Nehemiah 4:1_3 - "1 But it came to pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and took great indignation, and mocked the Jews." "2 And he spake before his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? will they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day? will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned?" "3 Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build, if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall."
l. INTRODUCTION - WINSTON CHURCHILL
• Winston Churchill is remembered as perhaps the greatest prime minister in the history of Great Britain. By the steel of his will, he led his island nation to stand against Hitler and eventually triumph in World War ll. But years before that victorious moment for the ages, Churchill found himself plunging through a succession of devastating trapdoors-each one worse than the one before.
• In August 1929, Churchill had managed to bring in approximately $70,000 into the family coffers. That's a lot of money even today. In 1929, that was an unimaginable amount of money for a single month's work. He invested nearly all of it into the American stock market. He then jotted a note to his wife saying how pleased he was to finally reach a place of financial independence. Less than ninety days later the stock market fell through it's own trapdoor and Churchill lost virtually everything.
• It was a major blow. Churchill had experienced ninety days of financial security-and then the bottom fell out. For the first time in his adult life he had been on easy street enjoying the prospects of a comfortable future and then the trapdoor fell open beneath his feet and down he went.
• That setback alone would be enough to send most any man into the dungeon of depression. But there were two more difficulties that waited quietly and patiently for Churchill to arrive. In 1931, after serving his entire adult life as a central figure in the British government, he was not invited to serve in the cabinet. This was another staggering blow to Churchill. He had been banished to the political wilderness. While Hitler was working full-time to build his war machine, Churchill, virtually the only British politician who saw the reality of Hitler's threat, was put out to pasture. When he should have been center stage, he was banished to his country home where he wrote, painted, and built brick walls and cleaned out the ponds to stay busy. This defeat was even more bitter than the financial loss. It was heating up in the British steel furnace.
• And then in the same year, while he was trying to hold things together financially and fight off depression of political defeat, he decided to take a tour of Canada and the United States. In New York City he looked the wrong way while crossing a street and was hit by a taxi traveling at thirty-five miles per hour. The accident sent him to the hospital, clinging to life by a thread.
• In less than three years he had suffered three shattering transitions that had devastated him financially, then politically, and then in an accident that nearly cost him his life. In a letter to their son from the hospital, his wife wrote: "Last night he was very sad and said he had now in the last two years had three very heavy blows. First the loss of all that money in the crash, then loss of political position in the Conservative Party and now this terrible injury. He said he did not think he would ever recover completely from the three events."
• At that point, as he recovered in that New York hospital room, Churchill was fifty-seven years old. Nine years later, at the right moment in history, the government that had ignored him would turn to him in desperation. But he could not see the future from the hospital bed. In fact, his prospects looked so bad that at that moment one of his enemies was emboldened enough to pronounce a political eulogy: "Churchill is finished!" Famous last words! History proved that statement to be just a bit premature.
-Maybe you are like Churchill and have experienced some devastating events, losses, and reversals. You feel like the heat and stress from a dozen pressing circumstances and are slowly pressing you and bending you out of shape.
ll. LESSONS FROM NEHEMIAH
• -Sometimes when you look to this world around us, you may even echo the question of Sanballat:
1. Will a revival come from a trash pile?
2. Will there be reconstruction from the rubbish?
3. Can riches come from the refuse?
• -When we look at the trash pile of what used to be a wall and a Temple in Jerusalem, something within shrinks back and asks, "How in this world can anything constructive come out of this thing?"
• -But within that element of mayhem and destruction there were some clear principles and laws that governed it.
A. The First Phase - The Phase of Deterioration
• the natural order of things is to condescend to go down to be come less
• -From the picture in the Bible it becomes clear that all material things, whether as sacred as the Temple or as natural as a forest, are on their way to the trash pile. To a man who places all of his trust in his material holdings that fact sounds to him as a funeral dirge.
• -What he loves is going to deteriorate.
• Neh 1:3 And they said unto me, The remnant that are left of the captivity there in the province are in great affliction and reproach: the wall of Jerusalem also is broken down, and the gates thereof are burned with fire.
• Marriages money and ministries deteriorate
B. The Second Phase - Occupation
Neh 2:19 But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king?
Neh 2:20 Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem.
• The ground is not just waiting cleared and ready for the seed or for the foundation, but rather it is covered with pine needles, with leaves, with moss. Great stones lie scattered throughout the land. Giant pines, oaks, and black gum, fight with the twining, creeping vines and the waving grasses for every inch of soil.
• -Is that not true with our own minds? The mind becomes a wilderness of foolish imaginations because clean and wholesome thoughts have not been planted there. The heart becomes, like Jerusalem, a wilderness and a desolation because the Kingdom of God has never been established there.
• -Evil is present. . . Evil always evolves where good evacuates.
• -In Genesis 26, a remarkable thing occurs there. Isaac found himself in the middle of a famine and instead of folding up and going home something happened within.
• -Here Isaac was, a man looking for the promises of God and instead finds himself in the middle of a famine. Not only living in the middle of a famine but now God expects him to stay in the land.
• -The fields were dry and barren. Hot winds rustled across the land and scorched what little existence of weeds that were still standing. The small springs no longer bubbled clear, cold water. Even the seed appeared to be withered in the sacks.
1. Isaac was looking for bread and instead he found perseverance.
2. Isaac wanted abundance but instead found a shortage.
3. Isaac wanted the comforts of life but instead found communion with God.
C. The Third phase - Elevation
God will allow burden to come on us, and it will cause us to be spiritual and do spiritual things Nehi prayed and fasteed and repented and sought God, and it got the attention of the King and even cause the King to send his servant w/ blessings.
No matter where we are at in life or what we are doing when God lays a BURDEN ON OUR SPIRIT and we handle it w/ prayer and fasting and we are exalting him .
If we were a millionaire or a doctor or a great politician hes wanting to elevate us to be his lowly servant.
Elevation doesn’t mean the battles over it is just beginning
Neh 4:13 Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall, and on the higher places, I even set the people after their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.
Neh 4:14 And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people, Be not ye afraid of them: remember the Lord, which is great and terrible, and fight for your brethren, your sons, and your daughters, your wives, and your houses.
Neh 4:16 And it came to pass from that time forth, that the half of my servants wrought in the work, and the other half of them held both the spears, the shields, and the bows, and the habergeons; and the rulers were behind all the house of Judah.
Neh 4:17 They which builded on the wall, and they that bare burdens, with those that laded, every one with one of his hands wrought in the work, and with the other hand held a weapon.
D. The Fourth Phase - revival
RE, a prefix or inseparable particle in the composition of words, denotes return, repetition, iteration.
Tit 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost; restore to primitive or original state joy peace righteousness no guilt no sickness perfect fellowship.
-God makes his loveliest roses out of rubbish. The charred ashes of yesterdays brush nourish the roots of tomorrows orchard. If the refuse of the ages had been allowed to accumulate, the world would be unlivable. The air would be heavy with pestilence. We bury our rubbish, and it comes back to us in fruits and flowers.
• -That brings us the fourth and last law, the phase of revival.
• -That is where the Church finds her most difficult problem. In this city there are crowds of people who have gone to the wall. They have been crushed and beaten down by life. Under the fierce system of competition the iron law of survival has flung them and discarded them at the social dung heap.
• -Sadly some of them hate churches. . . . They think that if churches had done their duty, then things would not be as bad as they are.
• -They forget that, if churches had NOT done their duty, things would be ten thousand times worse than what they are.
• -This world talks about a need for reform, restraint, culture, manners, peace, education, when what the supreme need is a revival. An outpouring of the Holy Ghost!!! Every time we come to church.
• -Now the mission of the Church is to do for this ruined mass what Nehemiah did for the rubbish heaps of Jerusalem-to build out of them the city of God.
"Will they bring a revival out of a rubbish-heap?" asks Sanballat. Of course!!!!
• -A rubbish heap is God's raw material. A revival is His finished product. Let this church get to work. She alone is equipped for the duty. If she fails, her collapse will be the event of the ages.
• -The church of Jesus Christ knows how to transform this mass of refuse into a field of roses.
• -Paul understood this magic secret. He looked at the unbridled lust, the grinding tyranny, and the hideous idolatry of the city of the Caesars, and was unabashed. And he gave his reason. "The Gospel," he said, "is the power of God unto transformation."
• -Paul was willing to face down the men who had mastered Italy, Greece, and Northern Africa. Rome had spread out it's arms in such a way that it had gathered to itself the control of the East and the West, so that in all the world there was no government that was not under retention to Rome. Rome was a city by itself, it was the capital, not of the nation, but of the world.
• -Paul strode into Rome without the grace of culture. He was not a gifted motivational speaker but he did have something turning over inside of his soul. He called it a "treasure" in an earthen vessel. He said, "It is a power. . . . . a power unto salvation. . . . for every one who believes."
• -He saw that the foulest filth of Rome might become the fairest fragrance of the New Jerusalem.
• Neh 6:1 Now it came to pass, when Sanballat, and Tobiah, and Geshem the Arabian, and the rest of our enemies, heard that I had builded the wall, and that there was no breach left therein; (though at that time I had not set up the doors upon the gates;)
• Neh 6:2 That Sanballat and Geshem sent unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief.
• Neh 6:3 And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?
Neh 6:9 For they all made us afraid, saying, Their hands shall be weakened from the work, that it be not done. Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands.
Neh 4:6 So built we the wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the people had a mind to work.
This power of God:
• He can make a dead rod bud.
• He can part the waters at the Red Sea.
• He can sweeten the waters at Marah.
• He can trouble the waters at Siloam and heal people.
• He can make an axe head float.
• He can overcome sin with a great flood. (He can bury my sin in baptism.)
• He can set a bush on fire and it not be consumed.
• He can make a rod turn into a serpent and back again.
• He can bring water out of a rock.
• He can give bread to me in a dry place.
• He can restore my soul.
• He can make a donkey talk.
• He can translate Enoch and Elijah.
• He can knock down the walls at Jericho.
• He can make the sun stand still until the battle is won.
• He can feed a man with the ravens or with an empty barrel.
• He can deliver three men in a furnace.
• He can turn water into wine.
• He can walk on water.
• He can calm the storms of life.
• He can straighten a withered hand.
• He can cast demons out of a madman.
• He can fill empty nets with fish.
• He can feed a multitude with some bread and fish.
• He can raise a widow's son, Jarius' daughter, and set Lazarus free.
• He can heal a woman with an issue of blood.
• He can go to a Cross, but the nails could not hold Him.
• He can go to a Grave, but the stone would not hold Him.
• He can deliver. . . . . .
• He can save. . . . .
• He can overcome. . .
• He can provide. . .
• He can meet the need. . .
