Fear Focus | Nehemiah 6 | May 24, 2026 | Aaron T. Colyer

Well, good morning.

If you have a Bible, open up to Nehemiah chapter 6.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

We've been walking through Nehemiah, looking at uh his trust in the Lord, his dependence on the Lord, his reverence towards God, that he fears the Lord with a right posture and right heart motive.

Uh today we're gonna look a little bit about some intimidation that was coming from every side, that the enemies wanted to stop this fortifying of God's city, and they did it in very deceptive ways.

Nehemiah chapter 6.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

As you're turning there, uh we're gonna pray for a church up the road in Dripping Springs.

I was able to chat with their pastor this past week.

His name is Pastor Russell Dixon, and he leads Canyon Church in Dripping Springs.

I said, How can we be praying for you from Wimberly?

He said, Pray for our VBS.

This is the highlight moment.

It's gonna happen at the end of June, and we're inviting all of our neighbors.

We're gonna be sharing the gospel with all kinds of kids and their parents when we try to reach out to their families.

Please pray for God's blessing on our vacation Bible school.

I said, it's easy to do that.

So let's pray for Canyon Church and Pastor Russell.

Let's pray for their VBS.

It's happening in a month from now, and we'll jump into Nehemiah chapter 6.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

Lord, we do thank you just for a moment to tune our hearts and our minds into your worth.

And as we've declared, holy, holy, holy are you.

There's none like you, there's no rock like our God.

You sustain us even in the deepest valleys.

We come together to worship with all kinds of praises and blessings, but burdens and sorrows, and yet, God, you can take them all.

So even in a moment like this, ease us.

Ease us from the deep things that rest on our hearts and souls, and let us just focus on you.

Let us lean into the scripture and say, God, what would you teach us today?

I do pray for a brother in Christ and fellow pastor Russell.

Lord, would you bless his ministry and so many around him on their team, ministry staff and lay leaders?

God, we just ask for your grace to pour out in that church.

I know, I know that they're wanting to see Jesus lifted high and see people repent and believe and have their lives changed forever, starting with kids and families and parents.

And so I just ask that you bless all of their planning and preparation for this VBS next month.

And would you bring all the volunteers that they need and the right people to hear the things in their mind's eye that you would give them new eyes to see to really call out and trust Jesus for the rest of their life?

Would you do uh a saving work through that ministry, through that church, and through that lead pastor?

We ask all that in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So Nehemiah chapter 6, there's a lot of focus on fear here.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

I remember, or I wonder if you remember, the old uh TV show Fear Factor.

Anyone, just about a show of hands, does anyone know what I'm talking about?

Okay, that's that's super helpful.

I would watch that sometimes as like a preteen, and it just grossed me out.

I can't imagine being locked in a clear pexiglass container while like snakes, hundreds of snakes, slither all around me.

That's just not my jam at all.

Okay?

Not my jam there.

I wanted to show you a picture of our daughter last year.

I got to take the students to junior high camp.

Our daughter was a junior leader, she's a high school student, and we had this challenge.

I don't know if you can tell.

We're at Highland Lakes, that's a Baptist camp that actually we help support.

Uh they preach the gospel to kids and teens all summer long.

I get to be one of the camp preachers this summer, which I'm really excited about.

But at the top of their hexaplad or hexapod, you have this beam and you're harnessed in, right?

And I challenge some of the older students that were up there with me on the third level, just do it with no hands, right?

Because you walk across it and you're holding your robe, it's no big deal.

But the second that you put both hands out and your knees start wobbling a bit, all you want to do is come in for security.

That's all you want to do.

I I am not afraid of heights at all.

I loved this challenge.

I loved it to have my heart beat a little faster.

But I'll tell you what, if I looked down, I would have fallen right off of that thing and thank the Lord I had that harness and that rope.

What do we do when we face fears?

Here's what I would contend, especially as we look to Nehemiah chapter six.

We need to make sure that we're focused on the right things.

The thing about that picture is if you just look ahead and you don't look down, it's easier to face your fears because you're just looking ahead and you're going on that beam, right?

What we see here in Nehemiah is there are enemies on every side trying to deter the work of God.

But his focus was on the right kind of fear.

A reverent awe of God, knowing exactly who God was and what God had called him to do.

And so he stayed faithful to the mission that God has put on him.

We need to make sure we have the proper fear focus today.

I'm gonna read from Nehemiah chapter six.

I'm gonna read the whole chapter.

I know this gets long, but it's important that we hear the word in its entirety.

There's some names that I probably will botch up, but I'm just gonna keep reading through them.

Nehemiah chapter six, there's a lot happening.

Let's focus in.

Verse 1.

Now, when Sambalah and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it, although up to that time I had not set up the doors and the gates.

Sambalah and Geshem sent to me, saying, Come and let us meet together at Hekafirim in the plain of Ono.

But they intended to do harm to me.

And I sent messengers to them saying, I am doing a great work that I cannot come down.

Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?

And they sent to me four times.

Do you see the persistence there?

They wanted to do harm.

They sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.

In the same way, Sambalach for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand.

In it was written, It's reported among the nations that Geshem also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel.

That is why you are building the wall.

And according to these reports you wish to become their king.

And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem.

There is a king in Judah, and now the king will hear these reports.

So now come and let us take counsel together.

Lies and more lies and more lies.

Verse 8.

Then I sent to him, saying, No such things as you say have been done.

For you are inventing them out of your own mind.

For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop.

Man, I I got a preacher voice, but maybe I could use this for a little bit.

Is that better?

Alright.

I'm just gonna have to yell.

Starting again here at verse 8.

I'm uh this is this is gonna test my preacher voice right here.

Y'all ready?

Alright, I'm gonna give it my best shot.

Give my best shot.

Pastor Mike, would you mind going and uh seeing if we can't?

I'm gonna leave that there for now.

Thank you.

Alright, verse 8, here we go.

Then I sent to him, saying, No such things as you have been done, as you have said, have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind.

For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop from the work and it will not be done.

But now, O God, strengthen my hands.

You see that, faith?

But now, O God, strengthen my hands.

Now, when I went into the house of Shemiah, the son of Deliah, son of Medabel, who was confined to his home, he said, Let us meet together in the house of God within the temple.

Let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming in to kill you.

They are coming to kill you by night.

Here we go, verse eleven.

Verse eleven.

But I said, Should such a man as I run away?

And what man such as I could go into the temple and live?

I will not go in.

And I understood and saw that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophecy against me, because Tobiah and Sambalah had hired him for this purpose he was hired, that I should be afraid and act in this way and sin.

And so they could give me a bad name in order to taunt me.

Remember Tobiah and Sambalah, oh my God, according to these things, and they said, The prophetess Nodadiah and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.

Look again, not just at verse 14, but skip all the way down to verse 19.

They wanted to make me afraid.

Do you see the fear that could be a potential in Nehemiah's life if he was letting the circumstances of the day and his enemies win the battle?

What we see here is that by God's grace, he's able to stay focused on the right kind of fear.

If you're taking notes, write this down.

Just notice the repetition of an anxious fear.

It's all over the place.

Verse 9, they wanted to frighten us.

Thinking, well, their hands will drop from the work that they are doing.

Verse 14, they wanted to make us afraid.

Verse 19, they wanted us to be afraid.

Why would they be doing this?

They feared that if the city is fortified, Nehemiah could lead a rebellion.

But that was all lies.

Nehemiah wasn't trying to lead a rebellion.

Can you hear me here?

Alright, perfect.

I'm gonna put this one down.

Their aim was to crush the hopes of the Jews.

They wanted to crush them and have them stop their work, stop fortifying the city.

Did you know that fear can be a crushing thing?

I don't know if in your own life you can identify times when you were genuinely afraid.

Some circumstance made you afraid.

The opinions of others made you afraid.

There's a verse in Galatians that says, Am I now a servant of God or a servant of man?

If I was still fearing man, I couldn't be a servant of God.

I think fear could crush us.

Yet we see time and time again in the Old Testament and the New that if we put our faith in the Lord, there is a victory for us.

Exodus 20 says this.

Do you see what's going on here?

In one verse, the word fear is used in two different ways.

Let me make it more clear.

Do not fear, don't be afraid, don't be anxious, don't let your knees knock.

Don't fear.

Why?

God is testing you that you should fear him, put him first, revere him, say, God, I'm serving you, and in doing that you can avoid sin.

So we gotta have the right kind of fear.

As we walk through this text, let's understand the right kind of fear.

Psalm 147, verse 11.

Psalms 147:11

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Repeated over and over in the Proverbs.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

It's interesting if you'll just write this one down.

In Proverbs 28, verse 14, it said, it says, Blessed is the one who fears the Lord.

Proverbs 28:14

This is a great little homework for you.

Isn't it interesting to think that God's grace and God's blessing, it is a grace gift for us to stand in awe of God?

It's not something we muster on our own and say, oh, I'm just gonna work more difficultly and try harder to fear God.

No, no, no, it's a blessing.

If you have a proper perspective and the awe of God, that's a grace gift.

Proverbs 28, verse 14.

Proverbs 28:14

Blessed is the one who fears the Lord.

So how are you fearing God?

We talked about this a lot the last couple weeks that Nehemiah has a reverent fear of God.

Is that true in your own life?

Do you stand in awe of Him?

Or what kind of ways are you in reverence to who God is when circumstances of this world and this life and the darkness tries to press in ever so much, just daily pressing on you?

How can you overcome those kind of anxious fears by saying, Lord, I want to have the proper reverence of you?

Let's just chat about it here for a moment.

Nehemiah, I believe, should have been afraid.

I am not so prideful as to say, if I was in Nehemiah's shoes, I would have done the same thing.

I think if I was in Nehemiah's shoes, I would have run and hid.

Amen.

Can I get an amen there?

Do I have any witnesses there?

They want to kill me.

They're scheming, they're lying, they're saying I'm leading a rebellion.

I'm not leading a rebellion.

Then they paid off a false prophet.

They paid him off to come and say, hey, God's gonna bless you if you just leave the work and hide out in Jerusalem.

And he says, No, no, no, no, no, no.

I don't I don't believe that.

You're not a true prophet, you're a false prophet.

Would it have been possible for you to run and hid out?

Would it have been possible for you to be deceived by some of the lies that were scheming against you if you were in Nehemiah's position?

Here's two reasons why I think he had the reason to fear his enemies.

One, fear from the enemy's plans.

Did you see all the way through verse one through nine?

They come to him, hey, come on down, we gotta talk to you.

No, I'm sorry, busy doing God's work.

They come to him four more times.

He stays steady, he perseveres.

Then there's lies about this rebellion.

Verse 8, he says, You're making things up about me.

Verse 9, he says, they were doing all this just to make me afraid.

There would have been a good reason to be afraid of his enemies.

Yet in Matthew chapter 10, we're reminded to not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

Rather, fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

Nehemiah didn't fear man, he feared God.

He feared his Maker.

He knew what God had called him to do, and he was staying faithful to the mission.

He was not gonna let the opinions of others deter him.

He was not gonna let a fear of man call him off the ball and call him off the mission.

But I'm just being honest with you.

Had I been in his shoes, I might have faltered.

The second reason I think he had legitimate reason to fear is there's this false prophecy in verse 10 through 14.

Shemiah, he was bought off to tell lies.

He says, And Nehemiah's enemies are coming to kill him, and he should go hide out in the temple.

Nehemiah says, No, no, no, I don't belong in the temple right now.

That's not where I belong.

I belong here where God has called me to fortify the city and fortify these walls.

I don't know if you know some tough dudes.

You know the guy kind of guys that just bow up and like I never face, I will never step down in the face of adverse.

You know some of those guys, like real tough bow-up dudes?

I could think of some, but I don't want to embarrass them.

Maybe you know them.

Even those guys had reason to fear if they were in Nehemiah's position.

Right?

They're tell they're telling lies and paying off profits.

What do you do when people are scheming against you and and paying to make up lies and then even falsely try to deceive you by saying, This is God's word for you.

It's God's word that you do this thing.

Yeah, I don't know why you're being so stubborn.

There was an example of one of these stubborn church fathers, John Christendom, 5th century, the golden-tongued preacher.

Here's some reports.

The story is often told that the emperor, worn out with Christendom's golden mouth and tired of his pointed preaching, called him to threaten him with exile unless he changed his message.

Christendom reportedly replied, You can't banish me.

For this world is my father's house.

The response was, then I'll take all of your treasure.

Christendom says, You cannot.

John Chrysostom.

Thank you.

If anyone knows their church fathers, you would have called me out.

The threat is, I'll take all your treasure.

He says, You cannot, for my treasure is in heaven and my heart is there.

My heart's not in this world, it's in heaven.

Then I will drive you away from every person in the world, and you will have no one left.

His response, no, you cannot.

For I have a friend in heaven from whom you cannot separate me.

Then I'll kill you.

You cannot, since my life is hidden with Christ in God, I defy you.

There is nothing you can do to harm me.

As it is with Nehemiah, so it was with Christosom.

Fear of God helps him overcome the fear of man.

I wonder if that's your fear focus today.

I wonder if we can set our fear in the right place and say, Lord, I'm all yours.

And so whatever this world tries to throw at me, whatever man tries to throw at me, I give it back to you.

It's interesting, there's an application about Shemiah, this false prophet, saying, You'll be safe if you just go to the temple.

And Nehemiah knew that that wasn't true.

He knew that wasn't true because he had a relationship with the Lord and he knew the things that the Lord had already said.

I wonder if someone tries to come in and say, the Bible says this, you should get called off of the mission that God has called you to.

Do you know the word well enough to say that's not true?

That's not what God has told me in the scriptures.

I'm not gonna allow you to deceive me.

Or what about when the circumstances of life seem so difficult and so frustrating to try to discourage you and get you off of your mission to magnify Christ, share the gospel?

What if the circumstances of life are just so overwhelming, if financial burdens or frustration at work, or trouble in the home, or a medical diagnosis that seems crushing?

Are you fearing that circumstance or are you fearing the Lord?

As I was preparing to preach this weekend, I couldn't help but think there was a young boy in our church over Christmas that got diagnosed with leukemia.

You probably know his story.

He's three years old, his name is Tripp.

I wear this orange Trip Strong bracelet every day to remind me to pray for Tripp and pray for his family.

They have walked through this trial of having a son with leukemia with such grace and such trust in the Lord, and what I would argue is the proper fear focus.

God, you're awesome.

Cancer stinks, but you're awesome, and you're gonna carry us through.

I reached out to him and I got this quote from his dad, JJ, good friends of ours.

This is what JJ had to say about fearing the Lord, even in the midst of a trial that seems so crushing.

He says this.

We talk about submitting to Christ a lot in our home, but it's a completely different thing to submit your child to Christ.

Especially in the early days of a cancer battle, when you often find yourself asking God why.

There was a resounding peace in the fact that Jesus loves our kid more than we love him.

And when fear and anxiety started to overcome us, our first instinct was to seek peace from medicine, protocols, doctors, nurses.

When in reality the greatest peace and comfort came from the greatest physician.

Jesus has shined the brightest in the midst of our darkest days.

There may be real reasons for you to fear the circumstances that you're facing in this world.

But can I tell you that having a fear, a reverent awe of who God is, is the thing that needs to be set first so that you can walk through those days, honoring him and giving him the glory.

I know JJ's influenced a lot of doctors and nurses, but one in particular, one of their cancer doctors for trip, oncologist, went and said, You are the first Christian family that I've ever seen walk through this in a way that makes me think, I gotta see where I am with Jesus.

He doesn't have any kind of faith journey or or or he doesn't consider himself a Christian, but he said, the way that you and your wife and your family and those that come to visit trip, the way y'all are walking through this is making me question, I better figure out who this Jesus guy is.

Do you see what kind of impact you can have when you have the right kind of reverent fear of the Lord instead of fearing circumstances and people and people's opinions?

It would have been okay, I think, if Nehemiah said, I'm a little bit afraid of these people.

But instead, Said, Lord, my fear is in you.

So I think we should follow his example.

Follow Nehemiah's example.

He fears the only one who is worthy.

If you remember last week, there were two places in chapter 5.

But verse 15 reminded us that he feared God.

He stood in awe of God.

And verse 19 is something that we skipped.

I want to read it.

I want to read it here because I think sometimes people can say, oh, what's going on here?

Chapter 5, verse 19, remember for my good, oh my God, all that I have done for this people.

It's easy to read that and think, does Nehemiah think he's That's not what's happening here.

By the way, I don't believe that.

You can read all the New Testament by grace we're saved.

Amen.

I think what's happening in verse 19 is he's saying, look, I'm not doing this for any of the people.

I'm not doing this in response to my enemies.

God, I am serving an audience of one.

Remember for my good, oh God, what I've done.

Because you're the only one that matters.

You're the one that counts the most.

You're the one that I actually stand in awe of.

I have a reverent fear of you, oh God.

And so I don't care about what my enemies say.

I don't care chiefly about what's happening with these people.

Of course, they're going to benefit.

Ultimately, though, God, I'm serving you and I'm serving your purpose for my life.

That's the kind of example I want to follow.

That I would not be afraid of man or the opinions of man.

I would fear God.

I would serve an audience of one.

And then verse 16 reminds us that all the way through, Nehemiah knew that his greater victory was not in himself, it was in the Lord.

Verse 16, I didn't read it before, I'm going to read it now.

Chapter 6.

When all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.

When the Lord carries you through, and when the Lord gives you the victory, you better make sure you give him all the honor and all the glory.

Amen?

That's the example we follow.

We have a proper fear focus, and when we see the Lord work through that situation, we give him all the glory.

So how can you follow that kind of example?

Being a Christian is not always easy.

Despite what some preachers might tell you, it's just become a Christian, everything's great.

Yes, your eternal security is great, but it's not always easy.

There's some hard days, there's some dark days, and when that happens, what will be your response?

Is it fear of your situation, fear of your circumstance, fear of people, fear of people's opinions of you, fear of your reputation, or is it God?

I fear you and you alone, so help me to stay faithful to what you've called me to.

Help me stay faithful.

The Christian life is a lot of work and a lot of digging.

I want to show this picture, and I don't want to get any comments of why were you burning a fire like that?

You come give me those personally, okay?

I love burning on our property.

We've got five acres.

We love cutting down cedars and burning them.

It's still light.

Can't you tell?

There's some light in the sky out there.

It's still light.

And if we needed to, we'd we'd burn some hot dogs and burn for food.

But this is our favorite thing, particularly my favorite thing, is cutting down trees on our property and burning them.

The kids get to work, we get to help.

Sometimes the fire department comes on out and says, Is everything okay?

And thankfully, everything has been okay.

All right.

I've always got a water source, want to make sure the winds are down, all of those things.

But the thing about cutting down trees is it's a really nasty thing to have stumps all over your property.

You know what I'm talking about?

Especially like the fist with cedar trees that you can't get quite ground level, so now you just got these stumps that you trip over.

That happens in our Christian life as well.

We we work for the Lord, we do soul work, we ask God to change us, we repent, we cast off sin, we put on Christ, but there are these little stumps that we gotta dig up all around our Christian journey.

One author says it like this, specific to facing anxieties and worry of this life.

We plant our lives in God's grace and think, that's it.

We've arrived, we've we're done, we did all the work.

But very soon, crushing fears and anxieties come creeping in.

We've got to dig deeper into what's already there.

Once we do, it may take a while, but then here comes fears and anxieties again, and they're bringing new ones with them.

We've got to dig deeper.

Though delayed and in different form, they invade again, and we've got to dig deeper, deeper into the precariousness, deeper into God's grace, deeper into the bottomless fullness of what is ours in Jesus.

We must dig deeper so that the fear of the Lord stands taller and taller in our lives, and the anxious fears of our hearts are relieved.

We don't see Nehemiah in this chapter getting braver and braver.

We see him digging deeper and deeper.

And so, what fears in this life threaten to overcome you to not properly fear God?

It's all kind of what ifs.

What if I lose my job?

What if that girl doesn't like me?

What if I get bad medical news?

What if I didn't save enough for retirement?

What if my kids grow up and rebel?

What if this plane goes down?

What if?

What if?

They get worse and worse, and we cannot live in the land of what ifs.

We have to strengthen a proper fear and awe of God.

And so, what does that look like for you today?

Very specifically, where is God maybe calling you to have a greater focus on Him, a greater awareness of who he is and how he's moving in your life?

Because it's not just that we stand with all of our might and all of our effort to say, I don't want to worry so much, I don't want to be afraid so much.

It's that we spend effort looking up, saying, God, I want to properly put you where you belong, and then all these fears and anxieties tend to just fade away.

So Jesus was talking about in the Sermon on the Mount.

Go read it in Matthew chapter 6.

Matthew 6 · chapter mention

I'd be more than happy to share in more detail later, but when we moved here, my wife and I, there's all kinds of things to be afraid of.

Afraid of what we were leaving, afraid of what we were coming into, afraid of being in a new place, afraid of, God, what are you doing in this church?

There's gonna be a lot of challenges in this church, all kinds of reasons to be afraid.

I don't mind being vulnerable with you and getting into deeper conversation about what that looks like.

But I'll tell you this.

I didn't let fear win.

My kids didn't let fear win.

My wife didn't let fear win.

We said, God, you've called us to something and we want to be faithful.

Help us to fear you most.

And all the other things are just gonna, they're gonna subside and work out because they're not nearly as important as you are.

What does that look like in your life?

Don't waste time and energy fearing anxious thoughts or worry or people or the opinions of man.

Fear the Lord.

Fear the Lord first and let all those things be figured out.

I want you to know something.

If you walked into this place and you wouldn't say you're a Christian, you say, I don't know that I've got the whole Jesus thing figured out.

One of your greatest fears likely is, will I be good enough to get into heaven?

That's legitimate.

That is a legitimate fear.

I got some bad news and some good news for you.

The bad news is nobody's good enough.

I'm not good enough.

Our other ministry leaders aren't good enough.

The faithful oaks in this church that have loved Jesus for twice my life, they're not good enough.

No one is good enough.

The good news is one person, Jesus was righteous and spotless.

He was holy, holy, holy.

He was good enough.

And he traded his righteousness to take the weight of my sin and your sin when he died on the cross.

And if you would turn from that sin and reach out to Christ and say, Jesus, I need you.

Would you forgive me?

Your whole life would be changed forever, and then you would have nothing to be afraid of when it comes to thinking whether or not you are good enough or thinking where your security in eternity lies.

I would challenge you today.

Would you reach out to Jesus?

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you so much for the things that we learn, even with names and places that are hard to even imagine.

Things that happened thousands of years ago.

God, you're still faithful.

Even through all this time, when we look at our own lives and we say, what are the things that cause us anxious fear?

Where do we feel like people are coming against us from every side?

Or where do we feel like the circumstance just won't let up?

Would you help us to fear you, Lord?

So however, people need to respond in this moment, whether they pray right there in those seats, come up to these steps and in that humble posture of bended knee.

God help us to respond to you.

Help us to know how you're calling us to live differently in light of the victory that we have in Jesus.

We ask that you do business in this time with us.

We ask that in Jesus' name.

Amen.