Introduction
Question:
why did the chicken cross the road? Answer: perhaps we’ll never know. But you
know why the duckling crossed the road don’t you? To prove he's no chicken.
If
you asked Nehemiah why the chicken crossed the road, I think he would probably
say something like this: “Because whatever the risks involved, that chicken
absolutely trusted the Lord to get him to the opposite pavement without being
flattened by a lorry.”
Because
Nehemiah was a man who, through faith, defied all the odds stacked against him
to achieve his goal. That’s one of the reasons it’s good to get into this book.
The words “defeat” and “failure” and “give up” and “lose” were just not part of
Nehemiah’s vocabulary. They shouldn’t be part of ours either.
If
you belong to Jesus Christ, then know for sure this morning that you are not
only called but also equipped by God, like
Nehemiah was, to triumph over every spiritual adversity that the devil can put
in your way.
So
how’s your week been? Marvellous? Just O.K? Full of hassle? The worst week of
your life? There’s no right answer, only your honest answer and following
Jesus, your week could be any of those.
Consider
the Apostle Paul. He probably had more bother in an average week than all of us
put together get in a year.
He
puts it this way (and this is from The Message paraphrase):
“In
hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed;
working hard, working late, working without eating; … when we’re praised, and
when we’re blamed; slandered, and honoured; true to our word, though
distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive,
though rumoured to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to
die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on hand-outs,
yet enriching many; having nothing, yet having it all.”
One
of the glorious things about being a Christian is this; no matter what Satan
pelts at us, God’s grace is sufficient, it is enough, to stand up
to it and prevail. That’s one of the things this book of Nehemiah is about.
Getting from Here to
There
Nehemiah
is a pretty good role model for standing tall in times of challenge and
anxiety.
We
saw last week in chapter one, that Nehemiah had a burden from God and prayed
that God would give him favour. That’s a good thing to pray. I hope you’re praying
for the Lord’s favour on you, on your family, on your church, on our nation.
But
having prayed for favour, Nehemiah doesn’t leave it there. He flexes the
muscles of his faith – and so should we.
This
is a key chapter in the story. It starts with Nehemiah hundreds of miles away
from Jerusalem and he hasn’t even asked permission if he can go and repair the
wall. By the end of the chapter, every obstacle has been cleared, he’s in
Jerusalem and ready to build.
That’s
pretty well where we are in our own rebuilding project. The plans have been
approved, authorizations have been granted, the finances are pretty well in
place, the roofers will be here three weeks tomorrow. But it’s been a lot of
work to get us from square one to where we are now.
On
25th May 1961, US President Kennedy said we’re going to put a
man on the moon and return him safely to earth before the end of this decade.
OK, but how do you get from the drawing board to the launch pad where you’re
ready for take-off? With a huge amount of creative planning and hard work
and belief, that’s how.
Think
about a huge challenge to your faith; maybe someone you would like to see
converted or impossible circumstances at work or a financial situation that’s
got “no way” written all over it. Or whatever… How are you going to get from
here to there?
The
journey is one of persevering faith and the sovereignty of God.
Six
Tests of Faith
In
this chapter, God puts it in Nehemiah’s heart to do six outrageous things. Now,
bear this in mind if you think God is calling you to do something that is going
to take you out of your comfort zone. If you feel that the Lord is stirring you
to be adventurous, that’s usually because he wants you to grow in faith.
Faith
hears the inaudible, sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives
the impossible. I hope that’s where you want to be. That’s certainly where God
wants you and me to be.
Six
outrageous things... So firstly, God says to Nehemiah, “I want you to go round
with a miserable face in the presence of your boss.” For some of us that sounds
like a normal day at work, but not Nehemiah. Believe it or not, failing to
smile in the company of the king of Persia’s was a capital offence. It’s a bit
harsh isn’t it? I mean, who always looks cheerful all day at work? (Well,
obviously the staff here do). But in the royal courts of Persia in 500 BC
turning up with a sullen disposition could be a matter of life and death. In v1
Nehemiah says “I had not been sad in his presence before.” I bet he hadn’t! But
this time, Nehemiah, by faith, turns up for work with a face that looks like he
is sucking a lemon.
Secondly,
God says “Nehemiah, you’re going to ask the king for a holiday.” And I don’t
mean a week’s camping with the family at half term. You are going to put in a
request for twelve year’s paid leave.” (We know that because
if you turn to 5.14, it says there that Nehemiah left for Jerusalem in the 20th year
of Artaxerxes’ reign. And when you turn to 13.6 it confirms that he didn’t
return until the 32nd year of that reign).
So
Nehemiah asks for a bit of time out. And naturally, the king wants to know how
long his cupbearer is going to be away. A couple of months? Half a year maybe?
So in v6 he asks “How long will your journey take and when will you be back?”
I’d love to have seen the king’s face when Nehemiah said “Err, about twelve
years, Your Majesty.” But Nehemiah does just that. How many bosses do you know
who’d say “A dozen years paid leave? Well, that sounds fair enough”? But v6 it
says “it pleased the king to send me.” That’s favour!
Incidentally,
in having the gall to make that request, Nehemiah was asking the monarch of the
Persian Empire to reverse a written policy he himself had made several years
earlier banning all reconstruction work in Jerusalem. You can read about that
in Ezra 4.21. So Nehemiah is asking the king of a vast empire to make a very
public U-turn. And he says “yes.” That’s favour.
Thirdly,
God says “And that’s not all. Nehemiah, not only are you going to go around
looking like death warmed up, request twelve years’ paid leave, and ask the
king to repeal his own law. You are also going to have the audacity to request
full military protection, tons of free building materials and some official
authorisations signed by His Majesty in person.”
So
in v7-8 that’s what Nehemiah does. And he says this in v8; “Because the
gracious hand of my God was with me, the king granted my requests.”
I
love that! When the gracious hand of God is on us, doors open, blessings flow,
spiritual blockages clear, oppressive atmospheres shift. Did you know that last
week, we were awarded another grant of £5,000 for our own roof project. That’s
over £29,000 in grant funding now over and above the £60,000 we have freely
given. We are now only about £5,000 away from being able to fund the entire
project loan-free. The gracious hand of our God is with us. Pray for favour in
every area of life.
Fourthly,
God says, “Now, you’re going to travel several hundred miles, probably on the
back of a camel (careful, they spit!) and through a no man’s land, notorious
for bandits and raiders.” So in v9, with a few armed guards around (who were an
absolute necessity), Nehemiah sets off.
Fifthly,
once he arrives, God says, “All right. You’re going to undertake a meticulous
inspection of the walls secretly at night.” Why does he have to do this
covertly? Because, as we’ll see in a minute, rebuilding this wall was a highly
sensitive matter politically. It was going to inflame the wrath of the
surrounding peoples, no doubt about it.
Even
today, there are endless land disputes in the middle-east. You’ve seen on the
news how emotional they get about who owns which bit of land and who can build
what, where. Well, it was the same then. No matter. In v12-15, Nehemiah carries
out his survey.
As
we know, Jerusalem’s defences were a pile of rubble. It was, by any standards,
a massive task. A conservative estimate of the dimensions of the walls is as
follows: The circuit of the city wall was a little over a mile long, and it
would need to be about four feet thick, and about sixteen feet high.
That
may not sound all that much, but the equivalent of that is if you and I had to
build a solid wall about as thick as the screen and as high as the arch behind
me from here to Yarm High Street. Are you ready for work? It was a massive
undertaking!
But
I love Nehemiah’s faith. He absolutely refuses to settle for the status quo.
Here’s a challenging question. What, specifically, am I doing in my life that
requires me to take a step of faith?
And
sixthly, when three neighbourhood bullies come along and intimidate Nehemiah,
by faith, he just laughs it off. In v20, he affirms, to their face, his
absolute confidence that what God has told him to do will come to pass,
whatever their threats and whatever the obstacles.
“The
God of heaven will give us success” he says. “We his servants will start
rebuilding, but as for you, you have no share in Jerusalem or any claim or
historic right to it.”
Facing
Spiritual Adversity
It
took guts to say that because the three men he said it to were formidable
opponents, and each for different reasons.
Sanballat,
first of all, had ambitions to take political control of the city, something
that would be impossible once the morale of the people had been restored by the
rebuilding of the wall.
Tobiah’s
agenda was not political but religious. He had a vision to mix up the worship
of our God, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, with pagan practices.
He knew that his plan would never work with a new wall in place.
Geshem’s
motivation was neither political nor religious; it was financial. The
rebuilding of the wall would be bad for business (well, his business anyway) so
he was also desperate to obstruct the project.
According
to my Study Bible, opposition to rebuilding Jerusalem had been going on for 90
years.
So
this visit from Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem isn’t an isolated and spontaneous
attack on the work of God; it’s part of a sustained, entrenched resistance to
it. Nehemiah is up against a mighty spiritual stronghold.
As
we go through the book of Nehemiah we’re going to see that this hostility is
repeated and intensified. Next week, Mark is going to take us through chapter
4, where the resistance takes the form of anger, insults and bullying. In
chapter 6 it manifests itself in timewasting tactics, scaremongering,
intimidation and defamation of character.
We’ll
look more closely at those things over the next few weeks. But these men begin,
not with anger or bullying or slander, but with ridicule.
What
is true physically in the Old Testament is true spiritually in the New. Our
battle is not against flesh and blood, people like Sanballat, Tobiah and
Geshem. It’s against spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly realms. The
tactics of these human adversaries in Nehemiah are the same tactics our
spiritual enemy, the devil, relentlessly uses against us.
In
the media, instead of reporting really good things like Soul Survivor, the
Alpha Course and the Welsh Outpouring, Christianity is routinely lampooned.
That’s ridicule – but don’t be ashamed…
Christians
who are married to an unbelieving spouse sometimes tell me that their husbands
or wives say to them, “Oh, you’re not going off to church again to be with
those naive people are you?” That’s ridicule – but don’t be ashamed…
In
our schools, young believers in Jesus are subjected to teasing. When our young
people stand up for what they believe in school, they know that their peers
will poke fun at them. That’s ridicule – but don’t be ashamed…
Whenever
I engage in a debate online about faith in the public sphere I get a
predictable avalanche of abusive comments about how I believe in flying
spaghetti monsters and the tooth fairy and how I haven’t grown out needing an
imaginary friend. That’s ridicule – but don’t be ashamed…
In
Nehemiah, mockery was the first tactic of the enemy and it still is in 2013.
You
see, the devil is sly. He knows that we hate to be laughed at. Like everyone
else, we want to be appreciated and accepted. We want people to like us, not
pour scorn on us.
But
hold your head high and count it an honour to suffer ridicule for belonging to
Jesus Christ.
Ending
Remember
they poked fun of the Lord Jesus too. And I want to end here by encouraging you
to lift your eyes and look at Jesus. Think of the scorn and mockery he endured.
They
gave him a flogging and dressed him in a fake royal robe. Then they curtseyed
in mock homage. They said, “You’re a king; here’s a crown, then.” And they
twisted some thorny briers and pushed it onto his head. Then they crucified
him. And they looked up at him. “You’re supposed to be the messiah! Come down
from the cross then and save yourself – and us.”
Little
did they know that the only way he could possibly save them was not by coming
down but by staying up there to suffer and die in their place – and yours and
mine too.
Sermon
preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 23rd June 2013
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