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Believe it or not, I used to be pretty rough as a kid. We moved around a lot. And one of the things that can happen when you move a lot is you can get in a lot of fights. People want to see what the new kid is all about. They want to see how he fits in. So there’s always somebody willing to start stuff. I was always taught that you never start a fight. And my temper is such that it takes a lot to make me angry enough to fight. As a matter of fact, it usually took getting hit. But once I got hit the first time, I usually finished it. But one thing I remember about those fights. There was always some type of unwritten rule book. There were things to do in a fight that were okay. And there were things that you just didn’t do. I don’t know who came up with the rules, but they were just understood. But sometimes, people wouldn’t abide by those rules. They would resort to what we would call “fighting dirty.” That’s how our enemy fights, isn’t it? When Satan comes against God’s people, he doesn’t use a rule book. The Bible describes him as the father of lies. He is a liar. So why would we expect a liar to fight fair? In our passage tonight, we see that the same old enemies were coming against Nehemiah again. Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arabian and all the rest of them were taking another shot at God’s people. This time it was just a little bit different because they were getting desperate. They were getting desperate because the wall was almost finished. Verse 1 tells us that the wall itself was complete. The only thing they hadn’t finished was hanging the doors on the gates. So you can see how the enemies’ window of opportunity was closing. And when the enemy begins to feel a sense of desperation, he will certainly resort to some dirty tricks. That’s what Nehemiah’s enemies did. In our passage, we can see four dirty tricks of the enemy. The first dirty trick is popularity. Look back at verses 1-2:
NEHEMIAH 6:1-2
Popularity can be a dirty trick of the enemy, can’t it? Notice how Sanballat and Tobiah changed their tactics. All the other times, they were openly defiant. They lined up their troops outside Jerusalem and taunted the people. They plotted and planned skirmishes and attacks against the people. They even spread malicious gossip amongst the people. But nothing worked. So they had to change their course. Now they were trying to be friendly and diplomatic. “Nehemiah, why don’t you come out and just talk to us a little bit.” “We’ve got your best interest at heart and just want to help you.” “We have some information that you really need to know.” “All we really want is just to be your ally.” You see, the meeting that they were presenting to Nehemiah was supposed to look like a diplomatic meeting. They proposed a neutral site between Jerusalem and Samaria. And for all appearances, it would look like they were going to make a treaty with Nehemiah. They were trying to make it look like they were bringing him into their little club. “Now that you’ve got your wall done, we’d like to invite you into our club.” Our enemy uses that dirty trick too, doesn’t he? “If you just turn your focus off the Gospel just a little bit, you can make people happy with you.” “If you just compromise a little bit, people will flock to you.” “You can be popular.” “You can be surrounded by people—all you have to do is just listen to what I’m saying. All you have to do is just take your focus off your mission and come out to meet with me for a few minutes. That’s all I ask—just a few minutes. And sadly enough, a few minutes of flattery and flirting with popularity is all it takes to turn many churches from being Christ-honoring and Gospel centered to being self-honoring and people centered. The lure of popularity is pretty and shiny and appetizing. But there is a terrible hook behind it. A hook that is catching many Christians and churches today. But Nehemiah didn’t take the bait, did he? The last part of verse 2 says that he saw through their plan. He wasn’t distracted by their shiny and appetizing lure. And verse 3 tells us what his response to them was. He just said no. He said, “The work that God has called me to do is my focus. I will not allow you to distract me from it.” “You can keep your little clique and your popularity.” “I’ve got a job to do.” When the enemy comes at you with the lure of popularity and numbers and success, how should you respond? When he comes at us as a church with that lure, how should we respond? When he says, “Come let us meet together”—how should we respond? Don’t even go near him. Don’t even entertain the thought of using his methods. Don’t even allow yourself to be caught up in his fleeting promises of popularity. Our mission is too important to allow ourselves to become distracted. There are no short cuts or bypasses or easy roads. Our mission is to make disciples—not make social connections. That is our great work. And why should the work cease while we leave it to do something else to make us popular? We shouldn’t. The promise of popularity is one of our enemy’s dirty tricks. Another dirty trick is persistence. Look at verses 4-5:
NEHEMIAH 6:4-5
Persistence is one of our enemy’s dirty tricks. Do you ever listen to kids around their parents? “Mommy, can I have a piece of candy?” “No.” Then what happens? Most of the time, the child waits a few minutes and asks again. “No.” Then a few minutes later, they ask again. That goes on and on until finally, the parent usually gives in. The child is so persistent that they completely wear down the parent. Finally, it’s, “I’ll give you the candy if you’ll just give me some peace.” Look back at verse 4. How many times did the enemy approach Nehemiah with the same request? Four times. Finally, they came at him again with a different approach a fifth time. They were persistent, weren’t they? James 4:7 says that if we resist the devil, he will flee. Of course, that’s true. But does it say that he won’t come back? Our enemy doesn’t like to take no for an answer. Nehemiah told the enemies of God’s people “no” at least 4 times. But that still didn’t stop them. They just changed their tactic a little bit. Don’t ever think that once you’ve resisted the enemy’s attack the first time that he won’t be back. You think about how an alcoholic gets into trouble. He goes without a drink for a period of time and begins to think that he’s cured. And now that he thinks he’s cured, he thinks that he can handle a beer or two. And then he’s back to where he was in the beginning. Many times even worse off than he was before. Our enemy is persistent. He will come at us over and over and over again. He will work one angle until he gets shut down several times. And then he will begin to work another angle. You’ve heard the old joke about the woman who came home with a new dress. When her husband saw it, he said, “Honey, didn’t I tell you not to buy any more clothes?” She explained that when she tried it on and saw how good it looked, she just couldn’t overcome the temptation. Her husband said, “Well honey, all you had to do to overcome that temptation was say, ‘Get thee behind me Satan.’” She said, “I did. And when I said that, he told me how good it looked from back there too.” Our enemy is persistent. So knowing that, how should we respond? How did Nehemiah respond in verse 4? He answered them in the same manner. He was consistent. He didn’t try to debate with them. He didn’t even spend much time explaining things to them. He just said no. Over and over again. Every time his enemies came at him with their proposal, he stuck to his guns and said no. When your enemy comes at you four times, how many times should you tell him no? Four times. If he comes at you forty times, how many times should you tell him no? Forty times. The way to overcome our enemy’s persistence is with our consistency. Stick with the formula that God has given us. Pray, prepare, preach. Make disciples. Baptize them. Teach them. It’s really a pretty simple formula. It doesn’t take a seminary grad to figure it out. It doesn’t take a whole lot of research and demographic studies to do it. Just do it—consistently. Day after day, be about the same business. Live like Christ wants you to live and tell others about Him. Overcome the enemy’s persistence with your consistency. But popularity and persistence aren’t the only dirty tricks the enemy has up his sleeve. Another one is publicity. Look at verses 5-9:
NEHEMIAH 6:5-9
Publicity is a dirty trick of the enemy. But the kind of publicity that he wants to give isn’t the kind we like to have, is it? There is hardly a week that goes by that I don’t hear some sort of destructive rumor about a church or a pastor. That concerns me. It concerns me because I’m not in what I call the gossip loop. I try really hard to not be a party to rumors and gossip. So I know that if I’m hearing those things, they must really be out there. Why are those rumors so widespread? Because the enemy loves publicity. But the kind of publicity he loves is bad publicity. And the thing about it is, he doesn’t care whether the information is true or not. Look at the publicity Nehemiah was getting. Sanballat sent him a letter. The problem was that it was an open letter. That meant that it was publicly read by one of Sanballat’s servants. In other words, the contents of the letter were publicly broadcast so everybody heard it. So, what did it say? It reported a rumor. “Everybody is hearing what you’re doing, Nehemiah.” “All the nations are hearing it.” “Even Gashmu (Gashmu was a friendly nickname for Geshum) is hearing it.” “Everybody knows what you’re up to.” “You are planning a political revolt.” “As soon as you get that wall finished, you’re going to rebel against Artaxerxes and declare yourself king over all those hard workers in Judah.” Now what kind of publicity was that? What do you think was going through the people’s minds when they heard that? Do you think they were suspicious? Do you think they might have been a little bit frightened? That’s what the publicity was designed to do. It was designed to completely undermine Nehemiah. Just like false rumors and gossip and negative talk can completely undermine us today. It’s a dirty trick that still works wonders. False rumors and gossip and negative talk can destroy credibility. It can destroy trust. And when those things are destroyed, nothing is going to be accomplished. The mission will fail. But here’s what I find interesting. Notice how Nehemiah responded to the enemy’s publicity dirty trick. Verse 8 starts by saying, “Then I sent unto him, saying….” And then it goes on to say how Nehemiah denied everything the letter said. But what’s interesting is how he did it. He didn’t do it the same way that the enemy did. He didn’t make a public proclamation to defend himself. His answer wasn’t public at all. The accusation was designed for publicity. It came in the form of a public broadcast. But Nehemiah’s response came in the form of a private letter. His response was not designed to get publicity. His response was a direct communication to the source. How should we respond to false accusations and rumors and bad publicity? Go straight to the source—privately. Let your consistent lifestyle and love for the Gospel be your defense. It doesn’t appear that the people of God were bothered by that open letter. And if they weren’t, it was because they knew Nehemiah. They had seen him in action. And what they saw was completely different from the publicity they heard. So they would have had to automatically assume that what they heard wasn’t true. It amazes me how Nehemiah could stand there being publicly lied about and not respond in kind. But do you know how that was possible? Because of what we see at the end of verse 9. He breathed another one of those arrow prayers. I don’t know if he was biting his tongue or not. But I do know that he was praying. Publicity is a dirty trick of the enemy. Overcome the publicity, not in public, but in private. And it’ll take a lot of prayer to do that. There’s one more dirty trick the enemy will pull. That is the dirty trick of piety. Look at verses 10-14:
NEHEMIAH 6:10-14
Piety is a dirty trick of the enemy. Have you ever met somebody who’s real “religious”. You know—those people who seem to always talk in really spiritual tones. That is what I mean by piety. Sometimes the enemy can use the most pious, religious sounding people to try and trip you up. That’s what Tobiah and Sanballat did. They actually went so far as to hire a prophet named Shemaiah. This prophet was apparently homebound. He called for Nehemiah to come see him. And in those days, the prophet only called you to his house if he had a prophesy to deliver to you. It was as if Shemaiah called for Nehemiah and told him, “You need to come see me. I’ve got a message from God that you need to hear.” That would get your attention, wouldn’t it? “God told me to tell you something.” So Nehemiah went. But when he got there, Shemaiah told him something frightening. He told him that Tobiah and Sanballat were coming to assassinate him. And the only way that he could keep them from killing him was to claim asylum in the temple. So, what did Nehemiah say? “Wow—you’ve got a message from God so I’d better do what you said.” No, he didn’t. The question is, why didn’t he? Because the so-called prophet’s pious words didn’t match what Nehemiah already knew from God’s Word. Nehemiah knew that the image Shemaiah was bringing to mind was when a king would claim asylum by laying hold of the horns of the alter in the temple. There were two things wrong with that picture. Nehemiah wasn’t a king. And he wasn’t a priest. It would have been a clear violation of God’s law for Nehemiah to do that. But here was the big problem. If he did that, he wouldn’t be doing the mission that God had called him to do. Piety fools a lot of people. It can be easy to be fooled by religious sounding people. The enemy loves to use that dirty trick because it’s so effective. But do you know how to overcome it? It’s really pretty simple. The surest way to identify a counterfeit is to know the real thing inside and out. You can easily overcome being deceived by false piety by knowing what real piety looks like. And the only way to know that is by knowing God’s Word. I don’t care how religious a person sounds, if what he says doesn’t match the Bible, he is a false prophet. And you need to answer him just like Nehemiah did. “I will not go in.” “I’m not going to fall for your dirty tricks.”
In 1 Peter 5:8, Peter said that our enemy walks about like a roaring lion, seeking those whom he may devour. And as he does that, he uses every dirty trick up his sleeve. How are you responding? Are you responding by falling for his lies? Are you buddying up to people you don’t need to buddy up with? Are you giving in to his persistence? Are you falling for his rumors and gossip? Are you deceived by his religious sounding lies? If you are, then our mission will suffer. God’s work will continue, but we just might not get to participate in the blessings that come with it. Right now, it’s time to quit falling for the enemy’s dirty tricks. Right now it’s time to reject bad company. Right now it’s time to start living consistently. Right now it’s time to give up gossip and turn a deaf ear to rumors. Right now it’s time to be so steeped in God’s Word that you can instantly recognize a fraud when they approach you. Are you ready to do those things? Are you ready to reject the enemy’s dirty tricks?
