Nehemiah 4 is a pivotal chapter in the book, and it is a chapter with a pivotal message for God's people and certainly for this congregation. In this chapter, which is self-explanatory, we find that nothing makes the ungodly madder, angrier, than the prosperity of the work of God. You see that very clearly. They were wroth, filled with indignation. They mocked the Jews. It's very interesting to me they mock and saying, you know, this is such a little thing. A fox would knock down that stone wall. But still it was enough to get them worried. Get them angry. Something that is very easy to forget in church work. That is, that no matter what the appearances, and the appearances are not always as clearly drawn as they are here in Nehemiah 4, no matter what the appearances, the reality is that if we're doing the work of God, we are about a work which threatens the ungodly, especially those who are entrenched in positions of power, until Ezra and Nehemiah and Zerubbabel and these men, but especially until Nehemiah came. Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabians, the Ammonites, all the rest of them, they had the run of the place. These were men in power, men in rulership, men who were able to pursue their own agenda. And they did so with great success in their own eyes. so that Nehemiah's coming was a real threat to them. We have got to understand that there are forces at work both in society and in the church. They are at work day and night. And if we are setting about the work of God in a biblical fashion, we will be perceived as a threat to them. There's no way around that. ...controversy. I don't know anybody in his right mind would like it. We may want to avoid it as much as possible, but it is a reality. If we do God's will and do God's work, we're going to stir up a hornet's nest sooner or later. Now, in these opening verses, you have a description of the opposition. The more things change, the more they stay the same. The devil changes his face, but never his heart, if he has a heart, if I can use that language. He pursues the same aims, and he uses well-worn tactics. The first tactic here is really of discouragement. The task you're facing is hopeless. That's the very first thing. What do these feeble Jews Will they fortify themselves and sacrifice? Will they make an end in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish which are burned? When you look at it through carnal eyes, you know, it did look hopeless. It looked to be a hopeless task, what Nehemiah was saying about. It's easy for us to read this. If you've ever visited Jerusalem or ever looked at pictures of it, if you've seen the terrain around that place. If you just imagine those great walls in rubble, the gates all burned with fire. I mean, the place was a mess through and through. Total mess. It seemed impossible. What Nehemiah was coming, proposing, and saying was the will of God seemed a total absurdity. And so the devil would be attacking and saying, The task you're facing is hopeless. Jerusalem's day is over. The burning is final. The destruction is final. Oh, you may have a little encampment here and there, a tent pitched yonder, you may build a hut over there, but there's no future for Jerusalem. That was the message. That was the mockery, discouragement of the people of God. And on every hand, that is precisely the message that we are getting today. That is precisely the kind of discouragement that we're getting today. And again, I confess, looking at things on a human level, I would have to say, that's exactly how it appears. A little while ago, I never really bought into it because the terminology is misleading. And I don't think one person in a hundred who used it had the slightest clue in the world what they were talking about. But the jargon preachers were preaching about it and it was in everybody's lips was that we are in a postmodern age. As I say, I have a conviction that most people have no idea what constituted modernism. And therefore, they have no idea what constitutes postmodernism. And at the end of the day, as far as Christianity is concerned, there wasn't $0.02 worth of difference between them anyway. But now, what we're hearing not so much, or we're not hearing so much that it's the postmodern era. In philosophy, that is probably still true. But now it's the post-Christian era. This has been so in Europe for a long time. This is the post-Christian era. The day of Christianity, certainly Bible Christianity, is over. Now listen, it's not just the atheists saying that. It's not just the humanists saying that. That's the witness of every major denomination in Protestantism. The day of old-fashioned Bible-believing, Christ-exalting, gospel-preaching, soul-saving Christianity is over. You can't expect to reach modern scientific man with an old-fashioned message. That's over and done with. Oh, here and there. As I said, you'll have your little tent here and there. Here and there, you'll build a little hut. Here and there, you'll see something done. And you'll congratulate yourself on a little success. But as far as Jerusalem, as it were, is concerned, as far as Christianity as an edifice is concerned, its day is over. That's what we're told. And particularly, evangelical Christianity, it's a thing of the past. When you look at some of the evangelicals, it couldn't be passed far enough or fast enough when you look at what passes for evangelicalism. So, if you, in this age, are preaching an infallible Bible, an authoritative Bible, if you're preaching creation from the hand of God, If you're preaching sin in Adam, depravity and corruption of the human nature, if you're standing for the morality of God's Word, if you're calling for repentance, separation from sin unto Christ, if you're taking a stand for the exclusiveness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, one name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved, apart from whom there is neither spiritual life nor any escape from death and eternal hell." If you are preaching that, then you are a relic from the past. And as we see as we go down here, you are a relic that has to be destroyed. That is the message of Nehemiah 4. A relic that has to be destroyed. Because what we're preaching, and this is what lies behind all this, is the only threat to this diabolical program that is or has been put in place. The gospel is a threat to humanism, Romanism, every other ism, the gospel is a threat to it. Here it is then. You can't do this work, you're wasting your time. This day is over. Discouragement. The worst thing about it is, very often, Christians give up hope That's why prayer meetings are more empty than full. See, Christians do not believe anymore, for the most part, in the power of God. That's a sweeping statement. That's a damning statement. But it happens to be true. That's why you could hardly beat most Christians to a prayer meeting, because they don't expect to meet with God. They don't believe in the power of God. They have given up hope in the movings of God. In other words, they have bought in to the devil's lie. What you're doing is a hopeless failure from the start. That led to the second part of the mocking attack, which was If I may paraphrase verse 3, it says, even if that which they build, if a fox go up, he'll even break down their stone wall. What he's saying is your work's in vain. I mean, you think of what it is. You're putting every ounce of energy. You're putting your time into this. You're putting your energy into this. You're putting your money into this. You're putting all your eggs in this basket, this gospel basket, and your work is going to be in vain. The best you can do is some weak little thing. If a pet poodle went against it, it would knock it down. Now that's the opposition. Now what's the answer? The response in verse 4 through 6. Two-fold. Pray. Number 2. Work harder than ever. Those are the two things. Pray and work harder than ever. Now, it's not an either-or situation. We start with prayer. It's wonderful when you read through the book of Nehemiah just to see the interjections of prayer. Nehemiah, of all the books of the Bible, is a book that has much to teach us about prayer. When you go through this book, just see how this great leader of men, this strong man a warrior, a statesman, a politician. He was the whole thing. A reformer. Most of all, he was a man of prayer. And he got through to God. We have already noticed how he opens the book when he was working in the king's palace. He was already in prayer. In the moment of crisis, he could get through to God in prayer. And right throughout this book you find When the enemy's coming in like a flood against him, he begins to pray. Now, there's something there we've got to learn. If the world's against us, we have got to know better than theoretically that God is for us. We've got to know that. Nehemiah's coming and he's crying, Hear, O our God. Hear us. If God hears us, It doesn't matter what Sanballat and Tobiah may say. If God hears us, we're alright. But if we don't have the ear of God, we have nothing. That's why the prayer time in your life is so important. That's why Jesus said, you enter into your closet, you shut the door, you shut the world out, you shut the family out, you shut the business out. You shut everything out, you get alone with God. That's the daily duty of every Christian. Get alone with God. In your life, you must get through to God. That's the most important part of your life. You can't be good at anything if you're not getting through to God. Now, what's true of the individual is true of the church. The most important thing this church can do is get through to God. And as I've said, I fear more and more people are giving up on prayer when they have set before them some imagined standard of what it is to succeed in prayer. And if they feel of that standard, then they give up. No, when the opposition comes, you've got to pray all the more. Hear, are God. We are despised. He begins to pray that God will move against His enemies, that God will not let them hide their sin, that He will not let them cloak their wickedness, but that God Himself will move against them. Nehemiah, we'll see later, he took up arms not to go after them, Nehemiah was not depending on the arm of flesh. Nehemiah was depending on the arm of God. And he asked God to take a stand against them. You know, at the end of the day, if God be for us, who can be against us? If God moves, who's going to stop Him? All the atheists in the world can't stop God moving once God says, I'm going to move. I don't know what God's plan and purpose is for this generation of Americans. I cannot read the secret purpose of God, but I do know this, that God's people can get through to God, and God's people can get the power of God against their enemies. We can see God do things. There was a time in our church's history in Northern Ireland when there were strange things happening. You saw things that It happened once, you would say, well, that's a coincidence. It happens twice, you say, well, that's a stranger coincidence. But when you see it again and again and again, we were facing a time when our very existence was under threat. We had men of immense power. They had all the political clout. They owned the media. They owned the churches. They owned everything. They owned the police. I sat in court, listened to police officers, get up, take the oath to tell the truth, and swear what I knew from personal experience and sight to be an absolute and diabolical lie. I saw that. I heard that. I can remember when we were having rallies around the country, there was one particular detective. I can see him to this day. He used to wear a big, long coat, and he had this smirking look on his face wherever you turned, he was there. He was a plainclothes guy. He was in there and you would see him. We would warn our people against him because he was there when you get a great crowd of people, even if it was on private land, on a farmland, he would be in there and he'd be doing his best to stir up trouble, provoke people. And what he was trying to do was get under some hothead's skin so much that somebody would wail out and let him have a dig in the chin. And then that would be the excuse. Never happened, mind you, but you could see what he was trying to do. That was the least of what he did. Other officers doing the very same type of thing. One by one. You just saw them go down like nine pins. We never touched them. But God did. God did. There was a man who was Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Rich man, powerful man, a very, very proud man. I remember one night he got on television And he went way beyond making political points. He attacked the moderator of the free church as the demon doctor, the doctor from hell. As I listened to him, I remember saying at the time, that man's in dangerous ground. He's gone beyond attacking men. He got into the realm of attacking The work of God. His position was impregnable. Again, no man's hand was upon him. He was a keen huntsman. He got on his horse, and that horse was, as far as my memory goes, was a perfectly plain road just going up and through him. He hit the ground and was killed instantly. Gone. Is that just coincidence? No, sir. One after another, God dealt with his own enemies. I don't know what God will do in this day and generation. It's not for me to dictate to God, but it is for me to draw encouragement that God answers prayer. God will protect his work. God will sustain his cause. He's saying, pray. You don't need to get worried that Sam ballots against you. You know something? You need to get worried when Sam ballots for you. Don't get worried that that ungodly rascal is against us. Thank God he knows his enemies and he knows we're for God and we're not for him so Pray Now I don't want to labor the point but I want us to stop and think of it we're here to pray tonight It's not just to say prayers. It's not to preach God a wee sermon I mean how many times have I said this God doesn't need my instruction We're here to do business with God. Do you ever ask yourself after you've finished praying, what have I asked for? What have I prayed about? I mean, our praying is so nebulous at times, so infantile, that if God answered, we wouldn't even know He had answered, for we have no idea what we prayed. Sometimes we blether on with a plethora of words and we've asked for nothing. Listen, we're going to do anything for God. We're going to pray. Now, I would to God that I could tell you that every Christian in this church is going to see the necessity and going to be here at the prayer meeting. If I could affect that, I would do it. But long and hard experience tells me that in every church there is a nucleus of praying people. They're the ones who are going to carry the burden. And perhaps in the mind and will of God, kindness of the Lord, the blessing will spill over and bring the others on board. But I'm telling you here and now, as goes the prayer meeting of this church, So will go this church. You can destroy a prayer meeting very easily. Very, very difficult to do a work like Nehemiah's and rebuild it. That's what we're about. Pray. But don't only pray. Work. Work harder than ever. So we built the wall. I like that. They're yapping. They're opposing. They're mocking. They're cursing. They're planning and they're scheming. So what do we do? Throw up our hands in horror. No, so we built the wall. That's the answer. You know, around the world, where God's people are really in trouble, that's exactly what they're doing. Pastors are thrown into jail. Housewives are thrown into jail. I read just yesterday or today of two Christian women in Iran, picked up by the police, thrown into a prison that's known for its violent and vicious treatment of women prisoners. Message from one of them is, how sick she is, I'm dying. Do they care? No. What are the Christians doing? What are they doing? In the teeth of all the opposition, they're witnessing for Christ. They're building the wall. That's true around the world, in Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea, Iran, parts of Iraq. You take any of the Gulf states, any of the Islamic republics in what used to be the USSR, this is exactly what's happening. I've told you about a father and his daughter in Pakistan, lying in jail, can be put to death on a trumped up charge. So what are others doing? They're witnessing. They're seeking the bill. What are the Christians doing in Orissa province in India? Their homes have been burned. Their churches have been burned. Some have been murdered. Dozens have been killed. What are they doing? Still building the wall. Still building the wall. So we built. It's an amazing thing in church history. That when the fires of persecution get hot, God's people go to the work. It was Tertullian who made the statement that has been modified to come down to us. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. Tertullian said, the blood of the martyrs is seed. The blood of the martyrs is seed. Read the history again of the Scottish Covenanters. See what was against them. What they were asking God to do was impossible. I was just reading, he actually Before Covenanting history, I was reading again a little of the history of John Knox, what he came to Scotland to do. Total impossibility. Absolute impossibility. But God did it anyway. How was it done? They prayed. And they worked. I wonder, is there anywhere in America Now I'm not saying there's not, mind you, do not misunderstand, I'm just asking because I don't know it. But then I know so little of the country, I know so little of the people. But is there anywhere in America where there's a man or a body of men that the enemies of the gospel would have to quail before and say what Mary Queen of Scots said about John Knox. I fear the prayers of John Knox more than an army of 10,000 soldiers. That's power in prayer followed by devoted work. So we built the wall. The people had a mind to work. The people had a mind to work. The people wanted to work. The people's hearts were in the work. They weren't simply going through the motions. They weren't sitting like bumps on a log. They were actually mentally engaged in what they were doing. They loved the opportunity. They were excited to be in God's work. However impossible the task, however strong the opposition, they were excited to be in God's work. They had a mind to work. They had a mind to work. That raises a question. Do we? Do we have a mind to work? Not a mind to criticize somebody else's work. Any fool can have a tongue to criticize somebody else's work, but do we have a mind to work? Have we put our hand to the work? Have we put our heart into the work? Are we doing that? In what way are we doing it? How are we trying to reach the lost? Many people in the last 12 months, have we tried to get under the sound of the Gospel? Now, if every Christian sits back and says, well, I have asked God to bring, but I haven't asked anybody. Well, who's going to ask them? Who's going to ask them? Go and compel them to come in. One of Spurgeon's greatest sermons was on that subject, or that text. Compel them to come in. What compulsion have we tried? What efforts have been made? Oh, a sporadic little puny effort here and there. But listen, and I'm not trying to be critical. I'm simply saying we have got to get beyond words and we have got to get down to reality. Pray and work. Pray and work. Pray and work. That's the answer every time. There's no other answer. Money's not the answer. You could throw money at it all day and you'd not be one bit better off. Pray and work. The people had a mind to work. Let me talk to the young people here a minute. For I pin a lot of hopes on what God is going to be doing, is doing, and will continue to do and multiply to do among the young folk. I have great hopes for many of our young folk. And I'll be following with my prayers that God will make them mighty for Him. So let me say a word to them. You get tired listening to old geezers talk about the old days. And you know, I was once young. I still am young. Actually, I'm flying high tonight. There's a young woman, her husband's in my class, and She looked at me, and she made so bold as to ask, she heard my retiring, she said, how old are you? She said, you know, when you were talking, because I'm doing pastoral theology, and I illustrate from the churches I've been in, the situations, try to do all that sort of thing. She said, we were totaling up where you must be, and she wasn't very far off, mind you. And she said, but I just said to my husband, he can't be retiring. He's far too young to retire. He can't be that age. He doesn't look that age. Now, I didn't say, dear, have you had your prescription looked at recently? I'll be happy for her to be blind and think that. Unfortunately, my eyesight's pretty good. So when I look in the mirror, I'm sightful and honest. But I was once young. And it was always the mark of old people. Things were always better in the old days. I can remember my dad telling me when I was a child, oh, the weather was so different. It was so hot in the summers, and we didn't have all this rain. I remember it was so hot you could have fried an egg on the sidewalk. The footpath, as we called it. Well, let me tell you, my father told the truth. But he'd been reading fairy stories. Actually, I tried this in Northern Ireland. Talk to people. Go back, look back on you. Can you ever remember one bad summer? Can you ever remember one summer when you were washed out? No. No. But you can remember the great days at the beach. You can remember the sunny days. Now, you might have been able to count them in one hand. But those are what you remember. You see, age has this strange way of throwing a strange glow over the past. So you get fed up listening to the old people blabbering on about the past, how good it was. There's no such thing as the good old days. The old days were just as wicked and rotten. The good old days were not particularly good at all. But nonetheless, I can tell you, even in this congregation, the older folk can look back on times that we would love to see again. Dr. Barrett talked to me a little about this today between classes. When I came to Greenville, we didn't have a lot of people. Our budget wasn't a very big budget. When I look at it now, to be quite honest, I wonder ever I had the courage to come. And the people who called me wonder they had the stupidity to call me. But anyway, that's all past. But something happened. It started to happen in 1978. God helped in the preaching and souls were saved. When we people come to the prayer meeting to get saved. I remember preaching from Psalm 62 one night in 78. Power belongeth unto God. I have to be honest, I can remember very vividly. The preaching was very pathetic. But the praying was powerful. People prayed. People prayed with tears. Something began to happen. that formed the character of this church for years. It was a people who caught a vision. It was a Christ-centered, gospel-oriented vision. Separated unto the gospel. You know, there were people who hated us and mocked us and said all sorts of things because the women wore hats. Because we didn't do this or we didn't do... They mocked us for the prayer meetings we held. They mocked us for our Sabbath keeping. These were Christians even. Sometimes they lied about us. That's still going on to this day. But listen, we had a people who caught a vision. They had a burden. They had a belief. They had a commitment. God raised up some young men who had a burden and a commitment. And it wasn't, how much can we change this to make ourselves popular? It was really, we don't care how unpopular, just so long as we have the blessing of God. Listen, that's where I want you young people to be. I long before God for you. You'll catch the vision of what this work is all about. Building Jerusalem. Building the walls. Separation. Yes, being a remnant testimony. Being outside the camp. being counted the offscouring of all flesh, but knowing God, getting through to God, obtaining the blessing of God, walking with God, working for God, seeing God bless. That's what we want. That's what we need. Pray and work all the heart. I wonder, really, how many among us have a mind to the work. We read on tonight the opposition will be renewed. It's not going to go away. It will even be intensified. The conspiracy will arise so that mockery will lead to intimidation. Intimidation will lead to persecution. There's no doubt. There's no doubt. I've said this for years. So don't be in any doubt about it. If the Bible picture of the end times is true, and believe me, it's the only truth, then there will be all these things. The answer is still the same. work all the harder, and leave the rest to the Lord. I trust tonight we'll get a vision of a work that the world thinks is impossible. To see a reviving of the old stones, as it were, that we're told have been burned up forever. To see the beginnings of a moving of God in the face of a general declension, we will see God working here. Now, let Him start in your heart and my heart, your home and my home. That's a start. Then let Him come in our midst. And as He does, let us keep praying and laboring. Praying and laboring. Let's keep at that. God, who is no man's debtor, will bless his word and prosper his work. So we get down to prayer tonight. There's much for us to pray about. Don't be intimidated into not praying. Don't let the devil guilt you into not praying. It may well be that you need to ask the Lord to renew your vision. It may well be you need to confess, Lord, I haven't done a thing. I haven't even tried to do a thing. Well, if that's the case, confess it and forsake it. But let's pray. Let's ask the Lord to give us the vision. Maybe it's a good thing to get back to the old chorus. I don't know if you grew up singing. I'm sure you did. Used to be very popular when we were young Christians. Lead me to some soul today. Teach me, Lord, just what to say. Friends of mine are lost in sin and cannot find their way. Lead me to some soul. You know, you pray that and God will answer it. No doubt about it. And let me just warn you, when he does, forget about the Francis of a CC kind of evangelism. He's come down in church history as, you know, he went everywhere. He went like a tornado through the world. And there's so many fundamental Christians and they want to go and they just want to witness once and, man, that's another decision clocked up and away somewhere else, away somewhere else. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. Invest some time. Invest some energy. Invest some effort. Invest some friendship, invest some of your heart with people. Bring them unto the sound of the word. Keep them coming unto the sound of the word. And see what God will do. God will do great things for a people who pray and labor. So let's get down to prayer tonight.