In his sermon 'Resist the Devil - Keep Praying, Building and Fighting,' Scott Brown examines Nehemiah Chapter 4, where the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls faces fierce opposition from adversaries like Sanballat and Tobiah. These enemies mock and threaten the Jews, symbolizing how the devil attacks believers. Nehemiah's response is characterized by steadfast prayer and determined work, emphasizing the need to rely on God for strength and protection. Brown draws parallels between Nehemiah's challenges and the modern Christian's spiritual battles, highlighting how adversities can serve as opportunities for growth and revival. The sermon underscores the importance of unity, strategic planning, and unwavering faith in overcoming obstacles, while also pointing to Jesus Christ as the ultimate rebuilder of souls. Through vivid imagery and scriptural references, Brown encourages believers to resist discouragement and focus on establishing true worship in their lives and communities.

To join me in reading, turn to Nehemiah chapter 4 scripture text for today. But it so happened when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant and mocked the Jews. And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria and said, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices?

Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned? Now Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him and he said, whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. Here, O our God, for we are despised. Turn their approach on their own heads and give them a splendor to a land of captivity.

Do not cover their iniquity and do not let their sin be blotted out from before you for they have provoked you to anger before their builders. So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together, up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. Now it happened when Sanballat, Tabiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, and the Ashtetites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry, and all of them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. Nevertheless, we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night. Then Judah said, the strength of the labourers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.

And our adversaries said, they will neither know nor see anything till we come into the midst and kill them and cause the work to cease. So it was when the Jews who dwelt near them came and they told us ten times, from whatever place you turn they will be upon us. Therefore I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall at the openings, and I said to the people, according to their families, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people. Do not be afraid of them.

Remember the Lord, great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives and your houses. And it happened when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, every one to his work. So it was from that time on that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor, and the leaders were behind all the house of Judah. Those who built on the wall and those who carried burdens loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction and with the other held a weapon. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built And the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me.

Then I said to the nobles, the rulers and the rest of the people, the work is great and extensive and we are separated far from one another on the wall. Whenever you hear the sound of the trumpet rally to us there, our God will fight for us. So we labored in the work, and half of the men held their spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. At the same time, I also said to the people, let each man and his servant stay at night in Jerusalem, that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day. So neither I, my brethren, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, took off our clothes, except that everyone took them off for washing.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this account of the miraculous rebuilding of the wall as your people came together. Father, help us today to apply these words and the teaching and your words that we hear through Scott, I pray Lord that you would cause us to rise up. May the church arise, may your church arise O Lord to build and to link our arms together as one, to stand before the enemy knowing that it is not in our strength we build, but, O Lord, in yours. Father, for you, O Lord, are our strength and our shield.

And we pray, Lord, that you would cause us to indeed rise up today even as we hear these words. Stir up our spirits, O Lord, in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, Nehemiah certainly is a page turner. You've got swords and bows and spears. You've got walls.

You've got attackers. You have all kinds of threats. You have just a remarkable array of vivid visual pictures of a pretty dramatic situation. And What we find here in this chapter is really a new section in Nehemiah that runs from chapter 4 to chapter 6. And there's nothing but opposition in this section here.

The accusers and the mockers and the attackers of the people of God, they bare their teeth, they show their true colors. And so it's a picture of times of trouble. This is a great chapter. I hope it helps to equip us for times of trouble and shows us how the accuser of the brethren comes against his people, the devil himself. He attacks the blood-bought people of God.

He belittles them. He tells them that they're nothing. He contradicts the gospel. He says they're going to get destroyed. This is what the devil does to many, many of God's saints.

And the question I have today, is there anybody here in that situation there just feeling the condemnation of the devil when actually they really have cried out to Jesus Christ for salvation, they really have turned to Him. They really have seen a change of their hearts and they want to serve the Kingdom of God, but yet they feel so condemned. Well, the voices of Tobiah and Sanballet and the rest of these accusers are that same kind of voice. And I think we need to ask you know what do these what do these walls and what do these accusers mean and we've talked about this in in different in different ways in different times as we've been going through Nehemiah but the city and the walls they all have meaning in the Bible. Jerusalem is a type of the true church that is gathering to worship.

And it's figurative of God gathering worshipers in heaven for all eternity. And so what this chapter speaks about is the slanderous accusations of the world and the flesh of the devil against the church corporately, but not just the church corporately, I think that's a picture of how the world and the flesh and the devil work in the hearts of true believers and the walls in Scripture are compared to salvation as Isaiah 58 verse 8 or 60 verse 18 says very clearly but you shall call your walls salvation and your gates praise. So the walls and the gates, they all have meaning. The city has meaning. And I think the adversaries in Nehemiah 4 are figurative of the devil and his attacks against true believers.

And here's what we learn. God's people face obstacles. Internal obstacles and external obstacles and threats and fears. But with Nehemiah, we see something that I hope is really helpful. You know, what if the obstacles that we're facing are actually opportunities that God has put in front of us?

What if the mocking was actually meant by God to mobilize you and to strengthen you? What if the reversals were actually meant to cause a revival in your life and among all the people of God? Well, that's really what we see here in this chapter and really in all of Nehemiah. Remember, Nehemiah stands in the midst of a 117 year period of God's people trying to return to true worship in the city. And They really speak of really our work today is to establish true work in the cities that God puts us in.

Now, in this new section, we have all this opposition that's ahead of us. It starts with external opposition. Next week we'll deal with internal, or in the next chapter it's internal opposition. But if you look at your outline, you can see that I've divided this into three sections. And the first section covers from verses 1-12 where the enemies attack, And we'll talk about the different ways that the enemies attacked and how Nehemiah and the builders responded.

And then finally, the whole last half of this chapter explains what Nehemiah and the builders did to respond to those attacks and then I want to end up with lessons learned from from all of this. So here this storm is brewing in Nehemiah chapter 4 and the first thing we see here is that the the enemies attack and you know the first thing that they do is they mock they start mocking and slandering the people of God and this first attack is found in verses one through three. I'd like you to follow with me as we go through this because I'm going to walk through this text section by section and then we'll finally get to the end and try to apply it. But the first attack is attack of mocking. Sanballat goes first and he's furious and he's indignant and he mocks the Jews.

And then Tobiah goes second, he piles in behind him and he's mocking them even further and he says even if a fox goes up on this wall it'll break down. And so what do we learn? What do we learn from this first level of attack? First of all, the attacks on your soul and the attacks on the church, they come from mixed sources. And what we find here, there are different kinds of sources of attack.

You have the religious attackers like Sanballat and Tobiah. Tobiah has a Hebrew name. He's connected to the Jews. Sanballat ends up as the governor of Samaria, which was the big syncretistic, you know, mixing worship of Baal with the worship of God, using God words but not really loving God with all your heart. So it comes from religious sources and then it comes from pagan sources as we see later on where there you have pagan nations and they are all surrounding the people of God pressing in on them.

The second thing you learn is that slander usually comes from a ringleader and in this case sand ballot is always mentioned first in the accusations. You see it in chapter 2 verse 9 and 10, you see it in verse 19 and you see it here. Sam Ballett is always the first one. There's always a ringleader and he's got an intelligence system and he's spreading out his intelligence to all the rest of people who do hate the people of God. Now, Sanballet is addressing two parties here.

Notice he's addressing his brethren and he's also addressing the army. That's what he's doing. He's talking to his brethren in the army and what does he say? He has five questions that mock them, mock the people of God. First of all, What are these feeble Jews doing?

In other words, these people are incompetent. And then secondly, he says, will they fortify themselves? He's just saying, they are so weak. And then he says, will they offer sacrifices? He's just saying, they're uncommitted.

They're not going to finish this job. And then the fourth question is, will they complete it in a day? In other words, these people are so slow and lazy. After all, this has been going on for almost 100 years, 117 years. And then he asks, will they revive the stones from the heaps of the rubbish stones that are burned?

In other words, he's saying, these people are stupid. You can't use these burned stones and this rubble. They're in la-la land. They have no idea what they're doing. So that's the kind of slander that you get from Sandbell.

He's basically saying, you know, these are a bunch of perfumers. These are a bunch of goldsmiths. You know, these are a bunch of priests. Are they going to rebuild these walls this is ridiculous these people have no business they're idiots they're losers that's the voice of the devil to the Church of Jesus Christ and you know this is the same thing they said about Jesus is this the carpenter son I mean can anything good come from Nazareth no no way this is what the slanders do they look at you they look at the people of God and they say, you're a loser. You're nothing.

It's amazing what God does for losers, isn't it? He redeems them and he picks them up from where they are. You know, they said the same thing about the apostle Paul. You're great and learning is driving you mad. And this is the slanders.

You know, When the apostles were out preaching in the book of Acts, the people said, these people are uneducated. They're uneducated, but they realized they'd been with Jesus. And that was really where their strength was. That's our strength right there. Are we losers?

Yeah, we really are. In some ways the slanders are true, but here's the deal. What God does is that he takes burned up stones and rubble and he makes a kingdom out of it. That's what God does. And so while the devil is sort of right he doesn't understand that in in that even sand bullet and talking about these burned stones and rubble he doesn't know that God is belittling him because God is building a church and it will last forever so you know the early church was mocked and slandered.

You know, the early church was accused of cannibalism because they, the rumors were that they, you know, ate the body and blood of Jesus. They were accused of having orgies because they had these agape feasts, these love feasts, they were accused of incest because they called each other brother and sister, they greeted one another with a holy kiss, they were accused of atheists because they didn't believe in the Roman gods. The people of God are always gonna be belittled, they're always gonna be called stupid and losers. And, but God has a completely different perspective and here's what it is while the world mocks the church God is preparing a spotless bride out of the losers of this world. It's amazing.

The world looks at the church and all of her imperfections and judges it as worthless. You might even look at yourself that way too. And you may have the accusers of the brethren saying the same thing about you, but you have to understand what God really is doing. God in His love restores sinners. We are weak.

We are flawed. And yes, there's enormous amount of baggage that we're still carrying around and trying to shed, but God is making us new one day at a time. He's sanctifying us and cleansing us. There's so much hope for a redeemed sinner. You might not have that much hope for yourself right now this morning, But guess what?

If you're redeemed, God has a lot of hope for you. He's taking you to glory. And He's destroying the works of the devil one day at a time in your life. Because He loves you. Because He loves to redeem the losers of this world.

And the other thing, you know, the people who are trying to restore true worship, they're always going to be mocked. They're always going to be looked down upon in this world. And that's what we find here. Now what's Nehemiah's response? You see this first attack of Sambell.

Nehemiah's first response is to pray, verses four and five. He prays, that's the very first thing that he does. He doesn't respond directly to the mockers, that's the first thing. And He doesn't melt, he prays. He doesn't melt, he prays.

It's easier to melt than pray, but it's better to pray than melt. And that's exactly what he does. He doesn't respond in kind. Nehemiah is so consistent. He's boring in this sense.

He always does the same thing. When he's attacked, he prays. He turns his eyes to heaven. He doesn't fret about it. He doesn't melt over it.

He turns to God and prays That's that's the kind of people we need to be become is when we find ourselves in those zones of attack and slander and discouragement, we pray. That's the very first thing that we do. And he does pray against the enemies of God. We could go into a long discussion about imprecatory prayers. This is an imprecatory prayer.

I'm not going to spend the next 30 minutes dissecting every element of consideration for imprecatory prayers. Maybe sometime we can do that. Maybe we can preach about prayer and go through the role of imprecatory prayers if there is one. But this is a prayer that is a resistance of the works of the devil. It's calling judgment upon the enemies of God.

It's legitimate to call judgment and destruction upon the enemies of God. By the way, that's where they're headed anyway. And there are six Psalms that are commonly classified as imprecatory prayers. Let me give you three facts about this prayer. Number one, the prayer is to call God to aid his people.

That's the first thing. Second, it's a prayer for God to take action. Third, it's not a prayer of personal vengeance. It's a prayer that calls upon God to act. And It's true, you know, imprecatory prayers are rare.

The Christians' knee-jerk reaction is to pray for mercy, to pray for salvation. There are times when the people of the world become so radically destructive and pernicious that it's right to say, Lord, please destroy them in their tracks. By the way, you'll find out that's exactly what happened. All their plots failed. God did that.

He answered this prayer. Matthew Henry says this. This prayer is Maybe not to be imitated by us who are taught by Christ, to pray for those who despitefully use and persecute us. Christ himself prayed for those that reproached him. Father, forgive them.

That should be our default. But there are times, and this is one of those times, where it was appropriate to pray for the absolute destruction of this attacking army. You see the same thing happening with Hezekiah. He cries out to God and he prays. And what does God do?

God destroys an army of 185, 000 attackers in the middle of the night on the battlefield. It was God who did it. And so this is Nehemiah's response. He's consistent, he's boring, he does what we all ought to do, respond by prayer. And then the third response is that they kept working, verse six, so we built the wall.

They prayed, so we built the wall, verse six. And the entire wall was joined together up to half its height for the people had a mind to work. Here's what happened. They ignored the mocking. They totally ignored it.

They had a death ear. It's like what David said in Psalm 38 verses 12-13. He says, like a deaf man do not hear I am like a mute who does not open his mouth in the face of his attackers." That's exactly what they did. They pretty much kept their mouth shut and they kept on working. Their minds were stayed upon the work.

You know, that will keep him in perfect peace. His mind is stayed on thee. That's how you deal you know with these kinds of attacks. You put your mind on God, you fix your heart on heaven, and that's how you get through. You lift your eyes up into the hills from which the help comes.

That's what you do when you're attacked. That's what you do when there's a war being waged and there's tremendous disappointment. And Nehemiah was tested by opposition. We're all being tested by opposition. We're all being tested by disappointment and reversal at different levels.

And everyone here has some jurisdiction, either over their own soul or over their own family. Or you might be a deacon having jurisdiction over something or an elder. But the truth is, when you have jurisdiction over something, you have to ask, am I the kind of leader that goes to pieces in the in the face of trouble or or do I trust in God and God alone some people when they when they run into trouble they feel so much pressure, they get discouraged and they don't continue. Others they just build walls around themselves. Sometimes people get embittered and vindictive, but not so with Nehemiah.

He doesn't do that at all. He turns to God and he keeps on working, and he switches off his ears to the slanderers. And I think there's a lot to learn. Also, when they started rebuilding, they got halfway up. And halfway through anything is usually the hardest part.

You know, halfway through a marathon, halfway through a semester, you know, halfway through building a house, halfway through growing a church. Sometimes those can be the sloggiest, hardest times. You just need to keep on moving. So they reached that point and a lot of times it's the last half or the last fourth that takes three-fourths of your energy. So that was needed here.

I don't know if you feel like you're in the halfway mark of something. You know, there are a bunch of mamas in here that are about halfway through something right now with their children. Halfway through this stage in life, halfway through diapers, halfway through potty training, halfway through something and everybody in this room is halfway through something right now and what do you do? Well Nehemiah really helps us to understand what we ought to do. The enemy attacks through slander.

Prayer and work go hand in hand. Prayer without taking responsibility is irresponsibility. Work without prayer is self-reliance. Building without praying is presumption. Praying without building is unworkable, and God has designed for us to both pray and work in that order that's the order pray then work don't work then pray pray then work in other words get filled up with the presence of God and then go do your work and do it as a strength that God supplies.

You know when the Bible says unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain it doesn't mean that we don't do any work. It means that we labor according to the grace of God according to the power and the wisdom that God gives us, but it arises out of this wellspring of relationship with God. You know God, you're connected with him, you have fellowship with him, you pray with him, and that's the fountain out of which your whole life flows. And so Nehemiah responds in that way pray and work then the second attack comes in verses seven and eight there's an escalation the attacks get more vicious The second way the enemies of God oppose God's work is through threats of violence. Now they get really nasty.

They were just nasty in word, now they are nasty with sword. At least they're threatening to do such a thing. You know it's not such a bad thing to have words thrown at you and things like that. But when people start threatening your body, it gets a little bit more serious. And that's what's happening here.

Now it happened, verse 7, when Sambalit and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites, in other words, they're surrounded. They heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry and all of them, All of them, everybody around them conspired together to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. They wanted to come in and confuse everybody and scatter them and get them back to do nothing about rebuilding the worship of God in that city. And hey, success in ministry, it triggers the alarms of the enemies of God. They get concerned and they escalate.

They escalate here in threats of life. And you have these various parties that are all around the people of God and they are you know they're they're threatening an attack you know we live in an era right now where more martyrs are being counted than any other era in history. Some people say half the martyrs that have been killed in the entire history of the world have been killed in the 20th century. It's possible. It's hard to know exactly how to count the numbers correctly.

But there definitely is an escalation of the war of the devil against the people of God in the world. More people are losing their lives. Some people say it's about 100, 000 Christians are killed every year right now over the last few years. But anyway, there's these threats of attacks. What does Nehemiah do?

Oh he's so boring. He just does the same thing. Verse 8. Nevertheless we made our prayer to God because of them and because of them we set a watch against them day and night. Now, notice the we.

We prayed. We made our prayer. They were together. They were the people of God coming together in prayer. God has always wanted his people to come together and pray.

In the middle of the week we gather our church together to pray. We do it because it's such a good thing to do. We made our prayer. All of us together. The people of God should come together and pray together.

And they prayed and they worked. Again, this very same pattern. Prayer then work. Prayer then work. That's the pattern.

They're of one mind. They're not standing alone. They're praying for one another. They're all working at different parts of the walls, this family's over here, that family's over there, and they're praying for each other, and they're praying against the works of the devil, and they're humbling themselves. You know, when When there's a trouble in your life, you often wonder if it happened to drive you to your knees.

Because you haven't been on your knees quite like you should. Trouble drives you to prayer. And I like what George bilk says he says the enemies sought to storm Jerusalem The builders stormed the throne of grace storm the throne of grace That's what Nehemiah did. I you know, do you want to be more like that? Oh, I do I pray that all of us are the kind of people that storm the gates of heaven when there's trouble.

Instead of stressing out about it, we storm the gates. You either stress or you storm. I mean the gates of heaven and the Lord is so kind to help us to understand how to do this. You know, don't be slowed down by the mocking and the threats. Pray.

Keep on working. Then there's another way the enemy attacks here and it's through discouragement and fatigue. Look at verses 10 through 12. This is really interesting. I want you to get dialed in on this because There are always physical challenges from your circumstances.

And in verse 10, it says the strength of the laborers is failing. And there is so much rubbish that we're not able to build the wall. So They're getting overwhelmed with the task. The zeal is falling, energy is dropping, they're getting weary, they're getting discouraged because there's so much rubble. You look around, you're halfway done, and there's still so much rubble out there.

And you wonder, how can I finish this task? And the truth is, for all of us, we are the most vulnerable to discouragement when we're exhausted. When we're exhausted, everything seems overwhelming and we just want to give up. You know I've heard my wife say this so many times, if you're married and you want and you want to talk about a difficult matter, don't do it when you're tired or sleepy, or getting ready to go to bed or angry. But when you're tired, it's a lot of times it's not the best time to make big decisions in your life because you're tired you're weary and that's exactly what happened here and you know that you look around at the rubbish and you just don't know how you're gonna possibly you know get through it you're raising your children and you're doing all these things And you always have 50 tiresome things upon you and 50 reasons why you just can't finish the task of doing it.

And the devil always wants to poke a hole in your energy gland and let it drain out so that you don't have energy for anything. There are times when you just come to the realization that there's just more rubbish in your life, there's more rubbish in your church than you imagined. And you don't know what to do. That's where they ended up. You know, God is so, He gives us an honest book.

You know, this is not a fake book. This is not a pie in the sky. God comes to us and he speaks to us in our weakness. He really, he tells a story of our own life. Is this the story of your life?

Absolutely it is. You reach those times of weariness and you just don't know if you can go on. You don't know if you can lift up another piece of rock and put it in the right place. But thankfully God's not done with you even when you get to places like that. God wasn't done with these people and He's not done with you and He's not done with me when I get to places of weariness and disheartenedness and discouragement.

I've had a couple times like that in the last couple years I really have where I just didn't know if I had any vision or any anything left and but I found that God doesn't leave you there he does not leave there what a blessing well the adversaries keep threatening verse 11 and they the adversaries come and they say they will neither know or see anything till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease. In other words, they're not going to know what hit them. They're going to be out there building their walls, chinking away, and we're going to wreck them. And they're not even going to know what hit them. So these threats keep coming.

And then even their brethren tried to discourage them in verse 12. Look at verse 12. So it was when the Jews who dwelt near them came that they told us ten times from whatever place you turn they will be upon us. So now their brethren are discouraging them. Now they're brethren ten times.

You're gonna get nailed. You're gonna get wiped out. It's over for you, buddy. You better just understand what's coming. There's a wave coming, and you are going to be at the bottom of it.

So this is their brethren now. So they get all these accusations from the outside. Now they come from the inside. They aren't really accusations. It's just a bunch more discouraged people spreading discouraging information.

And discouragement can come from within. And, you know, people can spread seeds of doubt in your mind. It's doubly hard when you're questioned by your own friends or your own family, and they're saying, what are you doing? You're going to get wiped out if you keep doing this. And everybody wants to be so protective.

And they assume the worst. So many give up because of discouragement. And what do you do? I think one thing that you have to realize is that suffering is not a sign of God's absence. A lot of times we think if we did Everything right, everything would go right.

That's really a lie. If you read the Bible, you understand how stupid that is. Because there are a lot of people that did what was right, and they got attacked, and they got hurt, and it was hard, but God was using it all for his own glory. But even if you do what's right, God's still not done with you and he's going to use external and internal forces to cause you to turn to him. And here it was just so discouraging.

Okay, so the primary focus of these first 12 verses is the attack of the enemy. Now, there's a fairly dramatic shift here where The focus is the action and the mobilization that Nehemiah brought about as a result of these attacks. And so let's get our minds focused on verses 13 through 23. Now, Nehemiah does seven things, I'm gonna identify seven things that Nehemiah does here. And we can learn a lot from these seven things about dealing with the accuser of the brethren, dealing with the slander of our souls, dealing with our weariness, dealing with our discouragement.

These are the things that Nehemiah does and that we need to learn from as well. First, he takes precautions in vulnerable places in the wall. That's verse 13. He takes precautions in the vulnerable places in the wall. Now when I just said that, I want you to be thinking about your own soul and your own church.

What are the vulnerable places in your own life and in your own church? Because Nehemiah took precautions in the vulnerable places. And what he does, he mobilizes families. And this is again, this is family integrated work and warfare. That's what this is.

In 1 Chronicles, Ezra calls families armies. Did you know that? Families are armies. They are work forces. Your family is an army.

And if you don't have a family, you have a church family, you have brothers and sisters who are in your army at the same time. But these families, they fought together and things like that. I love what we see in Nehemiah and Ezra, where you have these families coming and working and fighting together. We live in a culture where families split up and they just go do everything separate. And I'm not saying that everybody and every family has to do everything together, but the whole force of our culture is to split the family everybody's going in every different direction we need to come back to a time where families fight together and they work together and they worship together and they are they are they are like armies this This Old Testament picture is a picture really of the way that God desires to mobilize his people.

And that's what you find here. These families are little tiny armies and what Nehemiah is doing, he's giving them weapons. You know, I can just imagine the eight-year-old getting a weapon from Nehemiah. Wow. That must have been pretty empowering and maybe a little bit scary to the mama.

But this is exactly what happened. The families were armed and they were going about this work. Nehemiah, the second thing that Nehemiah does, not only does he take action and mobilize for the vulnerable areas, he also speaks to their fears and he calls them to fight. He speaks to their fears and he calls them to fight. He speaks to their fears and he calls them to fight.

That's verses 14 and 15. He says, don't be, he rose in front of everybody and he said, do not be afraid of them. Remember that the Lord is great and awesome and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. Why fight? Why is he appealing to them to do this?

Because they're restoring the worship of God. When you're restoring the worship of God you've got to fight for it. And he calls, he calls, he speaks to their fears and he says don't be afraid. And I think what's so clear about this is fighters need to pray and those who pray need to fight. Keep fighting and keep praying.

In verse 14, do not be afraid. Remember the Lord great and awesome and fight for your brethren and for your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. And this is really a call to fight and to set aside your fears. David says, I sought the Lord and he heard me and he delivered me from all my fears. That's what you see right here.

And they continued to press on in this way. And it's such a marvelous pattern. God delivered them. Now, something really remarkable happens in verse 15. Take a look at it.

I love this part. Now remember Nehemiah prayed for this and now it's happening. It's coming to pass. I'd love for somebody to do a study of how many times in the Bible some plot of the devil falls to the ground. Well, this is an example.

There are examples in the New and the Old Testament where somebody was plotting a really wicked scheme to hurt somebody or kill somebody or tear something down and all their schemes came to nothing and it should teach us that a lot of times our greatest fears never materialize you know why there's really one reason why your greatest fears don't materialize God protects you God protects his people and all this threat all the all this stuff comes to nothing in verse 15 and it happened I love that and it happened It just happened when our enemies heard that it was known to us that our God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall and everyone to his work. So God neutralized the plan of the enemy and he engineered this intelligence system for them to get information and God, hey God by the way He is the great conspirator. You know remember what Isaiah said don't stop saying it's a conspiracy Stop saying that It's me. I'm the one that's the conspirator. I'm the one spreading the rumors.

Okay? It's me. That's what God says in Isaiah. And God did the same thing right here. He was spreading these rumors all around.

Information was flying. The intelligence system was working and people were talking and passing information, but God was managing every single word of it. How about that? You can take rest in that. David said in Psalm 76 verse 10, surely the wrath of man will praise you.

Okay, the third thing that Nehemiah does is he organizes and arms the workers. That's verses 16 through 18. He organizes and arms the workers. He says in verse 16, so from that time on, half my servants worked at construction, while the other half held spears, the shields, the bows, and they wore armor. Notice there's this kind of gradiation of distance in armor.

Some kind, you know, you've got a shield that protects you close in and you also, you know, you have bows and spears that protect you from a longer distance. And that's what he did. He mobilized them to have various levels of protection. And he takes action to give them that protection. I was reading a commentary by Derek Thomas, and he was talking about how critical it is that we take action, that we do stuff.

And he says, he says this duty, honor, obedience, loyalty, stickability, and stick-to-it-iveness, these seemed old-fashioned and out of place within the orbit of spiritual growth and maturity. He says, but as qualities of the Christian life, they're often disparaged as legalistic and insufficiently reflective of our unconditional acceptance within the family of God. In other words, you know, there's this idea out there that you don't really need to work or do anything, you just need to sort of exist, right? But you don't need to fight. But here we find that the people of God don't just exist and sit there and soak it in.

They need to rise up and fight and they need to use their armament. And it's kind of out of fashion to mobilize people. People don't want to be put into a box and say, let's all go do this now. They want to be free. But actually, in this passage, you find that people are more useful when they're actually doing a vigorous work.

And you know Derek Thomas he talks about the church growth gurus that they say that all you have to do is have this organizational genius to your to your organization And then you have way on the other side that all those who say all you have to do is pray. Both of those are wrong. And I think you find a really good balance here in Nehemiah of working and praying, activity, mobilization, organization, strategy. You need strategy and you also need prayer. You need to rest and you also need to move according to a plan.

And then the next way that Nehemiah takes action is that number four, he kept a trumpeter near him to warn of trouble, verses 19 and 20. He says, you know, there are distances along the wall, and so when there was an attack, Nehemiah wanted to make sure that everybody knew so that they could, you know, come and resist the attackers. And so there was a trumpeter there to sound the warning and I'm going to talk about this a little bit later in this message but you need a trumpeter of your soul to warn of the attacker. You need to anticipate the attack and when there's one you need to bring your brethren in to stave off the attack. And then the next action that Nehemiah takes to protect is he provided protection from daybreak to dark.

That's verse 21. So now he posts sentries. He says, so we labored in the work and half of the men held spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. So there was a systematic protection that was put in place from daybreak to the time the stars appeared. And then the next thing that Nehemiah does, the sixth thing that Nehemiah does to mobilize for protection is that he provides refuge for those who lived outside the city.

That's verse 22. So, you know, there were people that were coming into the city to work, and so those who were traveling, he provided refuge for those who were traveling. You're more vulnerable when you're traveling. Every businessman knows that. Every family knows that.

You're more vulnerable when you're transporting from one place to another and you're in a new place and you're not there for very long. Nehemiah provided for those kinds of people and there are always people like that among us. They're not settled, they're doing a work, but they need protection at the same time. You know, the Bible is very clear about strangers and sojourners to take care of them, take care of strangers that come in. And then the seventh thing that Nehemiah does is that he uses every minute of time for rebuilding.

That's verse 23. That's the last verse in this chapter. He uses every minute of time for the rebuilding. This is so remarkable. I, my brethren, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me took off our clothes except that everyone took them off for washing.

This is what's called time efficiency. This is what's called redeeming the time. This is what's called making the most of your time while you are rebuilding the worship of God in your city. You are a soldier, you're not a civilian. You are in the service of your King, your time is not your own.

When you're rebuilding worship in this world, in this city, it means you can't do anything you want with your clothing. You don't want to be spending your time preening about, looking in the mirror, changing your clothes all the time. You know, I don't know if you've ever been to Asheville, North Carolina, and gone to the Biltmore Estates, and if you walk through, the ladies who visited there, these, you know, heiresses and aristocrats who would visit there, they would spend actually most of the time in their day changing clothes. They would have their early morning tea time clothes, and then they'd have their breakfast clothing, and they would change. And then they would have their morning walk clothing and then they would change and then they would go riding and then they would change and they would change and change and they wasted their lives they had no sense of time and We often spend so much time on things that are so irrelevant.

They don't contribute to the building of the true worship of God in the city. That is why God has put us in this world, by the way. Not to look so good, but to rebuild walls. And so he keeps a laser beam focus on this wall. Many years ago, when I was a young man, I remember reading an interview of Yasser Arafat, who was at that time, he was the head of Hezbollah, the terrorist organization in Israel.

And he was being interviewed by this person and Yasser Arafat always had like a three, four, five day beard on. It wasn't very popular then at that time. And so the interviewer said, why are you always walking around with a four or five day beard? And I'll never forget the answer. He said, you don't understand.

Fatah is my woman. It is my family. It is my life. In other words, he used every moment of his time for dedication to the movement. That's what he meant.

You have a sense of that here in Nehemiah. He's dedicating the moments of his life to the rebuilding of the worship of God and the protection of the people of God in the city. And we have to ask ourselves where are we spending our time? But they have a laser beam focus on the work and they manage their time well. Okay.

So there you have it. We've just raced through 23 verses of this remarkable, dramatic, it's a very exciting story. But I wanna bring about some lessons that we might learn from this. And the first thing I want to recognize is that the devil is the accuser of the brethren. The devil, as the accuser of the brethren, he speaks in a derogatory way in two ways.

He speaks in a derogatory way about the brethren and he spreads it and he speaks in a derogatory way to the brethren. He accuses the brethren in their hearts about what losers they are and he also accuses them before the world. And Jesus Christ said in John 8, he was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand in the truth because the truth is not in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it. And so he is a, as the accuser of the brethren, he always speaks lies.

And This satanic attack upon these people in the days of Nehemiah and upon you as a Christian is proof of the new birth. Satan only attacks those who have been born again. He's going to flatter and coddle those who are not, and he's going to attack those who are, because he hates the gospel, he hates the grace of God, he hates healing, he hates binding up the brokenhearted, and he hates the worship of God and so he brings his attacks on the other hand what does God say who will bring a charge against God's elect who will bring a charge against God's elect Now here's what the accuser of the Brethren does in Nehemiah and I want us to get some real clarity on what the accuser of their Brethren does and I'm going to give you several things that he does. First of all I'm gonna frame it in terms of your adversary and I mean you personally and you church and your adversary is furious and indignant and mocking. That's verse one and one through three.

The devil mocks you, he hates the human soul, and he desires your destruction, and so he's furious with you. And he's like a roaring lion who's furious with holiness. Secondly, your adversary tells you that you're a loser and he acts like a big shot talking trash as if he has some authority and he's saying you are feeble, you're incompetent, you're weak, you're uncommitted, you're slow, you're lazy, you're stupid. What are you going to do with these burned up stones? And, you know, you're a perfumer.

You're nothing. Look what you've done in your life. Look what you did in the last month. You are nothing. And your adversary is going to tell you that you're a loser.

Number three, your adversary brings discouragement from every side. From the religious side and the pagan side. That's what he does. You've got Sanballat and Tobiah, and you've got the Ashdodites, and you have the Jews. They're coming from, I mean, The voices of discouragement are coming from everywhere.

And the devil wants to bring you discouragement from every side. You might just ask yourself this. Where are the discouraging voices coming from in my life right now? Where are they coming from? Number four, your adversary hates your progress as a Christian.

Verses seven and eight are very clear about this. They saw the progress on the wall and it infuriated them. The devil hates any progress that you make. And when you start making progress, you can guarantee that he's going to be starting throwing some lures in front of you to slow you down He's gonna slow you down some way worldliness discouragement various other things are thrown in front of us as opportunities. A lot of people say, you know, the Lord's leading me this way because he gave me this opportunity.

A lot of times opportunities are nothing but the devil trying to lure you away from something better. And You may be facing some things right then, you think, oh, but the Lord brought it in front of me. That's irrelevant in some ways. But does it bring you to holiness and the rebuilding of true worship in your own heart and in your own city? But your adversary hates your progress and The more areas that you turn over to the Lord The more lures he's gonna throw out to hook you You might just ask what might that be?

Is the devil throwing any lures out and have they got me? And do I need to pull them off and throw them away? Number five, your adversary hits you when you're down. Your adversary hits you when you're down. That's verse 10, when you're tired, when you're exhausted, when you're discouraged, he hits you and he hits you then.

Maybe you're in that zone right now. Just recognize this is the way the devil works. He's always worked this way. Number six, your adversary pretends that you'll be destroyed. I love this one, verse 11.

Oh, You're not even gonna see us coming. You're gonna get wiped out. You're dead. You're gonna stand before God and he's gonna throw you into hell. You're dead.

And the adversary pretends that you'll be destroyed. But if you're a redeemed, blood-bought sinner, then you know that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus you know that that that you have been forgiven of everything everything he pretends you'll be destroyed number seven your adversary tells you that there's too much trash and you just might as well give up. There's just too much rubble, too much rubble in your life, in your heart, in your family, in your church. There's just too much rubble. He's going to overwhelm you with the real flaws that you see around you.

But God is so much bigger than all of that. So those are the things that the adversary does. Now, I'm going to give you eight things that Christians should do, that Nehemiah does, in order to resist the devil's accusations. First of all, pray. That's obvious.

Pray. Secondly, strategize on how to resist. Set guards. Arm yourself. Number three, have a deaf ear to the accusations of the devil and keep on working.

Number four, obey the command. Do not be afraid. The Lord will fight for you. Obey that command. Don't just intellectually receive it, but obey it.

Do not fear. Number five, keep your best weapon by your side, the sword, the sword of the spirit. That's your best weapon. Keep that best weapon. You're being attacked by the devil, keep your best weapon right there.

That's the sword of the spirit. Number six, Listen for the trumpet call of warning. Be alarmed. Be alarmed when it's time for alarm. There are times when you should take a serious response into your soul and when you hear the trumpeter, you need to respond.

Your conscience is one of the trumpeters that God gives you. The word of God is a trumpeter. Your brethren and your sisters are also trumpeters that can help you recognize when there's danger to your soul. Don't kill the trumpeter. Don't kill the trumpeter.

That's something that we often want to do. Number seven, use your time well. Keep yourself from unimportant irrelevant things. Minimize your primping And maximize your time of building the true worship of God in your heart and your family and in your church This is the most important thing in the world is to establish true worship in the city and So use your time well and then number eight finally remember that God is destroying the works of the devil and he's gonna, he is gonna nullify all your accusers. He's gonna bring all the plans to nothing against your soul because he is the savior of the soul.

So I think it's legitimate to spiritualize what's here in Nehemiah. The walls mean something, the city means something, the gates mean something, and the accusers mean something, and Nehemiah's responses mean something as well. And I think that there it's consistent with the rest of Scripture. Now, finally, I just want to leave us with the fact that Nehemiah points us to Jesus. Nehemiah is the perfect rebuilder of our souls.

Nehemiah points to one greater than Nehemiah. Nehemiah restores walls, and the Lord Jesus Christ restores our souls. Like Nehemiah, Jesus was a healer. He was the great physician. Like Nehemiah, Jesus left the palace to restore sinners.

Like Nehemiah, when he began to restore, Jesus was mocked. Like Nehemiah, when Jesus was opposed, He persevered. Like Nehemiah, Jesus was attacked. Like Nehemiah, Jesus was handed over to a betrayer. And Nehemiah tells us something about our salvation in Jesus Christ.

That Jesus Christ left his Father's throne, he came to earth to redeem sinners, and he was crucified, he died on the cross, and he bore the sins of sinners who had turned to him. The whole point of Nehemiah is that Jesus Christ saves and he builds up the walls of your life. And that's what we find here. And he is, he's a restorer. And God, God is the one who is restoring his people.

You know, Sanballat scorns Nehemiah because he has to work with burned stones. But that's exactly what God does. He works with burn stones. God belittles the work of the devil by raising up the burn stones and makes them into a building, a dwelling place of God. And so God ends up mocking the mockers by using those burn stones.

And that's us. And I'm so thankful for that. The Lord says a smoking flax he won't crush. Paul said, but such were some of you. A bunch of losers saved by grace.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you for the power and the beauty of the gospel of Jesus. Thank you for his redemption. We thank you for his long suffering, patience with the church over so many thousands of years. And even the short years of our lives, He's been so kind and faithful to us.

Oh Lord, I pray that you would give us such hearts to worship him, to delight in him today, that every every word would be a word of delight. Every interaction would be an interaction praising you and giving thanks for the greatness of your kingdom. I pray we'd use our time well today and tomorrow and the next day to rebuild your worship in your cities that you've laid out. Amen.