Building While The Nations Rage

Unfortunately, it is not uncommon for people to do physical violence against those who would protect the vulnerable. Nehemiah and the Jews are only seeking to build walls for their own protection. They seek to obey the true and living God of the universe, whose laws are just and fair, and for these acts of goodness the wicked would do violence against them.

Once again, rather than respond to the enemies, Nehemiah and the people of God pray and appoint guards. Look at verse 9:

I would imagine that they prayed along the lines of what we saw in verses 4-5, and that kind of prayer is very common in the Psalms. For example, we find in Psalm 5:10,

Then in Psalm 104:35,

These are not isolated examples of this kind of thing in the Psalms. If you are not submitted to God and Christ, if you are not trusting His goodness and faithfulness, and if you are not actively pursuing God’s kingdom but pursuing your own agenda, then you have set yourself up as God’s enemy. If you are God’s enemy, if you have made yourself your own God and try to rival Him as the Lord of the world, it is righteous for the people of God to pray for God to triumph over you.

I call you to repent of your opposition to God and His purposes. I call you to bend the knee to the King Messiah, Christ the Lord. And I 118call you to believe that what God has planned for you is better than what you could plan for yourself. Believe that what God has done for you in Jesus is better than what you could ever hope to accomplish for yourself. Jesus has paid the penalty for sin by His death and resurrection. Repent of your rebellion and cast yourself on His mercy.

The people of God, meanwhile, face challenges to their faith. There is faithless talk within (v. 10), enemy talk without (v. 11), and faithless talk from round about (v. 12). Nehemiah writes in verse 10,

The people seem too weak, the task seems too big, and the people recognize that they cannot do this by themselves. They are right, but what those who speak this way fail to remember is that they are not doing this by themselves. God has promised to enable the effort, and the good hand of God is upon Nehemiah.

The enemies show their arrogance and folly in verse 11:

These enemies are also making their calculations without factoring God into their equation, and we see this also from the Jews who live around Jerusalem in verse 12 (ESV):

These faithless Jews are trying to make those in Jerusalem rebuilding wall and gate flee the danger of the city.

Nehemiah’s response to this is in verses 13-14 (ESV):

They will not protect themselves by fleeing or fretting, and if they do not act, the plots of the enemies will come to fruition. Nehemiah neither frets nor flees but takes action. He identifies the most vulnerable 119locations in the work, and he strategically locates people near those, grouping defenders with those to whom they are emotionally connected. Not only are they next to those for whom they care deeply, for whom they will fight, but they are armed.

Are there things in your life that you fear? Take action! Are there doubts lurking in your mind about your ability to do what God has called you to do? Take your eyes off your inability and fix them on the One for whom nothing is impossible. As you contemplate the greatness of God, do the next thing. Look at the weak points and reinforce them, and when you reinforce them, do so with the recognition that you need armed defenders. Not only do you need to put weapons in the hands of those guarding the wall, you need to make sure that the ones wielding the weapons are ready to die fighting for this cause because they are standing next to those they love. Use your emotions. Use your brain. Trust God, and guard the wall.

Let me be specific: meditate on the way that God is more powerful than your sinful urges and more powerful than your wicked opponents. As you think on that, take action against the enemies of the gospel by calling on God to do justice against them. As you fill your mind with God’s greatness and fill your mouth with prayer, recognize how the sin that tempts you would crush those you love in its iron jaws, grinding them in its merciless evil. Flee temptation. Fight the good fight. Set your mind on Christ. Be valiant.

Nehemiah 4:15-23

Look at how this works out for Nehemiah: the enemies of God’s people do not have God on their side; they do not have a cause worth more than their own lives, and so they are making calculated risks about what they can get away with. We who have God on our side not only have the support of the Almighty, we serve a cause worth more than our own lives, so we can lay our lives down ferociously standing for truth, celebrating beauty, and acting for goodness. This is what Nehemiah and the returnees are ready to do in verses 13-14, and look at how it plays out in verses 15-17:

God frustrated the plans of the enemies. He did so by allowing the secret conspiracy to be made known to the Jews. Note the divine sovereignty and human responsibility. God is at work for His people, and His people are doing what they can to advance His kingdom. Look, too, at how the people respond there in verse 15—they get right back to work! Not only do they keep working, verses 16-17 detail the way they kept their weapons close by.

Nehemiah is right in the middle of the fight, as we see in verses 18-20:

If there had been a crisis, the trumpet would have sounded, and the people were to rally to the trumpeter. The trumpeter was beside Nehemiah, which means Nehemiah planned to be on the scene of the crisis. He was not backing down. He was not hiding away. He was on the front line, right there on the wall, ready to seal his commitment with his own blood. Look at the sovereignty and responsibility again in verse 20—they were going to rally to fight, believing that God would fight for them.

What did they do next? Verses 21-23 say that they kept right on working:

You want a picture of leadership? You have it here in Nehemiah. Nehemiah is not using people to make his life more luxurious. He is laying his own life down for a cause that is bigger than his reputation. 121He is not motivating the people with the song of his own greatness; he is motivating the people with the greatness of God. He tells them in verse 14 to remember the Lord, who is great and awesome. He tells them that God is at work for them frustrating the plans of the enemy (v. 15), and he asserts in verse 20, “Our God will fight for us!”

In addition to pointing the people beyond himself to the Lord, Nehemiah is leading by example as he shows his own willingness to engage the fight—with the trumpeter next to him (v. 18). He is leading by example as he surveys the situation and makes provision for the people to be defended at weak points (v. 13), for the battle to be joined in case of crisis (v. 20), and for the city to be guarded at night (v. 22). The extremity of his readiness to sacrifice is then stated in verse 23 as he describes the vigilance and readiness that he modeled with his inner circle.

Do you live for a cause greater than yourself? Do you lay your life down for those you love? Do you fix your mind on Christ, the perfect man? Do you lead by example?

What enables people to do this, of course, is the experience of God’s truth, goodness, and beauty, supremely displayed in the gospel. If we know God as He is, we will be enraptured by Him and ready to do whatever He says. Not only that, we will do whatever we must to be in fellowship with God, to be in His presence, to see the Lord Christ face to face.

Reepicheep and Prince Caspian are together again in C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. They are traveling to the edge of the world, and at one point in the story it looks as though the crew might not be willing to go any further. The strongest desire in Reepicheep’s valiant mouse heart is to get to the end of the world that he might enter Aslan’s country. As the crew seems unwilling to go on, Lucy seeks help from Reepicheep: