Good morning to you. Good morning. Very good to be with you again. I trust that you are enjoying experiencing the adventure that the Lord has you on.
Over the past few weeks since last I was with you, we had some adventures. I had the opportunity to attend a science awards event that was hosted by one of the organizations in the city. And they booked it, billed it as the gathering of the greatest scientific minds in Atlanta, Canada. And I got to go just because our office wanted to be represented.
I got a ticket. But we were sitting at the tables. And each person got up and they were professors and doctors and industry researchers. And it began to talk about what they were doing and how exciting the evening was to have so many people gathered of such renown.
And what I didn't realize is that I thought I had gone to an awards ceremony. But actually I had gone to a worship service. Because when the first person began to speak, all of a sudden began to give great homage to his god, his god is evolution. And he began to talk about how marvelous it is to see all the wonders he was an astronomer of how evolution has formed the universe.
And another fellow got up and he was a biologist and he was talking about just the amazing things that they're trying to unlock of how evolution has created all the varieties of life. And then another man got up and began to just, and I was sitting there going, you know, if I didn't know better, I'd swear I was in a worship service. Because each time someone would get up and he'd say his words and people would clap and applaud. It was a sad time.
And as I was sitting there looking at all the people, the one passage that kept running through my mind is they professed themselves to be wise and they become fools. Because here were all these people who basically have pinned their whole life on the fact that they don't recognize there's a god and that they are lost. But then in another adventure this past week in our office were responsible for doing various things in our building and my senior coworker came to me and said, Stephen, we're decorating for Christmas today. And I said, we're allowed to do that.
She said, oh, yes we are. So we were getting ready to decorate for Christmas. And you have to know my coworker. She's a wonderful lady, an Ethiopian lady, a strong believer.
But she marched down to our technical help desk and she said, we have to decorate this building today and I said, yes. And she goes, so there will be Christmas music playing while we decorate. And then he goes, well, I guess we could do that. And said, I don't want instrumental.
And I don't want some rock song. Said, I want Christmas carols. So all morning we decorated the faculty of computer science while Christmas carols played through the entire building. And I looked at what that's really cool.
And she goes, it's amazing what you can get away with when you don't ask first. So as you think of us pray for opportunities, especially at this season in our office too, our men and my coworker has mandated that she said, when someone comes and we interact with them, we wish them merry Christmas. And if they look and ask why, because we have very high international student presence in our building, mainly Middle Eastern, he said, if they ask, well, why do you wish me merry Christmas? Then you say, well, we say that because this is the time we remember that Jesus Christ was born.
And if they say, well, what does that mean? He said that you talk to them for today. And he said, as long as they're asking the question, you can tell them as much as you want to go over the desk because they asked the question. It's like, cool.
That's not where we're at this morning. We're in Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter four. If you've been with us over the past the previous three Sundays, we've been looking at this book and taking from it how God works in his people to do restoring works. To redeem and to rebuild.
And we're continuing following the life and the actions of Nehemiah and the people of God as they are in acting and obedience to God's work. So Nehemiah chapter four, let's pray. Our Lord and our God, awesome and glorious. Lord, we know there is none like you in the heavens about your flow or under the earth.
You have no rival and you have no equal. You are the Lord and there is none else. Lord, we gather this morning in recognition of that, that you have created all things and you hold all things together by the word of your power. You have laid your plans and they are not thwarted.
There is no task too great for you. There is no obstacle you cannot overcome. And we praise you this morning. Lord, we praise you because you are just righteous and holy.
You are perfect and there is no blemish in you. Lord, we praise you this morning because you are loving and compassionate and merciful. Lord, we praise you that in your justice sin must be paid for. And in your mercy, you provided the payment through your own Son Jesus Christ.
Lord, we praise you for this, that if anyone should believe on his name, they have the right to be called the children of God because of what you have accomplished. Lord, we praise you for your body of the church. Now, each person who believed in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ sealed by your Holy Spirit, called before the foundations of the world and then given the privilege to be the ambassadors of God so that you can tell of your wondrous grace. Lord, we praise you now for your word as we look into it, now you have brought it to be how you have preserved it and what how you continue to work through.
Lord, we pray this morning you would give us ears to hear, eyes to see, minds to understand the most of all hearts to be changed through your spirit, for your glory and yours alone in Jesus Christ. Amen. Well, as you recall, if you've been with us, the problem has been an issue of the walls of Jerusalem, the walls that have been demolished by the Babylonians as a result of Judas' continual sin through the generations. And how God grabs hold of the heart of one man, of Nehemiah, and gives him a burden to see the walls restored.
We looked at how God gave him such a burden that it broke him and he cried out to the Lord and petitioned to the Lord and fasted before the Lord for days, for three months. And then God at the right time gave him the opportunity, and God showed his power at work to bring about this amazing event where Nehemiah had the power and the authority to go to Jerusalem and see these walls rebuilt. We looked at how he approached the task, how he looked at the magnitude of it first before he called the people together. We looked at how all the people were involved that made no difference who they were, they were part of this huge task.
We talked about the fact that when God is at work, there will always be opposition. So in chapter four, we begin to witness more of this. When Sandblatt 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 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 rubble burned as they are?
Tobias the Ammonite who was at a side said, what they are building, if even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down the wall of stones. The response to the work that's being started is ridicule, is mockery. Those who do not want to see God's work done begin to attack it and to criticize it. The fact is, they're making some pretty good statements here.
He makes the comment, 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 rubble burned as they are? That's a fairly honest statement. We're talking about building a broad wall. You've got a group of people.
You've got young and old. You have men and women. You have skilled tradesmen and unskilled. We're trying to build a large defensive wall against their enemies.
Are they feeble? Yes. That's fair description. Is it a huge task?
Yes, it is. Is the building materials lacking? Yes. When the Babylonians destroyed the walls and burned the gates, a lot of the stone that was used was limestone.
And any limestone that was in the fires becomes cracked and fractured. So all those stones have to be discarded. Anyone's that were around where the gates were burned. So there's a bunch of the rubble that can't even be used anymore.
Let's see the amazing thing is, it's being built. The feeble people are doing the work, but it's being built. So who gets the credit for it? Not the Jews, but the absolutely amazing God.
Who is that work through them? See, God loves to use his feeble people. He does. We look at the history of the church, and we look at the people whom God has called.
And there's a poster that lists many of the heroes of our faith and how many of them, really, if you look at them, honestly, they were fairly feeble people. So I wonder it said, you look at Noah, who developed a drinking problem at least at one point. You look at David, who made a number of bad decisions. We look at Samson, a hero of the faith, and we generally use his life as a Sunday school cautionary tale.
We look at the disciples. How many times did they mess up? Did God delights in calling feeble people? Because it shows his glory as he is at work in them.
So they make the comment, what they're building, if even a fox climbed up to it, he would break down the wall of stones. And I'm sure as these words come back to the people in Jerusalem, some of them are going to look and go, yeah, what are we doing? Really, what are we doing? I'm not a wall builder.
Maybe this isn't going to work. So how do they respond? How do you respond to an attack and to opposition and to ridicule? Hear us, 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 blot out their sins from your sight, for they have thrown insults in the face of the builders. Nehemiah responds to what is being thrown at the people by giving it to the Lord.
He responds to what is happening by going to prayer. Because you see, when you and I are involved in a work that God is calling us to, whether it's in our families, in our relationships, in our communities, it is God's work. So when someone attacks that work, they're not attacking you and I. If we are doing it in accordance to God's will and obedience to Him and following in His character and according to His word, they are attacking the Lord God Almighty.
You know what? The Lord is able to deal with it. He is able to take it. It doesn't fracture the Lord's self-esteem when someone attacks His work.
And if it needs to be addressed, He has told us that He is able to address it. That we do not take revenge. That's in the Lord's hands. So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height.
Why? For the people worked with all their height. So while these people are saying, look, they can't build it. Their feeble, the other materials are substandard.
They're not going to be able to do it. It'll just fall down. The response, Nehemiah goes to the Lord. The people go to the Lord and the work continues.
And now it's up to half height. This wall that wasn't supposed to happen is now, it's up to halfway. That's actually a half wall is defensible enough that you could stop a sneak attack on you. Why?
Because the people are at work with all their hearts. Oh, the ministry that can be done. And the brothers and sisters in Christ go at it with all their hearts. The things that God accomplishes through His people when the people work at it with all their hearts.
But as I said, when God is working, opposition comes, and they're not going to give up at simply ridicule. By then, sambalat, Tabaya, and the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the men of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Ruslem's wall had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed. They were very angry. You'll also notice as we read through the text, that the number of adversaries increases as the work progresses.
As God's work gains more prominence, those in opposition to it begin to gather together. They all plotted together to come and fight against Ruslem and stir up trouble against it. But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. If you're the kind of person who puts verses on your fridge, put this verse on your fridge.
If you're the kind of person who is very artistic and cross-stitches or makes nice little plaques, put this one up. What do we do when plotting occurs against us? What do we do when our adversary, our own flesh, or the world, or the devil comes to attack us? It's right here, verse nine.
But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet this threat. Notice that there is both prayer and action. That's important because sometimes we will pray about things, but then we will not take the reasonable steps in accordance with what we prayed about. I'll give you an example.
The brother and the Lord who does a lot of counseling. And he said he was meeting with this man who was battling against pornography, one of Satan's most brilliant schemes of the 21st century. So I'm going to say that nine out of 10 men at some point have battled against pornography and the other one lies. But it is there.
And this man was losing the battle against internet pornography over and over again. And he would come back and he'd just be broken about it because what he was doing to his family. And at one time, he was sitting with his brother and they were praying about it. And the man cried out to God said, I want to be released from this.
I want to be free of it. I don't have anything more to do with it. When they finished praying, the gentleman who was counseling said, OK, so you're giving that to the Lord? They said, yes.
And he said, OK, there's only one more thing we have to do. And I said, what's that? And his friend walked over to his computer, grabbed the internet cable, and tore it out of the wall. He said, there.
We've given it to the Lord and we've placed the guard. There's no point in giving it to the Lord and then having the box sit there. There are sins that we stand against and there are sins that we flee from. There are sins that require that we set a guard.
So they prayed to the Lord and they posted a guard a day and night. And the restoring works that you're involved in are there are things that are attacking you and are you placing a guard against them. If it's thoughts in your own mind, whether it be of temptation or discouragement or bitterness, we give those to the Lord, but we place a guard. One of the first places we place a guard is by going to his word and meditating on a day and night.
It becomes the guard to our thoughts. The Lord through his spirit uses to protect us. And we have someone who holds us accountable. If one of the areas where we're attacked is in our speech, do we have a brother or sister who holds us accountable in our conversations?
Who is our guard? Who stands with us? That's one of the blessings of the body, the church, is that we can set a guard for one another. Meanwhile, the people in Judah said, the strength of the laborers is giving out.
And there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall. I want you to notice these next verses here are going to give us three attacks to the work that God is doing. In verse 10, the first common attack to the work that God is doing through his people is discouragement at the size of the task. We lose heart.
So the people are losing heart. The strength of the laborers is giving out. And there's so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall. Can you imagine the challenge of all the clearing out they have to do physically, of being there, pulling out the stones that are of no use and carting them away, and nobody's coming up.
There's no beeping of the large dump truck moving in. There's no articulated front and loader scooping them up. They're doing it all by hand. And how discouraging that must be when they get to those places that Nehemiah surveyed early on, where there was so much debris and rubble, he couldn't even get past it.
We get tired. We get discouraged. And we come to the second attack. 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.
So attack number one is when we lose heart because of the task. Attack number two is a direct attack from our adversaries. When someone says, you can't do that, or you're not allowed to say that, or if you do that, you're a bigot. And then attack number three, which sometimes can be the most insidious because we don't notice it.
Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us 10 times over, wherever you turn, they will attack us. Love the three, beware of this one. This is the counsel of our friends. When our friends come and speak words of discouragement and not encouragement.
When our brothers and sisters come and say, you know, I don't think this is going to work. Not with any sense of the Lord, not with having consulted his word, not with wise counsel, but just because of their own fears or their own flesh, come and say, look, I think this is a good idea. I've been in meetings where a plan was being made to do evangelism in the community and everything seem to be coming together and tell me something that's, if that's really the best way. I think that's a lot of work or that's going to cost a lot.
I don't really know what the results will be. I don't really think people like it when people come to your door and all of a sudden they're like, oh, yeah, they don't need to rethink this. So where did that come from? We had people with a desire to accomplish something, believing God was in it, having a passion for it.
And all of a sudden some words get shared. And suddenly everything just sort of cools on. So we have these three attacks, losing heart of those who are working. The threat of the enemy and words of discouragement.
Therefore, I stationed 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. After I looked things over, I stood up and said 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 fight for your brothers, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your homes.
So what does Nehemiah do when these three attacks come? First thing he does is he looks at where are they exposed? Where are these threats the most real? And he sets the guard there.
He sets the guards there. He prepares the people to be defensive. Where are the real attacks coming from? Where are the low places?
He sets a guard. Then he gathers the people together, and he gives them two things that they have started to forget. Number one, reminds them who it is, who empowers them. Don't be afraid of these threats.
Remember the Lord who is great and awesome. Remember him. Remember the Lord. That's why it's so important that we spend so much time in the world while we spend time both in the New Testament and the Old Testament.
I'm always concerned when I come to believers who have spent a lot of time in the New Testament but generally miss most of the Old Testament other than a few common Sunday school parts. Because the Old Testament gives us the clear picture of the character of God, which then explains that work that he does through the New Testament. But if you want to know how big your God is, how big the God of heaven and earth is, then you need to start a Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 and just start reading through. Again and again and realize that this is the God who spoke the universe into existence and it happens.
This is the God who keeps all our systems functioning from the subatomic level upward in ways which we cannot explain despite how many degrees people have. This is the God who says, I am the Lord, the God of all my in kind. Is anything too big for me? And the answer of course is no.
And so if he tells you and I that he is with us and will never forsake us, then when the thought creeps into our mind that we are all alone, then we go to that low place and we said, a guard saying no. For my Lord and my God has said he will never leave me or forsake me. And I stand on him. I heard a pastor once from Brazil who was at a large conference of thousands of believers and the person who happened to be leading worship was a person who was very much into sort of the feel of the event and he made the comment and kept saying, do people feel like God is with us?
Do you feel God is with us? Do you feel God is with us? And it was time for the person to speak. The other we pastor stood up and he went up to speak and he said, I have to confession to make.
I have to say this morning, I don't feel God is with us. I don't feel it. He said, but I know he is with us because his word tells me that his spirit is in me because I'm a believer in Jesus Christ and that he will never leave me or forsake me. He tells me that we're two or more gathered in my name.
There I am in the midst of them. And he said, I know that he is with me no matter what I feel in the moment. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome. And remembering that, then fight.
Fight for your brothers and your sons, for your daughters and your wives and your homes. Stand up to the attack. Brothers and sisters in Christ, if you know Christ, you are in a battle. We fight it all the time.
We will fight it until the Lord takes us home. If you don't think you're fighting, guess what? As I said before, you're either resting and God sometimes gives us periods of rest or, and make sure of it, or you're already a POW, which means the adversary has already got you. If you don't feel the struggle, if you don't experience the battle, we're in a fight.
We need to know who empowers us in the battle and we need to know what we're fighting for. I am a husband. So through the power of God, I have the responsibility and the challenge to fight for my marriage. In a world that is constantly telling me that marriage is not what God ordained it to be.
I am a father, so I have a fight every day in the raising of my children in the fear and admonition of the Lord. I'm a disciple of Jesus Christ and I have a fight every day. Because my Lord told me that if they hate him, they're going to hate me. And if I'm not being hated for the right reasons, then that's important too, because I knew a person once who used to always say the righteous shall suffer persecution.
And the older brother once said to him, you know what, the righteous suffer persecution and so do the anointing. So make sure that you're suffering persecution because of righteousness sake and not just because you're anointing. But know what you're fighting for. We are fighting against principalities and powers in this world so that the gospel can be proclaimed with power.
We live in a neighborhood where there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people who have not likely heard the clear message of the gospel once. We used to say that, well, there are parts of the world that they haven't heard at once and that's true, but you realize more and more and more as our brothers and sisters in Christ who out and share the gospel in Nova Scotia, they are finding more and more of the encountering people who have not heard the message once, who cannot tell you the basic story of the gospel at all. We had a youth ministry in Fall River and we had a lot of kids from the neighborhood who came out because it was a place where they could get away from their parents on Friday night and we would share the gospel with them and I never forget when the first times I shared it, I had this girl who very sincerely, 15-year-old said, Jesus was a person? Yes.
Because I thought that was just some weird, you know, other language word that people just used to say, you know, in bad ways. It's exactly a name of a person. In that moment, I looked at the other kids in some of their reactions and realized I'm sitting in Fall River Nova Scotia with a group of junior high and high school students who don't know Jesus existed at all. What are we fighting for if you know Jesus Christ?
To proclaim the message of the kingdom of God, the people who were lost otherwise. And then we see the response and the people are reminded not to be afraid of these attacks, to remember the Lord who was great and awesome and to fight for their brothers, their sons, their daughters, their wives and their homes. And our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it. We all returned to the wall each to his own work.
You notice that? When our adversaries realized that they knew of the plot, that we knew of the plot and that God had frustrated it. See, it's not, and we are so good and we're so alert and we figured this out. Even in their actions, this feeble group of people are testifying to the glory of God.
From that day on, half my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, and each of the builders wore a sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me.
Then I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, the work is extensive and spread out and we are widely separated from each other along the wall. Whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us. Now we continued the work with half the men holding spears from the first light of dawn until the stars came out.
At that time, I also said to the people, have every man and his helper stay inside Jerusalem at night so they can serve us as guards by night and workmen by day. Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes. Each had his weapon even when he went for water. So recognizing the real attack possibilities, the challenges to the work, they begin to live that way.
They live prepared for conflict. They live prepared for battle. And some might have thought that is going to slow us down. If every workman has weapons, they have to keep with them.
Here is this poor guy climbing up a ladder lugging stones and now he has to sort on his hip. Or here is this guy, he is only using one hand because he has to keep track of a spear with the other hand. I am sure they are probably saying this is not a good use of physical energy. But they were ready for the attack if it should come.
They were armed for battle all the time, recognizing that God would be the one who would fight it for them. And especially those in leadership. Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the guards with me took off our clothes. Each had his weapon even when he went for water and put that in.
Modern terms that meant they kept their weapons even when they went to the bathroom. Though some will say that the book of Nehemiah is just for leaders, I don't believe it's so. But I believe there are certain things that are intended to stand out for those in leadership. And in this passage we see one of them where Nehemiah sets the example for the people preparing for conflict.
It's like you will never find me unprepared. I will be ready. We will be armed all the time. Now of course for us today, as much as some of us who collect artifacts wish it were the case we don't need to go around wearing a sword.
So what does it mean for you and I? What is he saying to us? Are we equipped for the battle? Are we equipped for the attacks that will come?
Are we armed for them? And we see as we read through the Word of God that we equip ourselves for battle as we were told in Ephesians chapter 6 by putting on the whole armor of God. That we are equipped to fight the battle by having our sword with us, which is the Word of God. So as we are going about the work that God is calling us to do, we are always equipped.
We are always prepared. I mentioned this earlier and I'll mention it again because it's my hobby horse. We do not spend enough time using this in general terms in this. I sincerely believe that we generally as the believers in North America do not spend enough time in this.
But as we look at ourselves and we have questions and debates about issues, there are so many times and I've talked with young people at camp and there will be some issue that they're wrestling with and they're debating over and you look at them and you know the Word gives you the answer. It's fairly straightforward. It says this is right and this is wrong. This is true and this is false and it's all there.
Well, how do you look? It's there. I can remember we had one fellow who was wrestling with some particular issue and we were at camp and one of the fellows ran up and asked my son Andrew where such a such thing was found in the Bible and Andrew told them and they had this big discussion about it and the guy came to me afterwards and I never knew that such and such was in the Bible. I said, is that the advantage of reading it?
And reading it over and over again. And I look at our brothers and sisters in the church in parts of the world where persecution is very overt and how they read the Word. Reading of the church in Vietnam when scriptures would come and they would have to divide up scriptures and they give you a passage of scripture which you could have the next passage of scripture when you could recite the first passage they gave you verbatim from memory. And so somebody would give you maybe three of the Psalms and once you had memorized them totally they'd give you the next section of Psalms.
And this one pastor was talking about being at a meeting that was in the dark in a mountain region and the people had gathered together secretly and he said he began to preach and as he would preach he would say as it says in Romans 8 and immediately out of the darkness a voice or oftentimes several voices would recite verbatim from Romans 8. And then he would say or as we look back in the book of Leviticus and voices would begin to recite it out. And he said you know what comes from that? He said the authorities will arrest the people and put them in prison and take every single thing away from them but they can't take the word away from them because the word they've hidden in their hearts.
And so I said they'll sit in prison in the evenings and someone will start to recite through some of the Psalms and with that person stop someone else will start to recite and he said they'll have a reading meeting and nobody has a single scrap of paper. So equip yourself for the battle that you're in. Know the Word. Read the Word.
Read it over and over again. Use the tools that we have available to us but don't just read the tools. Don't just read what a brother has said about a book of the Bible. Read the book for yourself.
Spend more time doing that. There are many great books written by believers with much value to them but make sure you spend more time reading this. This is the only inspired book in existence. The only one.
And remember that God will fight for us. As long as we are acting in obedience to him doing the work he has called us to do he will fight the battle. We are equipped but he alone gives the victory. Let's pray.
Lord and our God Father I pray for our brothers and sisters. As you call us to our work as you lay burdens on our hearts when I pray that you would open our eyes to see those attacks that come those times when we are weary and lose heart. When the labor seems so big and our strength seems so small Lord for those times when the attack on the outside is so obvious and oppressive and intimidating those times when words of discouragement are said even within our own circle are oftentimes within our own minds. Lord I pray for your spirit if you were that you would remind us who you are.
How great at awesome you are. How great is our salvation. Lord that you would remind us what we are fighting for. The labor you give us to live out the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ makes an eternal difference.
Lord then we will see how you fight the battles for us large and small. As we prepare our minds our hearts for battle we rest in your victory not ours. Lord I pray for the saints here that you would encourage them and bless them and strengthen them in you for your glory in Jesus Christ. Amen.