Facing Fear with Faith Nehemiah 2 - Nehemiah: Arise and Build

You're listening to the road with Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

Build up the faith wall in your life.

So, guys, the only way I know to build up faith walls in our life is through the word, prayer, worship coming before the Lord, and making it a regular practice in your life.

If you're not regularly in God's word, I promise you the walls of fear will grow and your walls of faith will crumble.

But I promise you make another big promise to you.

You start reading God's word, start praying what's in it, praying that back to God, you'll see the walls of fear crumble and the walls of faith get built up.

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We hope you are encouraged by today's message from Pastor Teacher Steve Holt.

I want to talk about how to break the power of fear.

And we're looking at one of the great leaders in the Bible.

I mean, Nehemiah, what he did in 52 days in rebuilding the walls was nothing less than a supernatural work of God.

And he's one of the great leaders of the Old Testament.

And I want to show you how he also struggled with fear.

He struggled with fear, but he pushed through it, and we can too.

How many of you would say over the last five months, you've had some significant fears over what's happening in America?

You know, I think that's a normal, natural response.

And I think God wants to show us a way to rebuild walls of faith in our life.

A great church father from the fourth century was a man named Saint Augustine or Saint Augustine, however you want to say it, a different pronunciation.

He wrote a book, one of the great books of antiquity, called City of God.

And in his book, City of God, he talked about the fact that every human being is building two cities.

Every human being has a choice to build two cities.

One is the city of Babylon.

And the city of Babylon is one built on this world and the values of this world and the virtues of this world.

This is what he says.

There is a city of man or the city of Babylon, in which we are building to ourselves by loving and cherishing this world and this world's values and ways.

But there's another city.

It's the city of God, it's the city of Jerusalem, which is the city of the kingdom of God, and as believers, we are citizens of this kingdom, and we build this city in our hearts through our love for God and his values and ways.

St.

Augustine goes on to say this, and I quote: These two cities are two laws, the one which is holy, the other unholy.

One social, the other individualistic.

One takes heed of the common utility because of the heavenly society.

The other reduces even the commonwealth to its own ends because of a proud lust of domination.

The one is subject to God, the other sets itself up against the rival to God.

The one is serene, the other tempestuous.

The one is peaceful, the other quarrelsome.

The one prefers truthfulness to deceitful praises, the other is utterly avid of praise.

The one is friendly, the other jealous.

The one desires for its neighbor what it would be for itself, the other is desirous of lording it over its neighbor.

The one directs its efforts to the neighbor's good, and to the other to its own good.

These two laws have created the distinction between two cities, the one of the just and the other of the wicked.

And so when we talk about rebuilding walls in Nehemiah, and if this is your first time here, you missed last week, we were in the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament.

And to give you an update on that, we went through chapter one last week.

And Nehemiah is a cupbearer of the king.

His job before Artaxerxes is to drink the wine and then give it to the king.

By the way, cupbearers didn't have a lot of seniority.

Because the way you did elections in those days in Persia was you poisoned your opponent.

And so it was a very important job.

It was very, um, there had to be a close relationship with Nehemiah and Artaxerxes.

And so, in that relationship, being in the king's palace, he hears of some of the pilgrims of the Jews that have come back from being in Jerusalem.

And we what we know about Nehemiah is he probably had never been to Jerusalem, never been to the city of Jerusalem.

He had always been captive in the Persian kingdom or the Babylonian kingdom before that.

He's probably a young man.

He hears about the despair, and he hears about the broken walls of Jerusalem.

It breaks his heart.

It breaks his heart.

And so he cries out to God.

And in chapter 1, what does he do?

If you remember, he confesses, and the sense you get when you read chapter 1 is that he is wailing before God.

I mean, it really does take a special person, church, where you take on sins you have not committed on behalf of a nation or a city or a people or maybe a member of your family where you confess their sins because they're not capable of confessing their own sins.

It's all through scripture.

It's actually a prerequisite to revival.

And if you were here on Wednesday night during our strategic prayer gathering that we do every Wednesday night, and we had Todd and Kelly Hudnell from Radiance speak, Todd wailed before the Lord in prayer.

And to be honest, I've never been in a meeting like that before.

It was uncomfortable.

To hear Todd and Kelly talk about repenting of the sins of the United States of America, our sins over abortion, our sins over crimes, our sins over injustice, our sins over mediocrity in our spiritual life.

And then Todd, and I think it was the Holy Spirit, because I don't think you could contrive this, came upon him and he wailed before the Lord.

That's what happens to Nehemiah here.

And so when we pick up the story in Nehemiah chapter 2, it's four months later.

Nehemiah 2 · chapter mention

So it's the month of Nisan.

It's four months since chapter one.

So listen, guys, for four months Nehemiah has been crying out to God, fasting in prayer before the Lord for wisdom.

And now he realizes he's going to have to face the greatest fear of his life up to that point.

And that fear is he's going to come before the king and ask for permission.

Ask for permission to leave the court, go to Jerusalem, and rebuild the walls.

So let's pick it up at chapter 2.

And it came to pass in the month of Nisan, in the 20th year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, that I took the wine and I gave it to the king.

Now I had never been sad in his presence before.

Therefore the king said to me, Why is your face sad?

Since you're not sick.

This is nothing but sorrow of heart.

Now, this is the part I want you to underline, circle, highlight.

So I became dreadfully afraid.

Now this is autobiographical.

I believe Nehemiah is writing this.

It's in the first person.

He actually tells us, I became dreadfully afraid.

If you were writing your own autobiography, would you put that in?

Probably not.

So it says something about the authenticity of the book and also the security within Nehemiah, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to, I think, speak to us thousands of years later that even as we follow Christ, you're going to have times where you're afraid.

You are going to have fear.

And don't act like you don't.

You know, it's okay to struggle with fear.

Matter of fact, fear is a good defense mechanism against fearful things.

So it's understandable.

But what we're going to see in this young man is how he broke through that fear to be mightily used of God.

Because God is in the business of building new walls in your life.

In other words, some of you have built up walls of fear.

Some of you have built up walls of lust.

Some of you have built up walls of greed.

And God wants to begin to tear those walls down and rebuild walls of love and walls of courage and walls of faith.

So let's look at it.

You know, Americans are funny.

We're kind of funny.

We are struggling with a pandemic of fear in our country right now, whether it's immigration, gun control, terrorism, or natural disasters.

83%, listen to this, 83% of Americans are at least somewhat concerned, if not fearful, that lifting restrictions on COVID-19 in their area will lead to additional infections.

Everybody look at me.

When you lift restrictions on COVID-19, there will be more infections.

Everybody go like that if you understand what I just said.

Or you can stay cooped up for the rest of your life.

Almost all of us are gonna get infected.

Hello?

I like walking into Starbucks because I love the smell of coffee.

So wake up, everybody, and all you that are watching, smell the coffee.

You're gonna get it, okay?

54% say they're extremely concerned that such steps will result in a spike of COVID-19 cases.

Yes, it will result in a spike of COVID.

It's not gonna just disappear one day.

Okay?

47.5% of Americans are very afraid of the outcome of the next election.

I joined that group.

Alright?

62%, this is funny, this is a funny one.

62% of Americans are fearful to share their political views.

Right?

So they did a survey the other day because they keep, they can't figure out why they they're not sure if they're really getting how people are really gonna vote when they do the surveys and everything.

So they asked someone, how are you going to vote?

And so it was 40% for a particular candidate that they're gonna vote for.

Then the next question was great.

It said, Who are your neighbors gonna vote for?

And suddenly it went 70% for that particular candidate.

I'm not gonna name which one.

We're afraid.

We're living in fear.

So how do we release the fears of our life?

I want to give you three thoughts.

Number one, here's the first thought: face your fears.

Don't run from them, don't be worried about them, don't be embarrassed by them.

Face them.

Face your fears.

Face it.

If there's something you're fearful of, give it to God, face it, quit running from it.

If it's your wife, then deal with it.

If it's your husband, deal with it.

Face your fears.

You guys, you never accomplish anything in the fear arena by just letting the walls of fear continue to just build paranoia in your life.

Face it.

Number two, be vulnerable about your fears.

I like the fact that here in Scripture, it's so authentic, it's so real that by the Holy Spirit's power, Nehemiah says, I would, I am or I was dreadfully afraid.

And some of us have been dreadfully afraid, and it's okay to be vulnerable with it, and we'll talk about this a little bit more next week about the importance of bloodstained allies, the importance of having people in your life that you can be honest with, that you can share your heart with.

I had a group of guys around my fire a couple weeks ago.

We're sitting around and we talked about, and it just kind of came up with some of our fears.

And we, and it was a great atmosphere because we all could say we've had fears of that.

And so we struggle with that.

So be vulnerable.

That shame and the power of fear is broken by vulnerability.

So there's something about just saying it.

Yeah, I'm scared of this.

I'm fearful of a divorce, or I'm fearful of this, or I've struggled with that.

When you say that, you release the power of it, and if you keep saying it, and then also build up the walls of faith, you can start to see victory from it.

So the walls of faith are built up, listen, by neglecting the walls of fear.

Not focusing on the walls of fear, name it for what it is, but then pull away and start building up the opposite spirit in your heart.

Thirdly, build your faith, starve your fears.

Build your faith, starve your fears.

Build up the faith wall in your life.

So, guys, the only way I know to build up faith walls in our life is through the word, prayer, worship, coming before the Lord, and making it a regular practice in your life.

If you're not regularly in God's word, I promise you, the walls of fear will grow and your walls of faith will crumble.

But I promise you make another big promise to you.

You start reading God's word, start praying what's in it, praying that back to God, you'll see the walls of fear crumble and the walls of faith get built up.

Who here really wants victory in every area of your life?

Raise your hand.

Well, you came to the right church.

Because that's what this is all about.

If you don't begin to go after it, and we're gonna tell the rest of Nehemiah chapter two is all about this.

We're gonna do part one today and part two next week, is that when we start to attack fear for what it is, but then instead of focusing on it, we then switch gears and we say, you know what?

I have fears in this area.

I do struggle with this.

Instead of saying, I'm fearful we're gonna get a divorce, I'm fearful we're gonna get a divorce, start saying, God, by faith, I'm going to build a healthy, joyful, victorious marriage.

See the difference?

Huge difference, massive difference.

Most people focus on their fears, and what they're doing inadvertently is building up the fear wall instead of starving the fear wall and building the faith wall by proclaiming and demonstrating that which you believe and which your desires to see happen.

So, you guys upstairs, why don't we put up our declaration right now?

This is where I want to say it.

This is our faith declaration.

So let's all stand, and this is an example of what I'm talking about.

That when we say this declaration each week together, it's the example of building up walls of faith.

I'm growing to love Jesus a lot.

I'm growing to love people the way Jesus does.

I'm building up my faith with God's holy word.

I'm coming alive in the power of the Holy Spirit.

And with Jesus, all things are possible.

With Jesus, all things are possible.

So, Father, we're holding our Bibles up, we're holding our arms up, and we're declaring truth.

Father, would you respond in our hearts with another brick of faith, another stone of faith built up in the wall of faith that you're wanting to build up in the body of Christ?

In your name we pray.

Amen.

Alright, thanks you guys.

Be seated.

So verse 3.

Verse 3.

And I said to the king, may the king live forever.

Why should my face not be sad when the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies waste and the gates are burned with fire.

Now, listen, you guys, if there's not a deeper conviction within your heart for something that God wants to do in your life, then you're not going to have the faith to overcome fear.

So, in other words, Nehemiah, before he heard about what was happening with the walls and everything that was happening in Jerusalem, could never have stood before the king, dreadfully afraid, concerned about what the king could do, because at that time in antiquity, a king killed cupbearers for showing fear or being sad.

I mean, you're talking about a dysfunctional system.

I mean, if you were in any way in the court of the king, you were all supposed to be happy.

Because that was the sign that he was a good king.

Now, I have a hunch that I'm going to show you in just a second about why he chose this particular appointment with the king to share his heart.

There is actually a verse that I think that I think will be helpful to us.

But the reality is, until we have a conviction of something greater that we want to see God do in our life, we oftentimes will not break through our fear.

In other words, when I have had friends who have been who have been willing to go out and picket abortion clinics, or in some cases have gone out and knelt down, hundreds of them, before an abortion clinic and pray for the end of abortion in America, I say, that people are crazy.

What are they doing?

But because my conviction is their conviction, and their conviction has led them to break through their fear and, in a sense, be a spectacle that all the newscasts are always going to portray in a negative way, that's what I'm talking about.

That's a wall of faith that was built in them.

That's the men I know.

I know some men right now that come out of special forces.

They came out of backgrounds where they had to go into some of the most dangerous parts of the world of special forces, and now they're using their talents to go against child trafficking.

They're using surveillance techniques that they learn, they're risking their lives, breaking through their fear to save children that are being trafficked in this country.

And I know a guy who does it in this city.

Why would you do that?

Because there's a deeper conviction that those kids matter.

It's mostly girls.

But it's more and more boys, too, but that those girls matter and nobody cares about them.

Most of our politicians don't care about them.

Most of our police aren't even informed enough to be able to do much.

Sometimes there's a special unit, sometimes they're not.

But these guys, where they could be sitting back with their retirement, are using the skills and gifts that they have to go in and do that.

That's a conviction of building faith that overcomes fear.

And God's going to plant that in some of your lives.

That some of the things that God's going to do in your lives is that He's going to give you a conviction that will help you break through your fears.

Then the king said to me, verse 4, What do you request?

So I prayed to the God of heaven, and I said to the king, If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it.

So Nehemiah has this sense that this is the right time to share his heart.

He shares his heart with the king, knowing that it could be putting his life on the line.

But in so doing, here's what he did he prayed for favor.

Men and women jot this down, write this down.

It is always a good thing to pray for favor.

It says in Jesus, that as he was as he was being raised by Joseph and Mary, that he grew in favor with God and men.

And so to ask God for favor is always a good idea.

And some of us think it's selfish, or I mean, I'm just asking for blessing.

Absolutely not.

If you're in the center of your will, ask for favor.

Ask God to bless what you know to be his will.

And man, this guy is a man of prayer.

And we talked about last week that fasting and prayer is kind of the nuclear power.

That's the nuclear power of prayer.

I'm going to call you guys to fasting and prayer leading up to the election in November.

We're still as a team, a leadership team, figuring all this out, working all this out, but you're going to be hearing some initiatives coming up after Sean Foyt's here.

We're going to start an initiative coming up to the election that I think are very, very important.

Because God hears all our prayers, but there's something that gets his attention about a people who decide that they would rather feast on God than feast on food.

And that fasting will take on a whole nother meaning as we look at where America is going.

Does that make sense?

Alright, look at the next part, because this is important.

Verse 6.

This word king is going to be mentioned 14 times in chapter 2.

King.

14 times.

Then the king said to me, the queen also sitting beside him.

That's why he chose this time to share it.

How many of you know?

How many of you have been in any kind of negotiations before about a contract or about something?

You know, if raise your hand.

Have you ever been in a contract?

Okay, a lot of you.

Not a bad idea to have a spouse there.

Sometimes.

Sometimes it's better if they go get coffee somewhere else.

But in a lot of cases, especially men, we kind of bluster.

We're kind of the bluster people, you know.

We're kind of, you know, we're gonna get, we're gonna, we're gonna get that lemon juice out of that lemon man, we're gonna squeeze them.

And then you got a wife, usually it's got a little more, a little more loving, a little more kind, a little more grace-filled.

That's when you share your request, right?

And so I think, honestly, Steve Holtz's commentary here, because it's not in scripture, I think he chose it because the queen's there.

Because the queen wasn't usually there.

Something about having the queen there.

How long will your journey be?

He asked.

And when will you return?

And so it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a time.

That's really important.

I set a time.

Furthermore, I said to the king, if it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the river, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah.

And a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel, which pertains to the temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy.

And the king granted them to me according to the good hand of God upon me.

So he really, he's prayed for favor, he's fasted for favor, and now he believes that God's giving him favor.

Then I went to the governors in the region beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.

Now the king had set captains of the army and horsemen with me.

Does anybody here?

Does anybody here see how important a king is?

I mean, this king's really important.

Nehemiah could have never gone back to Jerusalem and gotten permission without the king.

Fourteen times in chapter two, king, king, king, king, king.

Elections matter.

Who occupies the White House matters.

Who occupies Denver matters.

He who occupies City Hall in Colorado Springs, it really matters.

It affects your life.

And if you think otherwise, then I want to inform you that the laws of the land or the lack thereof are made by people who've been voted in, in most cases, not all cases, by the people and for the people.

And when you have 90 million eligible voters in the last election who did not vote, and 33 million evangelical voters who did not vote, then we get what we didn't vote for.

So we have registration to vote in the back.

If you are here and you're not registered to vote, please register to vote.

Unless you're voting for a candidate I don't like, then do not register to vote.

Just head right out the door.

We're glad to see you go out the door.

And um, I mean you're still welcome here.

I'm not saying you can leave forever.

I'm just saying don't vote.

That's a good thing.

Okay.

But if you care about our country, and if you care about our city, and you know we say it every year.

I've been I've been around long enough to hear every election.

This is the greatest, most important election ever.

This one is.

All you gotta do is look at Seattle.

All you gotta do is look at Portland.

All you gotta do is look at Minneapolis.

All you gotta do is look at what's happening in these cities.

They're coming to our city, and we cannot sit idly by.

It's a spiritual battle, but it's also a political battle.

It is both.

Both matter, both are important.

So we can talk about character of candidates and all that.

I care about policies, not personalities.

So here we see, and this is really important, don't miss this, everybody, make a plan.

Everybody, write that down.

Say to your neighbor, make a plan.

Make a plan.

Make a plan.

If you don't make a plan, you will not build the right walls.

Your natural tendency, my natural tendency, my wife's natural tendency, all of us, our natural tendency is fear.

That's just where we go because of Adam.

But there was a second Adam, and his name was Jesus, and when he gave his life at Calvary for us and released the power of the Holy Spirit upon us as he rose from the grave and then 30 days later ascended to heaven, when all of that occurred, men and women, we received the temple.

We have the temple.

But as I said before, you can have the temple but not have the walls yet.

So we can have the temple, but we keep getting attacked because we're not building up the walls of faith.

And the way, church, that we build up the walls of faith is make a plan.

Nehemiah has a very, very clear plan.

He knows how long it's gonna take, he knows how much it's gonna cost, he knows the kind of wood they're gonna need, he knows the letters that need to be written.

He's making a plan.

And so, church, listen, make a plan.

If you're not spending time with the Lord each day, make a plan.

Start getting up earlier.

Start at 6 a.m.

or 7 a.m.

or 5 a.m., whatever it is for you, to make a plan.

Make a plan and a place.

Make a plan and a place.

And go there and begin to read God's word.

And I said it again, if you're a new believer, you're new to this, start with the Gospel of John.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and the New Testament.

Start with John.

Start reading it.

Okay?

Just read a chapter a day.

Get out your journal, PB and J, Prayer, Bible, and Journal.

And then as God speaks to you, write stuff down, and you'll see your faith enlarge.

Okay?

And then in some cases, you guys need to turn off some of the news.

Like turn off the fear that's coming in and watch it occasionally so you know what's going on, but build up your faith and starve your fears.

Build up your faith and starve your fears.

Say that.

Build up your faith and starve your fears.

Have a plan.

Nehemiah is useless.

He's useless if he didn't have a plan in place.

Because he's only going to get one shot with the king.

The king says, Well, what's your plan?

So he tells us his plan.

Now listen to what's going to happen next.

You heard it from me.

Look at verse 10.

Look at verse 10.

When Sambalat, and he's going to become a real popular figure here in this book, when Sambalat the Horanite and Tobiah, that's his sidekick, the Ammonite official, heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.

This is a governor.

This governor is deeply disturbed that Nehemiah is going to strengthen the foundations of the Jewish nation.

Folks, whenever you start to lead out and have a plan, you're going to flush out the enemy.

Every time you start to take a step, expect some kind of repercussions from demons.

Demons are arrayed against you.

If you don't believe it, read Ephesians 2.2.

The God of this age, who has blinded the hearts of the unbelieving.

And I'm going to talk about this Wednesday night.

So Wednesday night at our strategic prayer gathering at 6 p.m., I'm going to talk about demonic powers and how you break through.

How you break through those demonic powers.

Because when you start, to me it's like it's like pheasant honey.

Okay?

So when you go into a field, you have a sense there might be some pheasants in this field, and you got your dogs, and you're working through the field, but you never see them.

You never see them until the dog flushes them.

And when the dog flushes them, they're like, they could be right at your feet.

I can't tell you how many times I've been walking through a field, my dog missed the bird, and I nearly step on it, and you know, it comes out.

Well, it's like that.

It's like when you start to walk in truth, you're gonna start flushing the enemy that you never thought was even there.

Can I get an amen on that?

So you see, that's what's happening in these cities.

That's what's happening.

You start to find out kind of the deep core values of these mayors and these governors when this kind of stuff starts happening, you find out who they are.

We had a mayor, I don't know which city it was, was it yesterday or something, that he went out to acquiesce and appeal to the demonstrators and they tear gassed him.

Man, when you have friends like that, you certainly don't need any enemies.

Right?

So the reality is don't acquiesce to the enemy, stand for righteousness.

And so when you start to have a plan, just expect people are gonna oppose you.

Listen, listen, you need some enemies in your life.

Enemies are good, enemies are nice.

Because it says you're doing something right.

Now, I'm not talking about enemies because you don't pay your bills or because you're late on your mortgage.

That's that's your friends helping you learn how to grow up before you grow old.

But but the enemy that I'm talking about is when we start to take stands and you start to make a plan, I can promise you that your alarm clock's not gonna work on the first morning when you say you're gonna have a quiet time.

I'm getting up the next morning, and then you wake up, you know, an hour later and you go, ah! Stupid watch, stupid phone, and you look at it, and you never even said it, you know, or anything.

So there's gonna be pushback.

So that's what happens here, and really, you guys, in the next few weeks as we go through Nehemiah, really, the the theme, one of the themes of Nehemiah is building walls of faith with tons of enemies.

With tons of enemies.

So you guys prayed for Monday.

Pastors were gonna come over here, remember?

And we prayed the four points of the city.

It was twice as many pastors than I expected.

It's like 25 pastors came out.

It was really, really cool.

I thought 10 would come.

And we started up here in the northern part.

You can go up there, there's if it's still there, we had an American flag planted there, and we had a stake with 2 Chronicles 7.14, and we buried a Bible.

It's really awesome.

And then we went to the east, and then we went to the south, and then we ended up at Calvary Worship Center with Al Pittman on the west side, and we prayed, and it the group got bigger and bigger and bigger as we went.

Don't you think we're gonna get some pushback?

But folks, get ready.

Get ready.

The battle lines are drawn, and we come with love, and we come with grace, and we don't return evil for evil, we return good for evil.

We turn the other cheek, but at the same time, we don't quit.

We don't quit.

We keep pushing forward by faith.

Build up those walls of faith in your heart.

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