In your bulletin you have an insert about the family summer family nights. Notice that one of the
choices you have for adults is the Complement option. I'm concerned about your marriage. It's a
small group about marriage. And I would encourage you if you're married to sign up for that. I
was talking with Manny Capizzi this week and he said this. I asked him if I could quote him and
he said I could. He says, “I'm falling in love Michelle all over again.” Such a sweet statement.
He says, “You know, you get busy paying the bills, and earning a living, and taking the kids
from here to there, and you tend to drift apart but I've fallen in love with my wife all over again.”
So special. And I appreciate that. [garbled] in marriage and the rule is this: If you do not work on
intentionally coming together, you will drift apart. We must do that. So I'd encourage you if
you're married sign up for that particular group.
There are five others that you might consider signing up for, if you would like. We call them
Summer Family Nights, but I don't want you to think this is just for if you have kids you come.
Although there is a great children's program and there's a youth program going on. But there are
several electives and you can choose from any one of those. This is our church family coming
together, enjoying the relationships that we have together.
I encourage you today when you go down to the Ministry Fair to sign up for one of those
Summer Family Night electives. Or you can do it online. You can just click the link there and
you'll be able to sign up for whichever one you'd like to be a part of. I think you'll find it to be an
inspiring time this summer as we just grow more in our discipleship with Jesus Christ.
Let's pray together.
[PRAYER] Heavenly Father, I thank you for our opportunity to open your word now. We ask
that you would speak through your word and teach us. We pray that you would give us an
opportunity today to see ourselves in who we are and help us to understand more about what you
want for us. Lord, give us a vision for the next steps in our lives, for where you want us to go and
who you want us to become. So we now open your word and ask for you to speak through it. In
Jesus’ name we pray, amen.
I saw this note. I think you're going to find this interesting. I saw this note on Reddit (which is a
social media site) this week. Here's what someone says. I don't know if it's a man or a woman.
But here's what this person says: “I feel like I'm becoming a mean and bitter person. I don't want
to be. I want to be nice again. But sometimes I'm just so rude and I don't know what it is about
me that makes me react in the way I do to people. I don't like being like this. A lot of stuff has
happened to me in the past few months. A lot of stuff I don't think I deserved. But I don't know
why I'm being like this. And it makes me feel terrible. I don't know what to do.”
Oh I can identify with this person's feelings about this. She's struggling or he's struggling with
this whole concept of becoming mean. Sometimes I'm working with a family and a family will
say, “We have a child who's just mean. I don't know where this child gets this. Because my wife
and I, we're not mean. We're gentle, we’re gracious people. But our son just has this mean streak.
We don't know where he gets it.” I'm going to tell you where he gets it right now to remove the
mystery of this. It comes from what the Bible calls the sin nature. We all have a sin nature, which
is a propensity to move towards sin, to move towards selfishness, to move toward meanness.
And today we're going to see in our passage some guys that are just plain mean.
I want you to look at this story. I want you to get yourself into the story. Because I think when
we do, we end up coming away with some applications that we could have in our own lives
because we do not want to become mean people. The solution for the sin nature is not more
willpower. The solution for the sin nature is the saving blood of Jesus Christ, the gospel that
comes in to rescue us, to save us from our sin.
When Jesus Christ died on the cross, He saved us from the penalty of sin. We still have the
presence of sin that exists in our world. It's the power of sin that we wrestle with in our lives. If
you're not a believer, then maybe you have willpower that can help you be kind or gentle or
something. But when you're a believer, you have so many more opportunities to trust in God's
power, the Spirit's power to come in and help us not be carnal as the word describes this
worldliness. Not to be carnal, but to be spiritual. And when we allow ourselves to be spiritual,
then God takes over in our lives and so we're able to deal with some of that meanness that takes
place. In fact, if you look at the fruit of the Spirit, there's several of them that can help us –
patience and kindness and gentleness and self-control. All of those things are fruit of the Spirit at
work in our lives. God, give me more of that. I don't want to become a mean person. If you see
rudeness or meanness or yelling coming out of you, then you want to say I need…well, I need
Nehemiah 4.
Let's look at this passage and see what happens in this passage. Notice the meanness that takes
place right in the beginning. Would you stand with me please, as we just read the first five verses
of Nehemiah 4.
Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged
(two words for anger there), and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his
brothers and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for
themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of
the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he
said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!”
Without any interlude, Nehemiah just breaks into prayer. Hear, O our God, for we are despised.
Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they
are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they
have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. It almost sounds like Nehemiah’s
prayer is kind of mean, isn't it?
Well let's talk about this. Go ahead and have a seat. We'll try to look at this for just a moment.
Let's go back to the first part of the passage. I want you to see there are two Hebrew words used
for anger. The first one in particular I'm interested in. It's the word charah. You can spell it in
your Bible. If you're taking notes in your notebook, circle that word anger and type charah. C-HA-R-A-H. It's pronounced charah. Anger. It's an anger with intent to harm is what it is. Now a
lot of anger is that way and when it starts to come out there's this intent to get revenge, to harm
someone who's bothered you, irritated you, hurt you in some way.
It's the same word that's used of Saul when he saw that David's popularity was growing and the
Bible says he was angry, charah, inside. This is the same word that used of Moses when he
comes down from the mountain and sees the people worshipping the golden calf. He takes the
tablets and in anger (he was angry) he threw them down. Charah. This is the same word that's
used of Cain when he was angry with his brother and struck him and he died. This is charah.
This is the same word charah that happens in families. When someone yells at someone else, or
someone who uses sarcasm, is mean inside of a family. This is the same charah that's used in the
neighborhood when someone is mean, or when someone at work is just mean and angry. This is
the word charah. Charah is the word here. I don't want to become that way. I don't want to
become Sanballat or Tobiah, as these guys did. And notice he jeered at the Jews. What comes
out of his mouth is, as Jesus told us, it's out of the mouth that the heart speaks.
Notice verse 2 it says – He said in the presence of his brothers. He had an audience. When
people have an audience, they sometimes like to speak out their negativity in their critical
attitude and their angry responses so that everybody else can hear it. They believe they're
justified because usually they're right. Somebody has hurt them. But that's not justification to be
mean. I think this is his Facebook here and in the presence of his brothers and of the army of
Samaria, he starts making these jeering comments. And then when he does, then you know how
this happens. You start criticizing somebody and being angry with somebody, then what
happens? Somebody else steps in and says, “You’re right. Those people are terrible people.”
That's the Tobiah standing next to him, who was also jeering the Jewish people.
I'm just amazed that there's no introduction here that Nehemiah went away and called a meeting
and had a prayer meeting. It doesn't say Nehemiah went away and kneeled down and prayed. It
just says in the moment he calls out to God and he says, “Oh my God, I need your help right now
in this moment.” I think this is one of Nehemiah’s solutions to not becoming an angry person
himself, not becoming one of these people that becomes mean and critical and hostile. Because
he's able to offload this to the Lord. If you look at his prayer it does look a little bit mean, I
would suggest. Because I think we all have this sense inside of us that we feel like being mean.
But what we do is we need to go to the Lord and say, “God, I want to give this to you.” Why do
we do that? Because God has created our hearts this big. And it's not big enough to hold the
personal injustice that we experience. We need to offload it. We need to turn it over to the Lord.
That's what Nehemiah is doing. It’s just one of the solutions that we're going to see in this
passage.
So what I want to do today is I want us to look at how do you live when you've got mean people
around who are doing things that are mean or critical? How do you live in that situation? I know
some of this is very close to your life. Maybe you're a young person and you live in a home
where parents yell. That's not the right thing to do. How are you going to respond so you don't
also become a mean person? You are in danger of becoming more mean if you live with mean
people, so you need a plan. Nehemiah has a plan. God's going to give them a plan. Watch what
happens in this passage as we go forward.
Verse 6. So we built the wall. Isn’t that interesting. We can go back and do the work that God has
called us to do to grow in our lives, to be the husbands and wives that we should be, to be the
children we should be, to be the employees and neighbors that we should be. We're going to go
back in and do the work. We're going to focus on what we need to do instead of focusing on all
the stuff that's all around. You see what happens is inside of our hearts there's a blender that gets
stirred up with anger or discouragement or fear in our lives. It just starts to rob us of our ability
to do what we need to do. I really like this. They focused on what they needed to do. Great
statement.
And all the wall was joined together to half its height. In other words, now the wall is halfway
done. They've got another half to go. I'm just thinking of football. There's a half done and
another half to go. And notice how they got the half done. The first half notice I underlined it
there. They had a mind. For the people had a mind to work. Circle the word mind there. Draw a
line across and put the word heart. Because that's really what the word is. It's the word lav. It's
the heart. They had a heart to work. They put their heart into it. Instead of having their heart
churned up by the blender of anger and sadness and fear, they've got their heart committed to
doing what's right. I'm just going to focus on the right thing. I'm not going to get my heart all
churned up.
When I think about football and I think about the halftime locker room speech that must take
place. I always wonder, what is the coach going to say this time? When you see a team that's
losing and they've got to go in there, what does the coach say? I think the coach must say
something like, “Look, guys, they're making us play their game. Let's not play their game. Let's
play your game. You know you’re winners. Let's go out there and play the game that you were
designed to play. You can win this game. Let's go out and do it. I think that's the kind of halftime
speech. We're going to see some words that Nehemiah is going to use here to help us with the
halftime speech.
But I think sometimes when we start to see the rudeness in our lives, we start to see us starting to
be angry or getting revenge in some form or another, we probably need a halftime speech. We
need to come to the Lord and say, “Lord, I need your help here. I'm starting to play the world's
game. I'm not playing the game the way you designed for me to play it.” And so we pull back. I
probably need to do that every day. We probably need to come to the Lord every day and open
up His word and say, “Lord, I want to hear your halftime speech for me today,” so we can stay
on track and not develop the Sanballat or the Tobiah inside of our hearts.
You’ve got to know though if you're having a halftime speech, the enemy's also having a
halftime speech over there. That's what we read in verse 7. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and
the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of
Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very
charah, angry. And they all had their halftime speech. And they all plotted together to come and
fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it.
You’ve got to realize that we are fighting a battle. Young people, I want you to understand
something that is really important. Because sometimes young people believe that the world is a
playground designed to make us happy. And really the world is a battleground where we need to
do some work with the Lord and allow Him to fight for us. And in the midst of that when we
recognize the world's a battlefield, then we can experience the joy and the peace and the love that
God wants for us. But there's this battleground mentality we must understand.
There's a lot of young people who are in their lives are having fun and they come to that
realization that life isn't all that fun sometimes. And then they are discouraged or despondent or
even engage in self harm because life isn't the way they thought it would be. One of the signs of
maturity is to move from this sense of the world being this playground to a battleground. And
that's what we see. One of the things that can get you sidetracked is emotions. Emotions are
basically good, but sometimes our emotions get us in the way of ourselves. And so now we can't
really do what God wants us to do.
I just think about Peter in the New Testament. The young girl comes to him and says, “Aren't
you one of the disciples?” But his fear caused him to step out of his discipleship role, out of what
he needed to be doing and to lie and do the wrong thing. I'm sure that had a mark on Peters life.
I'm sure that's why he wrote in 1 Peter 5:8 this idea of the battleground mentality. He says – Be
sober minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking
someone to devour. And Satan wants to use emotions that get off track, to distract us from the
work that He wants us to do. That's why in Ephesians it says – Do not let the sun go down on
your anger, and do not give the devil a foothold. Wow. The enemy's prowling around. He wants
us to become mean and ugly people.
Let's go on and see what else Nehemiah does. Isn’t that an interesting statement in verse 9? And
we prayed to our God and set a guard. There are actually three things that are kind of balanced
in this passage. One, they prayed. Two, they did the work. And three, they set a guard. They set
up the guard that would be a protection against them day and night.
We must set up these guards in our lives that protect us from the enemy trying to get us. You'll
know you're in danger when you start to see the symptoms. When you start being rude or giving
that snap kind of a response to someone. Uh oh, I need to get my protection back on track here
because I'm moving in the wrong direction.
Now starting in verse 10, we're going to see the people of Judah start to get discouraged, which I
can imagine. I mean, if you live with people who yell, if you live with people who are critical
and mean and negative, then it's discouraging to live in that environment. I want you to see what
happens to them. First, we have to look at the discouragement and then we're going to see how
they come out of that. Because we need this in our life. We don't want to become mean people.
But we have to work in places where there are mean people. We drive on roads where there are
mean people. How are we going to prevent ourselves from becoming mean? Listen to the
discouragement in verse 10.
In Judah… Judah is where all the people are working. In Judah it was said three things that are
true. I want to point out that. They’re all true things. But sometimes when you focus on true
negative things, they make you discouraged. “The strength of those who bear the burdens is
failing. We’ve been working at this a long time. This is hard work.” Do you ever have someone
say that to you? “Oh I’m just so tired. I don’t think I can keep doing this.” That’s what they’re
saying.
Number two: “There is too much rubble.” And there is a lot of rubble. Sometimes in order to
build, you need to clean out first. And sometimes in our lives, we come to those places where we
say, “There is just too much rubble in my schedule. I need to clean out some of it. There's just
too much rubble in my house; I need to get rid of some of that stuff,” so that God can do some
work. Sometimes it's the distraction of busyness that prevents God from being able to work in
our lives. That's the second thing that he says.
And thirdly, “by ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.” It’s a true statement. God is
going to come and help them and support them. But when we start focusing on the negative,
even though the things are true, discouragement can come into our lives.
But here's what's really odd. These people are discouraged, and they're starting to quote the
enemy now. Look at that. Do you see that? This a quote about the enemy. They're quoting the
enemy. When you start quoting the enemy, you're in trouble. We should be quoting scriptures.
We should be quoting what God has for us. Notice this. And our enemies said, “They will not
know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.”
Then we got the other people, they're not the enemies, they're the Jews. Notice what they're
going to say. So here's what discouragement does. It gets us focused on the stuff we shouldn't be
focusing on. We need to focus in a different direction, which we're going to see in a moment. But
notice what it says in verse 12. At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all
directions and said to us ten times… Do you think the ten times is an exaggeration? Because
when you’re discouraged, you tend to exaggerate the bad or the negativity. Or maybe it really
was ten times. Some of you live in homes where it’s more than ten and you’re putting up with it
over and over and over again. In neighborhoods or at work. It’s more than ten times. “You must
return to us,” they’re saying. In other words, stop the work. This isn't worth it. You're not going
to be able to do this.
Well notice what Nehemiah does, because I think we need this in our lives. He says in verse 13 –
So in the lowest parts, the most vulnerable places he’s going to set this guard up, he’s going to
set up the protection. Where is your most vulnerable place? Maybe your most vulnerable place is
when you're tired. Maybe your most vulnerable place is at night. Maybe your most vulnerable
place is when you're alone or you're alone on the internet. Where's your most vulnerable place?
That's the lowest parts.
So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their
clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. They got some protection in the lowest
places. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the
people…and now we’re going to have what I consider the halftime speech of Nehemiah to these
people to encourage them to go out and continue fighting the battle of life.
Notice what he says first of all. He says – “Do not be afraid of them.” I think that's a really good
idea. Because sometimes we're afraid of people and it starts to affect the way we live. Do not be
afraid of them, number one.
Then two it says – “Remember the Lord.” Because here's what happens. Okay. We got all these
things going on in the flashcards of life start to come in front of our face. Oh, the work is too
much for us. We can't do this by ourselves. Oh, there's too much rubble in our lives. Oh, these
guys are mean and they're saying all kinds of bad things. And so these flashcards come in front
of our face. Notice it doesn't say learn about the Lord. Do you see that in the passage? It doesn’t
say learn about the Lord. It says remember the Lord. The things you already know about the
Lord, take the flashcards from back there that you forgot about, bring them in front of your face.
Remember the Lord. That's what he's saying. Remember the Lord. He's the one who's going to
fight for you. He's going to say those exact words our God will fight for us in a minute.
Remember the Lord, bring him to the front. So that's what you're looking at.
What are you going to look at about Lord? It says right there in the passage. “Remember the
Lord who is great and awesome.” And this isn't just about you. He says – “and fight for your
brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.” Whenever you are tempted to
do the wrong thing, you've got to remember that there are other people watching you. When
you're so tired that you say, “Oh man, we were up so late at night, but no, we're going to church
in the morning,” and you get up and go to church, you're making a statement for your children
who are watching you. When you're being irritated or attacked or annoyed by someone and you
respond in a godly way, there are other people watching. Fight the battle not for yourself only,
but you're fighting the battle for those who are close to you. You're fighting the battle for your
homes. That's what he's saying. Your sons and your daughters, your brothers, your wives. Fight
the battle for other people. Other people are watching you no matter what you're doing. And so
remember is what he's saying.
Verse 15 – When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their
plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. We’re back to doing the work we need to do
because that’s our focus. There’s some people that are not doing the work because they're so
afraid of the other things, they have to work on so much other stuff. God has given you a mission
in life. He's given your family a mission in life. What is it? How are we going to work that
mission? So they got back and they started working on the wall, each to his own work.
Now picking up on verse 16, you're going to see the word half again. And I'm thinking here's a
very important principle we must remember. This kind of half and half (that's what it's going to
say here) gives the impression of balance. We've got to have a balance probably between these
three different things. This protecting, this doing the work, this praying to the Lord. We need to
have a balance between all three of those things.
Notice it says – From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the
spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. It's interesting here that they're changing the way they
operate. For the first half of building the wall, they really didn't need to have this strategy. But
now they're in the halftime and they're saying, “Well, you know what, what we're doing, I see
that we're have some problems here. We're going to change the way we operate.” This is why I
think we need to go into the presence of God regularly. And we say, “God, am I doing the right
thing? I'm starting to see some rudeness come out of me. I'm starting to see some meanness
appear in my life. Lord, show me how I can change the plan here. Show me how I can be more
like you. Show me what I need to do.” We need to balance the protection and the working on the
wall. That's what he says.
And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those
who carried burdens… Notice this. Those who carried burdens. Just imagine they're carrying
bricks, they're carrying mortar. These are the people carrying the weight, just like you have your
burdens, you're carrying them, they're going to change the way they carry their burdens in order
to meet the challenges that they have in life. Probably we need to do the same thing. We need to
change the way we carry our burdens in order to meet the challenges that are attacking us in the
course of our lives.
Notice: Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way (in other words, this is they
changed the way they work) that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon
with the other. A sword in one hand, a trowel in the other. I use those words because Charles
Spurgeon, a great preacher in London in the 1800s, had a lot of good sermons, and he sent them
out as newsletters. He called his newsletter from this passage The Sword and the Trowel because
it's so important in our lives. We must have the sword and the trowel.
Verse 18 – and each of the builders… This is a great final kind of comment of ways that they're
able to protect themselves without getting sucked into becoming like the Tobiah and the
Sanballat. What do they do? This is the last of the things. And each of the builders had his sword
strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said
to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, “The work is great and widely
spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. It reminds me of GraceWay.
We’ve got some down in Bordentown, some up in Flemington, some other people over in
Pennington. We’ve got people separated on the wall, working on the wall individually, all doing
what we need to do. We're living the Christian life, we're doing we're supposed to do. We're
trying to build the wall and in our particular area, just like them. But they're saying we're all far
from each other. We're separated.
So what? Verse 20 – “In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there.
Our God will fight for us.” Isn't that interesting? Do you think God would fight for them when
they're all separated? I think so. But he's saying all come together and when you come together,
God will fight for you. Also, it just reminds me that there's some times when we come together
that God can do something that He doesn't do when we're all spread apart. And so when we come
together, there's a way in which God fights for us and there's a beauty about that coming
together. God does something. I think this is why Jesus said – Where two or three are gathered
in my name, there I am in the midst of them. Do you think God is present when one person is by
himself? Well of course! God is present everywhere. What’s he saying in that verse? There's
something special that happens when two or three come together. I’m present in the midst of
them. There's something that happens when the rallying cry goes and we gather together to
[garbled] of God. God does something very real and powerful in our lives.
Let me continue on in the rest of the verses here as we finish this up. So we labored at the work,
and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to
the people at that time (kind of an interesting thing he’s going to tell them here), “Let every man
and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and
may labor by day.” So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who
followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand. We never
washed our clothes. You know, there's some times our priorities need to be set so straight, other
good things we put aside for a bit. That's what's happening in this passage. They’re focusing on
what God wants them to do. They're able to build the wall.
I need this in my life, because there are times when I may become a little bit rude or annoyed,
and I don't want to do that. I want to focus on what God has for me. What a beautiful passage
that pulls all this together. Because I'm sure that you, as many of us do, must live in a place
where there are irritating people. And you don't want to become like them. You want to be
different. You want to be able to trust the Lord.
Sometimes when I'm working with a young person whose parents are getting in divorce, or
there's bad things happening in a home with people yelling at each other, I'll say, “You know,
God must have something very special planned for you. He wants you to keep a soft heart. He
wants you to have a gentleness inside of you that you can learn in the midst of all of this other
junk that's going around. God can do something special to strengthen you in your inner being.
You don't have to be like those people that around, but you can trust the Lord and allow Him to
do a work in your heart that is amazing and powerful and beautiful.” I believe that's what God
wants us all to do in our lives.
Would you stand with me and let's pray together.
[PRAYER] Father, we do need your power just to live with the lives that we’re involved in it. It's
just hard. It's just a struggle sometimes. And Lord, we know that we're Christians and we have
access to this power that you offer us. But sometimes we get distracted by our own emotions. So
I ask that you would speak to each of us. Show us how to be more loving, Father. We want to be
more loving in a world that so much needs your love. Lord, show us how to live our lives. Give
us more power to do what we need to do to work on the walls of our lives and to bless other
people. Lord, we need that. We want to serve you with all of our heart, with all of our mind, with
all of our strength. We want to do all of that in our hearts and lives. Lord, we ask for you to do
that deeper work in us. And all God's people said, amen.
