We have been going through the book of Nehemiah. this wonderful testimony of God's reviving work in the midst of Jerusalem. You remember that Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes, and he had been told by his brother Hananiah that things in Jerusalem were not going so well. The walls had not been rebuilt, although the temple had been built up again, yet the work in that city was not completed, and Jerusalem was not defensible. It was a city that was vacillating as well. They weren't determined to do the work that the Lord had set them to. And until they finished building the wall, until they made the city whole once again, until also they had a reformation inside the walls of the city, things would not be right and they would not be ready. of course, for the great promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to come upon that nation. In order for Israel to be restored to the promised land, Jerusalem, great David's city, needed to be rebuilt. And Nehemiah had come specifically with the intention of building up those walls again. And we're going to read in this chapter the conclusion of that great work of building up the walls. But of course the work is not finished. And just as Nehemiah did not slack off his work, turning his attention now after that to the work of reformation within the walls, so too we're going to see that the devil unfortunately also did not slack off but continued his evil work. in resisting the work that the Lord was doing in the midst of His people. But before we read about that, let's turn our attention to the Lord and let's ask for His blessing, remembering that we need His illuminating grace in order to understand this Word. And certainly, if we're ever going to apply it, we'll need that help too. Please join me. Heavenly Father, Lord, now as we come once again under your word, I pray, Lord, that you would do us the great favor of illuminating us inwardly. Also, I pray you would fix our attention. We have so many things, literally, to draw us away at this point in time, so many distractions. And we know that as the seed is being sown, the devil loves to come. He's always at our elbow in Sunday morning worship. and to distract us with wandering thoughts, with irritations, just with stupid things or with sleepiness. We're never so sleepy as we are in the midst of a worship service. But I pray, Lord, that you would hedge us in. I pray for our kids in particular, that you would give them understanding greater than their years, that they might be able to hear these things and apply them. And I pray that all of us would remember the counsel that we received from your word and the example that's set by the saints of the past. Now, Lord, help me to open up this word to divide it right and apply it to your people. Give me, oh Lord, that burning in my bones. And as I preach, remind me that I too sit under the word even as I am setting it forth before your people. I too need to be changed by this word. Make it so, Lord. May I persevere. May I remember, Lord, not to fall into the terrible trap of self-pity. And may I stand firm upon your word, which is the truth. And we pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen. Nehemiah chapter six, verses 15 through 19. So the war was finished on the 25th day of Elul in 52 days. And it happened when all our enemies heard of it and all the nations around us saw these things, that they were very disheartened in their own eyes, for they perceived that this work was done by our God. Also in those days, the notaries of Judah sent many letters to Tobiah and the letters of Tobiah came to them. For many in Judah were pledged to him, because he was the son-in-law of Shekeniah, the son of Ara. And his son, Johanan, had married the daughter of Meshulam, the son of Berechiah. Also they reported his good deeds before me, and reported my words to him. Tobiah sent letters to frighten me." The grass withers and the flower fades. But the Word of our God will stand forever. If you've been in our congregation for any period of time, you will have heard me quote Charles Haddon Spurgeon. I love Spurgeon. He's a great example to me, even though he died at the age of 57. It's 11 years from now for me. But he was a man who was greatly used by God in his 57 years here on earth. He was a great preacher, a great example, a great also expositor of the Reformed Word. But looking to what he wrote, one of the things that we see is he was very wise when it came to understanding that whenever the word is being proclaimed, whenever the word of God is going forth with power, whenever the work of building up the kingdom is taking place, the devil active in that particular area. So Charles Haddon Spurgeon wrote, there was never a revival of religion without a revival of the old entity. If ever the Church of God is to be built, it will be in troubled times. When God's servants are active, Satan is not without vigilant myrmidons who seek to counteract their efforts. Spurgeon knew that the truth of those words, not just from the scriptures. I mean obviously we look throughout the scriptures and we see constantly that whenever God is doing His work in the world, the devil gnashes his teeth and does all that he can to tear it down, even as our Lord Jesus Christ was doing his ministry, there was a particular outpouring of satanic rage against Christ and his word. But Spurgeon knew what he was speaking of, not just from the scriptures, but from his own experiences. Most of you will remember that Spurgeon is sometimes described as the prince of preachers, a wonderful preacher, a wonderful evangelist, a man who was singularly used by God to call thousands to faith in England. And if George Whitefield was the most successful English evangelist of the 18th century, then Spurgeon was certainly the most successful of the 19th century. But as I said, Spurgeon's entire career was afflicted by this terrible series of difficulties, downturns, constant attacks. And his initial success, he started preaching very early, and his initial success as a young preacher starting at the age of 19, didn't just produce admiration. It also produced a great deal of envy. There were many in England who wanted to see him fail. the press was constantly attacking him. And he was not just attacked by those outside the church, he was attacked by those inside the church as well. And as a matter of fact, the attacks that came against him were so intense that at times he almost despaired. And at the age of 22, he almost left the ministry entirely after a terrible event. At age 22, Charles Haddon Spurgeon had been pastoring the congregation of the New Park Street Chapel for three years. In that time, the congregation had swelled and it came to the point where people were being turned away literally at the doors. You needed to get a ticket to come in and to find a seat and to hear him. And it just wasn't possible to seat all of the people who wanted to hear Spurgeon. So a decision was made that they were going to build a new place for him to preach in, and that eventually became the Metropolitan Tabernacle, this giant church edifice in downtown London. He had, at the age of 22, just gotten married a little while ago. He had already had twin children with his wife Susanna, and things were going well. He was being attacked in the papers for his fundamentalism, but things seem to be going in the right direction constantly. And one of the things that we see was that he had this sense that the Lord was going to continue to use his ministry for a long time. And so he was persuaded that while the Metropolitan Tabernacle was being built, that he should move to another location. He was told that there would be enough room to seat everybody at a place called the Surrey Garden Music Hall, which was used for these huge events for concerts and things like that. It could seat well over 10,000 people. So he began preaching at the Surrey Garden Music Hall. However, on October the 19th, 1856, just as he was beginning to pray before his sermon, someone shouted, fire, the galleries are collapsing. And what happened was there was this terrible panic. that broke out in the midst of the audience. People began to rush for the exit, and as a result, seven people were crushed to death, and 28 were seriously injured. Spurgeon wrongly blamed himself for that tragedy, and he was in a state of utter shock, and he said he remained that way for the next two weeks, weeping frequently. He later reported that, my thoughts were all a case of knives cutting my heart to pieces. And during that time, he couldn't even think of going on in the ministry and he seriously contemplated resigning. And that, brothers and sisters, would have been a terrible tragedy. The main body of his work was done after this event. All of those wonderful sermons that he preached, all of the books that he published. His ministry to the impoverished ministers of England, providing them with good material books that would train them. His work in setting up a pastor's college to train men to go out and spread the faith. His work in a large part in restoring the reformed faith to England. All of those things happened after the events at the Surrey Garden Hall that evening. This was definitely something that the devil had intended to cut him off at the knees with. Something that the devil was hoping would end his ministry before it really even got started. The culprit who shouted the word fire was never actually identified or caught. But regardless of who that scoundrel was, who that murderer was really, we know who was behind it. Paul speaks of the ultimate source of all of these attacks when he writes this, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. So while it may be men who do the dirty work here on earth, in the main part, we know who is animating them, who is stirring them up. It's the prince of the power of the air who is directing them. And in Nehemiah 6, we've been reading how Nehemiah had been leading this revival, this restoration in Jerusalem, and the devil, with his spiritual hosts of wickedness, was striving to stop it. He wanted it to end, and his human agents in trying to bring that out in the main part were Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite, Geshem the Arab, then all of those forces that they could muster, and all of their allies, both outside and within Jerusalem. Because unfortunately, as we see in these verses, they had people who were working for them within the city. We saw last week that they had prophets on the payroll, men who were actually willing to stand up and say, thus saith the Lord, and then speak lies in an attempt to destroy the work of the kingdom. Now, The devil and his forces are smarting at this point. They've suffered a major defeat. Sanballat, you remember, had boasted to his friends and to his men how easy it would be to defeat this relatively small number of Jews who were dwelling in Jerusalem at the time. Nobody thought that they would be able to complete the work of building up the walls of Jerusalem in the first place. And This is because these were people, Sanballat and his friends, who walked by sight and not by faith. They looked at Jerusalem. They looked at the state of the walls, how they'd been burned and broken down. And they looked also at the relatively small number of the Jews who were living there. And they realized that these guys are perfumers and goldsmiths and so on. They were merchants who had come down from Babylon. They said they're never gonna be able to do it. Humanly speaking, it looked to be impossible. They joked that even a fox could knock down anything that these Jews would build. But what they hadn't taken into consideration was the awesome power of the God that these people served. and miraculously, despite all of the attempts to stop the construction of this wall, the wall was not only finished, it was finished after only 52 days. They had expected that these Jews would not be able to complete the wall, given years to do it, but they had gotten the job done without any word of expert wall builders in under two months. And when the enemies of God's people saw this, they were disheartened. They were forced to eat their own words. They were, as the word puts it so well, disheartened in their own eyes, especially because they realized from the time it had taken to complete the work that they were striving not just against men, but against God. Now that's something, brothers and sisters, that we need to remember. When we call men atheists, we speak as though they really believe that there is no God. Atheist, no God, that's what it means literally. But what the Word tells us is even the opponents of God know that He exists. They simply suppress that knowledge. The two-part explanation of atheism has often been defined as, one, the belief that there is no God, second, hating Him. Now obviously see the contradiction, I hope, in that. If there is no God, why would you hate him? I mean, any of you hate the Easter Bunny? Anybody? Okay, somebody's going to raise their hand, inevitably, whenever you ask a question like that. No, we don't hate the Easter Bunny because the Easter Bunny doesn't exist. I hope I'm not, you know, cracking any eggs, so to speak, in that, but he doesn't exist. So we don't hate him. It would be foolish to hate somebody who doesn't exist, and yet atheists rage against God. They hate him, and they give away, in that moment, the fact They do know He exists, they just can't stand Him. Well, they were disheartened, they were striving against God, and they perceived that this work was done by God. Now this shows us the great secret to the success of the church, and in fact, why it survived. This was pointed out actually to Frederick the Great. Frederick the Great, obviously the King of Prussia, was a man who was very much at the center of the Enlightenment. And he had attracted many, many of the great philosophers of the day, many of them deists, to his court. He was very influenced by men like Voltaire, and his own faith began to waver, to become very nominal, very tradition-oriented. And one day he asked his court chaplain, the royal master, asked this court chaplain to prove that the Bible really was the Word of God. He said, you know, whenever I ask Christians to prove to me that the Bible really is true, they always give me these giant dissertations. Well, surely if it's true, it should be provable in a short and succinct way. So he said, I want you to prove to me that the Bible is true using a single word. And the chaplain said, I can do that, Your Majesty. And he said, the word is Juden, Jews. the Jews, and Frederick the Great understood immediately what he meant. If the Bible was not true, the Jews would never have survived. If there was no God who was watching over these people, protecting them, they would have gone the way of all the other Canaanite nations a long time ago. They would have been consigned to the dust heap of history, but the Lord had been protecting his people throughout. He had preserved them, even against the mightiest seeming enemies. And that is the great secret of the survival and success of the people of God, not just in Nehemiah's day, but in our day as well. How the world rages against Christians. We hear about the persecution of our brothers and sisters. It occurs in two-thirds of the world's nations. Even within our own nation, there's increasing hostility. How will we survive when the world seems to utterly detest Christ and His followers? And the answer is, because no matter how the nations rage, the Lord protects His people. They are the apple of His eye. You may not feel like it, but that's how He describes you. You are the apple of His eye, His special treasure. In the Hebrew, His segula. And He will never allow anyone, either a spiritual enemy or a physical enemy, to afflict you without His say-so. Even the devil can't touch you without the Lord's permission. And it is because of that protection that the church has been preserved. But not only that, they have thrived. I mean, look at this. We see the work of a mighty God who specializes in doing the impossible through the most unlikely of people. What do we have in this story of Nehemiah? We have a few Jews. We have some goldsmiths. We've got some priests. We've got some perfumers. who set about this monumental task of repairing the city's fortifications. And they not only complete the work, they complete it in 52 days. But we need to remember this is the same God who used a small group of fishermen, tax collectors, and an ex-persecutor to overcome the Roman Empire, to turn the world upside down and convert the very empire that was once set on persecuting Christ. Ultimately, brothers and sisters, we need to remember this. Our endurance under persecution is something that brings honor, not to us, but to God as our preserver. And even as we are persecuted worldwide, unbelievers are forced to acknowledge the preserving power of God over His people. So when you are persecuted, remember, in the midst of it, you are honoring God, even as you endure. Now, wouldn't it be nice if after they were finished with this rebuilding work, the devil had simply given up? He'd said, well, I tried. They win. It would, but he doesn't do that. He's a sore loser. As a matter of fact, he never really admits defeat. He rages against the people of God, and he just tries another stratagem whenever one fails. And he's never going to give up trying to stop the work of the church. Sometimes we expect that the devil, after, say, we've done something amazing, after there's been a huge advance of the gospel, or after something as simple as building a church building in Fayetteville, that suddenly the devil's gonna say, oh boy, well, I guess that's that. I can't fight against them. Better stop. Or maybe he'll say, is it June already? I better go on vacation. Let's give the Christians a break for a little while. No, the Word of God tells us that the devil rages because he knows his time is short. He's gonna try to get in his licks whenever he can. And he'll never give up trying to stop the work of the church, whether it be in Nehemiah's day, whether it be in our day. He will never give it up until he is hurled with his followers into the lake of fire and brimstone to be tormented day and night forever. That's the point at which he will stop tormenting the church. But before that, never. Spurgeon wrote of his perseverance or his endurance, I should put it in evil. He said, well, did Latimer say that there was no busier plumbing in all the world than the devil. Whoever makes short furrows, he does not. Whoever balks and shirks, he is thorough in all that he does. Whoever stops work at sundown, he never does. But although he is industrious in his work of trying to destroy the work of the church, he prefers that his work not be done openly and in public. He would prefer to work behind the scenes. Spurgeon continued on in his description of the devil. He said, he and his children plow like practice plowman, but they prefer to carry on their pernicious work upon the saints behind their backs for they are as cowardly as they are cruel. And that certainly proved true here in Nehemiah. So what happens? The devil can't stop the work. He can't prevent the wall from being built. It has been built, but now he's going to try to get rid of the person who led the work. God's appointed agent, the shepherd whom he had set to set his people to work. So what does he do? He attempts to have Nehemiah replaced by the Jews with a candidate much more to his liking, Tobiah the Ammonite. Now, Tobiah may have been an official in Ammon, but we learn that he at least claimed to be a Jew, even though he couldn't establish his genealogy. In other words, he couldn't produce a certificate showing that his bloodline did go back as far as Abraham. Tobiah's name in Hebrew, though, literally means God is good. And through contacts and through marriages and through trade connections, he had, as the word tells us, connections to the nobles in Jerusalem, to the important families in Jerusalem. And one of the things that we need to see here is, and this book is going to major on this, but the importance of marrying well. the importance of marrying well, and also the major damage that can be done to the church and to the people of God by bad marriages, especially when you are unequally yoked. When a Christian marries an unbeliever or a nominal, somebody who says that they're a Christian, makes a profession of faith with their lips, but there is no evidence of it within their hearts. When that kind of thing happens, you not only damage yourself and your family ultimately, but as with Tobiah, the results of that bad marriage can be very far-reaching. King Ahab thought he was doing very well to marry Jezebel, this daughter of the king of Sidonians. It seemed to be an advantageous marriage in terms of alliances and so on. But, oh, what terrible mischief that marriage did within Israel because, of course, it was Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbal, king of the Sidonians and a zealous ball worshiper who did untold damage to the religion, the true faith in Israel. She killed the prophets. She drove the church underground. She tried to kill, you remember, Elijah. And all of that because of this bad marriage that Ahab entered into. I wish that was the last time, obviously, that the people of God entered into a bad marriage, or at least the covenant people entered into a bad marriage, but it happened again and again. Henry of Navarre, a Huguenot, that is a French Reformed Protestant, agreed to marry a Catholic princess in order to become king of France. He said the price was worth it. although he himself would have to convert to Catholicism. He said, Paris is worth a mass. And he was thinking in his mind, if I marry this Catholic princess, the terrible wars that have been rending France between Protestant and Catholic throughout the 16th century and then on into the 17th century, they will come to an end. But that one action ultimately spelled the doom of the Reformed faith in France. Rather than ending the conflict, it made it almost certain that the Reformation would fail in France. And it also ultimately made the French Revolution an inevitability. You see, the French Revolution occurred because the Reformation had failed. There hadn't been an essential change brought in by a turning to biblical religion in France the way that that happened, for instance, in Holland and in England, which didn't go through the same kind of revolutions that France did. Ultimately, hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of people died as a result of that marriage. If we include Napoleon, certainly the number would go into the millions. Just because of Henry of Navarre's catastrophic marriage. Now, Let me put it this way, your marriage will probably not be that catastrophic. I seriously doubt anybody in this room marrying badly is going to result in the death of millions. I hope not at least. it will still produce bitter fruit. And if you are not yet married, please, let me beg you, having counseled many an unequally yoked woman and a couple of unequally yoked men, don't do it. It just never bears the fruit that you expect. And I can't tell you how many have gotten married thinking, I can change them. And God doesn't give you any assurance of that. Quite the opposite. But back to Dunbiah. So this guy is connected. And he has established his credentials, and maybe not his genealogy, but he's established his credentials as an insider within Jerusalem. And apparently he is a smooth talker as well. He is well-liked, and he is, if anything, not a radical. He's not this crazy fundamentalist that Nehemiah is. He's not, absolutely, we're doing it according to God's way. No, no, no. He has connections with all of the surrounding people. He's got connections inside the city. He's got connections outside the city. He is somebody who can be a peacemaker between these warring sides, perhaps. Many of the very people who had done the work of rebuilding the walls, like Eliashib, the high priest, were actually allied with him. counted him as a friend, would have preferred to be under his oversight. So even as Tobiah is working to destroy that process of revival and reformation that Nehemiah is working to bring about, the people are singing the praises of Tobiah. And this must have been galling to Nehemiah. After all, Nehemiah, you gotta remember this, had done everything right. He hadn't messed anything up. And the work that had gone on under him had been miraculous. 52 days to rebuild this wall. But who's getting the good press? Tobiah. Who's getting stinky reports sent out about him? Nehemiah. He's getting the equivalent of bad email, gossiping emails sent to Tobiah on a regular basis. The people including information that they're hoping he can use to destroy or frighten Nehemiah. So, Tobiah takes the information that's being sent to him by the people of Jerusalem, by these nobles, and he sends nasty grams to Nehemiah on a regular basis. And you know, nasty grams, flame mail, whatever you want to call them, it's discouraging in and of itself. But it's even worse when you read something and you realize somebody who you thought was your friend was the source of the information. And that must have happened with Nehemiah time and again. He would read something written by this guy Tavai and suddenly recognize, I know who said that. I know where he got that. The people who are supposed to be supporting him, the people who are supposed to be helping him with the work are at this point attacking him and attempting to supplant him. to replace him. Now, I've often wondered who came up with the saying, sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me, because he didn't go to the school that I went to, I gotta tell you. He certainly was never in the playground I was. It's a bunch of bunk. Names can rend your heart apart. It can destroy you. Being called horrible things hurts your feelings, if you have any feelings at all. And it can easily be a source of great bitterness, especially when you're doing the right thing. You're doing what God said you should be doing, and you're attacked for it. It's costing you. That's a very embittering experience on occasion. But remember this, brothers and sisters, Jesus warned us that that would be the case if we did the right thing. He said in Luke 6 26, this is the warning he gave. He said, woe to you when all men speak well of you. Now, if the Jesus of the Bible was the Jesus of popular culture today, it would have been exactly the opposite, right? Woe to you when all people call you a bigot and a fanatic. Woe to you when people aren't speaking well of you. No, but what Jesus said is, woe to you when all men speak well of you, for so did their fathers to the false prophets. It's almost always the people within the church, the men and the women who are enduring, who are persevering in doing the right thing, who get the bad press. It's the Jeremiah's, the Nehemiah's who get the bad press, not the Tobiah's. It's the Christ's and the Paul's who get the bad press, while the smooth talkers are spoken well of in their age. Remember this. John, Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards have one great thing in common, aside from their love of the Reformed faith, their love of the Word, their desire to preach the truth, they have this in common. Both of them were fired by their congregations for doing the right thing. Does it surprise you? Does it surprise you at all that everyone these days, from Oprah on down, speaks well of Joel Osteen? Should that surprise us? or that the press attacked Charles Spurgeon in his own day. That shouldn't surprise us either. If you are in the church and the world loves you and the world speaks well of you, you know what? You should be very worried. You should be asking yourself, what am I doing wrong that they love me so much? How can I make it so that the world begins to gnash its teeth and complain about my preaching? Well, let me give you some applications. Obviously, I've already given you some. The first is this. Obviously, there's an obvious analogy as we're going through Nehemiah between what they were going through and what we're going through. We've obviously completed the building, and hopefully the devil's forgotten about us since then, right? No, the devil hasn't forgotten us. And he can still use the same methods he did against Nehemiah in the local church, even in this church. I have been astounded at how Machiavellian the things that happen in the church can be. I'll give you an example. I can't give you too much detail because you may be able to figure out who I'm talking about so I don't want to be too specific. But one example of a particular Machiavellian scheme laid against a pastor. A pastor came in to an independent church. And he began a great work of reformation. The church had once been very strong. At this point, it was now dying. And theologically, they'd lost their way. He worked to reform that church in every sense of the word. And the man who was supposed to be helping him was the assistant pastor who had been in the church before that time. And he had theological differences with the senior pastor, major theological differences. The pastor who was doing the work of reformation was a Calvinist and the man who was working under him was a, I suppose the term would be flaming Arminian, just a man who was on fire for the Arminian faith and also a dispensationalist. But he had said, I will work with you to rebuild this church. Now, even as he was saying that, the assistant pastor and several people within the church began plotting with another group outside the church to oust the pastor, take over the church, and then turn them towards Arminianism and Dispensationalism. And they plotted, and they plotted, and then they plotted. And then when everything was ready, they sent letters to the elders. secretly without informing the pastor, promising the elders that they could fix all of the church's financial problems, they could make the church grow, and all they had to do was fire the current pastor and hire their own guy. Now, to their credit, the elders on receiving this letter were absolutely appalled. and they immediately informed the pastor of what had been going on, and eventually it was the assistant pastor who had done the plotting who ended up leaving the church. But brothers and sisters, I can't tell you how many times that kind of thing happens within the church, and how often it is that it's actually the senior pastor who ends up leaving, not the circle of plotters who've been trying to get rid of him. And I use that example just to say, never underestimate the way that the devil will work behind the scenes to tear down any good work. How he can use people both on the outside and then more especially within the church. Watch out for that. There are many ways that we can terminate that kind of thing before it gets started. One of the simplest ways I discussed last week, which is putting an end to gossip as soon as it starts. and just being transparent. The thing the church needs so very badly is sunshine. We need to be transparent with one another, to let each other know how we feel and what we're doing, and we need to be open in everything that we do, and we should be striving to do that. Let me give you the second application, which is this. Never underestimate the importance of standing up for the right thing. despite persecution at one moment in time. What you are doing at any moment in time may not seem very important. It never seems important in the world's eyes. I mentioned last week, I mean, the world wouldn't think much of a group of Jews rebuilding a wall in a backwater area of the Persian Empire, and yet this was critically important. critically important not just to Jerusalem, not just to them in their own time, not just to the thriving of the faith within Jerusalem, but also for world history. We remember this is the place, this is the nation into which the Messiah Jesus Christ would be born about 400 years after the events that we are reading about here. But This not only had redemptive consequences, this work of Nehemiah, it also had historic consequences for us. It is no exaggeration to say that Nehemiah's work, which was a making or breaking point in the history of Jerusalem, are they going to follow compromise? Are they going to fade into the Samaritan surroundings and so on, was incredibly important in the building up of this nation. Now, a compromise, replacing, for instance, Nehemiah with Tobiah, would have destroyed the revival and the reformation that was taking place here. And it would have meant that Jerusalem was a very different place. Nehemiah founding his rule of the city as it was upon the word of God. I mean, he was working for Artaxerxes, the Persian king, but the liberty, the independence, the rights, those things that the Jewish people had, all of them stemmed from the assurances in the word of God. Now, that was not the case with the surrounding nations. They were mostly tyrannized by their masters. Sanballat and Tobai, I'm sure, were not benevolent rulers in the way that Nehemiah was. And that's very important for us, brothers and sisters. Russell Kirk. and a book I read a little while ago called The Roots of American Order, wanted to point out to the American people that the American miracle, certainly the miracle that took place in Philadelphia in 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence and later on with the Constitution and then the Bill of Rights and so on, was unprecedented and it didn't really just suddenly spring up. It wasn't created out of whole cloth. And you had to look in America's history, not back to 1776 or 1492, you had to look back to the influence of other civilizations. The point that Kirk was making is we had to look back all the way to ancient Palestine. And he goes through, in order, these four cities that he said were incredibly important in the formation of the American Republic. London, Rome, Athens, and then ultimately the beginning of it all at Jerusalem. First came Jerusalem, where the Hebrews lived this purposeful existence under God, as he put it. Their rights were set forth in his word. The law set forth what they should be doing. It constrained, for instance, what kings were able to do, what governors were able to do. And from it, we see the beginnings of all the ideas of limited government and the idea of individual freedom with rights that are assured by God. And the idea that our lives, even the lives of small, little, insignificant people in the world's eyes, have purpose. They find their purpose in God and in serving Him. All of that started in Jerusalem and then obviously Rome and Athens brought into the mix their own legal codes, their philosophy. But one of the things that we need to understand is Rome and Athens alone by themselves are not enough to produce the American Republic. I mean, we go to Washington and we see all of this pseudo-Greek and Roman architecture. And if we know nothing of the history of America, we might think that Greece and Rome were the two major influences in our nation's history. But no, it was actually London, the fourth city, which synthesized not only that which was good from Rome and Greece, but it took the word of God. It took the laws of God. and it made them preeminent in English common law and in the rights of man. And then those were taken and they were made even more solid and wholesome in Philadelphia when we had the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and so on. But Rome and Athens by themselves are not enough to produce America. Do you know how we know that? Because we know of one nation that was produced by Rome and Athens, France. And we remember, of course, the unfortunate results of the French Revolution. You remember that? It produced murder, bloodshed, terrible things, not anything good. So, God directed the events that produced this nation ultimately. And Nehemiah was signally used in these things. Now I didn't really finish the Spurgeon story, the important story, did I? What was it that caused Spurgeon to turn around and continue in his ministry after receiving this terrible blow at Surrey Gardens? Was it self-confidence? A belief perhaps that someday he would be famous? And the answer to that is no. There wasn't any great confidence in himself. Spurgeon's strength, Nehemiah's strength, Jerusalem's strength was found not in themselves, not in their desire to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever, but it was found in God's willingness to keep the promise. Those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. Spurgeon wrote these words. I'd like to conclude with them. He said this, if the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ, That is the cure for every kind of sorrow. He is the comforter. Many years ago after the terrible accident in the Surrey Gardens, I had to go away into the country and keep quite still. The very sight of the Bible made me cry. I could only stay alone in the garden, and I was heavy and sad. People had been killed in the accident, and there I was half dead myself. I remember how I got back my comfort, and I preached on the Sunday after I recovered. I had been walking around the garden, and I was standing under a tree. If it is there now, I would know it. There I remembered these words, him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a prince and a savior. Acts 5 31. Oh, I thought to myself, I am only a common soldier. If I die in a ditch, I do not care. The king is honored. He wins the victory. I was like those French soldiers in the old times who loved the emperor. And you know how, when they were dying, if the emperor rode by, the wounded man would raise himself up on his elbow and cry once more, vive l'empereur! The emperor was engraved on his heart, and so I am sure it is with every one of you, my comrades, in this holy war. If our lord and king is exalted, then let other things go whichever way they like. If he is exalted, never mind what becomes of us." And then he ended with these words. He said, we are a set of pygmies, and it is all right if he is exalted. God's truth is safe, and we must be perfectly willing to be forgotten, derided, slandered, or anything else that men please. The cause is safe and the king is on the throne. Hallelujah. Blessed be his name. What Spurgeon realized, what Nehemiah realized was that the culmination, the great importance of their life was not in serving themselves. It wasn't just in building up a city. It wasn't in that moment, but it was glorifying God and enjoying him forever, not just for time, but for eternity. And that if God was glorified, then their lives were best used. And that is why they endeavored in everything that they did to cleave to him and to act out of love to him. And that's how we should act as a church as we determine how we go forward in time, how we resist the devil. The answer has to be found in by glorifying God and enjoying him forever by doing what he says, by putting him first in our thoughts and our lives. So when it comes to deciding who to marry, we let him direct us. When it comes to how to worship Him, we let Him direct us. When it comes to deciding what to do and what not to do as a church, where to spend money and where not to spend it, we let Him direct us, and we do everything to His glory. Whether we eat or we drink or whatever we do, we do it to His glory. That is what directed Nehemiah in his course. Now, if we do that, I have to tell you, the world's going to be angry. the world will get on our case. But you know what? That's just an indication we're doing the right thing. Brothers and sisters, even if the world becomes so furious they want to kill us, that should not alter our course, our determination to do everything that we can to glorify God, because what can they take away from us ultimately? Yes, they can take away our lives, perhaps, just as they could have taken away Nehemiah's life, but at the same time, They cannot remove us from the kingdom. They can't take away our privileges, our treasure, our inheritance that have been vouchsafed to us through God and won by His Son, Jesus Christ, the same Christ who would be born in this nation that Nehemiah helped to repair in his own time. I pray that you are praying for this country, for the same kind of revival and reformation. We need it so very badly. We need to get back to our basis, our foundation. And I pray that the Lord would do that work through the church. May revival start with us. We pray this, I hope, in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Let's go before him in prayer. God, our Father, we thank you for the example given to us in Nehemiah. Lord, so often it is, it would be so much easier to compromise, to do things that would make the world happy, or simply not to stand fast for your word. But remind us. that it's about your glory God, not ours. It's not about us building big buildings, filling them with people, that's easy enough. But rather it is about glorifying your name. Help us to have the same kind of vision that Nehemiah had. the same kind of desire to see your son Jesus exalted. Nehemiah did not know him as Jesus Christ. He knew him simply as the promised Redeemer, but still his faith was the same. And so, O Lord, we too look to Christ and his promises, knowing that they will be fulfilled. Now, Lord, help us to apply these things to our own hearts in our own place as you see fit. We pray this in Jesus' holy name. Amen.