The Devil’s Defensive Line of Discouragement

and I've called the summit home for five years. Today's sermon comes from Nehemiah 4, beginning in verse one. Now, when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they rise up against the wall? Will they rise up against the wall? Will they rise up against the wall? Will they rise up against the wall? What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what they are building, if a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. Here, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight. So we built the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height for the people had a mind to work. But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites

heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah and each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. You may now be seated. What a great morning Summit Church. Nehemiah chapter four, if you are not already there in your Bibles, Nehemiah chapter four, every work of God in the world, whether great or small, faces opposition. We learned in our study of Paul's letters to the Corinthians that the presence of opposition

does not prove that God is not behind something. In fact, it usually proves that he is. Paul said in his first letter to the Corinthians, 1 Corinthians 16, nine, a great door of ministry has been opened to me and there are many adversaries. Not, well, I thought a great door of ministry had been opened unto me, but then it got really, really difficult. So I just concluded God was not in it. No, he said a great door of ministry was opened to me and there are many obstacles. That means if you are going to make it in the Christian life, you are going to have to learn to press through obstacles and opposition. Get this, in the book of Nehemiah, there are only two verses in the entire book that are exclusively devoted to cultivating vision and passion in ministry. There are five verses that are devoted to planning. There are 10 verses that are completely devoted to prayer, but there are, get this, four entire chapters that are devoted to persisting in the face of opposition. That in itself is extremely instructive for you and me. You see, we spend all our time on these things right here. You go to any leadership conference, ministry conference, pastor's conference, and we're going to spend all of our time

on this stuff right here. And yet it is persistence in the face of opposition that might be the most important skill that you're going to need to master if you're going to succeed in the life that God is calling you to. A lot of things in life work like that, right? Right? I mean, regardless of what you think of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's social policies, historians agree that it was his unwavering and steely resolve that guided us successfully through World War II. In fact, a reporter once asked FDR right before he died how he could be so tireless in his efforts, how he could keep believing and keep pressing on when everybody else wanted to quit. And he, FDR, pointed to his bouts with polio. And he said, you're looking at a man who spent two entire years trying to learn to wiggle his big toe. If there's one thing I've learned how to do, it is to never give up. Or the scientist, Louis Pasteur, whose discoveries in germ theory introduced one of the most meaningful scientific shifts in human history. When Louis Pasteur was asked about the source of his greatness. It's the source of how he did what he did.

He replied very simply, my genius lies solely in my tenacity. The only difference between me and all the other scientists is that I wouldn't give up. Or how about this one from the sports world? Emmett Smith of the Dallas Cowboys was in my humble but accurate opinion, the greatest running back of all time. And I say that not because I'm a Dallas Cowboys fan, which I am, but because for more than 20 years, Emmett Smith held the NFL record for most rushing yards. Listen, when you say you're a Cowboys fan nowadays, that is not a flex, okay? That is a plea for sympathy. You gotta be a true believer to still say that. But over his NFL career, Emmett Smith rushed for 19,941 yards, which is by the way, more than 10 miles that he rushed on a football field. But here was the thing, Emmett Smith got knocked down on average every 4.2 yards of those 10 miles. And Emmett Smith was one of the smallest players in the NFL. He was only 5'9", 210 pounds. The average NFL lineman is 320 pounds. So I want you to imagine running from downtown Durham to Franklin Street in Chapel Hill, which is about 10 miles. Only every 4.2 yards, you're gonna get violently blindsided by somebody twice your size.

Does that sound fun? Right, you young adults that are in that running club here, does that sound like an awesome run to go on? What made Emmett Smith great was that he kept getting up and pressing forward after he'd gotten knocked down. In fact, John Madden, the football commentator, famously explained that a running back's YAC. You ever seen this? YAC, which stands for Yards After Contact. John Madden said, that is a running back's most important skill. YAC meaning the number of yards that the running back can keep going after he's been hit. Emmett Smith had one of the highest YACs in football history. Commentators say that he could somehow consistently turn two yard losses into three yard gains. Your success in the Christian life is based on your YAC. What you do after contact. So let's just be honest and level up here for a moment, okay? Some of you have started recently down a path towards something that you thought God was leading you toward but then you hit opposition. You started to try to follow Jesus but your spouse has gotten really difficult. They're not only not supporting you, they're giving you a really hard time or maybe an old temptation resurfaced, an old girlfriend resurfaced.

Or this weekend, you decided to come to church for the first time in a long time. You got up, you got the family ready, you got them here but the entire way here, you argued literally the entire way over here. And you just wondered like, is this a sign that this is just not for us right now? Or you made a decision to get out of debt. You made a decision to start tithing but then your car broke down. You ever had that happen? People tell all these amazing stories about how God provided after they decided to tithe. Oh, I got an unexpected check in the mail from an uncle I hadn't heard from in years. It was the exact, you're like, oh, this is so beautiful but my car broke down when I decided to start tithing. Or you started volunteering to serve with the children here at the Summit Church, but then the very first week, one of the children puked all over you. My point is everybody deals with this on some level. The question is, how's your yak? By the way, could I suggest that as the new Summit greeting for the next few weeks? How's your yak this week? Nehemiah, Nehemiah had a great yak. He had a great yak. Let me show you all the ways that Nehemiah experienced opposition. Then I wanna show you how he responded

to those bouts with opposition. I count in these chapters, we're gonna cover three chapters today. I count five ways that Nehemiah experienced opposition. If you will indulge me with staying with the football image, I'm gonna call these the Devil's Defensive Line of Discouragement, okay? When you get hit with one of these five things, it feels like you're getting hit by a 320 pound linebacker. Now I know that from experience and some of you do as well. So I'm gonna give you the five members of the Devil's Defensive Line of Discouragement and I worked really, really hard to make them all start with D. So please notice and appreciate that if you will, okay? Number one, his first defensive lineman is derision. Look in chapter four, the first three verses. Stan Ballett jeered at the Jews. He said, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burn ones at that? What are they even gonna build these walls with? All they got to work with is trash. Then verse three, Tobiah joins in. Yeah, what are they building? If a fox goes up on the wall, he'll break down their puny little stone wall. Nehemiah, what are you doing? You've never built anything.

You're a professional wine taster, Nehemiah. You've never known a day of hard work in your life. You're soft, you're nerf ball. Well, Nehemiah, some of you have faced this kind of mockery and pursuits of faith that you have attempted. People telling you that you will never succeed. People telling you that you just don't have what it takes. This is just a fad. You'll never make it. You'll just fade away like you always do. By the way, social media makes this a thousand times worse, doesn't it? Because now you can be gang-mocked and dogpiled by total strangers. In fact, I wonder what it would have been like for Nehemiah if Sam Ballard or Tobiah had had an ex account or a Twitter account. They'd be posting pictures of Nehemiah's walls, you know, live and making memes out of him. They would have savaged Nehemiah, no doubt. Something like this right here, right? Nehemiah's still sipping on the king's wine if he thinks this is gonna work. Hashtag pray for Nehemiah, hashtag rock pile. You know, building that never, this one. If you wanna use their actual words, when you're building a wall with trash, even a fox can break it down. It would have had like 869 likes and 320 retweets. Some of you have been mocked in your attempts

to follow Jesus. You've been belittled, you've been insulted, you've been turned into a meme, you've been humiliated. Defensive lineman number two, discreditation. Discreditation, this is verses seven and eight. When Sam Ballard and Tobiah, watch this, and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward. And then they heard that the breeches were beginning to be closed. They were very angry and they all plotted together, all of them, to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it, to fight against Jerusalem. And cause confusion means these guys engaged in both terrorist type sabotage activities, literally attacking the wall and the people. And they spread, cause confusion, spread lies about Nehemiah's leadership to try to erode people's confidence in him as a leader. That took the form not only of mockery and insult, it took the form of outright lies. Chapter six, verse six, flip over there. It is reported among the nations, someone said to Nehemiah, that you and the Jews intend to rebel. You have set yourself up as King, Nehemiah. That's been your game the whole time. Now that was not true. Nehemiah had never done that. Here's my question, have you had that happen to you?

I have. Your first impulse in that moment is always, well, why didn't God defend me? Why didn't he shut the mouth of whoever is trying to slam to me? By the way, back in chapter four, verse seven, it shows you that their opposition came literally from all sides. When you read this, it kind of goes right over our heads, but if you were somebody living in that time and read that list, you would know exactly what the author is trying to do. Sambaoth was a Samaritan, Samaria was north of Jerusalem. The Arabs were from the south. The Ashdodites were from the west and the Ammonites from the east. In other words, their opposition literally came from all sides. Can I be really transparent with you? I definitely, definitely don't want to make this about me or our church, but just to illustrate, one of the things that has been the most bewildering to me is when you start taking opposition from multiple directions for the same thing. Listen, I am used to being criticized from the left. I mean, that makes sense, right? We are Christians who believe that the Bible is God's inerrant word and we take it seriously, so of course we take it from the left. I mean, we are not so far right that we can feel the edge

of the flat earth or anything, but of course we are considered to be on the right and we take criticism from the left, that makes sense. But what has been bewildering is when we take it from the right for doing things, y'all, that seem consistent with the most basic instincts of the gospel, like trying to show compassion for people or we attempt to at least understand their pain and enter into it. There's something I've had to learn over the years, and that is Jesus took criticism from both sides. And to be clear, I'm not saying we're one with Jesus or we fully represent him. Jesus was perfect and we got a lot of stuff wrong. In fact, I will go on record and say that a lot of criticism that I get is valid. There are legitimate things I've learned from it, even when it is given in the wrong spirit. But the plain fact is that Jesus's crucifixion was a joint project between the secular left and the religious right. Both right and left hated Jesus for different reasons. One hated him for his claims to authority, that he brought his authority into places like their bedroom. The other hated how he showed compassion to sinful people and how he brought social undesirables close. I cannot see any way around the fact that if you're gonna live like Jesus in this world today, you're gonna take it from both sides

because the spirit of the religious Pharisees and the spirit of the pagan Romans are still mightily at work in our world today. In fact, I'm pretty confident that if you're not taking it from both sides, you might not be as much like Jesus as you think you are. Again, to be clear, I'm not saying we're like Jesus. I'm not saying we're perfectly balanced. I'm just saying that if you're aspiring to live like him, you should expect discreditation attempts from all directions. Christians in almost every era have dealt with this. Jesus was called a glutton and a frat boy. The early church was called anarchist and cannibals. When John Wesley took the gospel to the streets, started preaching out in the fields to try to reach people, leaders in the church of England called him an emotional fanatic, a manipulator, and banned him from their pulpits. When Richard Allen, the former slave-turned gospel preacher and the founder of the African Methodist Episcopal denomination, the AME denomination in America, when he tried to reach fellow African Americans with the gospel, he was called a disruptor and a troublemaker. He was literally pulled up off his knees while he was praying in a Methodist church and thrown out of the church. All he was doing was in there praying for a way to reach fellow African Americans with the gospel.

Now, I am not trying to put us in that company summit. And anything that we have experienced pales in comparison to what these brothers and sisters went through. But we've dealt with this kind of thing in our own way. When we've tried to reach people, people accuse us of only caring about numbers. When we've tried to lead our congregation to reflect the racial makeup of our city because God's called us to reach not just one socioeconomic slice of our city, but the whole thing, we've been accused of selling out to a DEI agenda. When we've made any attempt to even understand the plight of non-majority communities in our city, talking about people of color, refugees, critics have said that we have surrendered to the woke mob. When we've tried to care for immigrants and refugees in our city, we've been accused of promoting open borders, something I have never said and would never endorse. There is a rumor online, I kid you not, a rumor online that George Soros helps fund our church and that I fly around on his private jet. Look it up, that rumor is out there. And then from the other side, when we've talked about the sinfulness of things like abortion, calling it the unlawful killing of a human life, or we've spoken out about the destructiveness

of the LGBTQ plus agenda, or spoken against the, frankly, the child abuse that masquerades right now as gender transition for kids, we have been accused of being political or bringing politics into the church. To which I always say, we didn't bring the church into politics, you brought your politics into the realm of God's truth. And so we got to speak about this. Again, I do not want to make this all about us because see, I know some of you have dealt with this in your own way. Whether it's because of the stands you take or sincere good things that you've been trying to do, others have falsely accused you and mistreated you and sought to discredit you. Derision, discreditation, that leads to number three, doubt. Thing about persistent mockery and slander is it works. At least a lot of times it does. Other people start saying, well, you know where there's smoke, there's fire. They start gossiping. People love a good scandal story, don't they? Look at chapter four, verse 10 in Judah, it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing, there's too much rubble. Where'd they hear that? That's what Tobiah had said. And the people of Israel are like, well, maybe it's true.

Maybe that's right. By ourselves, we would not be able to rebuild this wall. The critical voices had gotten in the heads of Nehemiah's people and they started to doubt. Maybe our critics are right. Maybe Nehemiah is just a guy with a wild dream. Maybe we've given ourselves over to him. Maybe he's out building a name for himself. I mean, did God actually speak to him? Was anybody here for that? Discreditation from the outside feels brutal. I'm telling you, the thoughts that always stick most in my head aren't the critiques from out there. It's doubts from in here. And see other people's criticisms have a way of just drawing out my own insecurities. You've been there? Who do you think you are? What credentials do you bring? It's what some psychologists call imposter syndrome. All right, people saw who you really were. They really knew what was going on in that messed up head of yours. They'd never follow you. They'd never take you seriously. At least that's what the voice says. Listen, there are times that I ask myself, should I even be a pastor? I mean, pastor means shepherd. Shepherd's supposed to know kind of what they're doing.

Sometimes I feel more like a wandering sheep than a competent shepherd. Number four, distraction. Fourth linesman, distraction. This is in chapter six. You read these three chapters and you're gonna find four attempts to pull Nehemiah away from the work. First one happens in chapter six, verse two. Sanbal and Geshem sent to me saying, come, come and let us meet together at Hakafarim in the plain of, oh no. Sambal is like, hey, let's conference. Let's conference. Let's just set aside some time, Nehemiah. See if we can come to a compromise on this. Now, if you just looked at that verse on the surface, you might be like, well, come on, Nehemiah. Conversations can't hurt. A little diplomacy always goes a long way. But Nehemiah discerns he's dealing with a bad faith actor. That look at what he tells us at the end of verse two. They intended to do me harm. I knew it. Nehemiah recognizes these are not good faith people looking for a solution. These are guys fundamentally at odds with Nehemiah and his mission. And they are using feigned diplomacy as a cloak to slow him down, distract him,

and ultimately derail his calling. So Nehemiah was like, oh no, oh no. And I sent messages to them saying, I cannot. I'm doing a great work and I cannot come down. By the way, this right here, verse three, stands as one of the greatest leadership verses in the Bible. I'm doing a great work and I cannot come down to argue with you fools. See, sometimes you gotta recognize when answering your critics only serves their purposes. I'm doing a great work and I cannot come down. Sometimes when I've heard from my critics, the image I have in my head is like I'm a fireman running into a burning building because there are people trapped inside. And on the way in, there's some bystanders and some people dressed up like firemen who are over off to the side, calling my name, trying to draw me into some argument about the equipment I'm using or how I'm carrying my ax or the tone of voice I'm using when I'm calling out to people in the building or whether a fireman should wear their patch on their right arm or their left arm. And I'm like, I don't have time for these stupid arguments. That building is on fire. God has called me not to manage your opinions. He called me to get those people out. In fact, I'm always reminded how D.L. Moody,

the great American evangelist of the 1800s, responded when people criticized him. He would hold these large meetings in theaters all over the city and give altar calls. First time in history that had been done like that. Some of the local church leaders are like, well, Mr. Moody, we don't like your way of doing evangelism. It's cheap and undignified. Sometimes people come forward in your invitations who were just responding emotionally and they're not really sincere. So you're creating false converts. We don't like your way of doing evangelism. D.L. Moody said, yeah, I get it. There's a lot of things in our process that we can work on. But I'll tell you one thing, when it comes to evangelism, I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it. Listen, I'm not saying there's no room for critiques. I read most critiques, especially when they're offered in good faith. And like I said, I spent a lot of time listening to and learning from people who disagree with me, but I always keep in mind that our enemy loves to raise up Sanballat and Tobias and Geshems to distract us. The point here is you got to recognize a distraction when your enemy puts one in your path. It's like one of my pastoral mentors always told me, he said, JD, always, always be careful accepting an invitation from a pig to wrestle in the mud.

Because here's the thing, when you wrestle with a pig in the mud, you both get dirty, but the pig likes it. Sometimes you got to recognize that an argument or some kind of self-defense is just not leading anywhere. When it's just not profitable to get in a back and forth on a Facebook post or an Instagram reel, and instead just reach out and have the discussion with somebody face-to-face. Because I think the percentage of people who change their mind because of a zinger comment you put on a Facebook post or an Instagram reel hovers right around zero. When's the last time you changed your mind because somebody really put you in your place on Instagram? God has not called you to manage everybody else's opinions of you. He's called you to build a wall and build a city. Number five, deception. Chapter six, verse 10. Nehemiah's enemies sink to a new low. They send in a false prophet who tells Nehemiah, he's got a word from God. Nehemiah, let us meet together in the house of God because Nehemiah, God's told me they're coming to kill you. They're coming to kill you by night. God has revealed this to my spirit and confirmed it with two or three witnesses. This guy says, Nehemiah, God sent me to you to warn you about a plot.

You need to go hide. Verse 12, Nehemiah discerns that I understood and saw that God had not sent him. Christian, this is why you need to be prayed up because you need to be able to discern what is a true warning from God and what is a distraction or deception from the enemy because some of the worst counsel I've ever received in my life has been preceded by the words, God told me to tell you this. Nehemiah has to show similar discernment. Verse 17, many in Judah were bound by oath to Tobiah. spoke of his good deeds in my presence. Now you got a bunch of people on Nehemiah's staff who are going, Nehemiah, you know who we're really impressed by lately? This guy, Tobiah. He really gets us. You should put him on your steering team. He's just a stellar fellow, I tell you. Again, Nehemiah has to show discernment. That is the job of the leader. It is the job of the person that is pursuing the call of God. Your enemy is a liar. He is the father of lies. And he masquerades as an angel of light, which means he doesn't always present himself to you as a temptress.

He doesn't come to you always as a temptation to sin. He almost never comes to you with, you know, violence and a pitchfork and horns. Sometimes he shows up in your life masquerading as spiritual counsel. When our enemy tempted Jesus in the wilderness, he didn't quote the Bhagavad Gita or the satanic verses. He quoted scripture, which is why you got to be prayed up and studied up. You got to really know your Bible. I'm telling you, the devil will eat you for lunch. Five players in the devil's defensive line of discouragement. Derision, discreditation, doubt, distraction, deception. The fact that they all start with D proves this list was inspired by the Holy Spirit. When you start doing anything for God, the devil's defensive line smothers you. The question is what your yak is going to be. How many yards you're going to get after contact. Let me show you three things that Nehemiah told his people to increase their yak. All right, this is Nehemiah on how to increase your yak. Number one, number one, you got to remember. You got to remember chapter four, verse 14. Nehemiah says, do not be afraid of him. Remember the Lord who is great and awesome. Remember who called you. Remember whose work you're doing. Remember whose walls these are. Remember what he has done in the past

and what he promises to do in the future. Y'all, my primary job as your pastor, I feel like, is to help you remember. My primary job as your pastor slash preacher is not to be entertaining or inventive, not to give you new ways of looking at the world. My primary job is reminding you. I am the reminder in chief. I remind you of who our God is and what his great works have been in the past so that you will be inspired and instructed for what to expect of him in the future. The reason we remind ourselves of what God did in the past is to raise our expectations and our grasp on what he wants to do in the future. Listen, it is always tempting in every generation to relegate God's greatest works to the past. I am sure people in Nehemiah's day said, well, yeah, Nehemiah, of course God did that for Moses and Joshua, but that was then and this is now. No offense, Nehemiah, but you're no Moses or Joshua. They were escaping slavery in Egypt. All we're trying to do is build a wall. But Nehemiah's like, no, no, no. Chapter four, verse 20, our God will fight for us today. Listen, some of the walls not finished yet, which means that he's still working. And it means his power is still available. Jesus said, I will build my church

and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And as long as that work is complete, his power remains available to build it. It is always tempting to relegate God's great works to the past. But the point of remembering what he did in the past is to instruct you in what he wants to do in the future. There's a fascinating passage in the book of Acts or the book of Amos, excuse me, where the prophet Amos makes the same point. Amos wrote a few years before Nehemiah and apparently people in Amos' day and Nehemiah's day had the same problem as we do. They thought God's great works were primarily things of the past. Here's what the prophet Amos said to them. We read right over this. We don't realize the significance of what he's saying. This is what the Lord says to Israel. Do not seek Bethel, Bethel. Do not go to Gilgal. Do not journey to Beersheba. No, seek the Lord and live. Now, Bethel, Gilgal, and Beersheba may sound like a random list of ancient Middle Eastern cities to you, but those were three very significant places in Israel's history. All three of these places had experienced an unusual outpouring of God's power.

At Bethel, God had met with Jacob in the vision of the ladder, and God had renewed his promise to make of Jacob a great nation. Gilgal, Gilgal was the place that the children of Israel had emerged into after they'd wandered for 40 years in the wilderness. And there at Gilgal, God renewed his covenant with Israel. And from Gilgal, God parted the waters of the Jordan River, and he knocked down the walls of Jericho. At Beersheba, at Beersheba, God had officially given Abraham possession of the promised land. The point is each of those places represented a time when heaven moved powerfully on earth. Israel spoke reverently of those places. They had holidays commemorating what happened in those places, but they assumed the things God did there were things that he only did in the past. And so what does God say to them through Amos? Seek the Lord now and live. Let me paraphrase. I am sick and tired of hearing you talk about my works as if they were simply a thing of the past. Stop talking about Bethel. Stop talking about Gilgal and Beersheba as if they were places who saw me do things in the past that I just don't do anymore. I'm not the God of the past. I am the God of the present. My name is not I was. My name is I am. You seek me now in your generation and live. See, I wonder if in our day, God might say to us, I am tired of hearing how awesome it would have been to have been a part of the early church. I'm weary of all your talk about the courage of Martin Luther or the evangelistic success of Hudson Taylor or Billy Graham. I want to move in your generation. Billy Graham and Martin Luther were awesome, but they can't bring my work into the lives of your kids. My name in your generation is not I was or I used to be. It's I am for you. Here's my question. Where do you need to be reminded that the same power that God had available in the past is available to you now in the present today? Where do you need to look for God's miraculous power? Is it in your parenting? Is it in the prayers you're praying for a friend? Remember, your God is a God who got involved in sickness. He healed the sick. He walked on water.

He raised the dead. He could not pass by anybody calling out to him in faith. He stopped to help him and he'll stop to help you. A good leader is a good rememberer. He or she charges you to remember God's works in the past and to remind yourself of his promises in the future. A good leader points you to look beyond the daunting obstacles that are in front of you to the awesome God that is behind you. A good leader says obstacle, yeah, but God gets the last word. Y'all remember the Roadrunner cartoon? Remember that? That was my favorite cartoon growing up, except for Tom and Jerry. That was a second favorite, but this is my first favorite. Basically, the plot in every Roadrunner episode is the same, right? Wile E. Coyote does something to sabotage the Roadrunner from his high-speed run to the desert. Usually, about halfway through the episode, you're pretty sure Roadrunner's done for, but something always goes wrong. But something always goes wrong. Wile E. Coyote pushes the wrong button or he stands in the wrong place and he ends up hoisted on his own petard. Every episode of Roadrunner ends with Roadrunner's iconic, meep meep, meep meep, which means, despite your best laid plans, I'm still blazing toward my goal. See, I think there's gospel instruction for us in that. Nehemiah is like, you just keep in mind, who meeps at the end, okay? God's call always leads to the valley of opposition. It always leads through death. It always leads to the cross, but it always ends with a meep meep of resurrection. You've never heard that sentence before in church, I promise you, okay? Remember, remember. Number two, redirect. Redirect when Nehemiah feels a threat. He does what's instinctive to him, what he's done the whole book. Chapter 4, verse 4, we hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their insults on their own heads. Where's the first place you take your troubles? Where's the first place you turn in opposition? You the kind of person who just gives up? You the kind of person who just starts complaining and blaming everything and everybody for why you're not succeeding? Kind of like therapy through, you know, complaining to your friends about, well, this person did that and that person did that, and that's why it didn't work. For some of us, our main thing seems to be coming up with justifications for why things didn't work, so we look good at the end of it. Or are you the kind of person who just takes failure in stride and assumes that if you just work harder, you will prevail? Now, the world praises that last one, but all those responses are wrong. Nehemiah's instinct was to redirect things to God in prayer. When Nehemiah's heart was burdened for something, he prayed. When he needed to develop a plan, he prayed. For four

months, he prayed. While he was waiting for God to open the door, he prayed. When God finally opened that door and Nehemiah felt the pressure to perform there in front of the king, he prayed. When he experienced opposition, his first instinct was prayer. Is prayer your first instinct or is it your last resort? By the way, I know some of you will wonder about the the judgment overtones of Nehemiah's prayer. In fact, after he says, you know, turn back their taunt in their own heads, he goes on to say, and give them up to be plundered in a land where they become captives. Lord, make them slaves. Do not cover their guilt. Let not their sin be blotted out from your sight and your light. That didn't feel like a very Jesus-y prayer. I mean, sometimes I feel like that with my enemies, but are we allowed to pray like this? You know, a lot of the Psalms are that way too. David praying for vengeance on his enemies. It's what theologians call the imprecatory Psalms, imprecatory prayers where you're praying down judgment. That's a great question for you to ask. Here's the answer. This is a pre-Jesus prayer. See, Nehemiah does not fully understand yet all that God is doing. And this is one of the many evidences that the book of Nehemiah is not the ultimate fulfillment of God's plan. Old Testament scholar, Derek Kidner says,

in these kinds of prayers, the one by Nehemiah, the ones in the Psalms, the imprecatory Psalms, we recognize in them legitimate cries against injustice, legitimate requests for God to take vengeance against evil. But they are no longer appropriate for us to pray, at least in this form, because we now know that we were the traitor that Jesus was punished in the place of. He was punished for our sin so that we could have forgiveness so now we pray for our enemies like Jesus prayed for us, that they will find forgiveness and salvation even as God exacts perfect vengeance against injustice. Listen to me, Christian, every act of injustice, every false word of slander ever uttered against you, every mean tweet, every malicious rumor will one day be set right. And because you know that, because you know that, if you can live with that knowledge as a constant present assurance in your life, then you can pray that God will bring your persecutors and your haters to repentance just like he did you, because you were unworthy just like they are when Jesus died and forgave you. So you remember, you redirect. Lastly, you rearm. They didn't stop with prayer. Verse nine says, they prayed and they set a guard. Verse 14 says, they prayed and they fought.

Sometimes people think that praying means you don't act, that's not true. In the Bible, prayer is not the alternative to action, prayer is the preamble to action. You pray for a job, then send your application out. You pray for healing and then you go to the doctor. You pray for your friend to get saved and then you extend an invitation to come to our Easter services. You pray for traveling mercies, then you fashion your seatbelt. You pray for a wife, then you ask her out on a date. Are we communicating, okay? Nehemiah even took time to clear up rumors. Chapter six, verse eight, in response to all the slander spread about Nehemiah says, no such things as you say have been done. You're inventing them out of your own mind. Now, I wanna be clear. That stuff I said earlier about not getting distracted or not trying to manage everybody's opinions, that does not mean there's never a time to give clarity. Nehemiah said, these are lies. And then he demonstrated why the accusations were not true. There is a time to defend your convictions and your positions against the false accusations. Look at chapter four, verse 18. Each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. Each builder had his building tools in one hand,

his sword in the other. Charles Spurgeon, British pastor, 19th century, named his periodical, his newsletter, the sword and the trowel based on that verse. The trowel being one of those tools that bricklayers use to smooth out the concrete. Spurgeon said that God's servants have to simultaneously build the kingdom of God with one hand, that's the trowel, and defend against lies and attacks with the other, that's the sword. Of course, in case you need this clarified, when I talk about holding a sword, I'm not talking about using actual violence. We fight like Jesus fought by speaking truth. Yes, always, boldly and clearly, but we also fight by loving our enemies and by serving them and by responding with grace and empathy to them and laying down our lives for them even as we speak truth to them. Nehemiah says, chapter six, verse three, says we got a job to do. God hadn't called us to manage everybody else's opinions of us. God's called us to build a city. At the end of the day, there's only one person whose opinion matters to me, he told his people. Only one person to whom I'm gonna give an account and it's not my critics and it's not my fans and it's not my friends and it's not Sam Ballett and Tobiah and Geshem, it's not even my family

and it's certainly not the Twitter mob, it's Jesus. Remember. redirect and rearm. That is how Nehemiah encouraged his people to keep going. And it's a fantastic list, but there's something critical left out of his list. Something Nehemiah did not include in his list because he didn't fully understand it yet. The writer of Hebrews will supply it. The writer of Hebrews and urging his congregation many years later to press through their obstacles and opposition says this, consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that you may not grow weary or faint hearted. He says, when your enemies look like they're winning, when your enemies feel like they're ruling the day and all you're facing is the cross and it looks like they're in charge, just consider how Jesus endured such hostility from sinners. But then also consider how God brought resurrection to him so that you won't grow weary or faint hearted because the cross is never the final act, the resurrection is the final act. And when it looks, when it looks like God's not answering a prayer, when it looks like I keep praying and praying and nobody's listening to me up there and it feels like the heavens are brass,

why aren't you listening? I'm asking you for something. Why aren't you paying attention? Consider him who prayed from the cross for deliverance and it looked like God ignored him. At one point he even says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why did Jesus say that? Because you feel like that a lot, that's why he said that. Now we know on this side of the resurrection, God wasn't ignoring him. In fact, soon resurrection came, so consider him when you feel like your prayers aren't being answered so that you will not grow weary and faint hearted in your prayers. You see friends, we got even more reason than Nehemiah did to believe what Nehemiah said in chapter four, verse 20, our God will fight for us. Because see, Nehemiah had only a split red sea and some knocked down walls in Jericho to inspire him. We got an empty tomb left by a God who voluntarily suffered death and hell in our place. And see Christian, we know if Jesus did that for us, he's gonna help us out in these battles we're fighting right now. Whether we're talking a dream of seeing an unreached people group reach with the gospel or we're talking about our kids coming to Jesus or we're talking about a situation working out for the glory of God where we work,

we consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself so that we would never grow weary or faint hearted in our own pursuits. They say in Egypt that only two creatures can scale the pyramid, the eagle and the snail. You may not have the strength of the eagle, but you can have the persistence of the snail and you can have it because of the faithfulness of Jesus. I'm just telling you, don't give up. That's the one skill you gotta master. You gotta be like Emmett Smith. You gotta keep getting up. You gotta keep walking forward. In fact, let me close by reminding you what Nehemiah reminded his people of, a motivation for them to keep going. And that is, he said, the lives of the people you love literally hang on you pressing through the opposition. Look at four verse 14. Remember the Lord was great and awesome. Watch this, and fight for your brothers, fight for your sons and your daughters, fight for your wives and your homes. When Israel was first reconstituted as a nation in the late 1940s, after the horrors of the Holocaust, they formed their first army. There was an induction ceremony that I was told about that they took all the new soldiers through. I'm not sure if they still do it today,

but it was true back then. The final test for becoming a soldier in the army was a several-day, brutal, miles and miles-long trek through the mountains of Judea. It involved extreme climbing and days of struggle and starvation. In some parts, you had to crawl on your belly through obstacle courses. But see, if you made it through, if you made it to the very top, the very top of this highest mountain, your families and your close friends were waiting there to stand with you as you were sworn into the army. Now, the symbolism was clear. All this pain that you're going through, all this sacrifice, not giving up, even when everything in you wants to give up, you're pressing on for the sake of your friends and your family. Yeah, we're doing all this for Jesus, Summit, but we're also doing this for the people that we love, people we wanna see come to Jesus. It's not an exaggeration to say that somebody else's life, somebody's literal eternity hinges on whether or not you keep going now. So dad, listen to me. Dad, who's just started to come back to church, don't give up. I know it's hard. I know there are so many obstacles.

And I know you drag yourself in there today feeling like. I'm not sure I can do it, but press on. I'm telling you, it's worth it. Your kids are worth it. And those of you who are pursuing that ministry dream, don't give up, press on. The lives of a lot of people that you're gonna bless through that ministry dream are totally worth it. I wanna end this by just a time of prayer, because I really sense that some of you came in here this morning feeling like you were ready to give up. You may not have known it, but I just called it out. What I want you to do is I want you to come up here and remember God's faithfulness, and then redirect, and then rearm. Maybe you're tempted to give up on a prodigal son or a daughter or a friend or a spouse. I want you to do it near my idea. I want you to remember, redirect, rearm. And the first step is to come up here and pray. Or maybe you need to come up here and pray for one of your enemies. Maybe you've been fighting against your enemy and you need to pray that God will open their eyes and forgive them and overcome the obstacle, yes, but change their hearts. Here's what I have us do. I want us at all of our campuses. I want us to stand to our feet.

Stand to our feet all over the Summit Church. Our worship leader is gonna come right now. They're gonna lead us in a song. We're gonna sing together. Yet not I, but Christ in me. It's a great way to finish this time in Nehemiah. I'm gonna pray. And y'all listen, even before they start singing, I want you to come up here and some of you need to grab somebody and start praying. I'm gonna put our prayer team on the wings, elders. If you want to pray with somebody, they're there for that. But you just otherwise grab, come to the front of your campus and just pray. Father, I pray in Jesus' name. Holy Spirit, I know that you're drawing people and you're saying, don't give up. You're wanting to rearm. You're wanting to redirect. So God, I pray that you would strengthen, embolden, and lead them, God, lead them to paths of fruitfulness and faithfulness. Holy Spirit, come now in this moment. Have your way, have your way in Jesus' name, in Jesus' name. Right now, as your worship leaders are coming, you come, if that's moving in your heart, and you spend this time in prayer.