Book of Nehemiah Part 2

Let's pray and we will get started. Lord Jesus, again, as we open your word and we consider what has revealed there, we ask that we would take comfort in the great example that we have of saints who have been persecuted for your namesake and the task that you have given them.

We pray that we would always do our job as Christians, that we would do it all with your strength and not our own so that we do not become exhausted to the point of failing our faith. We ask all of this in Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, so you'll note that the sermon was a little super heavy on the idea of the church militant being persecuted and even confessing to the faith to the point of death. In the book of Nehemia today, I don't think we're gonna see quite that extreme, but things are going to definitely heat up.

And if you remember at the beginning of the sermon, I pointed out that Satan, in attacking the church, he attacks it inside and he attacks it outside. And we heard in our text today how the word of God was expanding.

And one of the things I love about both Nehemia and the book of Ezra is that these are a group of believers in the one true God in the midst of perilous circumstances. They're grossly outnumbered. Things are not really, nothing is really looking by a worldly point of view, in their favor.

And they have no choice but to completely 100 hang on by their fingernails and cry out to God. You'll note that's standard operating procedure for most Christians around the world. I would remind those of us in Western civilization that the last few hundred years that we've been enjoying as far as having freedoms as it relates to worshiping Christ, that's an anomaly in human history.

That's not normal. And should it come to an end in the future, then note that we're going back to normalcy, not to something abnormal. But for us, it would seem that way. We're not entitled to having a government or a society that looks to Christians fondly.

We're not entitled to that. And most people in the world are dead in trespasses and sins, and they are active belligerents against those who believe and confess the one true God. And so you'll note that the book of Nehemiah and Ezra are beautiful in that regard to kind of help us out.

And you'll note that we're going to be reading about, maybe we may not get to it fully today, but we'll get to it next week for sure if we don't today. There is a revival that breaks out. A revival? Yeah, that's right.

And it wasn't one of these faux revivals that you see, like the Toronto Blessing or the so-called, the one down in Florida that happened, or the Asbury Revival. This is a legitimate revival, and it's always God's word that's front and center when there's legitimate revival.

Not outpourings of the Holy Spirit or weird things like this. It's actually a resurgence of the word of God, an interest in it, a hearing of it, the expanding of God's word's getting out. Now if you remember last week, they are building a wall.

We went through the list of people who were participating, and it sounds like everybody from the candlestick maker, the shoemaker, everybody was involved in building some part of the wall, and they're not done yet.

And so now things are gonna start to really ramp up in the danger department because Sanballat is not keen on what's happening. So we read in Nehemiah chapter four, 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? I am resorting to my surfer dude thing. Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? This guy's trash talking.

Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish? And the burned ones at that? Just totally trash talking. So Tobiah, the Ammonite, was beside him, and he said, yes, what they are building, socrates, is a, sorry, it's an obscure reference.

Yes, what they are building is a fox. If a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. So hear, O Lord 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.

Now, this is an example of, have you ever read any of the imprecatory songs? Holy smokes. Okay, this is the kind of stuff that will just, yeah, you ever smelled a smelling salt, by the way? Any of you ever done that?

That'll just wake you right up, and phew, you know. Yeah, yeah, imprecatory psalms are like the smelling salts of psalms, okay? They take, you know, if you're falling asleep, you read, you just read some of the sentences in an imprecatory psalm, and you are awake, and you just did, what did I just read, right?

Yeah, so you'll note here, they're praying for justice. We pray for our enemies slightly different than this, though. We pray that God would bring them to repentance, and if they will not repent, then we know that we ask that God would act in judgment, but because Christ has died for the sins of the world, we recognize that the best thing that can happen to our enemies, the best thing that can happen to them is they become one of us, and join us in experiencing suffering, and persecution, and reviling, and things like this, but he says, don't cover their guilt.

Let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. So he 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 Ashtites 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 to fight against Jerusalem, and to cause confusion in it, and we prayed to our God, and set a guard as protection against them day and night.

I think we read a little bit of this last week. You pray, and get busy. Just pray, and get busy, because God's gonna protect them through their arms. So in Judah, it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing.

There is too much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall, and our enemies said, they will not know, or see till we come among them, and kill them, and stop the work. So you'll note that this has gone beyond taunting.

This has gone beyond jeering, and reviling. We now have legitimate threats of murder, and by the way, if you ever get somebody threatening to kill you, take it seriously, okay? You'll note that no court of law would say, oh, he was just kidding.

Okay, no, when you get a threat that actually is of bodily harm, don't say that person doesn't mean it. They wouldn't have said it if they didn't. They have already practiced murdering you in their heart.

So we're now in real danger, and here's the issue, is that everybody, these Jews, Sanbalat, Tobiah, and these Arabs, they're all citizens of the same empire, the empire of the Babylonians, the Medes, the Persians.

They're all part of that empire. This is internal turmoil within, and who's supposed to be working out problems like this? So you'll note that Sanbalat and Tobiah are acting in a rogue manner. They are acting lawlessly.

They have no legal foot to stand on to oppose what's happening because the king himself has given the order for this all to happen and has funded it, and remember, Nehemiah, he has letters. He has official letters.

So just because you're doing something lawfully doesn't mean that people are going to be on board and say, well, I guess we can't do nothing about it, right? That's not always how things go down. So at that time, the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us 10 times, you must return to us.

So in the lowest part of the space behind the wall in open places, I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows, 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. Sounds like a bad Western, you know? It just kind of has that feel to it.

So when our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on, half of my servants worked on the construction.

Half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leader stood behind the whole house of Judah who were building on the wall. Those who carried the burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with his other.

That doesn't sound like an efficient way to get jobs done. But that's how much on alert they are. So they're carrying a burden with an AK -47 slung behind their back. You kind of get the idea. This is everything that's going on here.

And so each of the builders had a sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread.

And we are separated on the wall far from one another in the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet. Rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. So basically they know they're spread out. But from a tactical position, this is not a defensible position.

Their attention is divided between keeping one eye out to make sure they're not gonna get attacked and the other eye focusing on building the wall. And there's not a lot of them. If you remember, the total number of Jews who come back from the Babylonian captivity is less than 50 ,000.

How many people do we have in Grand Forks? What's our, about 50 ,000, okay? So we're talking about the whole population of Grand Forks at this point and how many of them, how many of that population are able to do work like this?

A percentage, right? You figure half of them are women and a sizable number of them are gonna be children of smaller ages and some of the elderly and the infirmed. What are we talking about? A quarter of the population is gonna be able to do all the work?

That's a rough estimate and I don't do math, but that sounds reasonable to me. And so these guys are spread out and half of them have to keep watch and the other half are doing the work. I'm sure they're taking shifts and rotating.

So this is just not a good thing. So here's the solution. If somebody gets attacked, blow the horn and we'll stop, we'll drop our bricks and grab our swords and come on down. Okay. Yes, Marilyn. That's a good question.

What was the reason why Sanballat and Tobiah are opposing this work? The scripture doesn't give us insight into their hearts. We don't know the exact reason. You could speculate and it would be a speculation.

You could say, well, Sanballat is an Ammonite and the Ammonites and the Hittites and the Uptites and the Balletites never got along well with the Israelites, right? You're saying they might be anti-Semitic?

There may be some anti-Semitism going on here, some tribal hatred that goes back a bit, but we're not exactly sure. And I would note that I've noticed over the decades of doing my work as a Christian apologist that sometimes the greatest enemies of Christianity, it doesn't make sense why, there's no rhyme or reason to it.

It's just, they hate God, right? It's really kind of that. They don't kind of like Jesus. They hate Jesus. They hate the one true God. They hate anything that reminds them of the one true God. And so at the core, Sanballat isn't merely opposing the Jews, he's opposing their God.

So, and who is the one, by the way, who gave this task to be done, who brought the Jews out of captivity in Babylon? He's the one who gave favor for Nehemia with Cyrus. You get the idea here. So that's how this is all going.

So we labored at the work. Half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. It's a long day. I also said to the people at that time, let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem that they may be a guard for us by night and may be labor by day.

So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes. Each kept his weapon at his right hand. How much you wanna get, these guys are barely sleeping too.

Long, long, long days. And the anxiety of not knowing whether you're gonna get attacked or not. All right, we continue. Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers.

For there were those who said, with our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive. There were also those who said, we are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, our houses in order to get grain because of the famine.

So food supplies are thin. And when human suffering is like this, where there's poverty and human suffering like this, who are the first to come in and really take advantage of it? Loan sharks, okay? Yeah, and then after them, the politicians, right?

But you'll know what I, have you ever been into like a neighborhood where it's like really, really, really poor, okay? One of the things you see on like almost every corner are these places that will give you advances on your paychecks.

These guys are running a scam and they are really oppressing people with that kind of stuff. Think of what's happening here as that. People see, oh, okay, they don't have any food. We have some food. So what are we gonna do?

Mortgage your inheritance, your property to us and we'll make sure that you get fed. Well, that is like cutting off your nose to spite your face because if you get rid of your land, you're no longer able to produce crops for yourself.

You might as well become an indentured servant. And who's doing this? Who's running these scams? Their own brothers. It's a mess. So there were those who said, we have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards.

Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves and some of our daughters have already been enslaved but it is not in our power to help it for other men have our fields and our vineyards.

So Nehemia writes, first person, he's the one who wrote this book. I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. I took counsel with myself and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials.

And I said to them, you are exacting interest from each from his brother. Usury, by the way, is forbidden in Israel. You cannot loan and charge interest if you're loaning to somebody who's your brother in Israel.

Okay, that is strictly forbidden. We as far as we are able have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations but you even sell your brothers so that they may be sold to us. They were silent and they could not find a word to say.

They were caught flat footed. You'll note that confronting people in their sins sometimes does that. What you're doing is wrong. So I said, the thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations, our enemies?

Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards and their houses and the percentage of money, grain, wine and oil that you have been exacting from them.

Give it all back. Then they said, we will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you have said. And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and I said, so may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise.

So may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, amen. And they praised the Lord and the people did as they had promised. Look at that, Nehemia, Robin Hood, even without a bow and arrow.

All right, right? But you're gonna note here, this is the, isn't this like the story of like every good story? Remember the, guys remember the A-team? Okay, this is the story of the A-team. You know, da-da-da-da, da-da-da.

Here comes Hannibal and Barabbas and they're coming in, they're just gonna, they're gonna clean house and what's happening? You got people who are in power who are oppressing people who are poor and this is just how things go, right?

So Nehemia comes in and he has a chat with his nobles and officials who are ingratiating themselves at the cost of their brothers. I mean, and note, you know, his invocation, do you not even fear God, right?

And then to add just a little bit of drama to it, he shakes out the folds of his clothes. May God do this to you, you know. Nehemia, man, this guy, I love it when a plan comes together. This guy's awesome, right?

Okay, moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year to the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, the king, 12 years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor.

So you'll note, as governor of Judah under King Artaxerxes, he was given a official food allowance. What did he do with all that food coming to him that he could have used? He gave it away. The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them their daily ration, 40 shekels of silver.

Even their servants lorded it over the people, but I did not do so because of the fear of God. I preserved in the work, I persevered in the work on this wall, and we acquired no land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work.

Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials besides those who came to us from the nations that were around us. Now what was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox, six choice sheep and birds, and every 10 days all kinds of wine in abundance.

Yet for all this, I did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on this people. Remember for my good, oh my God, all that I have done for this people. Now this is a book of the Bible here.

So I do not recommend if you're being generous with the goods that God has given you to let everybody know how generous you are. This is not an example for us to follow in that sense, but it is an example for us to follow in our generosity.

When you see that it is in your power to do good for your brothers and sisters, for your fellow humans.

Yes? Speaking of which, we got some photographs from Malawi with the people down there getting the equipment. So if you wanna show that at the end.

Oh wow, we did? We got some of those. Cool, all right, you can help me with that. Yeah, I'll airdrop it to you.

All right, that'll be awesome. How's it look, by the way? It looks like they're gonna get a lot of use out of it. Cool, all right.

So is he online right now? No, I don't see him at the moment. Cool. So just a little bit of note. I just was informed that, so there is a fellow who joins us from Malawi. His name is Jacob. And Jacob left the Pentecostal church in Malawi.

And he's been attending Kongsvinger online for a while. And he's been so excited about what he's been learning that he's decided that he's gonna share with all the people in his village the gospel. And now you got people from his village in Malawi, in Mizuzu, who have been joining him to hear the Kongsvinger services and to hear the teaching.

And so we just sent them some money so that they can purchase some equipment to make it easier for the people of his village to gather around to hear the word of God. So it's crazy stuff, just what's happening out here.

Just crazy stuff. Anyway, we were talking about generosity here. The idea is when there's human suffering and you have it in your power to do good to help ease people's suffering, if that means that you're not going to be getting more property, more money, your bank account isn't going to expand and it's gonna take a hit on your 401k, good.

Don't care about your 401k, care about your brothers and sisters, right? Remember, the commandment says, you shall not murder, right? And it's never enough to just say, well, I've never stuck a knife in somebody's back.

I've never taken a gun and shot them in somebody's assumed room temperature because of my actions. The positive end of that is that we are to care for our brothers and sisters in their bodily needs. And so we're seeing an example of that where you had these nobles and officials who were exacting interest in mortgaging things and taking advantage of the people and practically enslaving their own brothers and sisters.

That's a form of murder, that's a breaking of that commandment. And so Nehemia stands out as one who has honor and fears God and recognizes that it is upon him to take the good resources that God has given him, not only for his own good, but for the good of those he's able to help with it.

So he's left us a fantastic example for us to follow. Well, how's the story go? No good deed goes unpunished, right? So stop doing good. All these people were trying to oppress and keep them down and you just keep making their lives better, right?

Well, that's gonna get you in trouble here. So when Sambalat and Tobiah and Geshem, the Arab, and all the rest of our enemies heard that I had built the wall and that there was no breach left in it, although up to that time I had not set up the doors and the gates, Sambalat and Geshem sent to me saying, come, let us meet together at Hakafirim in the plain of Ono.

But they intended to do me harm. Oh no, right? I knew that was coming. This is a trap. It's a trap, oh no. All right, so I sent messengers to them saying, I am doing a great work, I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave and come down to you?

Now, funny note here, okay? So years ago, so this is what, 2008? More than years ago, it's almost two decades ago now. We're just quickly coming up on that. I attended as a guest a purpose-driven conference.

Rick Warren actually invited me, paid for me to attend, and I was there at Saddleback, even got to meet with him privately. And one of the weirdest things, when I was doing my podcast on a daily basis, from time to time I would get an email from Rick Warren.

Okay, and the last time that really happened was the last time that happened, that kind of all blew up in his face. So what ended up happening is that there was, if you can Google this, you can find it on the Orange County Register.

There was a person who worked for Rick Warren who was putting together a document with a Muslim mosque in Los Angeles. And they were working together on something called the Kingsway Document. And the Kingsway Document was showing all the ways in which the God of the Bible and Allah of Islam had similarities to each other.

It made it look as if they were basically the same God. Okay, and when that story first broke, things were, I mean, that was crazy. I actually was contacted by a reporter in Los Angeles who was doing the work for the Orange County Register.

And he was able to procure a copy of the document that they were working on with this mosque. And when I, he sent me the document. And I had, at that time, I had to actually say that I was, you know, I wouldn't say anything publicly about it until the story itself had broken.

But I saw the document. I said, holy smokes, this document looks like they're trying to make it appear like Christianity and Islam worship the same deity. And I explained to the guy theologically how that was the case.

And so they ran with the story. And when the story initially broke, Rick Warren emailed me. And he says, we're being framed by the liberal media. Okay, and I couldn't tell him I had the copy of the document.

Oh, I was quoted in the second one, the follow-up one. Okay, because it was a follow-up. So Rick Warren's explanation was he was being framed by the liberal media. And I said, Rick, I think you and I should have a conversation with each other.

Why don't we plan a phone call? He responded to my email and said, I'm doing a great work on the wall and I cannot come down. I kid you not, I kid you not. I still have that email somewhere. But it was so snaky.

I just think, dude, you just totally misquoted Nehemiah here. It would have been a meme today. Yeah, right, it was so bad, it was so bad. But yeah, so he decided that he didn't wanna have any more conversations with me.

And then I think he later figured out that I actually had the document because I helped get that out on a channel where people can see it.

Are you telling us that you're not part of the liberal media?

No, and I can assure you that the guy who broke the story, he was not part of the liberal media either. I mean, this guy was a freelancer and he was not some Marxist commie pinko or something like that.

I mean, he was something very different. So yeah, that was Rick Warren's explanation. He was being framed. But the document eventually got leaked. And then that reporter, he leaked part of the document.

And I actually spoke with the imam at the mosque. And I remember that. I got the phone call from him when I was at the Minneapolis airport. And he called me because the reporter had given him my phone number.

And he called me and he said, I have to be very careful. Just ask me yes or no questions. And so I asked him the question. I said, were you working on this document with Saddleback? Yes. Was the Saddleback leader basically arguing that you worship the same God?

Yes. Are you on board with this? No. So. Yeah, that was a, that was crazy. Yeah. So, yeah. So if you were to like do a search, a new search for the Orange County Register, Rick Warren Kingsway document.

There were two articles that came out in the Orange County Register. I got quoted in the second one. But, yeah, that was the last time I communicated privately with Rick Warren. But he was one of these guys that for years he would email me several times a year.

And it's like, I'm thinking, man, I must be under this guy's skin. So it was weird. Anyway. All right, let's take a look. Let's take a look at those photos, Josh. Where do I get them? Hold on. All right.

All right, we're gonna get an airdrop here. And we're not using a cargo plane for it. So, yeah. What? I love the days before Mythbusters. Because you remember when the Mythbusters, like the first myth that they debunked was the myth about the guy who put the JATO rockets on his car.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did. Hang on a second here. Malawi Outreach. Yeah. Okay, all right. Oh, wow, take a look at this. Okay, so. And I think everybody online can see this. So the tall guy on the left here is Jacob.

And look at these people gathered in his house. Okay, that is amazing. And they got a generator, they got a television. And a laptop. Wow. Oh, and they got speakers. Isn't that amazing? So that's Kongsvinger Lutheran Church of Mizuzu, Malawi.

So, there we go. That's amazing, so. Satellite campus. That's right, it's a satellite campus. All right. What we will do, we'll pick up with the rest of the story next week. I've gotta pack up and head down to Emmanuel and Radium.

But great to see you all. And pray that we'll see you guys next week. Lord willing, we'll see you guys next time.