A preachers son graduated from high school and the preacher kept asking his son what he was going to do? Go to college or maybe go onto the service. He kept asking his son, but he just could not make up his mind! One day while his son was out, he decided to perform a simple test. He went into his sons room and put 3 items on his desk
A Bible, a silver dollar, and a fifth of whiskey.
The pastor thought if he picks up the Bible he will be a preacher like me. If he picks up the silver dollar he will be a business man I he picks up the fifth of whiskey he will be a drunken sot!
He heard his son coming, so he hid behind the door to see what his son would do. His son looked at the three items, he picked up the Bible and put it under his arm. Then he picked up the silver dollar and put it in his pocket. Then he picked up the fifth of whiskey and took a drink!
The preacher said OH Lord no, my son is going to be a Senator
Anyone who as followed politics has plenty of stories of people who are not what they appear to be. But the ugly truth is that anyone who lives among people also has those stories. Sadly sometimes we might even be someone else’s example of it. As we look at the story of Nehemiah, even he could not escape this problem. Is it any wonder then that Satan our enemy uses the same tactic? Look at 2 Corinthians 11:14, “And no wonder! For Satan himself transforms himself into an angle of light.”
It’s not that Satan becomes good, he just appears that way to lead people astray, when all of the external attacks have failed then he tries to attack from within. We’re coming to the end of the series from Nehemiah now. We’ve walked through reasons for exile and the importance of vision. Last week we talked about how we have a supernatural enemy and when we try to do things for God we should expect to be opposed supernaturally. The interesting thing about the opposition was that they claimed that the children of Israel were weak when in fact they were strong. How do we know that even their enemies knew they were strong, because when it came time to attack all of their enemies wanted to go together or not at all. They were too afraid to attack on their own. Then when they realized that a sneak attack wasn’t going to happen they decided to try and infiltrate the ranks and attack from within. When that plan got ruled out they stopped trying for a while.
So now we come to chapter 6, the walls are almost complete. But notice, that although the task was almost complete the opposition didn’t end. Look at verse 1, “Now it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies heard that I had rebuilt the wall, and that there were no breaks left in it (though at that time I had not hung the doors in the gates.)” Notice the walls are up, the gates are up, they don’t have doors in the yet but the gates are up. The city is almost complete, it is now a defensible position. The enemy is frustrated, he is basically defeated but he doesn’t give up. He just shifts tactics, if he can’t strike down all of the people, he will pick them off as individuals starting with their leader.
Understand, at this point things begin to get personal. The enemy is no longer trying to win, he is just trying to inflict pain and cause damage and heart break. You want to know why bad things happen in the world? Because we have an enemy who has lost, so now he just wants to inflict as much pain on everyone he can as possible. Whether that makes sense to us, this is his history to, he as done it before he will do it again, and will continue doing it until Jesus comes and casts him into a lake of fire forever. The good news is, that day is coming. Jesus wins and we get to go to the victory party.
Notice something else, the more success Nehemiah had the more opposition he faced. When he shows up to build the wall, there is Sanballat, to mock him, lie about him and oppose him. When he recruits teammates and the people catch the vision and begin to build, Sanballat is joined by Tobiah, now that the wall is almost done, it’s Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshem. Every step he takes down the road to success just brings more opposition, but the greater the opposition the greater the victory. Do you think we would be studying Nehemiah today if he just got the kings approval to build Jerusalem and then went and built the thing with now problems. No, the problems from the enemy are what made the accomplishment great.
So Nehemiah is on the verge of success, the city is defensible, Israel is getting her identity back. So look what happens next, “Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come, let us meet together among the villages in the plain of Ono.” But they thought to do me harm.” The message sounds innocent and nice, Come let us meet together. They’re playing to his ego, “Nehemiah since you’re becoming such a great leader, let us all sit down and work things out so we can all just live in peace, since we respect you so much.” The message sounded good. It said a lot of the right things, but they didn’t mean any of them. It’s easy for some people to say the right thing, at the right time, when they have a motive that is pure evil.
Notice in this case what their goal is. The plan was to isolate Nehemiah from his teammates. This is why not only going to church is important but being involved in the church. You need to be involved somewhere so that you are making teammates. People who know you and are interested in you people who are your friend, who are strong enough to tell you when your wrong and will be there when you need help. The enemy wanted to pull Nehemiah away from Jerusalem so that he would be cut off and isolated and then he could be killed. The enemy wants to cut you off from the church by telling you all sorts of lies, but his end goal is to isolate you and kill you spiritually. People need to be involved in the church because that is how relationships are formed.
When that didn’t work they tried to distract Nehemiah. Four times they tried to get him to come out from the protection of Jerusalem and his teammates, four times he said, why don’t you come here, guys what do you have to hide? Finally on the fifth try they change their tactics, verse 6, “It is reported among the nations and Geshem says, That you and the Jews plan to rebel; therefore, according to these rumors, you are rebuilding the wall, that you may be their king. And you have also appointed prophets to proclaim concerning you at Jerusalem, saying, ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now these matters will be reported to the king. So come, therefore, and let us consult together.’”
“Nehemiah there are all these rumors, it’s going to lead to trouble, you’re going to have problems, so com let us meet together so that I your long term enemy who has opposed you every step of the way can now help you.” Really convincing isn’t it. But sometimes we fall for this, other times and equally as damaging we worry about the rumors we worry about what people are saying. The treat of the rumors becomes a distraction. Because remember what made Nehemiah successful was his ability to keep the vision of God in front of him despite both opposition and success, he wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted. All it takes for the enemy to be successful is for us to lose sight of what God wants. It doesn’t matter how good our motives are or how good the project may appear if it isn’t the plan of God, we missed our path. Look at this quote, “Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things that matter least.” Not only does God’s agenda need to rule in this place, but in our lives we need to keep His vision in front of us to be truly successful.
Here’s what’s interesting to me, even after everything the enemy has tried has failed, look at what the end goal of these attacks is, The enemy still wanted Nehemiah to be afraid. Look at verse 9, “They all were trying to make us afraid, saying, ‘Their hands ill be weakened in the work, and it will not be done.’ Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.” The enemy was still trying to make Nehemiah afraid and Nehemiah was still praying to the God that he feared and respected before anything else. We’ve said it all through the series, if you fear God, you won’t fear anything else. Notice the enemy has to scheme and plot, and lie to try and get his way, all God had to do was give a man a vision from Him. Satan put a lot of energy into trying to stop Jerusalem from being rebuilt, God just did it through His people. When the God who created everything, and defeated death itself is involved what do we have to be afraid of? Put God in the proper perspective in you life and you won’t be afraid of anything else, fear God and not men.
So all of the external plots have failed, so what does the enemy do? Verse 10, “I came to the house of Shemaiah the son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was a secret informer…” All of the external things didn’t work, so it was time to attack from the inside. The enemy couldn’t infiltrate the ranks in mass, but he did manage to get someone inside. Notice also what it says about him, he was a “secret informer.” His sin started small, he just passed along information. “Hey, I’ll just tell them what is going on. What harm can there be in that?” It doesn’t say that he committed any sabotage, or that he did anything to try and stop the rebuilding of the walls, he started out just passing information. Big sins start with the little sins we commit. We cross one line, and then another and another, until we’ve become someone we never intended to be. Why is it important to make friends will solid Christian people who will tell you when you’re headed the wrong way, because when you start down the wrong path, no matter how harmless it seems unless somebody turns you around you’re going to end up some place you don’t like.
For the church, both First Baptist Church of Mesa, but also the church as a whole we need to understand this, when all of the external attacks had failed, the enemy turned to someone on the inside who appeared to be a friend.” Shemaiah appeared to be a friend, he had his house on the inside of the city, he was a priest, and notice that it says that Nehemiah came to his house. This was someone that Nehemiah trusted, someone who at one point was probably worthy of that trust, but he started with a little sin, and then it grew bigger and bigger until he was a man willing to assassinate a friend.
Notice how he tried to get Nehemiah alone, he used religious and well meaning words. The enemy loves to speak with the language of the religion of God. Look at what he says, “Let us meet together in the house of God, within the temple, and let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill you; indeed, at night they will come to kill you.” Funny how he knows what the plans were isn’t it? But he used all of the language, and look where did he want to hide? In the temple where God could look out for them.
Do we have modern day equivalents of this? Sure we do. It’s the email that begins with a paraphrase of Romans 12:1, “Our reasonable act of worship is” and then moves into a discussion of what external things should be done for worship. That may be good but the verse is talking about giving all of our lives over to God. It is saying that we are to literally offer our bodies everything we are to God as worship. But hey it makes a great introduction into the point somebody wants to make so they use it and feel that they have spoken from the Bible. No quoting scripture accurately and using a passage for a point that is back up for it’s context is using the Word correctly. We need to stop listening to people who speak with religious words and start listening to the Word of God.
People have taken the license to play cut and paste with the Bible so that they sound holy and they think they’re point is right. It’s like they invented a new language, I call it Christianese. You know what, Jesus didn’t go out of His way to appear holy, He didn’t modify His words, to sound holy, He just lived a life that was Holy, and when He disagreed with Satan He didn’t play cut and paste, He quoted scripture as it was written and if someone wants to stand up and say that they have a message from God if it’s true they will have scriptural support and not just religious language.
You know what saved Nehemiah? It was that he also understood this principle, doing the religious thing with the wrong motive is still wrong. What’s wrong with going to the temple? Nothing, unless you’re going there to hide when you’ve been called to stand and fight. You can do something for that benefits the church but if it was for you agenda and your motive, you’re still wrong. Nehemiah understood that the religious thing isn’t always the right thing. God is more about seeing us live His vision with our lives then He is about seeing us fulfill rituals. Look at what he says, “should such a man as I flee? And who is there such as I who would go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in?” Later he realized that is was a plot, but by then he had already avoided the trap. A trap laid in religious dressings.
So how do we overcome the enemy within? Well we have to know how to find them. First step, form relationships with people who follow God and get to know their character and motives. If you are around the people of God you’ll be able to recognize them. But more importantly, when someone comes and they speak a message that you need to evaluate you’ll have a basis for comparison. Look at their character and their motives. If their heart is after God then their fruit will show. Look at Matthew 12:35, “A good man out of the good treasure of his heart brings forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure brings fourth evil things.” If you want to know the accuracy of a persons message from God look at the fruit of their lives.
Next, compare everything they say to the Word of God. First make sure they aren’t speaking Christianese, for a lot of people their favorite verse is “God helps those who help themselves.” The problem is that isn’t the Bible its Ben Franklin. We need to compare what people are saying is in the Bible with what the Bible says, don’t just take their word for it.
Not only that, Hebrews tells us that the Bible itself helps give us discernment. “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” The Bible isn’t just a book, it is the Word of God, it is alive. When you need discernment or guidance, go read your Bible until God speaks to you.
Then pray for God to reveal His will to you. Look at what Colossians says, “For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom ad spiritual understanding.” We talked about it last week, the one thing that God is just waiting to give us in abundance if we will ask for it is wisdom. We may not always like the answer, but He will give us wisdom, if we pray for it. So get to know a person so that you understand their motives and character. They you read your Bible so that you give God a vocabulary to speak to you, because when He speaks it’s through His word. That’s how you know it’s Him and not somebody else. Then you pray that He will give you wisdom and He will.
The final thing, do things in the open and not in secret. You know why people do things in secret, or in a small group, because they know that if they try it in a large group, they’re going to be opposed or stopped and the majority of the time because they should be. What Jesus was saying is if you can’t say something in public, you shouldn’t say it in private. If you have a goal that you don’t want to make public, you probably need to change it. Everything that we are supposed to do, everything that we teach we need to be able to teach for the world to hear. We have the truth and have nothing to hide. When do we know that it is the voice of the enemy within? When he wants us to keep it secret or do it with just a select group of people, but the gospel and everything about it is for the whole world.
So how do we know it’s true? Well consider this, do you know what the enemy was so opposed to the rebuilding of this one city? Forget all of that human rivalry stuff it comes down to this, before that city even fell prophets of God said that it would be rebuilt, that the nation would be restored and then Messiah would come. So here it was the broken and exiled nation was about to be restored. When that happened the Messiah would and did come. Look at the Middle East today. There is no hope for peace in the near or perhaps even distant future? Why because those same prophets were joined by others who said, that when Israel was a nation again, when the scattered people returned that the same Messiah would come again. We see in our world today the accuracy of what they wrote. The Messiah who makes the forces of darkness tremble is coming again, but the good news is that He wants to be a part of your life today.
“Scripture is the living testimony to what God has done and continues to do, and we are part of that testimony. The characters in Scripture are both our contemporaries and our ancestors. Their triumphs and failures help us understand our own journey of faith. Scripture is not something we only believe in, it is something we share in.” Kwame Bediako, in the Africa Bible Commentary
