Enemies of God

We're going to continue our look at the book of Nehemiah. We've been walking through, journeying through that book for the last few months now actually. I think we're coming to our sixth or seventh sermon on the book of Nehemiah. We're about halfway and we'll see very soon that it's not going to get any easier from here on out. Do you want to turn to the book of Nehemiah chapter six and we'll read the whole chapter just to give us a good idea of what's going on here.

Nehemiah chapter six. Nehemiah six verse one. When the word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and the rest of our enemies, that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it, though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates, Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message. Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the Plain of Ono. But they were scheming to harm me, so I sent messengers to them with this reply.

I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you? Four times they sent me the same message and each time I gave them the same answer. Then the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aid to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written. It is reported among the nations, and Geshem says it is true, that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall.

Moreover, according to these reports, you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem. There is a king in Judah. Now this report will get back to the king, so come, let us confer together. I sent him this reply, nothing like what you are saying is happening. You are making it up in your head.

They were all trying to frighten us thinking their hands will get too weak for the work and it will not be completed. But I prayed, now strengthen my hands. One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, let us meet in the house of God inside the temple and let us close the temple doors because men are coming to kill you. By night they are coming to kill you.

But I said, should a man like me run away or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go. I realised that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, oh my God, because of what they have done. Remember also the prophetess Noadiah, and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.

So the wall was completed on the twenty fifth of Elul in fifty two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self confidence because they realised that this work had been done with the help of our God. So far our reading. Friends, when it comes to opposition and doing the will of God, there are so many ways that God's enemies, whether that be Satan himself, whether that be the world around us that does not know God, or whether that be our own weakness, our own flesh. There are so many ways that these enemies of God can stand against God and His people.

In the case of chapter six, we see this morning three distinct ways that the enemies of God attempt to derail God's faithful servant, Nehemiah. As we've been journeying through this, we've seen these characters come up before. We see the scheming of the same old usual suspects: Sanballat, the Samaritan, Tobiah, the Ammonite, and Geshem, the Arab. Or as I call them, the three stooges.

So we see Moe, Larry, and Curly again come up with the same old plans to foil God and Nehemiah. But this time we see it just a little bit more desperate. This time we just see it a little bit more intense. The wall has now been completed. The wall had been built in fifty two days.

Nehemiah says in verse two, I believe, verse one that every gap had been filled. There's no way into the city anymore except through the gates that still didn't have the doors put in place. But what we see happening is that desperate times call for desperate measures. If Jerusalem's walls were built, God would start rebuilding and healing this nation. We saw a glimpse in chapter five last week where Nehemiah was already starting with this work.

Remember? There was not only this physical restoration of Jerusalem that was happening, but there was a spiritual reformation happening in the people of God. Nehemiah was calling out sin, calling out the people to turn back to God's ways. And so there was this aspect of restoration of spiritual hearts already happening. Not only was Nehemiah rebuilding the city of God, he was reforming the people of God.

And so we see Nehemiah's enemies plot against him one last time. And we see they do it in three different ways, three concentric ways that just seems to be getting more desperate, more calculated, more dangerous. In all forms of what is good, we will see how the enemies attack Nehemiah. Whether it is raising God's children in a godly way, for us as Christians, whether it is seeking to engage our friends or our colleagues with the gospel, we have to also believe that there are enemies, whether it be Satan, the world, or our flesh, that will try to oppose the good work of God. Don't be surprised that the enemies of God, because they are your enemies too, will seek to throw out these three different things your way as well.

Firstly, let's have a look at how Nehemiah gets assaulted the first time. When enemies of God oppose him, firstly, we see that they divert attention away from God. They try to create a diversionary attack on Nehemiah. Sanballat, we see, sends a message to Nehemiah in verse two. Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the Plain of Ono.

Perhaps the most dangerous attempts of God's enemies is not so much brute force or direct persecution, but an indirect stealthy temptation for God's people to have their eyes taken off the prize. Because Christians and the church, God's people has this one goal in mind: the establishment of God's kingdom on earth. Your kingdom come, Your will be done, we were commanded to pray. The establishment of God's kingdom, a kingdom among all the kingdoms of the world, a city of God within the cities of the world. The thing Jesus most often preached about was the kingdom.

But Satan's attack on this kingdom can be a cunning plan. Rather than bombard the walls of God's kingdom, it may just divert the eyes of the guards. In World War Two, the allies came up with a plan before they had their D-Day Normandy invasion. They came up with a plan called Operation Fortitude, a completely fake invasion against the Germans in Nazi Germany. One would be in Norway and one the north of France, several hundred kilometres north of where the actual D-Day invasion would happen.

Operation Fortitude deceived the Nazis by setting up fake airfields, fake equipment in various places. They used fake transmissions, fake radio transmissions into Germany and used double agents to feed bad information. All of it meant that when D-Day happened, the Germans had their attention elsewhere towards Norway, towards the north of France while the beaches of Normandy were being stormed. Diversion. Sanballat seeks to take Nehemiah away from the work of Jerusalem, away from fixing those last doors to the gates, and says, come and visit us in a neutral place in one of the villages on the Plains of Ono.

Now you can imagine if you were working in the tourism industry for Ono, it would be really hard to make people love that place. Where are we going? Ono. Anyway. Sanballat apparently holds out this olive branch.

Come and let us meet. We can talk about this. Let's sort this out. Let's bury the hatchet, Nehemiah. But Nehemiah sees through this in verse two.

He says, they were scheming to harm me. Verse three, I sent messengers saying, I am carrying on a great project. I don't have the time to come down to you. Why should the work stop while I leave it to visit with you? But this is exactly what they wanted to happen.

While Nehemiah leaves Jerusalem, the work would stop. The guards would relax. The doors might not be rebuilt, and it might mean that Jerusalem is still, just with a small glimmer of hope for them, open to attack. Now scholars don't believe that these guys specifically would have been the ones to attack because they were still also very fearful of the Persian king under which Jerusalem fell. Jerusalem was still a puppet state of the Persian king.

But it being vulnerable would have been vulnerable to bandits and robbers and brigands as they had been for up to a hundred years. They were plundered over and over again by these scavenging bandits. Keep them vulnerable and they won't be powerful. Divide and conquer. Now we'll see in chapter seven next week that although the city was now rebuilt, many people still didn't live in Jerusalem because it was unfortified.

And so there was no defenders there. There was not enough guards to really protect that place. And so we see this attempt of diversion. Taking our eyes off the calling God has put in front of us is one way that Satan can really get under the skin of God's people. One way that you can really damage the kingdom of God.

If you can take us and you can make us busy even with some other stuff, stuff that might even be very important, stuff that may even sound very holy and righteous to be busy with. But if it's not the stuff that God has called you to, if it's not the stuff that God has burdened you with, the kingdom will be lacking and God's enemies will be winning. Nehemiah says no, he stands against this.

But then they escalated a step further and we see the second attempt called defamation. Now these are all starting with the word d so if it doesn't make sense, let me explain it to you. Defamation means slander. It means slandering and muddying someone's name or reputation. Four times, Nehemiah's enemies, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, they send him this letter: come and meet with us, come and meet with us.

And Nehemiah says, four times I said to them the same thing. But now the fifth time they send the same message, but this time they send an unsealed letter with the messenger. And what does this mean? Well, every letter that was sent to someone was usually sealed with wax, with the official stamp, with the official authority that this had come from someone important. So if you would get a letter and the seal was broken, you would know that it had been read. Confidentiality had been broken.

Privacy had been broken. And it was a capital punishment for the messenger to allow this letter to have been read. But Nehemiah's enemies on purpose sent an unsealed letter to Nehemiah. Why? So that the whole public could read or know about what they were saying in this message.

It is like accidentally posting a private message on Twitter. They probably chose the biggest gossip in their army to be the messenger to take the letter to Nehemiah. So every town that he would come to, he would say, hey, this is what they're writing to Nehemiah. Everyone knew what was in it. In this letter, verse six, it says, this is what they wrote.

It is reported among the nations and Geshem, who just so happens to be one of your enemies, Geshem says that this is true. You are plotting to revolt. Nehemiah, the Jews are going to revolt against the Persian king. Nehemiah, you are going to set yourself up as king of this new city state, Jerusalem. But this is just plain slander.

This is plain lies that they are spreading through the whole countryside against Nehemiah. What they are accusing Nehemiah of is treason. Another capital offence. It is something that if the Persian king had believed them, Nehemiah would have been killed. Now can you see how heartless this attempt is?

It is done with no conscience. They make up a false source. They say, Geshem the Arab says that this is true, as if Geshem the Arab knew what Nehemiah was thinking, as if Geshem the Arab was Nehemiah's best mate and confidant. Like the gossip magazines of today that will write a source close to so and so has said, there's no source. There's no source.

You know and I know that there is no source. They make the claim that the nations knew about this. Again, you may have heard that people have said blah blah blah. There are some that reckon blah blah blah. Who are they?

Who are those people? They don't exist. Plain slander. It is plain defamation seeking to smear and slur Nehemiah's reputation. Maybe with a chance to get him killed.

And Nehemiah stands firm and sends back a reply in verse eight. Nothing like you are saying is happening. You are just making it up. Now for us, sometimes the work of Satan, the world, the flesh can be so willing to accuse. Think about it.

Satan has one of his titles in the Bible as accuser, as prosecutor. He's the one that stands next to the throne of God in Job and says, God, does Job really love You? Or is he just faithful to You because You've blessed him so much? Take away some of these things and surely he won't be a faithful believer in You. Or he says to Eve, did God really say you must not eat of this fruit?

Surely you will not die. In other words, God has lied to you guys. He's playing power games with you, Adam and Eve. Slander. Slander both for God, slandering God, slandering Job and the others, slandering the children of God.

And so we see Nehemiah combating this and he prays, Lord, strengthen my hands in verse nine. Strengthen my hands. We know that Nehemiah is a man of prayer. He's been praying throughout this whole book. At every step he's been praying.

When he felt the burden to go to Jerusalem, he prayed. When the first round of accusations and assaults happened, he prayed and he prays again. He is a man of prayer because the only thing that can resist these things is prayer. But friends, don't be surprised if the enemies of God attempt to rob you of the truth. Try to tempt you to exchange the truth of God for a lie.

Nehemiah never went to Jerusalem for power. In fact, we'll see again next week, chapter seven, when the wall is rebuilt, he makes his brother Hananiah the governor. He puts him in charge of Jerusalem. He takes a step back and says, my job is done. It was never in Nehemiah's wildest dreams that he would become king.

And yet his enemies run a smear campaign. But we also see that it doesn't touch Nehemiah. Because he has strived to be right with God, a life that would have been steeped in sin would have provided fuel for the fire of his enemies, but Nehemiah removes the fuel and the fire goes out. It doesn't stick on Nehemiah. People don't believe this because it's not true.

They know Nehemiah's character. They've seen him act according to God's will and so it doesn't stick. The Persian king would have heard this and he would not have believed this. It's a good reminder that by living faithful lives to God's law, those who would seek to do us harm in whatever way, it'll fall off our backs and often it will make them look bad. And thirdly and lastly, we see how Nehemiah's enemies attempt to oppose Nehemiah by desecration.

They attempt to desecrate or blaspheme God to Nehemiah. They attempt to trick and trip Nehemiah up to blaspheme against his God. In verses ten to thirteen, we see a very sad episode where a prophet in the town of Jerusalem gets hired by Tobiah and Sanballat. They give him a bit of money to invite Nehemiah over to his place. They have a cuppa together.

They have a beer together or a scotch or whatever. And this prophet says to Nehemiah, your enemies are coming. Do you know that? I foresee that they are coming. You should go and hide yourself in the temple.

You should go and hide yourself deep in the temple, he says. They are coming to kill you. Now scholars say that the temptation was not simply to enter the temple, but what he was suggesting was to go into the sanctuary of the temple, the most secure guarded area of the temple, but also incidentally, the holy of holies, the place that God's presence dwelt, the place that was only allowed to be entered once a year by the high priest. But go and hide yourself in there because that is the most secure place in the whole city. But Nehemiah sees through this again and he understands this man to be a false prophet.

But what is suggested here is not simply a silly attempt to intimidate. What is suggested here is for Nehemiah to desecrate God's holiness, to blaspheme. And what we see is a scheme not only that says, well, you know, we'll try and put a wedge between you and the priesthood perhaps, and they might get angry with you, and they might drive you out, or they might kill you. What they're trying to do is get Nehemiah to the stage where he will, in essence, curse God and God would punish him. What he would be doing would be an insult and a violation to God Himself, the God he chose to serve.

So we see how the attempts to Nehemiah get just more and more intense, more and more calculating. First it was just a diversion, then it becomes slander and defamation, now it becomes desecration tempting Nehemiah to blaspheme God for his own protection, so called. Nehemiah would dishonour his God. My heart aches this morning at the attempt that has been seemingly successful against God's church today. But God's enemies has succeeded in desecrating God's people. Just this morning I read that the Church of Scotland, which is the birthplace of the Presbyterian Church in Australia, the church that is the direct result of the great Scottish Reformation led by people like John Knox in the fifteen hundreds.

A church that underwent horrific persecution at the state church, the Catholic church at that stage under the monarchs, the royalty of England. This week, the Church of Scotland overwhelmingly decided to vote to allow gay clergy marriages. So not only do they already allow gay clergy on their pulpits, but now they validate homosexual couples being married and serving in the church. And so this morning my heart aches that men who have been given the responsibility to lead God's flock by their example, men who stand before watching eyes in the house of God, point to the discretion of God's church and says, this is good. This is right.

God's word was clear for Nehemiah. You will not go into the sanctuary. You will not play with the idea of My holiness. You will not. Yet the enemies of God will tempt us to question the perfection and the holiness of God and His will. Satan will tempt someone like Job through his wife to say, curse God and die.

Curse God, blaspheme God and die. Be careful of how Satan or this world or our flesh may try to intimidate us into sinning. It may tell us you won't be as popular if you hold this view. It may tell us you won't be respected if you stand firm on this. When Paul was confronted with the same intimidation, he wrote this to the Corinthian church, the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are being saved, it is the power of God.

To those who are perishing, those living far from God, who want nothing to do with Him, God's will may seem antisocial. God's will may seem divisive. God's will may seem uncivilised, but for those who have come near to God, those who have heard His gentle, loving voice through Scripture, they will stay faithful to God. They will cling to God's promise. They will cling to God's will unrelentingly.

We know that God is the only true north. He is our moral compass. He is the beginning and the end, and every popular fad will come and go. Every sin will one day be rebranded, will one day be excused. Church or government leaders may say this or that, but at the end of the day, God is the one that stays true.

And every man is a liar when they depart from the word of God. Every man is a liar when they depart from the word of God. Nehemiah saw through this. He refused to compromise his faith, refused to curse his God by his actions. He chose to uphold the holiness of God by remaining faithful to Him.

Friend, by living upright, righteous lives, you honour the name of God. Nehemiah refuses because he sees through the scam. Verse thirteen says he understands the prophet has been hired to intimidate him so that he would commit a sin by doing this. We have to stay alert to the attempt to desecrate God's honour by being tempted into sinning against Him. People may say this is the right thing to do.

People may say this is the grey area, but don't believe that if it departs from the word of God. In Nehemiah we see a foretaste of one who was to come who is a much more resilient, stronger kingdom builder. When we look at Nehemiah, we should see Jesus. In Nehemiah we see how the children of God can and must stand against all the devil's schemes, against all the plans of Satan, against all the opposition of human agency, against the diversionary tactics, against the defamation and the slander of God's people and God Himself, against the attempts to curse and desecrate God's holiness through sin. Jesus.

Because of Jesus, our resistance and our strength has found perfection. Because Jesus, as our representative, stood against all the attempts of Satan. Where Satan tempted Jesus for forty days in the wilderness throwing his entire arsenal at Jesus, wealth, power, freedom, everything. Where Jesus stood against His followers, against His people who said to Him, don't go to the cross. It is too hard.

It is too heavy to bear. Do it another way. When we look at Nehemiah today, we must see Jesus even more. When we are tempted to listen to the enemy, when we are tempted to take our eyes off the one who holds the answers, we are reminded again to glue our eyes on Jesus Christ because in Him we see the face of God Himself. So friend, look unswervingly at Him because He knows why He's called you.

He knows what He's called you to and He will not let you down. Don't let go of Him. Stay close to Him. Don't exchange Him for anything else, whether it be freedom or power or status. I'm reminded this morning of Hebrews 12 verses two and three that gives the same encouragement more or less to the Christians two thousand years ago.

This is what the author writes. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith. For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross, scorning its shame and sat down at the right hand of God. The shame of the cross, the intimidation of the cross, the pain and the suffering of the cross would have been diverted easily, could have been diverted by Jesus. Yet He persevered and He looked at the joy beyond the cross and He set His face on that hill. What joy did He look forward to? The joy of bringing His children into His kingdom, of establishing His kingdom, of, like a Nehemiah, building the kingdom of God.

Nehemiah was a great man but Jesus was the true kingdom builder. And for the joy of celebrating with His citizens, with His children, He had ransomed our lives from the clutches of our great enemy, Satan. And then the writer of Hebrews adds this in closing. Consider Him, reflect on Him who endured such opposition from sinful men so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Not only did Jesus buy us and purchase us back into His kingdom, but He left an example for us to follow.

He left an example for us to follow. Why? So that we will not grow weary, so that we will not lose heart against the opposition. Let's pray. Father, our world is a mess.

Lives around us are messes. Our lives are messy. And Father, we do sense just every now and then this opposition to You. We don't understand why, we don't understand the motives why, Father, because we don't experience that. We cannot fathom or understand the hatred of Nehemiah's enemies that would seek to send an innocent man to his death through slander and defamation.

We don't understand why anyone would do this. And yet, Father, we know that there is opposition to Your work. There is resistance against Your good kingdom. Father, because evil and sin is real. Father, we pray for the strength and the courage to resist Satan, the world, and our flesh.

To stand strong against it because we know, Lord Jesus, You have gone before us and You have resisted and conquered that. Lord, You were our representative. You were our forerunner and our pioneer. The one who has gone before us and conquered these things on our behalf. And so Father, we cling to Your Son's righteousness.

We cling to the promise, Lord, that while we were enemies of You, alienated in our minds from You, You gave Your Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sin. Your Son perfected our imperfection. And so Lord, we lay our lives before You. We ask, Lord, that the temptations, the attempts of our enemies, Lord, will fall off us, that we may be righteous, so righteous, Lord, that these things won't stick, that there will be no fuel for the fire of their lies. And Father that through this all, we may find a deep joy, a deep peace in the midst of really messy situations.

We ask in Jesus' name. Amen.