When I Face Resistance

Well, if it is your first Sunday, I want to catch you up on what we've been doing all year long.

We're doing something this year called the Whole Story.

We're going through the entire story of the Bible in a year.

We've broken it into 14 different series.

And it's okay if you're just coming because every Sunday and especially every series is designed to stand on its own.

You can totally go and catch up with all the stuff we've already done on our podcast, on YouTube, you name it, but it's okay.

Every single week stands on its own.

And last week, we started our eighth series, which is called A Shattered and Scattered.

Shattered and Scattered.

And we kicked that off last Sunday with a hash brown bar from Waffle House because it sounds so much like a Waffle House option.

We just leaned into that.

That was a lot of fun.

But this is a crucial moment in the story of Scripture.

Up to this point, we've been following this group of people that grows into a nation called Israel.

And it's a pretty wild story.

They start out as just a group of nomadic shepherds.

They become slaves in Egypt.

God rescues them from slavery.

Then he helps them survive and make it in the wilderness for decades.

And then eventually they enter into this place called the Promised Land.

They take it.

They have to fight for it.

But they're established as a nation.

And for centuries, they are a real, legitimate, and even powerful nation.

But they didn't get there in their own strength.

It wasn't their might, it wasn't their know-how that got them there.

It was the hand of God.

It was the favor of God.

But they get a little complacent.

They stop focusing on worshiping God, and they really become a nation that's defined by immorality, injustice, and idolatry.

They begin to worship the false gods of the nations that surround them, and God sends them prophet after prophet to say, hey, this isn't going to end well.

If you put your trust in these false gods, if you live this way with all this injustice, all this immorality, this is not going to end well.

You're distancing yourself from the very God who protected you, who rescued you, and who established you in this place.

Be careful.

But they don't listen to the prophets.

They don't listen to the warnings, and eventually it all falls apart.

About 600 BC, Jerusalem is destroyed by the Empire of Babylon.

The northern part of the kingdom had already been conquered by the Assyrians.

Now the southern part of the kingdom, it's all done.

Their capital city is destroyed, their temple is destroyed, their entire nation is shattered.

All the warnings have come true.

It is the low point in their story.

Their nation is shattered, their people are scattered because in these ancient times what conquering nations would do is they would they would exile all the people to other places.

This was their way of A, protecting against some type of insurrection.

They would make all the local people move somewhere else.

Now you can't form an insurrection, and they would also do that to assimilate you into their culture.

They didn't want you to be an Israelite, they wanted you to be a Babylonian.

And so all the people are scattered and exiled to all the corners of the Babylonian Empire, and everything seems like it's lost.

Everything is broken.

And yet it's this section of scripture that gives us some of the most inspirational and honestly relatable stories that we have in the entirety of the Bible.

There's stories that help us navigate a broken world.

Now the people live in a culture that doesn't value what they value, it's a culture that doesn't help them follow God, it's a culture that does them no favors in terms of having a deep walk with the Lord.

In fact, it's a culture that's often hostile to their faith.

And so for them to live well and succeed in this culture and at the same time live in such a way that pleases God, that's a difficult thing to do.

That's like threading a needle.

And all of us can relate to that.

Because we we live in a world that doesn't often help us grow closer to God.

We we live in a culture that doesn't always celebrate, in fact, often mocks and scorns the very things that we hold dear if we're following Jesus.

And that can be very challenging.

How do we live well and succeed in a culture that's so broken?

Well, these stories tell us how.

They give us a blueprint for that.

We have a lot to learn.

And so last Sunday we looked at Daniel.

Daniel's one of the first people exiled out of Israel, and we looked at his life along with some of his friends and how they navigated living in a culture that did not share their values.

And what we focused on last week was the necessity of conviction.

We've got to be people who have convictions.

And we can live by those convictions and trust God with the rest.

Today we're gonna talk about what we do when it seems like everything around us is fighting against us as we try to live the life that we know is right to live.

What do we do when we face intense amounts of resistance?

We're gonna cover the gist of the stories that we find in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

And so let me just kind of get us up to speed.

Ezra and Nehemiah covers about a hundred-year period of time.

70 years after the people were exiled out of Jerusalem, there's a king.

It's not the king of Babylon.

Babylon doesn't even exist anymore, it's been overtaken by what becomes the Persian Empire.

And this king decides it's time for the people of Israel to go back home.

God actually moves on his heart and he sends them back home, and it's the first time in 70 years they've been allowed to go back.

Most of the people have never even seen the land where they come from.

And we see this in Ezra chapter 1.

Ezra 1 · chapter mention

It says, In the first year of King Cyrus of Persia, the Lord fulfilled the prophecy that he had given through Jeremiah.

He stirred the heart of Cyrus to put this proclamation in writing and sent it throughout the kingdom.

This is what King Cyrus of Persia says.

The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth.

He's appointed me to build him a temple at Jerusalem, which is in Judah.

Any of you who are his people may go to Jerusalem in Judah to rebuild this temple of the Lord, the God of Israel who lives in Jerusalem.

And may your God be with you.

Wherever this Jewish remnant is found, let their neighbors contribute toward their expenses by giving them silver and gold, supplies for the journey and livestock, as well as a voluntary offering for the temple of God in Jerusalem.

And so what happens is throughout the Book of Ezra, there's these two main guys, Jeshua and Zerubbabel, which are fun names to say, and they're responsible for leading the rebuilding of the temple.

And it's a huge task.

It's difficult.

They lead 50,000, roughly 50,000 Israelites back to their land, and they've got to rebuild the temple.

And spoiler alert, they do it.

Temple gets rebuilt.

Woo-hoo.

And then several decades later, we get to this man, Nehemiah.

Nehemiah lives a long time after the temple's been rebuilt, but Jerusalem is still in shambles.

And he finds out about that.

He happens to be a servant of a new king of Persia, several kings after King Cyrus, a man named Artaxerxes.

And Nehemiah finds out that the wall that surrounds the city of Jerusalem has never been rebuilt.

So they have a temple, but they don't have a wall.

And in those days, if your city didn't have a wall, then you were never secure.

You were constantly vulnerable.

And it's really hard to succeed and put down roots if you're so vulnerable.

So Nehemiah's like, I gotta do something about it.

And he prays and he says, God, help me, help me ask the king for help and help the king give me the help that I ask for.

And so in Nehemiah chapter two, he goes to the king and he says, If it please the king, and if you're pleased with me, by the way, any of the any of like the young people in the room, like high school students, it's a great way to start talking to your parents, right?

Great way to start a conversation.

You're like, hey, if it if it pleases you, dad, and if you find any favor in me, it's just a great way to start a conversation.

And if you're pleased with me, your servant, send me to Judah to rebuild the city where my ancestors are buried.

The king, with the queen sitting beside him, asked, How long will you be gone?

When will you return?

Nehemiah was a very important part of the king's court.

After I told him how long I would be gone, the king agreed to my request.

I also said to the king, if it please the king, again, just really good lesson there, let me have letters addressed to the governors of the province west of the Euphrates River, instructing them to let me travel safely through their territories on my way to Judah.

And please give me a letter addressed to Asaph, the manager of the king's forest, instructing him to give me timber.

I will need it to make beams for the gates of the temple fortress, for the city walls, and for a house for myself.

That's a big ask.

You know, you go to your boss and you're like, hey, I'd like a lot of time off.

Like a lot.

And I'd also like you to uh, you know, provide supplies for my my trip and all the things that I would like to do, even though it's of no consequence to you.

Can you do that?

But God moves in the heart of the king, and the king allows Nehemiah to go, and he goes to build the wall, and spoiler alert, it gets built.

Just like the temple.

Boom, done.

Wall, done.

And when I tell it to you like that, it sounds like it just goes, it just goes incredibly smoothly.

That everything just clicks, that it all works, they go, they have a mission, mission accomplished, they move on.

But if you know these stories, and I'm sure many of you do, you know that that is not the way the stories go.

It does not go smoothly, it is not easy.

In fact, if there's one word to sum up what they face trying to accomplish these tasks set before them, it is simply this it is resistance.

And we all know what resistance feels like.

That kind of resistance you feel in life where what should be easy is very difficult.

When what in our minds should take just a little bit of time and a little bit of effort takes everything.

It takes everything, and it can sometimes drive us to really desperate places.

We all know what resistance feels like.

I'll give you sort of a silly example.

A few years ago, my wife and I got invited to a wedding.

And I don't know, like, just out of curiosity, how many of us are like, I love weddings?

Weddings are amazing.

If I get invited to a wedding, I'm like, woo! How many of us are like, how can I get out of this?

Like, is there any way that I cannot like you know, because you gotta figure it out, like, how well do we know the people?

Are we related to them?

Or how far are they gonna sit us away from them?

Do I have to buy them a gift?

You know, like there's all those types of questions.

But this was one of those weddings that we we needed to be at.

In fact, we were really excited for them.

The man in the wedding was a guy I had known for years through the church, really proud of him.

And so we went to the wedding, and it was great.

It was great.

I'm in a suit, my wife's in a dress, we had some mutual friends there, so we sat at a table with people that we knew, and we did all the stuff that you're supposed to do at a wedding.

Right?

We like, we watched the ceremony, thumbs up to that, we ate some food, we we hung out for a little while, the dancing got started, and there's always like a line where once you cross this line at a wedding, if you're young, you you just you dance the night away, you stay there for several hours, you have a good time.

But if you're if you're a little older and you're paying a babysitter by the hour, this is the line when you leave, right?

There's always that moment in the wedding.

And for me, that moment is once you've done the Cupid shuffle and the cha-cha slide.

Right?

Once those two songs are done, you're like, all right, my time has come.

It is time to leave.

And we all know that, right?

Like, how many of you are familiar with at least the cha-cha slide?

Like, okay, I'm gonna test you on this.

Because I don't know if you're a liar.

And so, if you truly are familiar with the cha cha slide, those of you who raised your hands, then you will know how to appropriately respond to this prompt.

And don't leave me hanging.

Here's what it is everybody clap your hands.

Oh, no, no, no, it keeps going.

That's not how no, we're good now.

We're good now.

Y'all committed and then you got real scared.

It was like clap, clap, I don't like this, and you put your hand.

That was good.

Okay.

That's better than the cupid shuffle.

Yeah, that's better than the cupid shuffle, that's true.

So, you know, so we did that.

And and then it was that moment where we're like, I'm looking at Megan, I'm going, it's time for us to bounce.

But it was still early enough that we didn't want to make a scene and be noticed.

You know, you try to sneak out, go all stealth-like.

And so we did it.

We slipped away.

We slipped away.

We made some appearances so they would remember we were there, and then we slipped away.

And all we had to do was get in our car and back out and go.

But that proved to be an enormous challenge.

We get in the car, which I say car, we got in our minivan, and uh and I put it in reverse.

And I'm I'm trying to go back, and it just won't go back at all.

Like we're we're on a little bit of a hill, we had to park in grass because of where the parking was, it had rained.

I get out and I look and the wheels are just spinning, and I'm like, oh no, like we are, and we're we're trying again not to make a scene, you know, and if you're reving engine real hard over and over again, it's not exactly like wedding background music, right?

People start to look, and so I'm like, I gotta push.

I get out, I'm in my suit, I'm like pushing.

I have Megan in the driver's seat.

I'm like, cut the wheel this way, give it some gas, cut the wheel that way.

I'm pushing hard, I'm kind of getting frustrated.

Every few minutes, someone walks away and waves at me, so I'm like pushing, and I'm like, ah yeah, we're good, we're good, you know, ah, we're fine.

You guys need help?

Nah, just go, leave me alone, like I'm doing that thing.

Um and so we just mean we work it inch by inch, inch by inch.

My suit is just ruined.

Uh we have further enriched the babysitter because it took quite a while, and so finally, finally, we break free.

And we're on the gravel and we're able to go.

And and Megan switches spaces with me again, and I get in the car and we start to drive away, and I'm like, man, this car does not feel right.

Like it just wasn't driving, it felt off.

And I'm freaking out a little bit.

I don't know anything about vehicles, so I pull into a gas station, and I don't know why, I don't know what I'm gonna do at the gas station.

Right?

I'm like collecting my thoughts.

I thought about popping the hood, but I'm one of those guys that pops a hood and does not have any idea what he's looking at at all.

You just see people do that in movies, you're like, well, pop the hood, and I don't know what to do beyond that.

But but I'm in that space, and I'm like, what is wrong with this vehicle?

Like, I'm thinking maybe because we we had to push it so hard to get it off the hill, we messed something up.

And then it clicks.

The emergency brake was on.

The entire time.

And I remembered, oh, when we parked, because it was on a hill on grass, I engaged the emergency brake, and then I just forgot about it.

I got so wrapped up in the cha-cha slide that I totally forgot that we had the e-brake on.

So the entire time we were trying to reverse the car, we were just fighting against the emergency brake.

That's all that was happening.

Had I just taken it off, we would have just gone zip, gone.

Right?

Saved some money with the babysitter, no one would have caused it, like it would have been amazing.

But no, the entire time the e-brake is on, I feel like just an absolute idiot.

And and we just had to turn it off, and there we go.

So we were fighting this resistance.

Sometimes the resistance we fight is the result of our own stupidity.

We can own that, okay?

But something that should have been really simple, something that should have been really easy became this massive ordeal because of constant resistance.

And life often feels that way.

Because life often is that way.

Ezra and Nehemiah, these stories, there's so much resistance to what they're called to do.

And let's let's look at some of the resistance that they faced.

In Ezra chapter 4, we're at this point where Zerubbabel and Jeshua have, they've they've actually made tremendous progress.

Ezra 4 · chapter mention

They've laid the foundation of the temple, which took about two years, but it's this big milestone, and and everyone celebrates, it's a huge deal.

They feel like they are just making fast progress, it's all going unbelievably well.

And then Ezra chapter 4, it says, The enemies of Judah and Benjamin heard that the exiles were rebuilding a temple to the Lord, the God of Israel.

Ezra 4 · chapter mention

So they approached Zerubbabel and the other leaders and said, Let us build with you, for we worship your God just as you do.

We have sacrificed to him ever since King, whatever that guy's name of Assyria brought us here.

I'm not even going to try that one.

But Zerubbabel, Jeshua, and the other leaders of Israel replied, You may have no part in this work.

We alone will build a temple for the Lord, the God of Israel, just as King Cyrus of Persia commanded us.

These people were lying.

They didn't really worship God.

It says, Then the local residents tried to discourage and frighten the people of Judah to keep them from their work.

They bribed agents to work against them and to frustrate their plans.

This went on during the entire reign of King Cyrus of Persia and lasted until King Darius of Persia took the throne.

These enemies fight against what the people of Israel are doing, and they are successful.

For 17 years, there is no progress made on the building of the temple.

They laid the foundation at success.

That took about two years, and then for 17 years it stood at a standstill.

That wasn't the end of their struggles.

Many of their enemies wrote letters to the kings of Persia, accusing them of rebellion, saying, hey, if you let these people build this temple, all you got to do is look at their past.

You know, they're going to be emboldened, they're going to think that their God has given them victory, they're going to lead an uprising against you.

You can't let this happen.

And some of the kings listen, and then other kings override that.

And it's just this long, drawn-out, frustrating affair filled with resistance.

Until finally, we get to Haggai.

He's a prophet that God sends to encourage them.

It says on October 17th of that same year, again, this is, you know, more than a decade after the foundation was laid, the Lord sent another message to the prophet Haggai.

Say this to Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, governor of Judah, and to Jeshua, the son of Jehosadak, the high priest, and to the remnant of God's people there in the land.

Does anyone remember this house, the temple, in its former splendor?

How in comparison does it look to you now?

It must seem like nothing at all.

But the Lord says, Be strong, Zerubbabel, be strong, Jeshua, son of Jehosadak, the high priest, be strong, all you people still left in the land, and now get to work, for I am with you, says the Lord of heaven's armies.

My spirit remains among you, just as I promised when you came out of Egypt.

Do not be afraid.

And they're encouraged by those words, and they start their work, and eventually the temple is built.

But it takes an incredible amount of time because of all the resistance that they faced.

Now, Nehemiah, decades later, when he comes to build the wall, he gets it done much faster than the building of the temple, but in many ways he faced even more resistance.

Nehemiah chapter 4 introduces us to some characters, some people that do not want to see Jerusalem have a wall.

Nehemiah 4 · chapter mention

It says Sanbalat was very angry when he learned that they were rebuilding the wall.

He flew into a rage and he mocked the Jews, saying in front of his friends and the Samarian army officials, What does this bunch of poor feeble Jews think they're doing?

Do they think they can build the wall in a single day just by offering a few sacrifices?

Do they actually think they can make something of stones from a rubbish heap and charred ones at that?

Tobiah the Ammonite, who was standing beside him, remarked, that stone wall would collapse if even a fox walked along the top of it.

It goes on in the next set of verses.

At last the wall was completed to half its height around the entire city, for the people had worked with enthusiasm.

But when Sanbala and Tobiah and the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashtadites heard that the work was going ahead and that the gaps in the wall of Jerusalem were being repaired, they were furious.

They all made plans to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw us into confusion.

But we prayed to our God and we guarded the city day and night to protect ourselves.

Then the people of Judah began to complain.

Meanwhile, our enemies were saying, Before they know what's happening, we will swoop down on them and kill them and end their work.

The Jews who live near the enemy came and told us again and again, they will come from all directions and attack us.

And so I placed armed guards behind the lowest parts of the wall in the exposed areas.

I stationed the people to stand guard by families armed with swords, spears, and bows.

Nehemiah comes up with a plan that while someone is working on the wall, someone is standing behind them, armed as a guard.

And this goes on constantly because of the threat of violence facing them.

Nehemiah chapter 6, it says that Sambalat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies found that I had finished rebuilding the wall and that no gaps remained, though we had not yet set up the doors and the gates.

Nehemiah 6 · chapter mention

So Sambalat and Geshem sent a message asking me to meet them at one of the villages in the plain of Ono.

But I realized they were plotting to harm me.

So I replied by sending this message to them.

I engage in a great work, so I can't come.

Why should I stop working to come and meet with you?

Four times they sent the same message, and each time I gave the same reply.

The fifth time, Sambalat's servant came with an open letter in his hand, and this is what it said.

So I suggest that you come and talk it over with me.

And I replied, This is Nehemiah talking.

There is no truth in any part of your story.

You're making up the whole thing.

They were just trying to intimidate us, imagining they could discourage us and stop the work.

So I continued the work with even greater determination.

I continued the work with even greater determination.

And eventually, Nehemiah finishes the wall.

And so now, after about a hundred years, Israel, Jerusalem specifically, has a temple.

There's now worship to God happening again that hasn't happened there in a long time and in almost a century.

And now they have a wall, so they're protected from their enemies.

They are safe.

These incredible projects are finished, but man, the amount of resistance they face to do it.

And as I said earlier, these stories are some of the most relatable stories that we have in all of Scripture because we face resistance in our lives all the time.

Sometimes it catches us off guard, sometimes it surprises us, sometimes it's the result of our own decision, sometimes it's completely out of our control.

I have friends who have worked hard at companies only to Have those companies make decisions that led the company to go bankrupt, and now they're they're struggling.

What are they supposed to do?

They didn't have any part in that.

I've known people who have who have worked hard to have healthy marriages, but something sabotages the marriage and it seems like it falls apart and it comes out of nowhere.

Sometimes that happens to us.

There's resistance that's a surprise and it's intense and it's major.

Other times it's it's smaller, but it's also more constant.

And so everything that we're trying to do in life, it just feels hard.

You work a job, you struggle at that job, you have a tough relationship with someone that you work with or maybe work for, they're very difficult.

And it just feels like pulling teeth to get anything done.

You're trying to raise children, and they're children.

And they're difficult and they're hard.

And they look at you and they roll their eyes, and it angers you, like deeply angers you.

I'm not speaking from personal experience here.

I'm just saying, like hypothetically, you're very angry on a regular basis and you feel disrespected, but you want them to succeed, and so you stick with it.

But everything feels tough because there's all this resistance.

These stories teach us what to do when we face resistance in our lives.

And I want us to have just two simple takeaways.

Two simple takeaways this morning.

Number one, expect resistance.

Expect it.

We should never be caught off guard when we face resistance.

When we feel like something's pushing against us.

It should not catch us off guard, but it often does.

I don't know where this idea has come from, but I'm sure many of us are familiar with this thought that when God is involved, when God is in something, when he's like with you, everything goes really smoothly.

But like you hear people talk like that, like, oh, and God, and I get it, right?

We set out to do something and God blessed it, and he was in it, and it just boom, it clicked, it happened.

And it's and it was so easy.

And I'm not saying God can't do that, I'm not saying God does do that, but there is this idea in kind of our Western church culture that if God is really involved, everything will just go without a hitch.

It'll be smooth, it'll be easy, and I don't know where that idea comes from, but it certainly does not come from Scripture.

In fact, quite the opposite.

Very often the people who are the closest to God, the people who are doing the most important work, the very things that God has told them to do, face the most difficulties and the most hardships.

They have the greatest struggles, and God is absolutely with them.

It's important for us to remember sometimes that we're here together because thousands of years ago people followed Jesus and they risked their lives to do that.

And when they would meet together, it would often be in secret because there were people that were after them, all kinds of lies and accusations being said about them.

But they stayed true to their faith, and here we are today in this amazing church that Jesus started, it still exists all over the world.

Being one of those early Christians would have been a little different than what it's like for us to be a Christian today.

There's definitely similarities, but it was so difficult.

What they faced was so hard.

And so you get to something like 2 Corinthians chapter 4, where Paul, one of the leaders of the early church, writes that we are pressed on every side by troubles.

2 Corinthians 4 · chapter mention

Do you ever feel like that?

It's coming from every direction.

Everywhere you turn, we are pressed on every side, but we're not crushed.

We are perplexed, but we are not driven to despair.

We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God.

We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed.

Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies.

Yes, we live under constant danger of death because we serve Jesus, so that the life of Jesus will be evident in our dying bodies.

So we live in the face of death, but this has resulted in eternal life for you.

We continue to preach because we have the same kind of faith the psalmist had when he said, I believe in God, so I spoke.

We know that God, who raised the Lord Jesus, will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself together with you.

All of this is for your benefit.

And as God's grace reaches more and more people, there will be great thanksgiving.

And God will receive more and more glory.

This is why we never give up.

Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.

For our present troubles are small and won't last very long, yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever.

So we don't look at the troubles that we can see now.

Rather, we fix our gaze on things that we cannot see.

For the things that we see now will soon be gone, but the things we cannot see will last forever.

Beautiful, yeah.

That's awesome.

Yeah, so what?

Yes, we face resistance.

Yes, things don't go smoothly.

Yes, it seems like we have all these enemies working against us, but we will not stop.

We will push through.

Sometimes we have to remember that one of the reasons we face resistance is so simple.

We have an enemy.

We have an enemy, we have we have forces that work against us, that work against what God is doing in this world.

Paul wrote later in Ephesians chapter 6, a final word be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

Put on all of God's armor so that you'll be able to stand firm against all the strategies of the devil.

For we are not fighting against flesh and blood enemies, but against evil rulers and authorities of the unseen world, against mighty powers in this dark world, and against evil spirits in the heavenly places.

And if you're like, whoa, that's weird, that's creepy, it is.

And if you're like, I don't know if I can believe that, you know, I all I can tell you is that if it ever has seemed to you like there's something that's like against you, discouraging you, distracting you, coming against you, and it almost seems like it's it's like intelligent, and it just knows the exact right time to come at you in the exact right moments, it's because ding, ding, ding, that's what it is.

We have an enemy.

We have an enemy, Satan, the devil.

And and he's a loser, but he's also really good at making stuff hard.

You know?

It's and I'm not this is gonna be taken wrong potentially, so I've got to frame this right.

Um, Aaron, it's my little brother.

If he happens to listen to this, he lives in Missouri.

I'm not saying you're the devil.

Um, I'm just saying that when you were four, it felt like it sometimes.

And so, you know, like I'm seven years older than my little brother.

And so growing up, he would come against me a lot.

And it's not like he could win, right, at that stage of life.

As he got a little older, yeah.

But when he was little and I was much older with him, seven years is a lot of years.

And so he would come against me, and and it didn't, but I could all I knew I was gonna win, but man, did he make it hard sometimes.

Like he would frustrate me to such a degree that if I was just setting out to have a relaxing day, to enjoy my day, my brother could ruin it.

He could make it tough.

I knew I could beat him, he wasn't gonna overtake me, but man, he made it difficult.

And I see that same dynamic happen in my home.

And there's just times where I hear my oldest son just lose his mind with his little brothers, and his little brothers love it.

They love it, they enjoy it.

There is evil in their hearts.

And I have to coach my son.

I'm like, look, they're never gonna stop.

In fact, the more you show them that it hurts, the more you show them that they're they're they're getting to you, the more they're gonna do it.

Their little brother skills are next level sometimes.

It blows me away.

Like Satan doesn't win, he's already been defeated.

But I want you to think about how dangerous it can be to have an enemy that knows they're already defeated.

When you have an enemy that knows they've lost, but there's still time on the clock, that's a dangerous situation.

You gotta be on guard.

We have an enemy.

And by the way, if you want to go deeper into that whole idea of supernatural forces, enemy, whatever, a few years ago we did a series called Standing Ground.

You can find it on our mobile app, really easy to find in the messages category.

We we did a deep dive of that, and I encourage you to listen to it if you want to know more.

But we have an enemy.

You're not crazy when you feel like something's coming against you.

That doesn't mean everything's a demon, right?

But there is a supernatural force that comes against us, so we shouldn't be surprised when things are difficult.

We shouldn't be surprised when we feel resistance.

Expect it.

Especially if you're setting out to do something important.

Expect resistance.

Expect it to be hard.

You want to have a healthy marriage?

That is hard, but that is important.

That is worth fighting for.

So don't think that it's just gonna be easy to have the kind of marriage that scripture describes, where two become one and the husband loves his wife the way that Christ loves the church, and there's mutual respect and love and submission and health and all kinds of other things going on.

That's worth having, that's worth fighting for, but you should expect resistance if you want that.

If you're trying to raise children who know Jesus and they have a strong faith and a strong character and a sober mind, that they love the Lord and they don't make dumb decisions more often than they make good decisions.

That is important, that is worth fighting for, that is worth parenting and all the struggles that come with that, it's worth it, but you got to expect resistance because it's important.

Life does not organize itself around what's important to us.

In fact, life often fights against what's important to us.

We have to expect that resistance.

Don't be caught off guard.

We have an enemy and we live in a broken world.

So, number one, expect resistance.

Number two, and and we'll wrap up with this.

Be determined.

Expect resistance, but be determined.

If you want like a motto for life that comes out of these stories, we can go back to Nehemiah chapter 6, verse 9.

Nehemiah 6:9

When he says, they were just trying to intimidate us, imagining that they could discourage us and stop the work.

So I continue to work with even greater determination.

What if that's the approach that we took to life?

Every time we feel discouraged, every time our enemy comes against us, every time we feel like everything's working against what we're trying to achieve, whether it's in our careers, in our families, in our own personal lives, you name it.

What if our attitude was like Nehemiah's?

Because he's amazing.

If that attitude was like, oh, oh, I get it.

My enemy thinks that he can discourage me and intimidate me.

My enemy thinks that if he keeps giving me resistance, I'm going to quit.

What my enemy doesn't realize is all that does is make me even more determined to work even harder, to keep at it even longer.

I will not stop.

Like, if that is the attitude of your heart, that's powerful.

And for us, it's even greater than Nehemiah.

Nehemiah is one of the best leaders that we have in all of Scripture.

You want to learn how to be a leader, study Nehemiah in detail.

But Nehemiah did not have the Holy Spirit like we have.

Nehemiah lived before Jesus came and died and left us with the Holy Spirit.

Now, if you've given your life to Jesus, you have the Holy Spirit inside of you.

God's actual Spirit lives in you and works in you.

You are stronger than you know.

You are much stronger than you think.

You are capable of more than you often give yourself credit for.

That's why Scripture calls us more than conquerors.

And it's not out of our own strength.

It's because we have the Spirit of God inside of us.

So when you face resistance, just be determined.

When you face resistance, don't be discouraged.

In fact, take it as a sign that maybe you're doing exactly what you ought to be doing.

Maybe you're committing yourself to something so important that the enemy wants to come against it and say, okay, I'll just do it even more.

I'll be determined to work with even greater intensity because of the fact that I'm experiencing resistance.

Expect resistance, but but be determined.

Hebrews chapter 12 says, therefore, and worship team, you guys can make your way out.

Hebrews 12 · chapter mention

It says, therefore, since we are surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up.

That's important to remember.

Sometimes what slows us down, sometimes the resistance that we face, is our own sin.

It's our own mistakes, our own shortcomings.

And that's that's okay.

That's life.

We just have to own that and deal with it and trust the Lord to help us with that.

But let's strip it off.

And it says, let's run with endurance the race God has set before us.

We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.

We persevere, we push through by keeping our eyes on Jesus.

And it says that he is the one who initiates, he's the author of our faith, but he's also the one who finishes our faith.

He's the perfecter, the finisher.

So what he started in your life, he will finish.

He is not caught off guard or surprised by resistance or setbacks or struggles.

But if you keep your eyes on him and you focus on him, you will be able.

You will be able to push through.

You know, it's a silly example.

Um but every time I think about this whole, you're we're surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses, right?

We're tempted to think about all the people in our lives that see us like maybe for me, it's my children and here at the church.

Um, you know, it's it's it's easy to think about all the people who watch us.

When I think about witnesses in my life, I try to think a lot about Jesus.

And not in some scary like Jesus is watching you.

I don't know if you ever grew up in a home that I actually didn't.

My parents were never like, Jesus is watching you.

Um, but you know, there's that idea that Jesus is is watching and he's always gonna like bust in at the worst moment and be like, aha.

Um that's not that's not the character of Jesus.

We don't see that.

You never see Jesus go aha to anyone.

Gotcha.

That doesn't happen.

Uh a lot of people get caught and they're like, Jesus, I know this looks bad.

And he's like, Yeah, it is bad, but I forgive you.

That happens a lot.

But but the reality is Jesus is alive.

Jesus is alive.

And and he does see our lives.

He sees it.

And to live aware of that, to live aware of the fact that Jesus is watching.

There's this moment.

I haven't done this in a while.

I have not told a story.

I don't know if you guys know this, I have a son who plays basketball.

Um I haven't told the story in a long time.

But when he was in first grade, my son was in first grade, I was the assistant coach on his team.

I was not the head coach.

I became the head coach the next year, didn't go great.

Um he played great, didn't go great for us.

That was a tough dynamic.

We weren't.

But assistant coach was like a sweet spot where I'm on the bench, but like I'm not the one calling the shots.

That was a good flow for us.

And so there's this one game, and I it's like a moment in my life I will never forget.

And so what happened was we were playing this team that was frankly better than us.

But but it was the first time that my son just had like the game of his life.

I mean, he's hitting it's first grade, so it's it's funny to look back, like their shorts are longer than their legs, basically, you know, it's just like some shoes and some shorts.

But he had 15 points, and for first grade basketball, that's that's not easy to do.

He's hitting all these crazy shots, it was like it was amazing.

But the team that we were playing was just better.

So we're in one of those games where it's closer than it ought to be.

And we were down by one point, and he got fouled shooting a shot, which means I think there's like a minute left, which means we we get to shoot free throws.

And Liam is an unbelievable free throw shooter.

And so, you know, he's at the line and he's in he's in first grade, right?

So he's like he's six years old, seven years old, something like that.

No, it's six, he was six years old.

And so, you know, he takes a couple dribbles and he shoots the first one, he misses it.

And he looks over at me and he's got big tears in his eyes, right?

He's in first grade.

Those of you who are friends with his don't be like, You're dad said you cried playing battle.

It was it was years ago.

He's a teenager now, this is six, right?

He has these big tears in his eyes because he's feeling the pressure.

But he looks at me.

I'm the one he looks to, right?

I'm the the witness to this, and he's aware of my presence.

And so then he he steps up and he shoots the next one.

Clank, misses it, runs down the court, looks at me, and those those tears are starting to well up, and I'm just like, it's okay.

You know, like this doesn't matter, it's a first grade game.

It's probably the last time he ever heard me say that.

It was that moment.

After that, he's like, everything matters.

Every game is vital, okay?

That's how I tend to be.

But but I was like, in that moment, I was in a good place, and so I was like, it's okay.

And I'm preparing for the I'm I'm like preparing for the loss.

I'm trying to like, he needs to, he needs to know that I'm a safe place, that I'm here for him.

This is tough.

He had a chance to win it for his team.

He didn't.

So we're we're losing, the other team has the ball.

There's no shot clock in first grade basketball, um, but the other team makes a mistake and it goes out of bounds, and we have another chance.

They come down the court, they throw it to Liam, and he just takes a shot from as far away as he'd ever shot before, and boom, it goes in.

The clock, but it's like a scene from a movie, uh, just with much lower stakes because it's a first-grade basketball game.

And so instantly, instantly, it goes through and and he runs to me.

It's like a again, scene from a movie, runs to me, jumps in my arms.

I'm like there on the bench, and I'm like wrapped my arms around him, and there it is, it happens.

And it was amazing.

Like I teared up in that moment, and I'm a very masculine person who doesn't cry for any reason, but like I had tears in my eyes.

And I was so grateful to God that I got to be sitting there, that I got to be in that moment, that I got to be the one that he went to.

But man, if he could have understood what was going through my mind as I watched him, as I'm I'm prepared for anything, I'm prepared to comfort him if he feels disappointment.

You know, I'm prepared to celebrate with him when he's successful, I'm prepared to do anything in my power to help him.

The struggle is I'm a man and my power is pretty limited.

I know it's a bit of a loose connection, but just understand when it says that we're surrounded by a crowd of witnesses, Jesus is a witness to your life.

Jesus is with you, Jesus is watching, Jesus is there.

And when you struggle and you feel pressure and you feel resistance and you feel like you're failing, or maybe you're gonna fail and it's not going well, you can look to him.

And you can look to him as you are.

You can have tears in your eyes, you can have frustrations, you can have questions, and know that Jesus is there.

And when you and when you win, when you push through, when you overcome, when you conquer whatever is in your way, you can run right to him.

You can wrap your arms around him, you can celebrate with him because he's watching the entire time, and he is not surprised by your victory.

Because he loves you, he's empowered you, he's equipped you, and he will celebrate with you.

We have Jesus.

We have this one who's gone before us, this one who knows everything that we go through.

And you want to talk about facing resistance, what he faced?

Oh my goodness.

All of the doubt, all of the disbelief, all of the lies, all of the accusations, all of the threats, the torture, the pain, the arrest, the humiliation, the death, he experienced all of that, and he never quit.

He pushed through, and now we can live life and we can put our eyes on him.

No matter what you're going through right now, no matter how hard it is, it is important.

Push through.

Expect resistance, be determined, and keep your eyes on him.

He will not let you down.

He won't.

He won't.

Let's pray.

Let's pray.

Father God, we thank you so much.

Lord, we thank you for this day.

Thank you, Jesus, that we can come together on a Sunday morning, that we can sing to you, that we can think about you, that we can open your word, we can talk about you, we can be reminded of what we need to be reminded of.

Lord, I know that in this room right now, and even with those watching from home, I know, Lord, that this room is full of people going through really difficult situations.

There's so many of us right now that know exactly what resistance feels like.

We feel like we're stuck, like we're not making progress, we feel discouraged.

Maybe, Lord, we can even really relate to these stories today.

Maybe we even know that there are people who are against us.

We know what it's like to be lied about.

We know what it's like to be sabotaged, to have traps set for us.

Lord, help us keep our eyes on you.

Jesus, help us keep our eyes on you.

Lord, help us be expectant.

Help us to not be caught off guard when things are tougher than maybe we feel like they ought to be.

Remind us that we have an enemy.

But our enemy is no match for you.

Our enemy never has and never will defeat you.

So, Jesus, I pray that you give us a determination in our hearts that we would be a people who, like Nehemiah, can say that when resistance comes our way, we just give it even more.

We're just more determined, we work with more enthusiasm because we know that you are a witness to our lives, that you are watching us, and more than that, you are with us, and if we keep our eyes on you, we will push through.

Give us that confidence, Lord.

That kind of determination.

We live in a broken world, and our lives often feel very shattered and very scattered, and we don't know what to do, but you do.

And if we keep our eyes on you and trust you, I know that we will find victory.

And we pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.