Pastor Mike comes up and preaches I'm gonna read Nehemiah 6 for us and then we're gonna pray and I think I'm actually gonna read all of it this time just to see if I can do good with the names but we're gonna read this portion of scripture so if you have your Bibles follow along Nehemiah chapter 6 if you don't there's a Bible in front of you and if you don't have a Bible that's our gift to you but you can open them up to Old Testament Nehemiah chapter 6 Beginning in verse one it says, now when Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it, although up to that time I had not set up the doors and the gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent to me saying, come and let us meet together at Hakerphareim in the plain of Ono. but they intended to do me harm. And I sent messengers to them saying, I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave and come down to you? And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner. In the same way, Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand. And it was written, it is reported among the nations, and Geshem also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. That is why you're rebuilding the wall. And according to these reports, you wish to become their king. And you have also set up prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem. There is a king in Judah, and now the king will hear of these reports. So now come and let us take counsel together. Then I sent to him, saying, No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind. For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hands will drop from the work and it will not be done. But now, O God, strengthen my hands. Now when I went into the house of Shemaiah, the son of Deliah, son of Mehetabel, who is confined to his home, he said, let us meet together in the house of God within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple, for they are coming to kill you. They are coming to kill you by night. But I said, should such a man as I run away? And what man such as I could go into the temple and live? I will not go in. And I understood and saw that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. For this purpose he was hired, that I should be afraid and act in this way and sin, and so they could give me a bad name in order to taunt me. Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, oh my God. According to these things that they did, and also the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid. So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul in 52 days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. Moreover, in those days the nobles of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah, and Tobiah's letters came to them. For many in Judah were bound by oath to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shekiniah, the son of Arah. And his son Jehohanan had taken the daughter of Meshulam, the son of Berechiah, as his wife. Also they spoke of his good deeds in my presence, and reported my words to him. And Tobiah sent letters to make me afraid. Let's pray. Father, we're so thankful for the opportunity to study your word. And as we come to this portion of scripture in Nehemiah chapter 6, I pray that you would speak through your servant, Mike, right to our hearts. God, you know what each one of us needs to hear. We need to hear from you. And so may your spirit wreck us and destroy us and change us and encourage us and convict us and challenge us and comfort us. May we leave this place more like your son, Jesus, excited to honor you, excited to serve you, we pray. God, give Mike the strength to proclaim your words and not his own. We love you, we praise you, and we're excited to hear what you have to say to us tonight. And it's only because of your son, Jesus, that we pray these things. Amen. Good evening. I don't use the pulpit because I saw Pastor Chris lose his hand twice on that thing. So I'm not trusting that bad boy. So we're going to be in Nehemiah 6 today. And I was talking to someone this morning, like, why don't you ever give us a little update when you're in the evening service about how your church is doing? So for those of you who don't know me, I don't typically come to church here. But I grew up in this church and love this church very much. And I'm actually pastoring on the other side of town at a church called Tree of Life Fellowship. We meet in Ellington Hall, which is right behind Kmart. And God's really been blessing us, actually, in these past three, four weeks. We've had a new family come in pretty much every week, and three of the four families are sticking around with us. So it's been really exciting to see God just work and do some great things. We had a young man come in this It was the morning, I guess it was. I'm all messed up now. But he's really excited about the church and getting plugged in and signed him up for the Easter Egg Hunt already. So I'll be talking to many of you afterwards, too, about that. So let's get into Nehemiah 6 here today. I usually plan out a preaching calendar of where I'm going for, I don't know, six months, a year in advance. And as I look ahead to see where I'm going, I could always be like, oh boy, that week's going to be a tough one. That's going to be a tough one. I'm going to go through it because I've seen God kind of put you through the rigors before you're preaching. And you kind of start going through what you're going to be preaching on so you don't just come in and be like, oh, I have no idea what's going on here. Um, when I saw this chapter, I'm like, boy, that's kind of depressing chapter. All right, let's, let's get into it. It should be an interesting week. And it has been, it's been a busy week, a kind of difficult week. And, um, so I hope you guys have had a difficult week too, just to get ready for this. Right. Okay. Hope you guys are really downcast and, uh, and ready to go here. Getting beat up. And you, anyone really cheery, excited. Great. I'll fix that for you in just a second here. Don't worry about that. All right. Just give me a moment. So Nehemiah 6, we're going to get started here. and that there were no breaches left in it. Although, up to that point, I had not set up the doors and the gates." I mean, right off, we have opposition, right? I mean, verse 1, hey, we're going right at it here. And you can see throughout Nehemiah, if you haven't been here or missed a couple weeks or just been sleeping, that happens, I understand. It's been a long walk for Nehemiah. It's been a difficult, difficult situation. It seems like opposition has just been coming in again and again and again. And Nehemiah was a cupbearer to a king. And Nehemiah was sent to go to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall that had been torn down. And for 140 years plus, the wall has just been destroyed. And Nehemiah was sent to go do this. And basically God was moving this entire time The entire time God is moving, I mean, he overturned foreign policy that had been set up for about 13 years. He got the king to foot the entire bill. It was this amazing situation where in chapter one, all of a sudden God is just answering and moving and Nehemiah heads on out. In chapter two, boom. Opposition, right there. Opposition's like waiting at Jerusalem, hey, how you doing? I'm opposition. It's like, you know, you ever seen those name tags? Hi, my name's Mike. Well, hi, my name's difficulty. All right? I'm going to be here the entire walk. I'm gonna be here the whole time for you, buddy. Don't worry, we'll be right here." And so these guys have been following Nehemiah along, just giving him, just chasing after him, looking for him to fail, looking for him to stumble, looking to trip him up in some way or another. And so we get to chapter six and it's no different. These guys are just waiting for him. Just waiting to take him down. And they brought friends. Like how encouraging is that? You know, it's like, all right, boy, we got three guys that really don't like us. And now they brought all their friends. Great. They sent out a Facebook notice, said, hey, meet at the wall. We're going to come after these guys. The rest of our enemies. So they brought everyone out. And Nehemiah had finished the wall. It says he finished the wall except for the gates, and that's basically just the doors. They're waiting to hang the doors back on there to keep the people out. It's done. It's done. And I find it interesting in chapter six here, we're going to see that the wall is complete. And so many times we look at Nehemiah, it's like, oh, it's all about a wall, right? It's all about building a wall. Well, what's going on for the rest of the book? And we're going to look at that. We're going to start looking into that just a bit here. Verse 2. I've actually been in the plane of Oh No. I went to school in Wyoming, and it's out in the plains. And when I got there, I said, Oh No. This is not good. It's like an hour from the nearest McDonald's. It was in the middle of nowhere. I literally pulled in and went, Oh No. I was in shorts, and it was snowing. But I think it's a different Oh No. I could be wrong about that. But these guys are setting him up. They're saying, Hey, why don't you come meet over here? They don't have, they don't say what their intention is. It's almost like friendly. Hey, why don't you come on out? We'll meet in this plane. We'll shake hands. We'll be buddy, buddy. We'll, we'll resolve some things. But Nehemiah goes, man, you guys were attending this for harm. You guys were coming to set me up. Verse three, and I sent messengers to say to them, who would like that job? Hey, I want you to go and give them this message. I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you? That's great advice right there. That is some great advice. You're doing God's work, you're working, diligently and all of a sudden someone says, Hey man, let's get together. I'm going to plan to do you harm. Hey, sorry man, I'm busy. I can't do it. Sorry. And that's kind of my week's been very busy. Uh, really busy. I'm, I'm pastoring a church. I have counseling meetings going on. I just got a text from a guy whose wife is leaving him this week. Uh, I'm, This is the third sermon I'm preaching. I teach a class. I'm in charge of a community group. I'm training elders. We're part of the Southern Baptist Convention. The guy that's above me actually came to me and said, you know what? We're not sure how your church was dead about a year and a half ago, and now you have about 45, 50 people coming. You know, there's a dead church that's on the other side of town. Can you come and merge with them? So we're trying to work through that stuff. We're working on a building project. My workload is getting, like, crazy. I get this little, I don't know, pain right here sometimes. I think it's called stress. I'm doing an Easter egg hunt where about 5,000 people are going to be showing up. And thank you guys all for showing up here. You guys have all been volunteered. I'll take your name and number at the end. It just starts piling up, piling up. And I had someone come up to me and say, boy, you know what? I heard you really aren't that big into the glory of God. I'm like, what? What? What are you talking about? I'm on Jesus's team. That's my guy, you know. I love the glory of God. And the massive lesson I learned from this is, hey, just keep working, man. Like, hey, I got some leaders here in the church. You want to go talk to them about that? Go ahead. I'm not going to waste my time on this. I don't care. I don't think you're right. You're messed up. Go talk to someone else about that because I have to keep working. And that's good instruction for any of us. We should not get tangled up with these things, this inward fighting a lot of times, just to stop the work. I'm going to stop working right now so I can come over here. And what kind of excuse are they going to say to you? Boy, that guy's taking a bag full of groceries to a widow. Man, he didn't have the guts to meet me. How big of a jerk is that guy then, right? Boy, he was in an orphanage fixing a door. You know, he's doing God's work. He's meeting together some young men, training them up. So it'll be the next generation of leaders in the church. You need to have time for me. If you're about God's work, don't get tangled up in arguing. Don't get sidetracked. Because that's so easy to do. It's easy to come and defend your name and your honor, isn't it? Because what's the world all about then? It's all about you. It's all about what you're doing. It's all about your name. Someone wants to go and slam my name, is anyone going to remember me in 20 years? Probably not. I mean, I figure I got another 40 to 50 years left in life, depending on how I treat bacon. And it's, No one's going to remember me when I'm dead. I'm a nobody from nowhere. So what does it matter if someone slanders me right now? But whose name is valuable? Jesus Christ. God's name is valuable. God's name is the one that we should lift up. That's the one we should placard. That's the one that we should magnify. It's his name, not ours. So if we get tangled up in making a name for ourselves and defending our honor, who are you to say that I don't love the glory of God? I know I love the glory of God. I know I'm giving my life to that. I know that I'm dedicating every moment that I can to lift up the glory of God in my life, in my wife's life, in my children's lives, in my church life. I'm seeking after that all the time. What do I care if one person says that I don't? It's God that we should be concerned about, not me, not you. Is there some issue in your life that you're sitting there just fighting over, wrestling? You guys ever get in those fights, those things, and you're like, boy, I wish I would have said this afterwards? Don't worry about those things. Don't get focused on those things because this is deterring you from the work that needs to be done. This is a great, great lesson that Nehemiah is giving us on how to deal with these critics that are coming in. And that's really the first two-thirds of this chapter, just dealing with critics. And we've seen it throughout Nehemiah. Critics continue to come again and again and again. It seems like the bigger you get, the bigger target that's on your back, isn't it? And I saw this when Anna Nicole Smith died, and not like I'm a huge follower or anything like that, but it was all over the news. You know, it was, and everyone's making these jokes about her. Everyone's talking about how they don't know who the father is of her child. They're just ripping her again and again and again. It's like this woman has just died. Her son doesn't know who her dad is and we have people making fun of her constantly. Really? The woman just died. The woman just died and people are just ripping her apart. That's how it is. It seems like the bigger you get, What's happening? I'm a little guy from nowhere, and it's happening to me. You know, I've been criticized a lot. I've been criticized on what I wear. I'm like, hey, for a guy that's married to a woman and dresses himself, I do all right, I figure. You know, I feel like I'm not that bad. Am I? Okay, apparently I am. You know, I've been criticized for the music that I've played. Like, I don't even really play the guitar. I'm not as Ikea's dance. I mean, the only thing I really play is the radio, and that's about it. It's amazing how critics can come up in your life and just continue to rip you apart. Verse four. And they sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner. Even though someone's trying to bait you, don't fall for it. Even though someone's trying to come after you, don't fall for it. They're trying to, four times, hey, why don't you come meet up with us? No, sorry, can't, I'm about the Lord's work. Hey, come meet up with us. No, sorry, I'm busy on this wall. You've seen this thing, it's going up around Jerusalem. Hey, come meet with us, again and again and again. Don't fall for it. Stand firm, don't take the bait. In verse five, in the same way, Sanballat, in the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand." An open letter. We know what that is, right? Anyone can read it. This is public knowledge. This isn't a sealed letter. This is wide open for anyone to read. And it was written, is reported among the nations. And Geshem also says it, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. That is why you build the wall. And according to these reports, you wish to become their king. And you have set apart the prophets to proclaim concerning you in Jerusalem. There is a king in Judea. And now the king will hear of these reports. So now come, let us take counsel together. If I can't get you to come out here and fight with me in the plains of Ono, I'm gonna come back around here and I'm gonna slander you on the backside. That's what they're doing right now. They're coming and just smashing him apart. They're taking him apart. Saying you have some ulterior motive. You wanna be king. You want to come over and take control of this country. You want to be lifted up. Your motivation is messed up. In verse 8, Then I sent to them, saying, No such thing as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your own mind. For they all wanted to frighten us, thinking their hand will drop from the work and it will be done. But now, O Lord, strengthen my hand." They intended to scare them, tended to frighten them, to push them away. And Nehemiah once again cries out to God, strengthen my hand. He needs strength at this moment. He's doing this big impossible thing by building this massive wall, and he needs strength. Verse 10, now when I went up to the house of, and here's how you gotta read the Old Testament, you gotta read it fast and with confidence when you hit these names, okay? And so, it's always difficult. And so we have this guy who Nehemiah is now going to. He's feeling comfortable enough to go to this man in his home. He says, let's meet together in the house of God within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple for they are coming to kill you. They are coming to kill you by night. But I said, should such a man as I run away, and what man should I, and what man such as I could go into the temple and live? I will not go in. And I understood and saw that God had not sent him. But he had pronounced the prophecy against me because Tobiah and Sandoval had hired him. These guys couldn't get him to come out to the plain of Ono. Tobiah couldn't get him to come out and fight with him because he was saying that he wants to be king. So what they're doing is they're getting a hired hand. They're coming in and someone that Nehemiah has trusted, and they're bringing him out, telling him to go into the temple that these people are going to kill him. They're setting him up. And so that when he does come on in, he's going to get mocked, ridiculed, and he's going to not trust in God. He's just a hired hand. I've heard this happens even to this day, that there are big shot guys that just come after other people because they've been hired to. They get on some little hobby horse and they go after some other man just because they have the clout, the name, the books, the pulpit. They do this so that they could go after them. And for this purpose, he was hired that I should be afraid and act in this way and sin. And so they could give me a bad name in order to taunt me. Remember, Tobiah and Sandoval, oh my God, according to these things that they did, and also the prophet, Noida, and the rest of the prophets who wanted to make me afraid. Nehemiah, keeps his head down and keeps working. He just keeps moving along. He keeps pushing and pursuing. He doesn't get distracted. And guess what? Verse 15, what happens? So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elu in 52 days. He's actually able to complete it. For 140 plus years, 41 years, this wall has sat destroyed and people have continually come back trying to rebuild it again and again and again and again. These guys are rebuilding, trying to rebuild this wall and they keep on failing for 141 years. What does Nehemiah do? Comes in and rebuilds it in 52 days. 52 days. That's amazing. 52 days, start to finish, complete. Because he handled his critics properly. He handled them accordingly. Could you imagine these guys? Hey man, this Nehemiah guy that's coming into town, he's just going to be like the rest of them. We're going to detour him. We're going to get him sidetracked. We're going to get him off his mission. He's going to not complete this wall. Because we're going to do the work that we did with everyone else that came in and tried to rebuild this thing. And he couldn't get him sidetracked. And for 52 days, Nehemiah stayed the course. And he completed the job. He completed it. In verse 16, What an amazing thing. What an amazing thing. God is receiving glory because a wall is built. God's receiving glory because a wall was built. In 52 days, basically countries would have these temples and regions, and if your temple or region fell that your God was protecting, your God would be like, eh, he's not that great and powerful. He's not that great if he is going to allow his area to fall apart. And God is rebuilding Jerusalem for his honor and for his namesake. He's coming in and doing work and he is strengthening Nehemiah so that he could accomplish something great for God's sake. It's all about Jesus. We're all called to ministry, aren't we? If you believe in Jesus Christ, you're called to ministry. You're called to love Christ and love his people, to be faithful in his church. You're called to these things. And so many times we get sick and tired of ministry because of the opposition that's raised, don't we? I talk to tons of people. Boy, I don't want to be in ministry right now. You know why? I got burnt so many times. I'm just tired of it. I don't want to do it anymore. I'm sick and tired of this. I don't get the recognition that I should. I don't get the name, the praise that's due me. We should be involved in ministering in this church. If you know Jesus Christ, it's what you're called to do. But so often I think that we're given this list of things, hey, these are things that we should be doing, right? And we feel that we should do them, but we lose perspective on why we should do them. If we see who God is, it should send us into ministry. If we see a massive list and say, this is all the stuff that we need to do, We're not going to be motivated to do it. We're not going to be like Nehemiah who wants to go do it. We're going to see this list and be like, eh, I guess I'll take the nursery job and change some diapers. I guess I'll do that. Then you get burnt out after a couple months and you're like, oh, I did my work. I'm done. I'm retiring. That never should happen in the church of God. But our motivation should be that we have seen that Jesus Christ has come to earth to serve us, to die on a cross. And because of that, we should now be servants. We should be willing to be changing diapers in the name of Christ. There is no retirement. My church, the youth group that I inherited, the youngest person was in their 70s, okay, when I got there. So it made for an interesting time. And I kept on hearing again and again and again in my church, boy, we're looking for a young pastor to come on in and do all the work. And I said, whoa, wait, no, no, no. This is not Mike comes in and does all the work. This is Mike comes in and we all do the work. We're all going to the same goal. We're all going and moving in the same direction. We are all moving ahead in ministry. We're all picking up something and doing it to the best of our ability for the glory of God. And even to this day, I still get this opposition a little bit. Oh boy, I don't really want to do that because I've put my time in. You know how much time you put in? You keep going until you're put in the grave. You keep going until you're put in the grave. That's when you're done with ministry here on earth. You just keep going. And Nehemiah does this great job. He gives God the glory. He is constantly praising and magnifying God. And even though it's difficult, it's hard, it's tough, he just keeps going. Martin Luther, I love Martin Luther, he would get depressed sometimes because of all the work that had to be done. He would get depressed and upset and he had a great wife, I think a God-given wife that had to be given to Martin Luther and she was kind of a one-of-a-kind woman. And he would stay in bed for days at times just because he was so depressed and the work and the opposition. And one day his wife Katie came dressed in all black and comes walking in and doesn't say anything to Martin. And Martin looks at her and goes, well, who died? And she looks at Martin and goes, well, for the way that you've been acting, I would think that Jesus Christ himself has fell off the earth and died. And Martin kind of laughed about it and got the idea. Hey, you know what? Jesus Christ is still on his throne. I need to continue on in ministry. I need to continue to push on to pursue, even though it's difficult, even though I want to give up sometimes, even though it's just want to throw in the towel. It's hard. It's hard work. I think of Second Corinthians and at the end of chapter 11, you see Paul just saying, hey, here's what I go through. People don't like me in the city. People don't like me in the wilderness. I've been shipwrecked. I've been stoned. I've been persecuted. I've been hungry. I've been tired. I've been thirsty. I've been all these things. But he keeps on going. He just keeps on going. This is a huge lesson that we need to do in order to complete work in ministry, is that we need to continue to push on, even when it's hard, even when it's difficult, even when we don't want to. We don't cash it in. We don't retire. We look at God and we continue to walk. We continue to work. So let me pray. God, we thank you. We love you. God, I pray for the rest of this evening, Lord, as we continue to worship you, that we would just magnify you. Thank you and love you in Jesus' name. Amen. This message has been brought to you by the Santa Rosa Bible Church. Our purpose is to lift up the Lord by living out the word, loving one another, and leading others to Christ. Be sure to visit us on the web at www.srbible.org or come visit us in person at 4575 Badger Road, Santa Rosa, California 95409. You can also give us a call at 707-538-2385.