Let's just kind of take a little honest assessment for a moment. Is not from the time you get up Sunday morning until you walk through those doors one of the most challenging times in families. Because something happens always when you get ready to leave the house and it just kind of starts falling apart. And then some of the most intense arguments ever happened in families happen in the car between church and home and home and church. Right.
Okay, good. It's not just us, Kathy. Yeah. I remember an argument by my parents on the way home from church one Sunday morning. It was the most intense thing I'd ever seen in my life.
And I'm a little kid in the back seat and I'm just watching this thinking like what just happened from altar call to this, you know. But those things that we plan to do that are always well intentioned, good ideas. The enemy has a way of sticking, sticking his hand in there and kind of messing with it. You get up in the morning, you're gonna have your quiet time. You've got your coffee if you do that, or tea or whatever you have.
And you got your bible and you've got your notebook that you're gonna take notes in, you got your prayer list, you're all ready and then you sit down and there's something, there's a memory button right back here. And when you sit down, oh yeah, I forgot, gotta take the trash barrel out to the street. Oh yeah, I forgot that. And then on the way back in, I thought we pulled up those weeds last week, you know, and you pull up a few weeds and then you come in the house and you sit down and then the kids come and find you, right? And moms, let's just take a moment, right?
If you got little kids, there's a direct correlation between what time you plan to have your morning devotions and what time they plan to get up. And it's usually 15 minutes before your scheduled time. So I've got to get up at 5 o' clock to make it work. They get up at 4:45, it doesn't matter. It's just one of those things.
Every good intention, a good thing I'm getting ready to do. But the enemy starts messing with it. It happens at work too. You go to work and you've got this project and you've got a whole day scheduled and you're gonna be kicking it out. You got all these emails you've already answered yesterday, you've had all the meetings you needed to have yesterday about it and you've got this block of time uninterrupted to go hard at it.
And then the boss calls a departmental meeting, and then you're sitting in that meeting, supposed to be getting something out of it, and all you're doing is watching the clock tick by, all those minutes turning into an hour that you were supposed to be doing the project, and it's just not going to happen or pick your spot. You have an intention, you have an idea, you have a thought. It's going to be good if you just go ahead and do it and then the wheels fall off. There's always something in the way of it. We come today to a situation 400 years after what happened last week.
Talked for those of you who were not here. We talked about Jehoshaphat in 2 Chronicles, chapter 20. And he was faced with this massive attack coming from the southeast that was looking to come and destroy him and his people. And the Lord gave him incredible ability to be able to process that and to do it in the name of the Lord. And he looks to the Lord God and says, lord, we don't know what to do, so our eyes are upon you.
And what happened was his fear became faith and his worry became worship. And they prevailed. Well, there's always going to be an enemy trying to intrude upon a plan that is good and right and faithful before the Lord. And so last week we talked about this threat that just seemed too big, and yet God showed what he could do. You stand still and watch.
The battle's not yours, it's mine. Well, today, 400 years later, Israel, Judah are in exile in Persia at this point. And the king of Persia is a guy named Artaxerxes, and he has a cup bearer, you know, the guy who tested the wine to make sure it wasn't poisoned. What a great job. Oh, I want to work in that department.
And so he's had his cup bearer to the king and. And Persian king Artaxerxes is over all these vast areas, including Jerusalem and the surrounding Judean area. And so Nehemiah has recognized that some other folks have already gone back. Zerubbabel several years before, had gone back and they rebuilt the temple, and now they're looking in exile to have Ezra go back. And Ezra goes back and helps with some reforms spiritually.
And then he gets word from his brother Hanani. He says, how's it going over in Jerusalem? He just got back from sort of a trip over there and. And he says, nehemiah's not good. I mean, the people are scattered.
The few that are there are not being able to do what needs to be done. And besides that, the walls of the city are crumbled. They've been torn down and burned, and the gates are completely wiped out. And so he hears this report, and it says that he wept and fasted for days. Now, as the cup bearer for Artaxerxes, he has every day to go into the presence of the king.
But there is a. An understanding for those who work in the king's court that you do not demonstrate any personal emotion in the king's court. And you definitely don't go in there sad. You don't want to be a downer to the king, you know. And so he goes in and the king says, nehemiah, I see sadness in you that I've not seen before.
And I don't think this is a result of illness. I think this is sadness of the heart, what's going on? And Nehemiah says, well, I prayed to the Lord and the Lord gave me the freedom to say. And so he says, my city where my forefathers are buried. He didn't say Jerusalem, because that was kind of a hot button.
But he says, the city where my forefathers are buried lies in ruins. And I just want to be able to go back and help remedy that and help rebuild the wall and do what needs to be done. And so Artaxerxtes, this Persian king, says, okay, go. And not only go, I will send supplies with you. I will promise you that those in the surrounding area will provide building supplies and other things you need.
And we will take care of this thing and some of it will come out of the Persian treasury for that to happen. And I'm going to send with you the cavalry and army to protect you on the way. Nehemiah was a good prayer. I mean, that was incredible to have all that happen. So he gets back over there, and this is just prelude to reading the passage.
I'm sorry. But just to give you the background, he gets there rests for three days because of the journey, which was pretty arduous. And then the night after the third day, he goes and does a survey of what the damage is. And he doesn't make a big deal out of it. He doesn't tell anybody he's doing it except a few close friends.
And. And he goes on his own horse to kind of go around the wall and see what's the damage. And then he comes back and says to the leaders, when he finds out what's going on, we're going to rebuild this wall. And the leaders, the nobles, the priests, elders, all of them said, let's go, let's do it now. He kept it in house at this time because there were going to be those who did not want this to happen.
They were the ones who had kind of been running the show in the Jerusalem area while the Persians were in charge. And a lot of the Judean folks and a lot of the Jerusalem residents, a lot of the Israelites and a lot of the folks from Judah had been in exile for this time. So there were some who had made a name for themselves in that area. And any threat to that was going to be met with all kinds of opposition. So they find that that opposition is clear.
So if you'll turn to Nehemiah, Chapter four. I told you we'd get to the Bible. One of the guys was named Sanballat. Sanballat was actually Jewish, interestingly enough. And so Sanballat was not pleased with what's going on there.
And neither was his friend Tobias, nor his friend Gesham, nor some of the Ashtonites and the Ammonites and some of the other folks from the Sumerian army. They were all kind of dismayed that the Persian king was taking the side of the people in Jerusalem. This just didn't seem right. So beginning verse one, chapter four. When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was greatly incensed.
He ridiculed the Jews. And in the presence of his associates in the army of Samara, he said, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in the day?
Can they bring the stones back to life from these heaps of rubble, burned as they are? Tobiah, not to be outdone, chips in and says, what are they building? Even if a fox climbed up on it, it would break down their wall of stones. Then he prays, hear us, O our God, for we are despised. Turn our insults back on their heads, Give them over as plunder.
In the land of captivity, do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from their sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders. Verse 6. So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height. For the people worked with all their hearts. But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the men of Ashdod heard that the repairs of Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were very angry.
They plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. There is a threat in every generation. Whenever anyone moves forward to do the will of God, South Bridge will face it in these next several months. There will be things that will happen from inside and outside that will try to get in the way of you doing what needs to be done next.
There will be excuses made. Well, we don't have a pastor yet, so we don't know whatever. But God has a plan and he's going to bring it to pass. And we get to watch and we get to participate, and we get to rejoice in it. So let's pray together and find out what was the pattern that Nehemiah followed to be able to prevent himself from getting so distracted by all the distractions that he couldn't do the very thing that God had really called him to do.
Build that wall. So let's pray together, Father, may it be so that we learn together today all the things that you have in store for us as a people to be able to be faithful to the calling that we have to be a part of the body of Christ being built up together as one people with one heart, united in one focus to exalt Jesus Christ, to proclaim him as Savior and Lord, wherever we have opportunity to do so. And that we, Lord, would be dependent upon you in every circumstance. And, Lord, yes, there will be threats. There will be things that get in the way.
There will be problems that emerge. There will be things that we never anticipated. And yet, Lord, they're not outside of your view. And you already prepared a way for us to walk through them together with you. May we walk through together with each other as we come to the other side, rejoicing and celebrating the goodness of our great God.
Lord, the song said while ago, you never fail. We're counting on that. And we want to follow the patterns that you've given us for how to proceed. Faith, it's in Christ's name we pray. Amen.
So the question that we start off with was, was it credible, this threat that was being posed by Sam Ballot and Tobias and others? Yeah. You never can neglect or ignore legitimate threats. It's not wise to do so. You can't play Pollyanna or stick your head in the sand like an ostrich and pretend that's not a problem.
There was a threat going on there, and he knew it. Nehemiah was aware of it. And so he heard and understood pretty quickly the fury of the enemy. As Sanballat Says he was angry. And then later on it says he was really angry when the wall started really going up and making some progress there.
So you've got an enemy who is furious. This is not a secret, I don't think. But when the body of Christ prospers, the world out there gets furious. They write nasty articles about the church and those crazy Christians who actually believe something and practice it. Can you believe that we actually believe and do what we believe?
How could that possibly be true? And yet they go on attack. And so there is a fury among the enemy in our day, just as theirs. And then there was a conspiracy that was working there in verse eight of chapter four. They all plotted together.
These guys, Sinball and Tobiah and Geshem and the others, they plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to stir up trouble against it. Well, so what Nehemiah had to do is not just take a little surveillance recon trip around the walls. He had to also identify who the enemies were out there. He had to understand that, no, this is Sam Ballat's a player. Tobiah and these others, they all represent armies of various people around us who have determined that they're going to attack us and keep us from doing the thing that God's called us to do.
Now, in our time, we have a few enemies. They develop their own narrative and then try to sell it as what is true, relatively speaking, because truth is relative according to them. Right? And they develop. And so one of the things that kind of helps me recognize who we have as enemies is summed up in like four kind of buzzwords.
Harvard to Hollywood and Washington to Wall street is that pretty much given it the Harvard crowd, that's the academic community, the scholars of the world who tell us what is supposedly, from their perspective, the true way of looking at things. Whereas we have a truth here that frequently contradicts what they're teaching us. And so we have a choice to make in our culture as to whether or not these enemies of truth are going to prevail with their narrative. Or will we allow God to speak and have the authority in our lives? Well, that's the Harvard bunch.
How about the Hollywood people? Well, that's sort of representative of the whole media industry and everything from the entertainment side all the way through the news cycles, the blogs, the social media mess that's out there directing traffic as to what people should and shouldn't perceive of what's going on out there. That's an enemy of the gospel frequently. And a lot of that's coming from inside the church. I hear people from time to time say, can you believe what's going on?
And then they'll name a church or an institution or something. Can you believe what's going on there? And I'm going like, no, I totally don't believe that. Well, I read and I said, yeah, did you check who you read? They've got an agenda that has nothing to do with the truth or the good of the gospel or the greatness of the love of God for his people.
Don't listen to that garbage. There is this media narrative that's out there that's represented by the word Hollywood. What about Wall Street? Well, that's summarized in that movie years ago called Greed. It's what will allow us to gather the most and do, you know, accumulate.
First the greed part. Hollywood's not interested in any principles or anything. I mean, Wall street, they want the bottom line. Dollars in Washington. Well, yeah, there you go.
You know, it's a whole other thing. But you gotta identify who your enemies are. You gotta know where this stuff is coming from and recognize that it is coming every possible way known to man. And so you have to then take time to understand what the plot is, how does it work? And you can trace back in our culture to places in the history of our nation, much less expanding it around the globe to see where it came in.
And you see determinations that were made decades ago, sometimes centuries ago, that have set the course to be enemies of the people of God and the families of faith. And that battle is not slowed down. And yet God has not said, you know, look, well, you fight that battle, you're gonna have to just give up all that church stuff and just kind of hunker down. Let's go to war here and forget everything else. No, Nehemiah had two major concerns.
He had the building of the wall, which is a massive task. And to put up with these yahoos over here who are trying to get in the way of it. And so the Lord's saying to us, are you going to be dissuaded by all these other things, or are you going to put seek first his kingdom and his righteousness on the agenda? And no, then all these other things will be added to you. That's from the Bible, by the way.
Jesus said that. Matthew 6:33. So what was the plot? Well, it started off with just persistently disturbing them. Disturbing the peace.
That's what it talked about in verse 8. We'll constantly harass them. We'll just try to disturb what they're doing. And then they said, well, if that doesn't work, we're going to go to direct attack. We'll put the armies together and they won't know what they're.
They're busy building walls. We'll come in when they're not paying attention and we will attack them. Verse 11. And then he goes back and he says, now let's not forget that we've already started ridiculing them in verses 2 and 3 of chapter 15. That a fox could jump on that wall and destroy the whole thing.
This is a piece of garbage that they're trying to work on. It's not going to happen. And then the last part is, it says, okay, chapter six, that wall is going up. What can we do now? Well, let's entertain some diversionary dialogue.
In our day that's called let's have some meetings on mediation. Let's get together all the enemies and see if we can talk this thing out.
I love Nehemiah's response when Sambala and Tobiah, who had said, we're going to wipe you out from the river to the sea kind of thing and we're going to wipe you out. And they kept sending messages to Nehemiah and this is what he says in chapter six, verse three. They were scheming to harm me. He said, I'm no idiot. They didn't want to talk to me.
They wanted to hurt me or just get me out of the way. They had schemes to harm me. So I sent messengers to them with this reply. I am carrying on a great project. I can't go down.
Why should I stop the work while I leave it and go down to you? Four times they sent me the same message and each time I gave them the same answer. God called me to do this. I am not stopping this to cater to your whims. I am not going to stop doing the work that God has given us as a family and as a church to do whatever the culture says we have to do to be able to meet their expectations and their standards.
Who cares? When God has given us a vision and a mission, we don't stop doing what he's called us to do. So understand this plot. And so when we see that, then we respond to that plot with a faithful diligence that says to the enemy, we can't be intimidated. Thank you very much.
That doesn't mean that they're not gonna keep going. That doesn't mean that they're not gonna get more sophisticated in how they come after us. That doesn't mean that they're not going to intensify their efforts. But we will not be intimidated when we know that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is on our side. Will he fail?
He won't. We understand that. And so what happens, he says, when they've had all these threats coming to us? Verse 9 of chapter 4, we prayed to our God. Sound familiar?
I think Jehoshaphat did that last week. The threats came, we prayed the threats 400 years later. We prayed, God, we will respond with specific prayer as soon as the issues arise. Not wait until they're out of hand and say, we haven't got anything else now to do but pray. Well, you didn't have anything else to do but pray to begin with.
Why not start there? And so Nehemiah modeled that. We prayed. How big does the threat have to get in our lives before we pray? How deep does it have to go before we call prayer meetings?
I remember at 911 I was talking to our family a while ago, I was in India when 911 hit. Tried to get home from India when the airports are closed in the US and everywhere else around the world. So we finally figured it out. But what we saw happen is that our nation gathered together from all kinds of backgrounds to pray together, which was not always smart because we're saying we want all people of all faiths to come together and pray. God doesn't hear the voices of everybody except in the name of Jesus.
So we had that problem going on there. But our church and the church of the pastor I was with gathered together and the room was absolutely packed to the gills with people coming together to pray. That's how big an issue had to be. Thousands of people being killed by terrorists. And then the people came together and prayed and pleading with God, said, lord, deliver us from this enemy.
And then a week passed and the prayer burden lowered and another week passed and the prayer burden lowered. And eventually we're not having to pray anymore. Thank you, Lord, for preserving us from that awful thing. We don't want to actually be saying, God, thank you for making it so we don't have to pray anymore. And that's how we respond sometimes.
Not what Nehemiah did. We hear the problem and we seek out the Lord and then does that mean we're just kind of ostrich in the sand kind of thing? No. From out of that, God gives us insights and understanding to develop a strategic plan. What is it that we need to do, Lord?
Well, the first thing he did without spending A whole lot of time gathering meetings about it. He says we need to set up the defenses, we need to prepare because we can't ignore the legitimate threat. We need to have defenses. So how are we going to do this? Well, let's start by guarding the vulnerable areas first.
That's what he says in verse 13. I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points in the wall at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords and spears and bows. What had happened? He had gone around and done an assessment of where the weak points were. Here are the low places in the wall.
Here are the places where we're kind of most vulnerable right here. So let's make sure we've got people with spears and bows and swords ready in those spots. Strategic plan. Good thinking.
Do we think that way? Where are the low places in the walls of the church? Where are we most vulnerable?
A lot of places. Doctrine, obviously, is always one, making sure we're soundly biblical in what we do. So that sound doctrine is the foundation of everything we're about. So we want to be doctrinally with the walls high there. Divisions can come within any congregation at any time.
That's a low point in the wall. When that starts happening, we got to be diligent to recognize and identify where that vulnerable area is. Hypocrisy. People who are saying one thing here on Sunday morning and living something else out the rest of the week. That's a low point in the wall.
How about the social media influence that we have coming into our homes?
All these little machines that we carry about in our hands now that are selling worldviews that are contrary to the ones that you believe and that you want your kids to believe?
How are you keeping those things out? What are you doing to protect yourself by what you watch, what you read, what you listen to? What about those issues in churches of people who are interested not so much that God's work be done, but that God's work done my way be done. Power, control kind of things. It never happens here at South Bridge, but in other churches it has happened.
That's not. That's not. That's a low place on the wall. Comparing. Do we compare ourselves to other churches?
Do we compare my family to his family, her family? Oh, they look so sweet when they walk in the door thinking, whoosh, our family could be like that. Did you ride the car over here with them? There was a different family that just got out of that car than was riding over here. Comparisons wouldn't necessarily work.
How about careless Words, Things that we say. It was interesting when Kathy and I left Providence. I retired there at the beginning of 2016, and people said, what's it going to be like going back there? Well, it was great because we took a little time away and then we're back in there and. And people would come up.
Careless words. What do you think about what the new pastor's done about this? Ah, man, I love our new pastor. It's so exciting to be under his ministry. This is great.
Yeah, yeah. That's the very thing I was. That's what I was trying to say. Yeah. Yeah.
So finally we realized they weren't getting anywhere with me and they'd go after Kathy. You know, Kathy's just repeating this is company line at our house. This is. He's our pastor. We love him.
And. And it's. You know, this is fantastic. We love being under his leaders. But if we had just given a hint.
You understand? If we had just given the slightest hint. Well, you know. Yeah, you're right about. No, the old World War II thing.
Loose lips, think ships. It's even worse in the church. It distracts us and divides us. Careless words cannot be there. This is one of the ways we have to recognize that this is a vulnerable area.
Watch what you say and who you say it to and what your intent is in saying it. So the walls Nehemiah figured out. I know where the low places are. What are we going to do? We need to organize a plan and a backup plan so we're going to have families in all these low places and they'll be there with their swords and spears and all the stuff that they have to have there.
But we've got to have backups because those families are going to need to sleep sometime and they're going to get tired from what they're doing sometimes. So we got to have a backup plan. And so he says, here's what we're going to do. We're going to work together as a city. We're going to have kind of a community alert thing going on here, and things may be going great on your side of town, but if you sense danger of a particular nature coming in your way at your low point on the wall, and you let me know, and we will have the sound of the trumpet blaring out.
And everybody in town has agreed. Our backup plan is we rally to that point and we support each one of you who's finding themselves in trouble. What a great thing it would be in the body of Christ is if somebody in the family of faith starts experiencing trouble. Instead of being talked about, they're prayed about. Instead of discussing what options they didn't pursue that would have made them much more godly like you, you actually come alongside and say, how can we help?
It could happen in a family with a rebellious child or children. It could happen in a marriage that's struggling. It could happen at a place where there's an illness that's come in, and you've dealt with that in your family and you came out spiritually sound. And there are a bunch of spiritual weaklings. How dare they not believe God like we did?
And so, no, no, the trumpet sounds. And sometimes the sound of the trumpet is faint and you hear the plea, but they're too ashamed to say it out loud that I need help. Nehemiah said, you hear that trumpet blow, get over here and come alongside. Somebody said years ago, the Christian army is the only one in the world that shoots its own wounded. We don't want to be those people.
We want to be the kind of folks who rally to the sound of the trumpet. Wherever. Verse 20, wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, you join us there. Our God will fight for us. And then you delegate those responsibilities to make sure it's happening all the way across the way.
Verses 17 and 18, chapter 4. Those who are building the wall and those who carried materials did their work with one hand and they held a weapon in the other. Each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. The man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me. So he says, here's the work.
Sword here, trowel here. Let's go. It's time to go to work. And overnight we've got guards from the surrounding area who we've asked to come stay in the city with us while we're doing this work. And they will spell you at night.
They'll take second and third shift for you. But we're going to make sure we have prepared a way to set up defenses for the city. Now, what happens even in doing all of that? There are going to be times when we are afraid. Fear is a natural thing.
And we're going to see the enemy sometimes for bigger than he is and God smaller than he is, and forget that he wins. And so we have to come to the fact where we got to confront the fear. And so in chapter 4, verse 14, Nehemiah heard the voices of fear out there, and there were people who were anxious about what was going on. How long can this happen? And what are we going to do.
And he says in verse 14, I saw their fear or I perceived what was happening. I looked and see what was going on. And then I. After seeing that, he says, I rose and I spoke to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people. Don't be afraid of them.
Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and you fight for your brothers and your sons and your daughters, your wives in your homes. Get in there. Don't be afraid of them. And you do what God's called you to do. Don't be afraid.
Confront the fear. Address it.
Remember last week again, when fear becomes faith, what happens with worry? It becomes worship and then God prevails. Well, once you've done that, then the people are ready to say, okay, let's do it. You prepare them to fight. We'll build and we'll fight.
We'll build and we'll fight. We're going to go after it. So how do we prepare to do both of those things? This twofold challenge?
You don't give up either. One can't afford to.
You can't allow yourself to choose one or the other of the things that God's called you to do. Well, if I really am obedient over here, it will counteract the fact that I'm not doing anything about what he said over here. No, God is sufficient. If he gives you 50 tasks, he's sufficient for all of them. He's the ultimate multitasker.
He can give you everything you need. So what happens? He says, start off by giving him some incentive here. He says this battle, just to give you context, he says this is not about just building a nation. He says, this is about protecting your own sons and your daughters.
It's about taking care of your wives and your babies and your homes. It's about something really important. So I'm going to give you some incentive. You get out there and fight that battle because this matters.
That's what happens in our homes as well. The battles that you fight. Don't expect parents, don't expect your children to praise you and thank you for what a wonderful thing you're doing for them. I just, when you say no to me, it just blesses my soul. I mean the other kids parents are saying yes to them and look where it got them.
Fun, joy. But no, I'll be spiritual and follow my parents leadership. You know, that's crazy what happens here? He says, no, you kind of, you got to give them some incentive. You got to let them understand that there is a goal that we're working toward that causes us to keep wanting to, to work toward the thing that really matters.
We want. In our case, we have three, three sons. We didn't have the daughter issues, so we prayed, lord, make these boys marriageable. Just somehow or another he did. And we've got three of the most awesome daughters in law in the world.
But I mean, but you got to kind of say, this is what matters. We've got. We got to teach them, we got to help them understand. We got to prepare them for what they're going to be facing. We got to go after doing that and, and then we've got to make sure we're giving them the right equipment to do it.
Nehemiah made sure that they had sword and trowel together. You're going to need both of these. You're equipped now. Now we say, well, we don't need swords and trowels to do that kind of work. No.
Ephesians 6 says, you need to put on the whole armor of God. That's your equipping. You got to equip yourself to be able to know that if I'm going to be equipped for the work of Ministry, Ephesians 4 says that that's what we're supposed to be doing to grow up the maturity in Christ in all aspects into him who is the head, even Christ. We are to be building through that which every joint supplies according to the proper working of each individual part. That's what has to happen.
So the pastor, teacher, and the leaders of the church are there to equip you to do that.
This is not a news flash because you've had a great pastor for these many years. But a lot of churches think that they pay their pastor to do the ministry. No, no, you couldn't pay him enough.
He is there to equip you to do the ministry. That's his job description from scripture.
Do the work of ministry. Prepare them for that. And so he says in Ephesians 6, he says, you got to put on the whole armor of God. This is the only way to do this, because that's how you're going to grow up to maturity in Christ. You gotta help your kids understand this.
They need to put on the belt of truth from Ephesians 6. Part of that whole armor. You gotta put on the breastplate of righteousness, have the feet fitted with the gospel of peace. You gotta have the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, the sword of the Spirit, and unite them all together in prayer. That's what's gonna have to happen.
That's giving them the right equipment.
A lot of churches, a lot of parents get the idea that somehow or another, if we can get our kids through and out of our house, not on drugs and not pregnant, we have done a job.
Well, yeah, but what about. Are they walking with God and have they seen the glory of God and are willing to walk into fire for him? Why do so many kids graduate from high school and go off and lose it at university levels? They haven't been equipped for the right battle. Well, that's a whole other story.
Give him the right equipment, Help them walk by the spirit, putting on the whole armor of God. And then this other thing to keep him from being discouraged. Nehemiah recites the milestones. These people had a mind to work and they built up the wall to half its height. As he's kind of documenting what's going on, this is his testimony.
They. They had a mind to work. They worked with all their hearts, and he praises them for it. Way to go. In the meantime, that's just annoying the daylights out of Sam Ballot in Tobiah and his buddies in the conspiracy against him.
Now we celebrate. We got halfway up. You said a fox couldn't be able to stand on the wall without the whole thing coming down. It's halfway up and we are on the way. Any questions?
Yeah. What are you going to do when we attack? I'll tell you what we're going to do. We got people standing in the low places, the vulnerable places, and they got weapons. You want to come?
Well, you know, we got a job. Well, you know. No, they didn't want to come. What happened? They had their plot, how they were going to do it.
But attack was really not in mind against an armed enemy.
So what is the scriptural principle here? Godly families and churches cannot be destroyed. The gates of hell cannot prevail against the body of Christ. The same thing true about a family that has devoted itself to walk in the fullness of Christ. We will stand firm in him.
Like for us, simply give that rock upon which we stand. Let the storms let. Let the rain. Let the enemies. Let the project size.
Let all this stuff come against us. We will not be shaken. So what happens? The enemies in this situation lost their confidence, all their bravado, all their bullying. By chapter 16, verse 6.
Chapter 6, verse 16 says, when all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid. They lost their confidence because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God. They looked at this, the body of Christ they looked at the people of God there in Jerusalem and they went, you know what? We need to maybe pick on a little softer target. I mean, when God's on their side.
I'm just saying, I remember that story about the Red Sea and I remember that story about the plagues, and I remember that story about this. I remember that story. And they began to say, I don't want any of that, do not want any of that. They lost their confidence. And then as they started trying to boost the morale again, verse 9, they were all trying to frighten us.
How were they doing? They were thinking, their hands will get too weak for this work. It's not going to be accomplished. And then Nehemiah says, and then I prayed, God, strengthen my hands, make me stronger. You remember Acts 4 from last week?
Peter and John come out and they talked about all the threats against him for preaching in Jesus name. They prayed and at the end of it says, lord, make us bolder. They hadn't seen anything yet as to what's going to happen. When a praying people are on mission for God, they have never seen anything like it. And so what happened?
The people accomplished their goal. In verse 15 of chapter 6, the wall was, was completed on the 25th of the month of Elul in 52 days. I want them as our contractor when we do work around our house. We just started, we're doing a project at home with kitchen and bath and all that stuff and all that's involved. And it's going to be about 30 day project or something like that on paper, you know, these guys rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem in 52 days while holding a sword in one hand and a trowel in another.
Now what was the result of it? They finished, they completed the work that God gave them to do. Tobias and Simballa and all those guys are still out on the hinterlands going like, what just happened? We thought we had this one.
I'll tell you what happened. They celebrated. Nehemiah looked at this whole thing and says, we need a little party here. So he gathered all the people together. This is in chapter 12.
Several weeks had gone by and he says, you know, you gotta celebrate what God's done. Churches replicate what you celebrate. So he called in the Levites and the priests and all those from around the area. Listen what he says in verse 27 of chapter 12. At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, the Levites were sought out from wherever they lived.
And they were brought to Jerusalem to celebrate joyfully the dedication with songs of thanksgiving and with the music of cymbals, harps and lyres. And then verse 43, what's happened is you've got the orchestra coming up one side of the wall with the harps and lyres and cymbals and all that. And then he's got the choir, the singers coming from the other side, and they meet together. And this is what it says in verse 43. And on that day, they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.
The women and children also rejoiced, which is, I think, a very interesting statement. Today we try to get the men to rejoice. Come on, guys. It says even the women and the children rejoice, meaning the men were leading the way in the praise. Not to be outdone.
So the sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem can be heard from far away. So whether it's the church or your family, or if you want to extend it further, even your business, when threats come, and they will, God has devised a plan and a pattern has been established for how you stand firm in it. He says, be strong in the Lord. Back to the Ephesians 6: Passage. Be strong in the Lord, and in the strength of his might, you put on the full armor of God because that you may be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.
Then you'll be able to do what you need to do to guard against the threats. And you'll need to do what you need to do to accomplish the calling and the task that he's given you, both in Jesus name, without either distracting from the other. Because God is able, he said. And when that happens, the sound of the rejoicing of the church will be heard from afar and the surrounding nations will tremble at the works of God. Right now, they're not trembling and the church is not being bold.
It's time to step it up. This next season for here at Southbridge is going to be awesome as we watch what God does to establish a base of testimony, a lighthouse in this community that the enemy will not be able to put out or dim in the slightest, but that we're going to be going on for the glory of our great God. Building on a rock that's unshakable and immovable. Rain, storms. We don't love it, but we're not afraid of it.
Bring it, because we're built on a rock that will not fall. Let's pray. Father, thank you. In the powerful, glorious name of Jesus, we thank you.
The victory that you have won for us, Lord, it extends to so many areas that we seldom even think about it. We think with great joy about the salvation we've experienced for those here who know Christ already. And we're grateful for that wonderful atoning sacrifice that Jesus made for us at the cross and the forgiveness of our sin and the new life we have by the power of the resurrection. But Lord, now we are to walk in a manner worthy of that resurrected Savior. And that means trusting in you.
Even when the walk gets weird and the enemies are lining up to assault us and wage a siege against us, we will not be deterred from the things that you've called us to do in the way that you called us to do them. In the powerful name, the one who rises and stands above it all, Jesus, you are Lord. So Lord, thank you for meeting us here in our worship time this morning. And we praise you for your faithfulness for what you're going to be doing in the days ahead. In Christ's name, Amen.
Amen.
