judea said, the strength of the laborers is giving out, and there is so much trouble that we cannot rebuild the wall. Also, our enemies said, before they know it, or see us, we will be right there among them and will 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 you. Therefore, I station some of the people beyond the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords and spears and bows. And after our looked things over, I stood up and said to the nobles and the officials and the rest of the people. Don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fights for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your homes. And when our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated them, we all returned to the wall, each to his own work. May the Lord be praised. Well, you heard the passage of scripture from Nehemiah chapter 4. I got an email not too long ago. From a friend of mine, I'll call him Jim. He doesn't go to church here, but I used to, I used to hang out with Jim a pretty good bit in a former church. And I got an email from him one day and the very first sentence in that email said, it wasn't supposed to be like this. It wasn't supposed to be like this. Jim's life had totally changed a couple of years before. He'd become a new man. He had heard the gospel and repented of his sins and trusted in Jesus and it totally changed his life around. He overcame a longstanding gambling addiction that he had in his life and became a lot more attentive to his wife and kids, made friends, went to church, got involved there. There was kind of a peace and a joy in Jim's life that people noticed and could tell he is something radical had happened to him. And we know that it was the gospel. But then one thing after another started happening to Jim and most of the things that were things he couldn't help. I mean, it was everything from his cars breaking down on a regular basis to his dog dying. He had a friend who turned his back on Jim. He lost his job. He watched his own daughter kind of spiraling out of control and all of these things just sort of mounted up in Jim's life and caused him a great deal of grief. He got really, really discouraged. So Jim started dabbling in online games again. He lost a good bit of money and when that happened, guilt and shame and disappointment upon himself just kept piling on over and over. Jim dropped out a church. He retreated from his friends. He wouldn't return my phone calls. Those were just sort of the dominoes effect of things that happened in Jim's life. And finally, one day he sent me that email. He said, it wasn't supposed to be like this. He said, I thought God loved me. If God loved me, why does he allow these bad things to happen? And then Jim and his email said, it's just no use. I feel like totally giving up.
You know what Jim needed to understand? It is supposed to be like this. It is supposed to be like this. The Christian life is not a walk in the park and I suspect that most of you maybe hopefully all of you have found that out. Faith in Jesus does not protect us from trials and troubles. No, quite on the contrary. Faith in Jesus invites troubles and trials and guarantees that they're going to happen. And that's exactly what we see here in Nehemiah chapter 4. I want to show you three things this morning. First of all, that the Christian life is a fight. Secondly, you got to arm yourself for this fight. And thirdly, you got to rely on someone much stronger than you if you were to win that fight. So first of all, let's talk about the Christian life being a fight. If you haven't heard the last couple of sermons of our series on Nehemiah, let me tell you what's going on so that you can catch the drift as we jump right in here in Nehemiah chapter 4. Nehemiah was a Jewish man who served as an official in the cabinet you might say of the King of Persia. His name was Art Exercise. The time is about the mid 5th century BC. Nehemiah's title was Cup Bearer. You read about that over in chapter 1. And in chapter 1, we read that some friends came to Nehemiah where he was in Susa, the capital of Persia. They came from Jerusalem, which was the homeland of Nehemiah's ancestors, and they brought him a disturbing report. The people of God back home in Jerusalem, he said they said that Nehemiah were depressed. They were despondent. They were without leadership. The wall around the city was in ruins. Jerusalem was vulnerable to attack by enemy nations. Nobody knew quite what to do. These were Nehemiah's people. So you can understand why Nehemiah would be very, very disturbed by that report. So in chapter 1, he prays about what to do. He asks his king for an extended leave of absence. He travels 1100 miles or so from Susa to Jerusalem and he becomes the governor of Judah. In chapter 2 of Nehemiah, Nehemiah goes out and surveys the landscape. And he decides that job 1 is to rebuild the wall, the wall around the city of Jerusalem. I showed you a picture of that wall or at least an artist's rendering of that wall last week. So Nehemiah develops a plan. He gets together with the people. He divides them up into teams. He assigns each work team a section of the wall, just kind of like the people painting the wall did last week. And in chapter 3 of Nehemiah, they start to rebuild that wall. Everything seems to be coming up roses for the people of God. They're excited. They have a fresh vision for the future. It's morning in Jerusalem. Hope had sprung eternal. But then we get to chapter 4. And chapter 4 begins in that very first verse by saying that when San Ballet heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed. Now who was San Ballet? Scholars believed that San Ballet was actually the governor of Samaria, an enemy nation to the north of Judah. He pops up every now and then in this book and it's never good news when you see San Ballet's name. He is the wicked witch of the east. He is agent Smith. He is emperor Palpatine. He is snidely whiplash. He is the Joker. He is the Norman Bates. He is the antagonist of all antagonists. And in verse 7, San Ballet teams up with his cronies, Tobiah, the Ammonite, to the south, Guessum and the Arabs to the east, and the men of Ash Dodd to the west. So as you can see, Jerusalem is now encircled by these four different allied nations. And these guys become thorns in the side to Nehemiah and to the people of Jerusalem. They wage an escalating war in this chapter of psychological warfare against the Jews. First, they try ridicule. And you heard what they said, didn't you? In verse 2, look at that. It says, here's what these people were saying. San Ballet said, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can you just hear the sarcasm in San Ballet's voice? Can they bring those stones back to life? All these rhetorical questions designed to wear down the morale of the people of God. And then in verse 3, Tobiah chimes in and he says, what they're building if even a fox climbed up on that wall, it would just fall down. So they're telling jokes about these people, the people of Jerusalem. They're passing around stories amongst themselves and among their people about what a ridiculous set of people, what a ridiculous project this was. The very idea that they would rebuild the wall. That was there. That was one of their strategies. And then in verses 7 and 8, later in the chapter, they begin to raise the temperature. They got very angry. They got outraged. They plotted together. It says to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. And then in verse 11, they try something else. They circulate a rumor. Says in verse 11, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and will kill them and put it into the work. What do you hear San Ballet doing here? He was inciting the people of God to fear, trying to stalemate the work by intimidation and harassment. And those tactics began to take their toll on the Jews. Like what happened in my friend Jim's life, the people of God got discouraged. Look at verse 10. And verse 10 says that the people in Judah said, the street of the laborers has given out. And there's so much trouble, we cannot rebuild the wall. Wow, that's really interesting, isn't it? Because if you remember, if you've been here over in chapter 2 of Nehemiah, the people had said, let's start rebuilding. I mean, their hearts were pumping, their vision was strong. They really wanted to get out there and do this work. Let's start rebuilding. They said in chapter 2, but now look what it is. They say, look at all this rubble. Look at all this rubble. We can't do it. What did we ever think we were doing? How did we ever think we'd be able to do this?
It wasn't supposed to be like this. I'm sure some of them said.
San Ballet was breaking the people's resolve. He was snapping their will. His goal was to stop their work on the wall and it seemed to be working. He didn't want a well-defended Jerusalem in his backyard. He wanted a people whom he could manipulate, whom he could control, whom he could invade. San Ballet wanted power and authority and he knew just how to discourage and to frighten the people of God. He wanted to subjugate them so that he and not God could be their Lord and their master. Does that sound like anybody you know? Sure it does. It sounds exactly like our enemy, the devil. He goes by a lot of names, Satan being one of them, adversary, enemy, liar, murderer from the beginning. Many other names throughout the scriptures, but San Ballet resembles Satan in this chapter. Just like we've seen Nehemiah is a type, and the word type means resemblance or symbol or prefigurement. Just as we've seen that Nehemiah is a type of Christ. He shows us Jesus. So in this chapter, we find out that San Ballet is a type or a resemblance or a symbol for Satan, the enemy of God, the enemy of good and the enemy of all God's people. First Peter chapter 5 says, your enemy, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. The Bible is very plain, very blunt about the reality of a supernatural being who was one of the fallen angels who rebelled against God and became the ruler of the prince of the air as the Bible calls it. And San Ballet was a tool of Satan in this time period to hinder the restoration of Jerusalem if he could, to destroy the nation of Judah if he could, and why would Satan want the destruction of the nation of Judah if not to also prevent the arrival of a son of Judah, namely Jesus Christ, the Messiah. And his objective in your life is no different. He wants to wear down your resistance. Satan wants to ruin your spiritual journey. He wants to tempt you to sin. He wants to separate you out from your brothers and sisters in Christ. He wants to put doubts in your mind about the love and grace of God. And ultimately, Satan would love to just kill you and be done with you. That is his goal in your life. Do you understand that? Do you believe that? It's exactly what the Bible tells us. See, Nehemiah is a metaphor for what you and I daily face, namely spiritual warfare. You read this book and you see the gospel as it's embodied by Nehemiah. You see how Nehemiah portrays many of the qualities of the coming King Jesus. But you also see on the other hand, the Kingdom of Darkness, which seeks to rise up against the Kingdom of God and dispel it and bring it to an end. That's the way to read the book of Nehemiah. There's this amazing cosmic battle going on between God and his people on the one hand and Satan and his hosts on the other. Take, for example, these rhetorical questions back up there in verse two, where San Balant says, what are these feeble Jews doing? I mean, do you ever hear voices like that rattling around in your head? I suspect you do. You call yourself a Christian. You are a lousy excuse for a Christian. Let me tell you. You call that a prayer? That was one of the worst weakest prayers I've ever heard in my life. So you think God cares about your little measly problems when he's got so much else to think about? You ever hear voices like that in your mind? I do. All the time. Let me tell you something. God's voice will never be the voice of discouragement. Do you want to have a clue as to how to tell the voice of the devil apart from the voice of God? Because sometimes it's hard. The voice of God will never be the voice of discouragement. He will never disparage you or criticize you or condemn you. He may convict you. Oh, yeah. He may confront you about a sin in your life. But if you're his child, he will always do that with a tender voice and words of hope and of encouragement. He will always point you to growth and healing. Never just make you grovel in your guilt and shame. That's the voice of the devil, your enemy. Because God loves you. If you're his child, he looks at you and sees the shadow of a tree across your face. He always sees you in Christ and he smiles and is glad to own you as his son or his daughter. But not so, Satan. Satan hates you. He wants to browbeat you and defeat you. The enemy knows how to push all your buttons. He knows exactly where you're weak. Sometimes he'll take truths and half truths and use them against you so you don't even know whether you're listening to him or to God. Listen, until you get home, your life as a Christian is a fight every day. Don't you think you get a vacation from spiritual warfare? If you love Jesus every day of your life as a fight, just as Nehemiah had his sand ballot to buy it and guess him, you have your world, your flesh and your devil to fight. And these enemies don't come up to you wearing a t-shirt that says, hello, I'm Satan. I hate you and I have a terrible plan for your life. Or hello, I'm the remnants of your old sinful nature and I want you to be unhappy. No, no, no, that's not how it works. Your enemies creep up on you when you least expect them and they bring you down with all kinds of different strategies. They attack you individually. They attack you in your family and they attack your church as well. I was just thinking earlier this morning when we were singing God of this city, you know, we've identified three things that we want to make a gospel impact on. The UCF campus, families that need Jesus and the poor and the marginalized. And when you look at those three mission fields around us, do you ever get tempted to say, look at all this rubble. Look at this mess. Who are we to think that we can do anything about that? See, that's, again, the voice of discouragement, the same exact voice that the people of Jerusalem heard, which brings me to my second point. You must arm yourself for this fight. The Christian life's a fight, therefore you must arm yourself for that fight. Ephesians 6, 11 says to put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. You know, one thing I really love about Nehemiah is that he didn't try to beat San Ballad at his own game. You know, you don't see Nehemiah getting defensive, right? You don't see him arguing with San Ballad and Tobiah. You don't see him trying to come back to him with some kind of cute little, you know, retort. You remember how it was on the playground as a kid? Nehemiah didn't play that game. You remember as a kid, my dad can beat up your dad. Well, well, well, you have not seen my mom. You know, that's how we do in life. We try to beat them at their own game. Nehemiah didn't do that. No, instead he used five spiritual weapons. Let me show you what I see these as being. Five different spiritual weapons in this chapter. The first was prayer. The first thing Nehemiah did in response to spiritual warfare and discouragement was he prayed. Verse four, he says, hear us, oh, God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own heads. He prayed an imprecatory prayer upon his enemy. First response in your life, is it prayer? Do you go to God and say, hear me, oh, God, hear me, oh, God. Secondly, his weapon was prudence. He used prudence in his fight with sand ballad. Look at verse nine. I love this. You got to love this verse nine. He says, we pray to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Do you see what Nehemiah is doing? He's combining the spiritual with the practical. Now really, I hate making that dichotomy because I don't think spiritual is not practical, but I don't know how else to put it. He combined the classic spiritual battle plan of prayer with just using his head. You know, don't overspiritualize everything. God has given you means to use in your battle with your enemy, and so you must use them. Nehemiah was wise enough to use common sense. Look again, at verse 14, for example, and you'll see a little bit more. Verse 14, he stands up and he says to his people, don't be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your son's daughters, wives, and homes. Remember the Lord and fight. Some of you know that World War II song, praise the Lord and what? Pass the ammunition. That's what Nehemiah was doing. Remember the Lord but pass the ammunition. Let's arm ourselves, let's fight. So in your battle with the world and the flesh and the devil use your head. If your problem is pornography, don't just pray about it. Get somebody else to put a password on your computer or something. There are all kinds of practical steps that a person can take against that battle. If you eat too much, don't just pray that God will release you from that, get on weight watchers or something like that. If you struggle with depression, go to a counselor, talk to your doctor about medication. There are things that God provides. In other words, don't be stupid. Use prudence in your spiritual battle. Thirdly, another weapon that Nehemiah used was good old fashioned stubborn persistence. Verse 6, he says, so we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height for the people worked with all their heart and literally the Hebrew phrase there is they they had a heart to work. They had a heart to work. They didn't give up, they didn't buckle under the pressure and you must not either. Number 4, another weapon was partnership. Nehemiah and the people recognize the importance of having friends to help them through the battle. Partnership. Look at verse 14 where Nehemiah says, fight for your brothers. Fight for your brothers, your sisters, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. And later on in the chapter, we're not going to look at it. But later on in the same chapter, Nehemiah gets a guy to carry a trumpet and Nehemiah instructs the people. We're scattered out. We're separated from one another. So when you hear the trumpet, come running, come running to where you heard the sound of the trumpet. See, that's what it means to fight for your brothers. You partner up with someone who is going through a hard time. Let me ask you a question, who do you have in your life right now that can fight for you? Who do you have in your life that can fight for you when you're in a time of need? Who can you call in the middle of the night and know that they'll wake up, they'll put on their clothes and they'll come get to be with you if they need to? We all need a friend like that. Are you fighting for somebody else? See, we need partners in the battle. We can't go it alone. And the fifth and final weapon in this strategy of Nehemiah was preparedness. Preparedness. Verse 13 of our text, he says, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places. Oh, friends, please highlight that phrase. Please underline or remember that phrase. I posted some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords, spears, and bows. The question is, where are your exposed places? Where are you vulnerable? Where does Satan most often attack you? Here's the thing. Put extra guards at those places. Take extra precautions at those places. Maybe you're most vulnerable when you're tired. Be sure you get enough sleep. You know, maybe you're most vulnerable on a business trip. Call a friend every day, kind of report in and make sure you're accountable. Maybe you're most vulnerable on payday when you first get your paycheck. Develop a budget so that you don't blow through your money the moment you get it. See, those are kinds of preparedness techniques that a Christian should do. A lot more I could say about that, but that would be a great discussion topic by the way over lunch today. Where are your exposed places? Why don't you talk about that with your family, with your friends, with your life group this week. The point I'm making is arm yourself for battle. Arm yourself for battle because the Christian life is a fight you dare not wake up and go through your day without engaging the enemy every way you can using one or more of these different strategies that we see modeled for us by Nehemiah. But there's one more thing you got to do. As we fight the spiritual battle, there's one more essential and it is the biggest one of them all. You have to rely on someone stronger than you to win this fight. Friends, you've got to have white knuckled hand held grip on someone who is stronger than you if you're going to win this fight. That's why Nehemiah prays in verses 4 and 5. That's why he says, remember the Lord who is great and awesome in verse 14. And that's why he says later on in this chapter, verse 20, look at verse 20, wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there, our God will fight for us. Now, how did Nehemiah know that God would fight for him and his people? Where does Nehemiah get that? How did he know? God would show up? Well, he knew the scriptures. He knew the history of Israel. He knew times in the past when God fought for his people. The Exodus would be a great example. In Exodus chapter 14, Moses says to the people, as they stand on the side of the Red Sea, be still, our God will fight for us. Nehemiah knew about Joshua. Joshua chapter 10, when Israel was threatened by five different Amorite nations. And Joshua cried out to the Lord and said, God, would you let the sun stand still? We need more time to defeat the enemy. And the sun stood still. And it says there's never been a day like it before or since a day when the Lord listened to a man, surely the Lord was fighting for Israel. These are the kinds of situations that Nehemiah knew about in Israel's past. And so if God had fought for Israel in the past, why wouldn't God fight for Israel in the present? See, Nehemiah knew those stories. You know more. You know more stories. You know the story about the day when a king walked up to the top of a hill outside the very wall that the people were rebuilding, a hill called Golgasa. And this king carried his cross up to the top of that hill and allowed Roman soldiers to nail him to the cross. He cried out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Forgive them for they don't know what they're doing. And you know the story that three days later, that king rose from the dead and lives still. See Jesus fought the battle with sin and with death. And one one day is going to engage the devil one last time and throw him in the lake of fire and be done with him forever and ever and ever. Are there any gyms out here this morning? Anyone discouraged? Anyone who thinks I'm ready to give up. Listen, you're in a fight and you have a captain of your soul who loves you and will not let you go and who will fight with you and for you. He's the one stronger than you. Put your trust in your hope in Jesus Christ this morning and continue to walk, put the step in front of each other and walk through the battle knowing that one day Jesus will get ultimate victory. And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear for God has willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim we tremble not for him. His rage we can endure for low his doom is sure one little word Jesus will fail him. Let's pray. Father my brothers and sisters this morning are and I am weary of this fight and we would rather it not happen. Lord they're probably people this morning who are pretty much like my friend Jim and feeling ready to stop it all and get out of the fight all together. Lord thank you that you've equipped us with armor thank you that you've given us people in our lives the church you've given us your word you've given us Jesus who is the one who is stronger than us. Lord help us please we pray to hold on to him and to keep fighting and to keep walking to keep trusting and we thank you that you will win the battle and we pray in Jesus name Amen.