So we're back in Nehemiah chapter two. We hope to finish Nehemiah chapter two tonight. That is our goal, to finish Nehemiah chapter two. So I'm gonna begin reading in verse 12, and we wanna read down through verse 20, just to kind of remind us of the actual scriptural passage that we will be touching upon here tonight. We're talking about Nehemiah. This, of course, is after he has now returned to Jerusalem. I say returned, he has never been there before. But as a Jew, he is returning now to the home of his forefathers. You'll recall that is what he said to the king that he had a burden for the city where his fathers were buried. And the king has given him permission to go back. And we find, picking up in verse 12, that after he arose, verse 11 says, he was there three days, and then verse 12 says, I arose in the night, I and some few men with me. Neither told I any man what my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem. Neither was there any beast with me, save the beast that I rode upon. And I went out by night, by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, and to the dung-port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire. Then I went on to the gate of the fountain, and to the king's pool. But there was no place for the beast that was under me to pass. Then went I up in the night by the brook, and viewed the wall, and turned back, and entered by the gate of the valley, and so returned. And the rulers knew not whither I went, or what I did, neither had I as yet told it to the Jews, nor to the priests, nor to the nobles, nor to the rulers, nor to the rest that did the work. Then said I unto them, You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire? Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me, as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work. But when Sanballat the Horanite, 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? 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 rite, nor memorial. in Jerusalem. When you really put yourself in Nehemiah's shoes here, this is remarkable what we see him doing. Let me just quickly get us to where we need to be tonight. Even though we find circumstances sometimes, maybe oftentimes problematic, we can trust our God. we can trust that He will fulfill every one of His promises, and that trust should actually bring about hope within our hearts, that we can be filled with hope. And in fact, In terms of our ministry to one another, our hope, our zest, our passion for the things of God can help inspire some of our number who've grown weary in well-doing. Fact is, every one of us is not only susceptible to growing weary in well-doing, each one of us has had a season where we have grown weary in well-doing. And it is important then that in the spirit of Galatians 6, we can come along and hold up each other's arms, if you will. We can help each other and carry each other's burden. We can inspire one another so that we do not persist in that place of weariness. If we don't anticipate the realities, the danger is the realities of service, the danger is that we'll grow disillusion and that we will be tempted to quit. Again, not asking if you've ever been there, but I think that if you've been a Christian for any length of time, there probably have been seasons of your life where you've entertained or at least had thoughts of that nature somewhere bouncing around in your head. Nehemiah 2 provides helpful insight for us into the realities of service. It helps us to gain the right perspective and that's what we're looking for as we're looking at this book. Nehemiah's service wasn't always smooth, it wasn't rosy. He faced problems. We're going to see that as we get into chapter 3 and beyond. But he faced the problems. He moved through the problems. And God used him to great accomplishment. So what have we learned so far from the text? Number one, service involves waiting. Waiting is hard. What do we do while we wait? Well, we should pray. And we should allow God to help develop patience, which is a good thing. And God uses that period of waiting to help us gain that patience, which helps us to mature. And while we are waiting and while we are growing in patience, we should be planning. And the fact is that prayer and planning are not at odds with each other. I've said that before, I'm not trying to simply highlight the point. It is not wrong to plan. We may have to wait on God to open a door, but while we're waiting, we can be counting the cost and figuring out what we're going to need. Clearly, that's what Nehemiah has done. Then, not only does service involve waiting, it also involves working with people. And we've noted that there are three types of people that he is dealing with in this passage. Last week we saw him deal with the unbelieving king who had his life, Nehemiah's life, was in the king's hand. How did he move the king? Through persuasive words? No, through prayer. That's where the prayer comes in. It's amazing how God can soften the hearts of the most difficult people if we will simply spend some time praying that He would do so. Usually that's the last thing we do, isn't it? We might fuss and fume and, you know, metaphorically at least, shake our fist at the person that we're so upset with or whatever, when what we should be doing is praying for that person and praying if it is necessary that God move the heart of that person. That's what Nehemiah did and God did that very thing. That brings us to the second group tonight that Nehemiah is dealing with in this passage, and that is the demoralized believers. I mean, think about the people in Jerusalem for just a moment. The Jews believed in God and His promises. They knew it intellectually. Why are they there? Because, remember, this is 444 BC, so nearly a hundred years before in 338, Their forefathers left and came back to Jerusalem. They'd been there nearly 100 years, so we're now talking to their grandkids and their great-grandkids. But why are they there? Because there was a belief, there was a faith, there was a confidence in the promises of God. Amen, right? But what had happened over those 100 years? Had everything gone smoothly? No, just the opposite. In fact, they came back in 538 BC, and if you remember in 520, God raised up Haggai and Zechariah to challenge them and say, hey, what are you guys gonna remember what you really came back here to do? Which is to rebuild the temple. They'd been back there now some 16 to 18 years, they had not finished the job. Things didn't turn out the way they wished. Even in a closer timeline, 13 years before this, they had tried to rebuild the walls and they got shut down because their enemies spoke to the king and the king said, stop, don't do that anymore. So here this, if I can say it this way, this Johnny come lately comes along and he's talking to a group of people who've lost hope. They're not in a position where they're saying, God brought us back, this is wonderful. We read through this and for us, the timeline gets squashed, right? Because we're reading about these things as if everything is happening right immediately after the other and we forget they're long periods of time. And these are normal human people just like you and me. And they've grown disillusioned. They've lost hope. They don't have the zeal and the passion to rebuild those walls and rebuild Jerusalem because they tried it and they got shot down. So how will they respond to some stranger? We can say, well, Nehemiah is one of them. Nehemiah is one of them in the same sense as if I went back to West Virginia and went to the state capital and said, all right, guys, I want you to roll up your sleeves, because we're going to get busy and we're going to do this job. And they would look at me and say, who are you? I'm one of you. Now, in my case, I could say I was at least born in the state. Nehemiah was not born in Jerusalem. They didn't know who he was. He's just some guy that comes in here riding on a horse with all these soldiers and I'm sure, as we said last week, they're gossiping. They're talking among themselves, what is this guy here for? What is it that he wants to do? They're probably a little suspicious of him and I can only imagine that there would be some level of resistance to somebody coming in to try to do a job that they tried to do and were not able to complete. Some may not have seen the need. So some could be upset saying, we tried it, it didn't work. That never happens in churches, right? We tried it, it didn't work. Okay, didn't mean that it wasn't the right thing to try. Some, I imagine, when Nehemiah stood up and said, this is what we're gonna do, would have said, why? We've been here almost 100 years with these walls broken down. Why do we need to go to the trouble and put all that effort into rebuilding these walls? What's the point? What's it gonna gain us? Others would have said, wait a minute, you realize that there's just a small group of us. Even after almost 100 years, there's just a small group of us. And we're surrounded by people that don't like us and don't want us here. And the last time we tried to do this, they petitioned the king and the king shut us down. All you're gonna do is stir them up. We don't wanna stir them up, let's just leave everything the way it is. Because at least we can have our farms, our agriculture, we can have our animals, we can live our lives in relative peace. Oh, I know we're under their thumbs and they can, but the status quo is better than what could possibly happen. So let's not do anything crazy here. Do you think I'm out of bounds to suggest there could have been those three kinds of responses? That Nehemiah could have been expecting something like this? I think the fact, you could ask the question, and that's why I wanted to read it. Why did he get there, wait three days, as the passage says, never telling anybody why he was there? And then at night, Remember, they didn't have street lights. So at night, he takes this circuit around the city and observes the walls by torchlight. He and a small group. Why did he do it in a secretive, careful way? I think it's because he anticipated there would be some resistance. and he needed to get his P's and Q's together. He needed to not simply come with the plan that he had put together while he was praying at the king's winter palace. He needed now to take that plan. What do you have to do when you have a plan and now you actually are ready to put it into action? You need to kind of make sure that your plan matches the reality on the ground. That's what he's doing. He's saying, okay, I need to, I know what I need to do and I have a plan to do it, but will my plan work? And how do I need to maybe adjust my plan? Because when he goes to the people, he doesn't wanna go to the people and say, we can do this. I don't know how we're gonna do it, but we're gonna do it because probably we're not gonna get very far. He wants to come to the people and have a clearly thought out, articulated plan that will win them to his side and get them excited about what God had given him the opportunity to do. Remember we said in chapter one, who are the people that God uses? People who have a burden. He has a burden. But he's not running roughshod because he's got a burden with no idea. He has thought it through. He has prayed diligently. He has put the effort into the planning stage. He is now looking at his plans and making sure they fit the actual situation on the ground. It's one thing to plan when you're a thousand miles away. It's another thing to actually be there. So he's putting his plan together. Now he's going to talk to the people. So he spent three days doing his homework, thinking about how to present it. to overcome their objections. And then he called the Jewish leaders and the people together and he began stating the problem. Did you notice verse 17, what he said? He said unto them, You see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire. And come and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. He starts by stating the problem plainly. Look guys, you see how bad the situation is. They couldn't argue that, right? And then he identified himself. Did you see that? We, us. How long has he been there? Three days. So could he not have said, you know guys, I'm really disappointed in you. How could you have let this problem persist for all these years? You guys have been here, you were born here, you've been raised here, you know the problem better than I do. I mean, could he not have talked to them that way? And would we have been tempted to maybe talk to them that way? Talk down to them? To berate them? But he's trying to win them over. Remember we said one of the great things about the book of Nehemiah is it's a book on leadership. It really is a book that tells people how to be good leaders. And here is one of those lessons. You can beat people over the head and try to herd them like cattle, you know, shooting the guns. We've all seen those westerns, right? To get them to move where we want them to go. We can try to be the shepherd and the sheep follow the shepherd. He wants to win their hearts. He is identifying himself with them. He didn't blame them. He didn't say, it's your problem. He said, it's our problem. He didn't gloss over the fact there was a problem, but he identified himself with it. And then he appealed to a need. Did you notice, he said at the end of verse 17, that we be no more a reproach. What did he mean by that? I mean, what is the real issue with the walls of Jerusalem being broken down? Well, from a practical standpoint, they would be a laughing stock to all the other peoples of the day because what was the main first line of defense? A wall. You had a wall around your city. All of the ancient cities had walls around them. And we tend to judge how successful those cities were by how big their walls were, right? If your walls are broken down and they've been broken down for 150 years, well, that's not saying a whole lot about you, but even worse, who had chosen to put his name in Jerusalem? Almighty God. The only true God. So this is a reproach not simply because it makes the Jews look bad, but more importantly, it is a reproach upon the God of heaven. And so he is appealing to them saying, look, you see the problem. We have a problem. We need to fix it because this dishonors God. and we need to understand how important it is that we do that. It's not just that we're a joke to the other people who would laugh at us. Did the other people's laugh at them? Well, verse 10, when Sambalat the Horonite and Tobiah the Servant the Ammonite heard of it, it grieved them exceedingly that there was come a man to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. Were they happy to see him? No, they didn't know who he was, but they knew that he had come to do something to help the people in Israel, the Jews in Jerusalem. And so they're not happy that somebody is there to seek their welfare. Finally, he told them that God had already been favorable. So after he's already challenged them and challenged their thinking, he says, then I told them in verse 18, the hand of my God which was good upon me. And the king's words, he said, listen, God is at work here, folks. God is the one that gave me this opportunity. Let me tell you the story about how one day I was standing before the king. And I'm sure he recounted for them that whole episode we see earlier in this chapter. And he would have told them, I was sore afraid. Because you don't come into the presence of the king of Persia and look sad. Because you're supposed to be happy that you've even got the privilege of being in his presence. But he listened to me. And I had been praying. And God answered my prayer. And this is what I asked for. And look at the letters that he sent. I'm sure he showed them, here the king has said that I have the authority to do what is necessary to rebuild this city. And I can go and cut down trees. Remember we talked about last week or the week before that you can go back in the extant writings of the period, not biblical writings, and you'll find trees were so precious that even a man who was a forester who had been given the responsibility of looking out for the trees was killed by the king because they cut down a tree. Trees were precious. They were important. Here's a writ saying cut down what you need. I mean, it's almost like a blank check. Hard for us to imagine, it's just, you can have some trees. They were valuable. And this was in effect, the king saying, here's a blank check, go and rebuild that city. Go and fix the problem. And so he's saying, look at what God has done. And then he says, let us arise and build. And how did they respond? Let's arise and let's build. There was hope. There's an art in working with people to learn to motivate them to accomplish great things for God. Some leaders make a mistake because they become people-pleasing politicians. They want everybody's approval. They just wanna make people happy. And so they tell people what they wanna hear, not what they need to hear. There is a difference, right? Politicians, it's all about getting votes. So I gotta make promises to get your vote. But when it comes to being someone whose life is impactful on the lives of others, it's not about us tickling their ears. The New Testament says something about false prophets doing that, right? It's about speaking the truth. Now we should speak the truth and love Ephesians 4, but we're still to speak the truth. He is speaking to these folks, not speaking down to them or berating them because He loves them even though they're strangers to Him and He's a stranger to them. These are His people. He wants to encourage them and He wants to honor God by having the work be completed. So we don't wanna be people pleasers, but there are also those who err because they have no sensitivity or tact. See, that's the other extreme, isn't it? You can be too much about just making everybody happy and you ignore what sometimes has to be said, but the other side of it is you may say, this leader may say, well, I'm just speaking the truth. Yeah, but you're using it like a big hammer. And oftentimes someone with that attitude may think they're speaking the truth, they may be sincere, but could they be sincerely wrong? So both of those are extremes. People react to that leadership, but when people don't respond to that kind of leadership, then that kind of leader says they're rebellious, they shouldn't be here, we need to get rid of them, they hit them over the head. Nehemiah teaches us that we have to combine wisdom and tact with the plain truth. We don't deny the truth. There was a problem and it dishonored God. But he didn't have to come along and convince them that they had not been doing the job and hit them over the head. That would have been true. But it wouldn't have won them to the cause. What he needed to do was to get them to understand that there is a need and God is at work. God has opened the door. It's going to take some labor. Believe me, to do what they did in 52 days, they worked. I mean, there was a lot of sweat that they put into building those walls, but they did it because they've been challenged and they responded to the challenge because they had hope. Now, the third group here that I want to mention very quickly is the enemies. So he spoke to the king, he spoke to these disheartened believers, if you will, but then there are the enemies. And I read that in verses 19 and following. What's interesting here is Samballot is the governor of Samaria. Now what do we know about the Samaritans? The Samaritans are part Jew and part pagan. And they have a religion that basically has combined the two. Tobiah. Here's an interesting thing. Tobiah is a Jewish name. It means, Yah is good. It's a Jewish name. Why did he have a Jewish name? He ruled the Ammonites. Who were the Ammonites? Do you remember your ancient Hebrew history? The Ammonites and the Moabites, they had a father, Lot. These are the children of Lot. So they're cousins to the Jews, right? But you know, they were always the enemy of the Jews. I mean, they fought against David and Solomon and so on. But here you have a guy who actually has a Jewish name who's the head. We can't really say more than that. Some people wanna really make this a big flowery thing. I can't go any further than to simply say, was he a Jew? Or did he have Jewish heritage? He had a Jewish name. Maybe his mom and dad just liked the name. That happens, right? Or maybe he was from one of those families that had not been taken into captivity who had moved across the Jordan River into the area of the Ammonites. Then Geshem was the leader of the Arabs to the south. Today, when you talk about the people who live in that area, we use the term Arab, but the Arabs actually would encompass every other people group that have lived in that area over the course of centuries. Remember, this was 2,400 years ago, almost 2,500 years ago. They've sort of subsumed all the other people groups. So we don't talk about Ibumeans anymore or Ammonites or Moabites. We talk about Arabs, right? Jordanians, but Jordanians are what? Arabs. And even the other people that live there have some sort of Arab descent. But they're a mixture of all the other people groups. It's just that over the years, they have been lost. We might surmise, why have the Arabs as a name, why have they survived? I don't want to go down this road too far, but why has that name survived down through the centuries? Could it be because Islam was Arabic and the center, Mecca, is in Saudi Arabia? so they kind of conquered all the other peoples. And so even in Egypt, the Egyptians have Arab DNA, if you will. That's a whole other story. You don't need to get lost in that. But it's simply to acknowledge that these are the people that surrounded them. Clearly some were Samaritans, some were not. So some were cousins to the Jews, some were not. But they all opposed a fortified Jerusalem because it threatened their political power. That's what it boiled down to. It's not that they really cared about the Jews one way or another. They just didn't want the Jews to come and grow into a regional power because that would threaten them. And they didn't want that. So they didn't really care about the Jews. They didn't really care about the name of the Lord. They were very displeased. We see in verse 19, they laughed us to scorn and despised us and said, what is this thing that you do? Will you rebel against the king? Why is that an important phrase? 13 years before, what did they tell the king? They're going to rebel against you. And the king said, stop the work. Now they're saying, you guys really think you're going to do this? You're going to rebel against the king. We're going to tell on you. Now what was Nehemiah's response? He answered and said unto them, the king has given us letters of permission to do this. Is that what he said? Could he have said that? Would it have been true? But he didn't say that, did he? Who is he appealing to when he withstands the enemies? The God of heaven, He will prosper us. We, His servants, will arise and build." They didn't say we have the king's permission and the king has given us a blank check to do it. He could have done that and it would have been true. But he acknowledges by saying that it's not the king that's going to help us build this. It's the God of heaven who moved the heart of the king to give us those letters. It is God himself. And what are we going to do? We're gonna rise up and build. I just want you to notice this. I know I need to bring our lesson to a close tonight, but I just want you to notice. We need to arise and build. This is the will of God. Now we got to do the work. Are you with me? Doesn't this same principle hold true today? God has given us a call. We are to lift up His name. We may be surrounded by those who laugh us to scorn and threaten us. We're going to tell the king, we know what you're really trying to do here. But the appeal is not to a man. The appeal is to the God of heaven whose hand rules everything. God is the one who will prosper us. We're going to get busy about what He's called us to do. And then He makes this, I love the way this statement goes, you have no portion, no right, no memorial in Jerusalem. He's basically saying, get out of here. You don't have any place here. I don't care if you have Jewish lineage somewhere in your background. You aren't here to serve the one true God. They did not want their help. Why did the Jews turn down their help? Because they knew the reality of why they wanted to help. What would they have done if they actually could have helped? They would have sabotaged the work. They didn't want those walls to be built. If they were allowed to do anything at all, it would have been to basically cause it all to fail. He said, look, you guys, we don't need your help. We don't want your help. It won't honor God if we get your help. God's gonna help us do what needs to be done. 52 days later, less than two months, they did what had not been true of Jerusalem for 150 years, roughly. because God was in it. And here's the point. He acted courageously when he confronted the enemies. Now, he didn't go out to them. They were the ones that came to him and said, what do you think you're doing? Ha, ha, ha. But when they came to him to intimidate him, he said, the God of heaven will prosper us. We're gonna do what he called us to do. And if I could boil it down, I would simply say to us, that's the way we need to do it. Let me make this statement. Anytime God's people say, let us arise and build, the enemy will say, let us arise and stop them. I am so thrilled when I see what God is doing in this ministry. We've all seen it. We're all grateful for it. But folks, be aware. that as you and I rise up and build what God has called us to build, we're rising up to do what God has called us to do, the enemies are gonna rise up and say, we gotta stop it. Now, they finished the job because God was with them. And that's what you and I have to remember. It is God who will give us the strength, the ability, the wisdom, the knowledge. He is the one that will keep us going when we We begin to grow weary, but we minister to one another. We edify and build up one another. And together, sometimes you're pulling me along because I'm a little weak, and sometimes I'm helping to pull you along because you're a little weak, but together we're making progress for the Lord. And it is God who gets the glory because it is God who is doing the work. So, just a challenge for us. God has called us to serve Him. Here's a lesson in how we should look at that call. There actually is one more quick point. Maybe next week I'll just touch on it in passing as we get into Chapter 3. All right? Let's close in prayer. Father, I thank You for the opportunity that we have to study the life of Nehemiah, to look at the book of Nehemiah, to have this history of what actually transpired over 2,400 years ago, to be challenged by it, to realize that though we live in a different time with different circumstances, the reality is the same. You have called us to do a work. And it's a work that can only be done as you bless us and empower us to do it. And as we seek to do what you've called us to do, there will be enemies. Lord, help us to remember where our hope lies. Help us to remember in whom we trust. God, help us to be faithful in doing what you've called us to do. And Father, by your grace, as we arise and we build and we put our arm to the work, I pray, Father, that by Your grace You would accomplish through us Your good purposes. May it arise to Your glory, we pray in Jesus' name.