Nehemiah: Persevering Through Distractions

Where in the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament, God's people have been conquered by other nations.

They've been hauled off.

And then beginning in 539 BC, they began to return to their homeland.

When they began to return back to Jerusalem, they rebuilt the temple.

After they rebuilt the temple, they restored worship in the temple.

And then as they're doing that, Nehemiah, still in a foreign land, he learns that the walls around Jerusalem were broken down.

So that meant that Jerusalem, his center of his faith, the city that was so important to him and his people, was vulnerable to attack if they ever became enemies of other people.

And so Nehemiah returns to rebuild the wall.

And today we're nearing the end of this project, nearing the end of these walls being rebuilt.

And as he nears the end, his opposition increases.

Now maybe you're here and you have something you want to do, just something meaningful.

Something meaningful in your life that you want to do, you want to accomplish good grades, get into a certain college, a healthy work-life balance, spiritual practices, a loving marriage, responsible, kind children.

Maybe you own a business, you want to own a business, you want your business to be profitable, you want to build a garden.

You have a vision, you have something meaningful you want to do.

Maybe you are a mom and you have a home, and maybe you have a husband.

Maybe you have a job.

And your children who just keep needing you, right?

And if you're young, it feels like you're drowning in children.

They literally are just pulling, they're on you, just weighing you down.

And then you get to my stage of parenting and it switches and you get freedom back.

Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Some younger ones you have no idea what I'm talking about.

And then you get this stage and it reverses.

Oh, you want to hang out with me?

Oh, you oh, you want to hang out?

You want to go for a walk?

Yeah, I'll go for a walk.

Let's go.

If you want to be with me, sure, I'll clear the calendar.

Let's go for a walk.

We all have something meaningful.

Something meaningful in our lives, something meaningful we want to do, something we're dreaming about, something we're working on.

Nehemiah keeps giving us the brutal truth.

We have visions, we have callings, and you will face obstacles.

Fear begins to whisper, obstacles show up.

Nehemiah 6.

We're going to read through this entire chapter, and we're going to break it down in different sections.

Verses 1 through 4.

Now when Saint Balat and Tobiah and Geshep the Arab, so this is Nehemiah's opposition, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall, and there was no breach left in it, although up to that time I had not set up the doors and the gates.

Saint Balat and Geshem sent to me, saying, Come and let us meet together at Hekaphiram in the plain of Onoh.

But they intended to do me harm.

And I sent messengers to them, saying, I am doing a great work, and 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 in this way.

And I answered them in the same manner.

Point number one is this is distractions often increase as we move forward in our calling.

I can remember finals week in college.

Here's a picture of me in college just for your own amusement.

A lot of hair.

And during college, finals week, some of you remember Monday final?

Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna lock in over the weekend.

I'm gonna study hard.

I am gonna grades mean a lot.

Tuesday, Wednesday, yeah.

I am locking in.

I'm buckling down.

Grades mean everything to me.

Thursday final grades mean a little bit, not so much.

Yeah, I'm gonna study a little bit.

Friday, nothing matters.

That Friday test, forget it.

You don't care.

Every distraction imaginable increases, right?

Yeah, I can throw the frisbee, lay up at the pool, get ice cream, milkshake, we'll go for a walk, whatever.

Like the distractions as you near the end seem to always increase.

We call it senioritis, right?

Some of you have it right now as you're finishing school.

These people are finishing the wall, the gaps are closing in, those distractions increase.

So this enemy's pulling out all the stops.

They invite Nehemiah.

Hey, hey, we just want to talk.

Hey, they don't want these walls built.

They don't want this city getting stronger.

Hey, let's just talk.

Just come on down.

Yeah, you can take a break from your work, it's no big deal.

Nehemiah isn't tricked by the distraction.

We can say this: Nehemiah had discernment through the distraction for what really mattered.

Through the distraction.

This week I read this prayer, as in a commentary on this chapter, this Nehemiah 6.

And here's the prayer.

Like Nehemiah, help us to have spiritual discernment that keeps us focused on the work you've set before us.

We can easily become distracted by good things that ultimately are not the best thing.

Give us the wisdom to discern your will and avoid the temptations that seek to lead us astray.

The story goes on, verse five.

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

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

That is why you're re that's why you're 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 of these reports.

So now come and let us take counsel together.

Then I sent 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 from the work and it will not be done.

But now, O God, strengthen my hands.

Point number two, we move through distraction by remaining plugged into God as our strength.

Verses 8 and 9, Nehemiah sends the letter, in short, the response to the stuff that these other people just made up.

They just made stuff up.

Hey, we hear you saying this, you're doing this, you're doing this.

And Nehemiah says, in short, he says, You don't know what you're talking about.

You are ridiculous.

And then he just returns back to God and says, God, strengthen my hands.

Like you're ridiculous, God, strengthen my hands.

He sees the distraction for exactly what it is.

And he's secure enough not to get caught up in it, wasting time defending himself to somebody who doesn't care about him.

I mean, how easy is that?

Somebody will say something about you, and you begin a new mission.

New mission.

The new mission is I'm gonna leave what God's called me to do to defend myself to somebody who doesn't really even care about me.

It's wasted time, wasted energy, it's wasted emotional energy.

It's easy to functionally unplug from God and plug into some other person who's just saying something about you.

When the call is to abide in Christ, here's John 15, 5.

This is from the message version.

Live in me.

It's Jesus speaking, live in me.

Make your home in me just as I do in you.

In the same way that a branch can't bear grapes by itself, but only by being joined in the vine.

You can't bear fruit unless you're joined with me.

I think there's two ways to live when I think about it.

There's the way of distraction and exhaustion, where the world is our home, and then we go to deal with God.

And then there's the way of strength and rest where God is our home, and then we deal with the world.

Nehemiah teaches us that people will say stuff.

But God's our home.

God's our home, and then we'll deal with the world.

Somebody's gonna say something.

It's your decision whether you get on the roller coaster and you get entangled in all that?

Or whether you stay doing the work you're called to do.

Our home is in Jesus.

We have callings.

Oh God, strengthen my hands.

Verse 10, Nehemiah 6, 10 through 14.

Now when I went into the house of Shemiah, the son of Deliah, son of Mehetabel, 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 to kill you.

They are coming to kill you by night.

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 Saint Balat, remember the opposition?

They hired him.

Verse 13.

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 Saint Balat, O my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid.

Point number three is this fear is a poor counselor.

So this spiritual counselor shows up to Nehemiah, but everything he says is fear and discouragement.

And then we learn in verse 12 that he was hired by the opposition, he was paid off.

So he acts wise, but he's just speaking fear.

And that's where Nehemiah just responds and says, Should I run away?

Nehemiah has this unbelievable ability to stay focused on the thing that he's called to do.

So somebody shows up into your life and begins to speak wisdom, advice.

When someone's giving you advice, I think we should filter it.

Here are some questions that I will ask myself.

You can take them for what they're worth.

Somebody's giving me advice.

Does this advice line up with Scripture?

Who is this person?

And where are they coming from?

Me, like, do they love me?

Do they know me?

Do they know my context?

Do they have a personal interest in this issue?

Because that wisdom can sure get shifted quick if they have a personal interest.

Are they speaking from the burden of fear or the goodness of wisdom?

Are they speaking from the burden of fear or the goodness of love?

In our first year of a church, 12 years ago, early on that first year, I'd wake up Sunday morning, I'd wake up at 3:30, not by alarm, not because I'm some spiritual giant.

I would be so worried nobody was going to show up.

I'd just wake up just anxious.

Go sit in the den, look over the sermon.

Is this gonna be enough?

Is anybody gonna show up?

And we go to the preschool, and 50 people would be there, 60 people would be there, and I'd preach what was best I could do as a 33-year-old.

One Monday I open my email, I get an email from some guy, and he ripped me to pieces.

He didn't even go to church.

I guess he listened online.

It was an articulate critique.

I I I don't necessarily even think he was wrong, but it was all discouraged.

It wasn't the sandwich, right?

Like positive, negative, positive.

Like, like I'll receive that.

Like give me a sandwich.

I can deal with a sandwich.

It was just an entire email picking me apart.

And I felt horrible.

I beat myself up.

I went back and listened to the sermon.

Oh, I every um and every uh and every like everything just stood out after he pointed it out.

I mean, for the whole week, I just felt horrible.

Like, we are gonna fail.

We are gonna fail.

It's gonna fail.

And I'm gonna lose my job.

I won't have a paycheck.

My family's gonna suffer.

Who knows what's gonna happen?

And then I realized something.

He doesn't know me.

I don't know this person.

And he doesn't know me.

He doesn't even come to our church.

He doesn't know our context.

He doesn't know our leaders.

He doesn't know anything about us.

Right?

I wasn't filtering the advice through anything.

I just took it.

Nehemiah teaches us we need to filter advice when we get it.

Because sometimes advice is wonderful and we need to receive all of it.

Sometimes it's a critique and we need to learn from the criticism, but sometimes it's just fear and discouragement.

And we don't have to demonize them and stamp them.

We can just go like thank you.

Delete.

Move on.

Let's finish the chapter.

Nehemiah, verse 15.

So the wall was finished on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul in the fifty-two days.

52 days.

They did this in 52 days, built these walls.

And 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.

Moreover, in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah's letters came to them.

For many in Judah were bound by oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shechaniah, the son of Arah, and his son Jehonan, and take the daughter of Meshelem, the son of Barekiah, as his wife.

Also they spoke of his good deeds in my presence and reported my words to him.

And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid.

So that's a great example of delete.

Point number four, do not fear.

God finishes what he begins.

The wall's finished in 52 days.

And even in the end, even when it's over, there's still messages, voices of fear and of discouragement.

Scotty Smith in his book, Objects of His Affection, that's you, you are the object of God's affection.

Wrote this.

Interestingly enough, the most asked question in the whole Bible, from Genesis to Revelation, is how long, O Lord, how long?

And the most repeated command from God is do not fear or do not be afraid.

The people of God consistently cry out for relief, and the God of love bids us trust Him.

Beloved, we have a source to plug into, and it's not the voices of everybody else that fear and discouragement.

It's the God who knows you and loves you and is for you.

It's one problem.

And it's been the problem with all the other sermons as well in this book of Nehemiah.

The problem is, we don't always behave like Nehemiah.

We're not always faithful.

We don't always persevere.

Sometimes we don't discern what's best.

Sometimes we do give in to those voices of fear.

Sometimes we are the voice of fear.

Sometimes we do run away.

Some of us have run away.

Sometimes we're our own worst enemies.

That's why we've been saying this.

Nehemiah shows us something about perseverance and then points us to Jesus, our forever gate and walls of protection.

This morning when I was on my morning walk and I was thinking about Nehemiah 6, and I was thinking about Mother's Day, and I was thinking about you, Mamas.

And my prayer was for you to see more and more, you are not the perfect Nehemiah.

You're the wall.

I know you feel like the Nehemiah, working on the wall, working on your children, building them up.

And you're doing that.

We're gonna learn as much lessons from Nehemiah as we can.

But we have to see that we are actually the wall.

Nehemiah is a picture of Christ.

That Jesus is at work in us just like he's at work in our children.

Christ is at work in our hearts.

Jesus died the death that we deserve because we are not perfect.

We are not perfect, Nehemiahs, perfect mamas or dads or kids.

Jesus lived the life that we should live.

Jesus lived the life of obedience and righteousness and faithfulness and perseverance.

And that righteous record, as much as we're fully forgiven, that righteous record is given to us.

We fully received that.

Jesus had a clear calling to teach us and die for us.

Jesus was faithful to the calling, despite distraction, despite opposition, he was faithful.

And while we desire to be like Nehemiah, we are much more like the wall needing to be worked on.

Maybe you remember how we've been finishing these sermons.

This point number five.

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, walk in him.

So walk in him, rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

Twice in those verses, in him, once in verse 6, once in verse 7, in him, walk in him, in him.

Not in your perfect mothering.

Not in your perfect record of a businessman or a dad.

Not in your perfect record as a child.

In him.

He is rooting us, he is building us, he's establishing us.

Jesus is this sufficient and wonderful and lovely to us.

Let's pray together.

Heavenly Father, thank you that while we are broken down like a broken wall, you are at work and you fully know us and fully love us while we're broken.

Thank you for the gift of Jesus, that we are fully forgiven in Jesus, and we are fully righteous in Jesus.

Help us to trust you all the more.

Would we be more in awe of you today?

How good and lovely you are for us.

In Christ's name.

Amen.