Our God Fights for Us

Alright, Nehemiah 4.

Here's what we're gonna see.

We see some traction happening in the rebuilding process.

We see in verse 6 that they're actually about halfway completed with the work.

And in Nehemiah 4, we're introduced to the first major opposition in the narrative of the story of rebuilding the wall from these outside enemies.

We're introduced to a character specifically who leads up this kind of oppression or leads up this resistance named Sanbalat.

And so we're gonna read about him, what he tried to do to stop God's work, and we're gonna see how God's people respond to the enemy's attack that comes around them.

So right when we dive in, we're looking at verses one through six, and this is where we're introduced to Sambalat and his attack on God's people.

If we were to summarize verses one through six, we would see this.

We'd see two very different verbal attacks.

Two very different verbal attacks.

First, we're gonna be introduced to Sambalat's attack.

He is going to criticize, he is going to ridicule, he is going to jeer at the people of God and try to convince them to stop.

He's going to try and build self-doubt.

He's going to try and build all of this sense of inability within them through his jeering at them.

You see, the redemptive work of God in Jerusalem, like we said, it's getting some traction.

It's about halfway built, and it's provoking onto it resistance and opposition.

One thing we can see from this is that the work of God will always incur opposition.

God's work through God's people will always incur opposition on itself.

And Jesus kind of opens our eyes to this reality in John 3.

If we can't see it clearly in like redemptive history, or if we can't see it clearly through the narrative of the scriptures from Genesis to Revelation, anytime God's people start moving forward and the kingdom starts expanding, opposition is going to meet it on the other side.

And Jesus helps us understand this specifically through John 3, 19 through 20.

He says this, and this is the judgment.

The light has come into the world, and what?

People love the darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.

For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light lest his work should be exposed.

So there's this cosmic battle, right?

It's the story of the ages, light versus dark.

But what happens is us as humans, we try to tell this story in creative ways, but it's not our own story to tell.

It's God's story that He's been telling since the beginning of time.

And so light comes in.

Anytime light comes in through God's purposes and people, darkness is going to hate it.

Because they reject the light.

And so God's work will always experience opposition.

So we're introduced to that opposition in Nehemiah 3.

Sanbalat.

He was most likely the governor of a city called Horan, which was a city, it's about 12 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

So they're building the wall around the city of Jerusalem.

Imagine this governor of this city about 12 miles northwest, he's getting frustrated at what he's seeing being accomplished through the people of God and rebuilding the wall.

Now, Horan was probably connected to a major route within Persia to be able to have goods and access to trade, economy.

And so what was really the root of Sambalat's kind of opposition?

Well, the prosperity of Jerusalem would actually negatively affect his own pursuit of prosperity.

Right?

They were jeopardizing the prosperity that he was going after, the power that he sought to have.

Because if Jerusalem became prosperous, it was going to impact in negative ways Horan's ability to become prosperous and for Sambalat to actually make a name for himself.

A prosperous Jerusalem would negatively affect his own prosperity.

And so Jerusalem's fallen condition made way for Horan's exaltation.

And so what did he want to do?

He wanted to make sure Jerusalem stayed down.

He wanted to make sure that they stayed in rubble and ruin.

He did not want to see them rebuild to become prosperous.

It's recorded that he makes a verbal attack on God's people, but not in their presence.

He actually does it in the presence of his brothers in the armies of Samaria.

We would kind of relate this to a dude who's behind a keyboard in his mom's basement making verbal attacks against people, right?

He doesn't go face to face.

He doesn't have the courage or the strength to actually tell it to them eye to eye like a man.

He's kind of saying these things to his brothers and to the armies of Samaria, and word gets back to Jerusalem somehow.

And he says these things, these five mocking questions he gives about Israel and their purposes of rebuilding the wall.

He basically says it this way What are these feeble Jews doing?

Will they actually restore it for themselves?

Will they be able to sacrifice there?

Will they finish up in a day?

Will they revive the stones out of the heap of rubbish and burned ones at that?

See, Sambalat is working to demoralize those who are at work building.

Isn't it funny?

The ones who are not building are often the ones who are trying to demoralize and to tear down the ones who are building.

It kind of seems to be that way.

The most negative posture that we'll experience in community, the ones that have the most resistance to what's happening, the ones that have the most negativity towards changes being made, are often the ones doing the least amount of work.

I don't know why that is, but it's true.

It's the ones who are not building who are trying to demoralize and tear down the ones who are building.

You see, he's saying that they're too weak, incapable, under-resourced, over-ambitious.

Even the man standing next to him, Tobiah the Ammonite, he chimes in with him.

Yeah, yeah, they what they are building, if a fox goes up to it, he will break down their stone wall.

So basically he's saying what they're even trying to build is so weak and pathetic that if a fox just goes up and lays his paw against it, the whole wall will just tumble down, right?

So that is so Sambalat's friend Tobiah, the Ammonite, he he kind of chimes in, he kind of adds to the ridicule and the mocking.

You see, even though they launch a verbal attack on God's purpose and people, even though they attempt through cowardice means to create a strong sense of self-doubt, that God is who he says that he is, and that he has called his people to accomplish what he has called them to in his work, even though they launch this verbal attack, Nehemiah does not respond in embracing the doubt that God's enemies try to arouse in him, nor does he launch his own verbal attack against them in a way of starting to call them names, of starting to try to tear them down verbally.

No, what does Nehemiah do?

He responds in a verbal attack of his own in an imprecatory prayer.

So, what's an imprecatory prayer?

An imprecatory prayer is a prayer that we see throughout the scriptures where the one praying calls on divine cursing to God's enemies of his work and his people.

So even though Sambalat and Tobi are gonna launch a verbal attack to try and ridicule and demoralize Israel, how is Nehemiah gonna respond?

He's gonna step back.

He's gonna understand the one who fights for him, and he's gonna pray that God would respond in divine cursing in this imprecatory prayer.

Let's read it here in verse 4.

Hear, O our God, for we are despised.

Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives.

Do not cover their guilt.

Let not their sin be blotted out from your sight.

For they have what?

Provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders.

Nehemiah prays this in precatory prayer over God's enemies.

God's enemies who are trying to demoralize and destroy God's purposes through God's people.

You see, in precatory prayers takes the work of vengeance out of the hands of the individual and places it in the hands of the one who is vengeful.

Let me say that again.

Imprecatory prayers takes the vengeance out of our hands and puts it into the hands of the one who is vengeful.

We serve a vengeful God.

When will you avenge us, O God?

When will you avenge your glory?

When will you destroy that which was wicked and seeks to rob of your righteous kingdom?

When will you have vengeance?

Our God is a God of vengeance.

And we are called as his people not to take that vengeance into our own hands.

We are called to trust him with it, the one who has perfect justice and executes it perfectly and wholly throughout all the nation, among all people.

We are called to lay that pursuit, that desire for vengeance that we have in our hearts in his hands.

You see, loving our enemies, it never comes at the expense of foregoing appeals to divine justice.

Praying for God to punish the wicked is neither unloving nor vindictive, but it's an expression of faith in him who judges justly.

Ultimately, praying in precatory prayers is submitting ourselves to praying the way Jesus taught us to pray.

Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.

Because when Jesus' kingdom comes in its fullness on this earth, wickedness will be judged.

And for some of us who are found in the sovereign grace of God our King, we will experience that justice through the one who was judged in Jesus Christ.

By his sovereign grace, no one escapes justice, the justice of God.

No one.

We are either experiencers of it through the person and work of Jesus, and we're actually receivers of blessing and grace and reconciliation through him, or we're gonna experience the full weight of his justice and the crushing of ourselves, where we're cast into outer darkness, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth forever.

No one escapes the justice of God.

You're just either gonna experience through Jesus or through yourself.

Our prayer is thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

God, let your justice roll like a mighty river through the nations.

That's what Nehemiah is praying here.

And I love what they do next.

After praying and trusting God, the people simply turn back to build.

For the people had a mind to work.

For the people had a mind to work.

Then we see in 7 through 9, uh, the righteous stand against God's enemies.

The righteous stand against God's enemies.

It says, but when Sambalat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashtadites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry.

And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it.

And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night.

Here in verses 7 through 9, we see that Sambalot and Tobiah have been able to round up others in their purpose, to be able to try and bring to ruin what God's people have been working to rebuild, to join in the opposition against God's purpose and God's people.

After his seeing that his verbal attack only led to more production, right?

He gets outraged.

When he says, look, I gave him everything I had verbally to try and build self-denial and to try and incur them to stop what they were doing, and they just kept on working.

You ever experienced that before where like somebody just tore you down verbally and then you just worked hard and showed them that everything they said about you was untrue, and then they get even more mad because you're prospering?

Yeah?

Or maybe you've done that to someone, maybe you're the jerk and you've just been, you've torn, you've sought to tore down other people, and then they get, they actually do better on the other side of that, and then you get even more mad.

I'm sure there's a few of y'all in here.

The work of God was going forward in spite of his efforts, and so Sambalot sees fit to escalate the situation.

The people of God are surrounded and isolated.

Imagine that at every corner they have enemies waiting.

At every corner, there there's probably resources that are unable to come in, trade cut off.

There's all kinds of worry happening because they find themselves isolated in this situation.

Their determination in the work of God has only made their enemies enraged, feeling the pressure of their enemies strategizing violence against them, they turn to the best weapon that they can ever wield: prayer.

Constantly, we see throughout Nehemiah, their first response is prayer.

Their first response is prayer.

We talked about this in Nehemiah 1.

When we encounter things in our life, when we encounter travesty, when we encounter uh destruction and ruin, when we can when we encounter uh things that make us anxious or worried, what is our first response?

Is it to kind of make sure that we get our hands around it so that we can try and control it and fix it ourselves?

Or do we respond in prayer?

Do we respond in trusting God?

Do we respond in giving it up to Him?

We see constantly the people of Israel respond in the way that we should be responding by wielding the best weapon that we have: prayer.

They pray.

But this isn't prayer by itself.

This is prayer with action.

As we read in the last verse there, then seven through nine, verse nine, and we prayed to our God, and we set up a guard as protection.

The righteous stand against God's enemies.

They have prayer and action in harmony with one another.

You see, prayer with action does not mean that you don't have faith.

I would make an argument that prayer with action means that you have more faith than one who doesn't act.

You actually believe the words coming out of your mouth.

You actually believe that God is who you've just confessed him to be.

You actually believe that he is for you in the ways that you've just claimed that he was.

You've actually confessed these truths about God and what he, what you know to be right about your relationship with him and what he desires in his sovereign will in your life.

And then what do you do?

You act as though it's true.

It's faith with action.

Faith and works.

You see, these are these two things that are mysteriously intertwined with one another, and we try to separate them so much.

James, Jesus' own brother, in chapter 2, verses 26 of his epistle, he says this for as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead.

What he's saying is this you want to show me that you have faith?

Or you want to tell me that you have faith, then show me by your works.

What he's saying, if you really believe it, then you'll live it.

And what I'm submitting to you this morning is if you really believe it when you pray it, you'll put action behind it as if God is going to accomplish it for you.

Now, there are times throughout redemptive history where we see God sovereignly move while his people stay still.

We see that throughout the narrative of the Exodus.

We see that in uh some of the great battles of the Old Testament judges.

We see this truth, but the normative history that God reveals to us as his people is that prayer and action are harmonious with one another, intertwined with one another.

In mystery, we see a dependency upon prayer and action.

By setting up a guard as protection, God's people were not displaying their absence of faith.

They were displaying how strong their faith truly was.

They believed wholeheartedly in the God that they had prayed to protect them, and now, in action, they set a guard at the gate to show how deeply they believed him.

Verses 10 through 14, we see that self-defeat is the most shameful kind.

Self-defeat is the most shameful kind.

Throughout this whole kind of section of the text of this story, we just see where Israel is getting ready to give up.

It's not that the verbal attacks were efficient, it's not that the physical, external attacks were sufficient.

Where we see the pro the production of God's purpose through God's people most jeopardized in its most critical state is when they're determined to give up themselves.

Though many persevered and kept their hands and minds strong to the work, there were some who would face the most difficult attack yet, the internal one.

They would convince themselves that they were losing strength and too weak to go on.

They say the strength of those who bear the burden is failing.

They would convince themselves that their resources were insufficient to complete the mission.

There's too much rubble, they said.

They would convince themselves that we can't get the help we really need.

By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall, they said.

How many times in our pursuit of accomplishing the mission of God that He's given us do we wrestle with those very three self-defeating statements?

I'm losing strength and I'm too weak to go on.

My resources were insufficient to ever complete the mission.

I can't really get the help that I need.

You see, the circumstances of external threat and internal self-defeat led the Israelites from the areas around them to plead ten times with them to give up and come back into exile.

This was the state.

Not the state of the wall necessarily, but the state of the people.

That the Israelites who were not in Jerusalem yet but were still living in exile came back into Jerusalem ten times and begged them to give up and come back into exile with them.

All seemed hopeless.

Many of them were buying into the narrative.

Why?

Because they listened too much to the noise of the world.

Because they listened, they gave their ear too much to the enemies of God.

Their hope and trust in the Lord was failing them.

Seeing this, Nehemiah rallies the people.

This is leadership right here at its core.

Nehemiah able to rally the people back up to get back to work and building.

I love this part of the story because he strategically starts to set them up in front of the gaps and weak places in the wall.

So he identifies, first thing he does is he identifies the weak places in the wall where there's gaps, and he starts setting groups of people up there.

So he's strengthening their weaknesses, and then you know what he does?

He starts actually putting them in clusters according to their clan.

He starts putting them next to their family members.

So not only does Nehemiah seek to shure up the weak places, but he gives in their hearts something to fight for.

Because if you're fighting side by side to a somebody that you you know, right?

You know in the city, you you you know them maybe a little bit relationally, but but you're like, if this dude dies, I'm okay, as long as it ain't me.

Right?

But when that's your kid next to you, when it's your wife on the other side of you, no, I'm dying first.

You see, he gave them something to die for, he gave them something to fight for.

Ultimately, Nehemiah shored up the weak places and gave them something to fight for.

We see three critical things in the response to self-defeat in this section of the story.

Number one, we see Nehemiah calls them to not be afraid.

Nehemiah has demonstrated the strongest sense of trust in God and the work that he's called his people to.

He says, Do not be afraid.

We see God calling that out to his people.

It's one of the very first and most recorded responses.

When people, image bearers, encounter divine spiritual beings, we see this call, do not be afraid.

Right?

It's one of the major statements made throughout the scriptures.

And Nehemiah is reminding them do not be afraid.

Our God fights for us.

This gives him an incredible sense of courage and a perceived sense of recklessness.

Right?

Sometimes when we are trying to set forth to accomplish the mission of God, we need courage, but to the outsiders who don't really know what's going on, it's going to look reckless.

They're going to say, you're under-resourced.

You don't have the right people here.

You've got four armies surrounding what you're trying to do to try to destroy you.

And Nehemiah knows.

Nehemiah knows who he is according to relationship with God, and he knows what God has called him to accomplish.

And so his response is, do not be afraid.

But to some, that's going to seem reckless.

Number two, Nehemiah calls him to remember the Lord who is great and awesome.

Remember the Lord who is great and awesome.

When our eyes get fixed on our circumstances, we lose sight of the God who calls and equips us to accomplish the work ahead.

You see, we get so focused on the world.

We've talked about this so many times.

When your information resources are that of the world and you're constantly allowing yourself to absorb those things, you are going to weaken your faith.

You're going to weaken the impact that you make in the kingdom, and you're going to be in this position of self-defeat because you're going to buy into the narrative of the world rather than to buy into the promises of God for his people.

This is what we're going to be like.

We're going to be like Peter, whose eyes get fixed on the breaks of the waves rather than on the face of his Lord.

And when that happened, what happened?

Peter started to sink in the water.

That's what you and I become.

When we set our eyes, we set open our ears to this influx of information from the world rather than reminding ourselves of God who is great and awesome.

And then thirdly, Nehemiah calls them to fight for their family.

He strategically places the people in their clans so that if the enemy approached, they would be able to look at the faces of those they loved on their right and on their left.

They'd be driven to fight for their families.

If they were going to be defeated, Nehemiah would not let it happen through self-defeat.

He would not let it happen through such dishonorable means.

If they were going to be defeated, they were going down in honor.

If their end was in sight, it wouldn't be marked by the shame of giving up.

It would be memorialized by the honor of fighting to the end.

In verses 15 through 23, we see that the work continues in the face of opposition.

The work continues in the face of opposition.

Right in verse 15, what I would submit is that we see the reality of duality.

The reality of duality.

Verse 15 says this: When our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had frustrated their planned, we all returned to the wall, each to his work.

We see both in verse 15 the responsibility of man and the sovereignty of God, not in contradiction with one another, not in tension, in opposition with one another, but in harmony with one another.

It was the trust of God that the people had that led them to fight and stand up to get their hands to work.

And what do we see is the fruit of that in verse 15.

The enemies that surrounded God's people gave up.

They were done.

And it's not because their action was absent of faith or because their faith led them to no action.

It was the duality of their reality, man's responsibility and God's sovereignly, perfectly suspended harmoniously with one another.

These two things are not at war with one another.

In fact, the kingdom of God, they harmonize with one another.

And here we see the reality of every man called to live with both the sword and the trowel in hand.

I love this.

He says, Hey, get to work.

Those of you who are building, those of you who are carrying burdens to make sure that this wall keeps getting built up, he says, you're going to be working with one hand and you're going to have a sword in the other.

You're going to have the sword and the trowel as you set forward to see God's work accomplished in this city.

Taking on the responsibility to both work and to protect.

They were ready no matter what may come, and nothing was going to stop them from the work that God had called them to do.

They couldn't just focus on the enemy because there was still work to be done.

And they couldn't let the enemy prevail because what had been built would be ruined.

Nothing was going to overcome the work of God.

Not a verbal attack, not an external attack, not an internal attack.

No matter the opposition they may face, their anthem will boast their confidence to continue the work.

Our God will fight for us.

So our main idea this morning is this as we look through this chapter four of Nehemiah, our main idea is our God fights for his fighting people.

Our God fights for his fighting people.

All throughout this passage and throughout the narrative of Scripture, prayer and action accompany one another through the mission and work of God.

This is what I want us to really walk away from here is understanding prayer and action.

There are many of us who might pray, God, help me out financially, but you don't put a budget together or have a savings.

You keep spending on that target card way too much.

Y'all know.

Right?

You know what God wants you to do?

Prayer and action.

God, help me get fit.

Stop eating Cheetos.

Prayer and action.

God, we want to see the righteousness of your kingdom prevail in this city.

Then stand up and get to work.

Fight for it.

Because our God fights for us.

We want to see the lost come home and be saved.

Then preach the gospel.

We want to see homes restored and built up that are centered around your glory and the proclamation of your name.

Well, then disciple your children.

We want to see this.

Then get to work.

Prayer and action are harmonious with one another.

Prayer is not just a petition for help, but it's also a declaration of your belief.

Belief that God is able to fulfill his promises that he's made to his people.

Belief that he is for his glory and the good of his people.

Belief that he is able to deliver and redeem.

Belief that he is near and present to us in our times of distress.

Prayer is not just a petitioning of God to do something, prayer is a confession of a belief of these things.

So what do we do after we pray?

We get to work.

We get to work.

The action that follows prayer is the evidence that you actually believe what you prayed for.

The action that follows prayer is the evidence that you actually believe what you prayed for.

Throughout the scriptures, we see the normative course of history has been witnessing God fight for his fighting people.

And we see this through kind of two wars: an air war and a ground war.

Air war is prayer.

It's the best weapon God's people can wield.

Prayer.

And here we see in Nemai chapter 4 two types of prayer.

We see this in precatory prayer, right?

An invocation of divine cursing.

We pray for the justice of God to be executed against sin and ungodliness.

It's birthed, in precatory prayer is birthed out of a lament for the perceived prevailing of evil in this world.

When we rightly mourn injustice in this world, we will pray all the more to see God's hand of justice in action.

Many of us don't have the opportunity or don't have the gumption within us to pray in precatory prayers.

I would submit this, it's because we're really not softened to the injustices of this world.

We can allow injustice to reign around us and we sit stagnant and silent.

It doesn't break our hearts for what breaks God's hearts.

If we mourned the prevailing of wickedness in this earth, we would pray these imprecatory prayers more because our hearts would long to see the justice of God's hand move in action.

You see, they take the work of vengeance out of our hands and they rest it in the hands of the one who is vengeful.

We also see a prayer of protection.

We should also pray for God to uphold his righteous people.

Pray for the prosperity of those who do his work.

Pray that he would be our protector when it seems as though the enemy is too great.

But then we also see a ground war, right?

We see a ground war where we stand guard against the attack of the enemy.

I love these passages in James.

Actually, let me scoop back to imprecatory prayer real quick.

The Psalms are littered with imprecatory prayers, prayers of calling down divine judgment against God's enemies.

Read through the Psalms.

David is not bashful in praying this way.

God, I hate iniquity and unrighteousness as you do.

God, let their destruction and ruin be upon them.

God, let your judgment fall upon your enemies.

But then we also see it in the New Testament.

Jesus prays in pregatory prayers.

To the Pharisees and scribes, he says, Woe to you.

Woe to you.

Cursed be you, because of the way of which you lead people astray from the kingdom of God.

Paul prays this against people who would actually preach a different gospel to the church at Galatia.

He would say, Anathema be to you because you preach a different gospel than that of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Anathema means that you would be cursed beyond redemption.

But even the martyrs in heaven prayed in precatory prayers.

In Revelation 6, we see the martyrs around the throne of God say, When will you avenge our blood?

And God, the creator of heaven and earth, says, Not till there's more.

But not only should we incite air war, we should incite ground war as well.

James 4.7 says this.

Submit yourselves therefore to God, resist or stand up to the devil, and he will flee from you.

Do you see what that's saying?

When we talk about temptation, when we talk about attacks of the enemy, when we talk about his ability to overcome us, look how simple James 4.7 puts it.

If the righteous would just stand up, the devil flees from you.

He runs as fast as he can in the opposite direction.

Why?

Because he understands that we're full of the Spirit of God, that the one who raised Christ from the dead and dwells within us, that all the power of heaven resides within us through the triune God in the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

All we have to do to the devil is stand up and he flees from us.

Many of us we don't stand up to the devil.

We stay seated.

We lie down and we let him walk all over us in our families, in our loved ones.

1 Peter 5 9 says, resist him.

Again, stand up to him.

What?

Firm in your faith.

Knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world.

Stand up for righteousness.

Stand up against unrighteousness.

God calls us to action.

But also we should be ready to take up arms and be ready to fight.

2 Corinthians 10, 4 through 5 says this for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power to destroy strongholds.

We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God and take every thought captive to obey Christ.

No, we are not picking up the sword of this earth, but we are picking up the sword of the Spirit to wield against the enemy that stands in front of us.

God has equipped us and He has enabled us to take up arms that we might wage war against unrighteousness and wickedness in this earth.

Ephesians 6, 10 through 11 says this.

Finally, brothers, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might.

Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.

Church, our God fights for his fighting people.

But our story is this.

Many of us, we refuse to fight and what uh what was built gets destroyed.

We refuse to fight, and what was built gets destroyed.

Imagine if Israel didn't stand up.

Imagine if Israel didn't get on their knees in prayer.

Imagine if they didn't set a guard.

Imagine if they didn't take up arms.

Imagine if they didn't share up the weak spaces.

Sambalat and Tobiah and the surrounding enemies would have come in and destroyed what was built, brought it back to rubble.

Some of us, we look at our lives, we look at our homes, we look at our cities, and we're all we're doing is saying, man, it just keeps getting torn down and torn down, it keeps getting brought to ruin, desolated.

You know what?

You didn't stand up to fight.

If we look back, we can probably see the places where we didn't stand up to fight, and what we sought to be built got destroyed.

And all we want to do is sit there and complain about it.

There's many of us, let me speak to the fathers in this room.

We have a predominantly young family congregation with fathers of young children.

In their teenage years and their young adult years, you're gonna have to stand up for righteousness.

Lest all the work you just put into these next 13, 15, 16 years of discipling in the Word of God, if you stop standing up for righteousness, you're gonna sit down, be passive, and allow the enemy to tear down what you sought to build up.

Don't do it.

Stand for righteousness.

If we are passive in the fight for righteousness, the enemy will come and he will destroy what was built.

We're see and we're we see evidence of this.

We see evidence in our homes, we see evidence in our marriages.

When the enemy starts to win, somebody gave up.

When the enemy starts to win, somebody gave up.

Church, we cannot refuse to fight because if we do, what was built gets destroyed.

Some of us, though, we continually fight and nothing ever gets built.

Some of us just jab our jaw way too much.

Some of us are so busy in the fighting.

And you know, you know these type of people, right?

Like, I'm in no way saying like America is the kingdom of God.

So don't know, but you know the people who just fight all the time about America, politics, culture, economy, blah, blah, blah.

And these dudes don't do nothing.

They're not building anything, they're just fighting all the time.

It's the same dudes who are on chat boards about like theology or about whatever else, and they're just messaging all this, and they're not building anything.

In fact, they couldn't build anything if they wanted to, but they can fight all the time, and they just frustrate everybody around.

Nobody likes to be around those people that's just constantly fighting because you know what you want to say?

Shut up and get to work, dude.

That's what you want to say at some point in time.

All your fighting, all your uh uh aggression needs to be re-channeled into actually being productive and building something for once.

And so some of us are those types of people.

We just continually fight and nothing ever gets built.

You see, Jerusalem could not do that.

The people of Israel could not do that.

They had to be focused on the enemy, but they had to also be focused on the work to protect and to produce.

But what's the beauty of the gospel?

The beauty of the gospel is that Jesus died as an enemy of righteousness so that a righteous kingdom would be built.

Jesus died as an enemy of righteousness so that a righteous kingdom would be built.

It was God who crushed him.

Isaiah 53 shows us this: that it was the will of God to crush the Son who defeated him.

God the Father defeated his own son as a foe of his glory.

He stood in our place, church, as enemies of the purpose and people of God.

We were Sambalat and Tobiah.

We were the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites.

We jeered, we mocked, we profaned the work of God.

We were opposition to his purpose and his people.

Remember that in precatory prayer?

Do we remember that in Nehemiah 4, 4?

Let's read that again.

Hear, O our God, for we are despised.

Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives.

Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of your builders.

Well, what happened?

Jesus was plundered in a city where he was captive.

He was taken out onto Galgotha.

He was robbed of, they cast lots for his garments.

They stole everything off of his body that he had, and they put on him shame, and they put on him defeat.

They mocked him and profaned him.

This prayer, this imprecatory prayer, becomes ours.

This is our prayer.

We see the justice of God not poured out on us, but on him.

We deserve the curse of Nehemiah's prayer.

Do not cover their guilt.

Do not let their sins be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you in anger.

But because of the cross, Jesus covers our guilt.

Jesus blots out our sin from the sight of the Father.

Jesus takes on the wrath-filled anger of God in our place.

Nehemiah's prayer was fulfilled.

And it was fulfilled against the enemies of God.

But it was absorbed in the person and work of his son.

So that when we trust in him, we experience that justice.

We experience that in precatory prayer.

Not in the fullness of God's wrath and judgment poured out on us, but on Jesus.

And we get his blessing, his righteousness, his sonship, his favor, his communion with the Father.

What do I hope for us, Sacred Mission Church?

My hope for us is that we would fight for the work of God by prayer and action.

We would fight for the work of God by prayer and action.

We're going to set up some culture of prayer here at Sacred Mission.

We're excited about some of the ways that we're getting you involved in prayer.

We've got weekly prayer all through Lent on Wednesdays at lunch on Zoom.

It was an awesome time of kicking off this Lent season and Ash Wednesday by praying together.

But we're going to develop that even more with church-wide prayer and ways that we can get together in unity to pray to our God.

But we also are going to be a church of action.

We're not just going to sit idly by and expect God in this crazy supernatural way without any human effort of our own to accomplish these things.

No, he has in his divine purpose and sovereignty, even in our inability to understand it, set up prayer and action, human responsibility and his sovereignty to live in harmony with one another.

We're going to see that live out.

We're going to be a people of prayer and action.

We're going to be a people who seek to rebuild what has been torn down.

We're going to be a people who seek to see the glory of God fill this city.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.