God’s Provision Is A Call To Action

Good morning.

Today's scripture reading is going to be found in Zephaniah, in Zephaniah chapter

2, verses 1 through 11, and

that's on 789 of your Pew Bible, and then we'll go to Colossians

chapter 1.

Beginning in Zephaniah chapter 2, would you please stand for the reading of God's Word?

Gather together, yes, gather, O shameless nation, before the decree takes

effect, before the day passes away like chaff, before there comes upon you the burning

anger of the Lord, before there comes upon you the day of the anger of the Lord.

Look to the Lord, all you humble of the land, who do his just commands.

Seek righteousness, seek humility.

Perhaps you may be hidden on the day of the anger of the Lord, for Gaza shall be deserted,

and Ashkelon shall be a desolation.

Ashdod's people shall be driven out at noon, and Ekron shall be uprooted.

Woe to you, inhabitants of the sea coasts, you nations of the Charithites.

The word of the Lord is against you.

O Canaan, land of the Philistines, and I will destroy you until no

inhabitant is left.

And you, O sea coast, shall be pastures, with meadows for shepherds and folds for flocks.

The sea coast shall become the possession of the remnant of the house of Judah, on which day shall

graze, and in the house of Ashkelon they shall lie down at evening.

For the Lord their God will be mindful of them and restore their fortunes.

I have heard the taunts of Moab and the revelings of the Ammonites, how they have taunted my people

and made boasts against their territory.

Therefore, as I live, decrees the Lord, decrees the Lord of hosts, the God

of Israel, Moab shall become like Sodom, and the Ammonites like Gomorrah, a land

possessed by nettles and salt pits, and a waste forever.

The remnant of my people shall plunder them, and the survivors of my nation shall possess them.

This shall be their lot in return for their pride, because they taunted and boasted against the

people of the Lord of hosts.

The Lord will be awesome against them, for he will famish all the gods of the earth,

and to him shall bow down, each in its place, all the lands of the nations.

Turn now to Colossians chapter 1.

We'll read from verses 9 through through verse 14, and

that can be found on page 983 of your pew bible.

Colossians chapter 1, beginning in verse 9.

And so from the day we heard, we have not ceased to pray for you, asking that you may be filled with the

knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so as to walk in a manner

worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work, and increasing

in the knowledge of God.

May you be strengthened with all power according to his glorious might, for all endurance and

patience with joy, giving thanks to the Father who has qualified you to share in the

inheritance of the saints in light.

He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness, and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,

in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Let's pray, please.

Oh, you may be seated.

Father in heaven, we come before you, as it were, open books.

Lord, you know the deepest recesses of our hearts.

You know the besetting sins we struggle with.

You know our day -to -day struggles, Lord, to walk in purity, and before you,

honestly and openly, without hypocrisy.

You know our struggle, Lord.

And again and again, we sin, repent, and turn to you.

And we know we can do this, because we can turn to you after we sin, Lord, because

of Jesus and his shed blood.

Lord, help us to sin less and less as we go on in our walk before you.

Help us, Lord, to be more and more conformed to the image of our Savior.

We thank you that we can come before you, even boldly, and we can come before you and be

heard because of Jesus and what he has done.

We thank you that his shed blood makes it possible that we can gather here and we can

be honest and open and known by you.

Father, we ask that you would bless this day, that if there is any compartmentalized sin, any

sin that we're harboring, that we're not confessing and forsaking, that you would deal with us

in your mercy and grace.

Be gentle, Lord, with those who are ignorant.

Be firm, Lord, with those who know better.

Help us, help us, Lord, to be more consistent in

our walk, that when we bear testimony to non -believers, Lord, that they will hear and they will

see that God is present in our testimony, that Jesus Christ would be lifted

up, and that we would even bear fruit for you.

Bless the preaching of your word as our pastor comes before us right now, and may Jesus Christ

again be glorified.

We ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Your Bible's pleased to Nehemiah chapter 2.

Nehemiah 2, as we continue to go through this historical

record, this morning we'll

concern ourselves with verses 9 through 14.

Nehemiah 2, 9 through 14.

Then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.

Now the king had sent me with officers and the army and the army and horsemen.

But when Simbolik the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant heard this, it displeased them greatly that someone had come

to seek the welfare of the people of Israel.

So I went to Jerusalem and was there for three days.

Then I arose in the night, I and a few men with me, and I told no one what my God had put into my heart to do for

Jerusalem.

There was no animal with me but the one on which I rode.

I went out by night by the valley gate to the dragon spring and to the dung gate, and I

inspected the walls of Jerusalem that were broken down and its gates that had been destroyed by fire.

Then I went to the fountain gate and to the king's pool, but there was no room for the animal that was under me to pass.

Then I went up in the night by the valley and inspected the wall, and I turned back and entered by the valley gate and so

returned.

And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I was doing.

And I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, and the rest who were to do the work.

Then I said to them, you see the trouble we are in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with its gates burned.

Come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good, and also the words of the king, words that the king had

spoken to me.

And they said, let us rise up and build.

So they strengthened their hands for the work.

But when Simbalit the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite servant and Geshem the Arab heard of it,

they jeered at us and despised us and said, what is this thing you are doing?

Are you rebelling against the king?

Then I replied to them, the God of heaven will make us prosper and we his servants will arise and build,

but you have no portion or right or claim in Jerusalem.".

God bless the reading and now the hearing of his word.

Do you notice that the narrative sort of picked up the pace here?

If in the last message we did the first eight verses of chapter 2, this meeting with Nehemiah

and the king, this King Artaxerxes, same king we have here, we're going to refer to him several times in this message, that

king with the queen sitting beside him.

And we broke it up into three messages for each of the three questions, but it goes pretty quickly, doesn't it?

There's Nehemiah, he's ready to serve the wine to the king.

The king says, why is your face sad seeing that you are not sick?

This is nothing but sadness of heart.

First question and Nehemiah answers it.

Second question, what are you requesting?

And Nehemiah answers it.

Third question, how long will you be gone and when will you return?

And Nehemiah answers it.

Those eight verses giving us what might have amounted to three minute

conversation.

And now in 11 verses, or excuse me, 12 verses I just read to you, verses 9 through 20,

Nehemiah takes the king's approval of the project.

He gathers up this cohort of armed men that the king sent with him,

gets all the supplies together, goes to Jerusalem, spends three days there, inspects the wall,

sells the project, answers the enemies.

And all of that after a four month journey from the capital of Persia to Jerusalem.

And all that in 12 verses.

You see, Nehemiah is wasting no time here.

He's immediately on his way with his armed guard, courtesy of the king, with his passport, the safe passage,

courtesy of the king.

He's given no trouble on the way.

He arrives.

And as soon as he is there, as we read, the enemies are revealed that Simbala and Tobiah,

soon joined by their ally Geshem.

Nehemiah answering that the God of heaven is going to bring prosperity to the project when those enemies all

challenge him.

And in a nutshell, brethren, that's what happened.

That's the substance of this historical record.

These facts that are given to us.

It's somewhat fortifying for me to know that these facts are so well attested outside of the

Bible.

The Bible sits over those historical records.

But it does help us to know that, for example, this man Simbala, his cohort, Tobiah, and

later Geshem, who comes at the end, are very well attested in archaeological evidence.

These men really existed.

These men really said these things.

These men really hated God's people.

These men were really enraged that someone would come for no other reason than to do good for God's people.

These things really happened.

And so we have a historical record in a historical book, and that should not be too surprising for any of us.

But it's so much more than just a record of historical facts.

It's history in the purest sense on that score, because it is accurate, because this is scripture, which never leads us

astray.

But what's behind all this?

What does it tell us?

Well, behind it all is what came at the end of the reading, the good hand of the Lord God upon

Nehemiah.

God's goodness being brought to his people through this servant.

What's behind all this is a history of God's people and his dealing with them, and so his dealing

with us.

We, God's people, bought by the blood of Jesus Christ on the cross.

Looking to a history like this and saying, if that's a reading of the facts, if in twelve verses

Nehemiah gets his approval and goes to Jerusalem, which is about a four -month journey,

and does these things that pastor went through so quickly, what does it mean to

us?

What does this record tell the church today?

The record today tells the church that God's provisioning is a call to action.

God's provisioning is a call to action on the church, as much as it was to them then.

God had provisioned Nehemiah with everything he needed, from the armed escort, to the

safe passage, to the requisition for the materials, to the approval to

even join on the project.

He had given them, given him all that he needed in order to accomplish what God had put on his heart.

And when God provisions us as a church, no less than it was for them, it is a call to

action for us today.

When God provisions you, you, the average

Christian sitting in the pews, if anything could be average about a Christian, if anything could be average about someone bought by the blood of

Jesus Christ, which of course there can't be.

The call is to look to God's provisioning of you, and how you are provisioning to the

church, and how the church thus provisioned is called to action.

We're called to do something with it.

The people back in that day had been 13 years

since they had last tried to build this wall.

Now you don't have to turn there, because I'm going to just mention it very quickly.

In Ezra chapter 4, it is recorded that when they started to build the wall, the enemies of

Judah, not named, but it seems very possible it's the same ones, Simbalit and

Tobiah, accused them of treason, went to Artaxerxes, the same king that we have who

approved Nehemiah's project, the same Artaxerxes, but back in Ezra chapter 4,

about 13 years before this, when he heard that rebellion might be fomented by

this wall, if he allows it to be completed, he gave a cease and desist order.

And so what we have here in this provisioning of Nehemiah is an overturning by Artaxerxes of Artaxerxes'

own order.

What have they been doing for 13 years?

I'm just going to call it a decade for now, so I don't have to keep saying 13.

What have they been doing for a decade?

Have they been idle?

Have they not known that the wall was broken down?

You know, sometimes we just get used to things.

Sometimes we just see things as they are, and we forget what God's Word says they should be.

Sometimes we make a little progress towards the image of Christ, and as

circumstances slow us down, weeds grow up so we can't see beyond the immediate circumstance,

things just stifle us.

We get used to it.

They had been all these years with that wall and just accepting

it.

Just looking and saying, well, this is the way things are.

Maybe they were just marking time for these 10 years.

You know, the men in chapter 1 who came to Nehemiah, they didn't mention the wall.

He asked about the wall.

And when Nehemiah heard it, he was horrified to hear what condition things were in.

But I think they had just gotten used to the idea that

they could live with the disgrace of an open city, that the visible aftermath of their awful defeat was

okay, that the derision they were held in was just the way things were.

What we have here is this record of God's provision for Jerusalem's wall by means of

Nehemiah's leadership.

It's a record of hope.

It's a record of encouragement for us today.

You see, God makes his will known and he raises up men to lead us in carrying out his will.

And he provisions us, he provisions them for the need of the moment.

If we look at these verses, there's sort of a structure to them.

I'm not going to preach the structure to you, but I want you to see the way I think this was organized.

Then we're going to delve into this and pull out some of the points that I think we need.

But if you look at verse 9, it has to do with Nehemiah, Nehemiah going to Jerusalem.

And that's the first verse.

And the last verse I read has again to do with Nehemiah.

And here he's answering the enemies.

In verse 10, we are introduced to those enemies.

That's the second verse.

And the next to the last verse, verse 19, is the enemies again.

And in between these two, we have Nehemiah going and checking out the wall and

looking and seeing the actual condition of things and making his plans, kind of a logistical tour,

if you will.

And verses 17 and 18, explaining the project and getting the buy -in from the people.

I want us to see this morning, God's providential provision,

fitting the circumstances, fitting the need of the moment.

God had put on Nehemiah's heart the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls and had done all to make it a reality.

And so our passage, as I said, begins and ends with Nehemiah.

And after Nehemiah comes and before it ends with Nehemiah, we have the enemies of God.

And in between that all, we have the project and God's provisioning overruling all the

resistance and being better than the circumstances they have.

What are these provisions that he gave?

What is the provisioning that God gave that is the need of the moment for them then?

The first thing God provides is, of course, a leader.

The first thing God provides is Nehemiah.

You look again at verse 9, then I came to the governors of the province beyond the river.

Now remember, then I came to them.

This is right after his meeting, which ended in verse 8.

And in verse 9, he's there.

That's four months of journeying.

I came to the governors of the province beyond the river and gave them the king's letters.

Now the king had sent me officers of the army and horsemen.

Now he's more than just a good leader.

He's a leader who knows how to plan.

He's a leader who knows what needs to be done so that things go smoothly, so that things go rightly.

He knew that if he simply meandered to Jerusalem, he would be in danger on two fronts.

I mean, first with the roads.

The roads were dangerous.

They're full of bandits.

They were full of brigands.

We know when Ezra went from Babylon to Jerusalem, he eschewed the king's escort, preferring to trust God

and to seek his protection by prayer.

Nehemiah's mission, though, is different.

Ezra came as a priest in the name of God to restore proper worship in the temple.

Nehemiah comes in the name of the king to restore civic order.

Now understand, he needs to be provisioned properly.

He's going to come, and he's going to claim that we can rebuild this wall, because what has happened?

The king has overruled the king.

The king has removed a cease and desist order from 13 years before, a decade earlier,

and he said, we can build again.

Now would that not give you a little skepticism?

You, who is going to build this wall, you, who a decade before have been accused of your rebellion, you,

who have been told not to build this wall, you, who Nehemiah is going to say, at the risk of your head remaining

attached to your shoulders, should start building this wall again.

What's one of the first signs he has?

What's one of the first provisions he has that his mission is legitimate?

It's the escort.

It's the escort.

It's the letter of safe passage.

It's the requisition he has for all the building materials he needs.

You remember back in the other chapter, or back in the first part of this chapter?

He gets the requisitions to go to Lebanon and get everything.

He can prove that King Artaxerxes had approved this mission.

So he's rightly provisioned in that way.

He comes to Jerusalem with all the pomp, all the, everything that's necessary to prove

royal patronage.

I mean, would they have believed, would they have actually believed that Artaxerxes had actually changed his mind and allowed the

building to resume if he just rode in by himself?

Would that have been enough?

You see, God has always provided leaders to his people.

Now, God is to be the king.

And we spoke a week or so ago about how in raising up Saul, they rejected not

Samuel, the prophet then, and their leader, their judge then.

God said they have not rejected you, but they've rejected me from being king over them.

God is our king.

Today, we live under the authority and the auspices of Jesus Christ, our king, our risen king, now at the right hand

of God and ruling us by his spirit and according to his word.

But even so, God has always provided to his people, even today to the

church, leaders, human leaders to lead his people.

We think in terms of biblical history, you think of Israel groaning for 400 years under the Egyptian sun,

but really doing nothing about it.

Had they given up hope?

Had they just gotten used to it?

They said, okay, we're born slaves, we're going to be slaves, as long as we get some leeks and onions, we're okay with it.

Just got used to it.

They did nothing about it until God sent them a leader, until God sent them a Moses,

providing Moses with an Aaron to speak for him, providing Moses with a staff to bring down God's power.

And then the people said at the end of Exodus chapter 4, the Lord has visited his people, and they rejoiced

at their coming freedom after 400 years of getting used to slavery.

The Jews in Nehemiah's time had leaders.

They had Ezra at the temple.

He was leading the temple back to proper temple worship.

They had Zerubbabel.

He had been their governor.

He saw that the temple's construction.

Now Nehemiah, for the special task of building up God's

walls.

What do leaders do?

Do you have a leader in this place?

Well, of course, according to God's rule, according to God's word, we do.

It is, of course, the one who's preaching to you now.

It is myself.

One of the things leaders do is give wake -up calls.

This is what Nehemiah did.

When the men gave him the report, they said the remnant there in the province who survived the exile, this is back in chapter 1,

verse 2.

This is when everything got started, is in great distress and shame.

The wall of Jerusalem is broken down and its gates are destroyed by fire.

But what had been done for that decade?

What had been done?

Well, nothing.

And along comes Nehemiah to wake them up.

What are you all doing?

They said, well, we're working hard at things.

Well, if you read Haggai, which is about that time frame, they had been working hard and they got rebuked for how

hard they're working because they're working on the wrong things, working on their own homes and not the temple.

Well, they got that squared away.

They got the temple done and received God's blessing for that work they were doing.

Well, now what?

You just get used to these walls being crumbled down.

We just get accustomed to it.

They were sure working hard at a lot of things, but not getting anywhere, not having any direction.

In a real sense, they were marking time.

Back when I was 17 and 18 years old, I spent two years in the Vanguard, the Santa Clara Vanguard Drum and Bugle Corps.

And one thing we're really good at was precision marching.

And the hardest thing of precision marching is to mark time.

Because you have to stand in one place.

You have to lift each foot up to the knee of the opposite leg and then down again, up again in time with

whatever score was being played.

And all that while you're playing a trumpet or a bugle up here and your head can't shake because it would mess up your sound.

It was really hard.

I mean, I was 18 years old.

It was exhausting.

But you know what?

The whole goal was to go nowhere.

Every time your foot came down, it had to come down in the same place because you couldn't move.

And there were judges out there while you're playing, making sure you didn't move and making sure you didn't mess up when you're playing.

It was really hard.

We didn't go anywhere.

By design, we didn't go anywhere.

People see this wall, these crumbled

gates burned with fire and start marking time.

Now, maybe they're working hard at things.

Maybe the marking time was a lot of exertion, a lot of effort.

But they weren't getting anywhere.

I just wonder how often we in the church just get used to things.

As John prayed about besetting sin, we get used to it.

Is it like a wall crumbled down?

Is it something that every day we see and we just get so accustomed to it

that we start ignoring it?

We're in the same position as them in so many ways.

Sometimes it takes that wake up call.

Sometimes it takes God to raise up a man and to stand and say, what are we doing here?

Where are we going?

Have you just gotten so accustomed to this wall being broken down?

People say, well, no, we're not accustomed to it.

It's a terrible thing.

We're in great derision.

So there's another direction we can go for why this wall was left crumbled for so long.

And it answers to ourselves for why we put up with our lack of progress into the image of Christ for so

long.

Or just don't work so hard or trust God so much for that one besetting sin that

we can't let go of.

I would suggest, I know you people.

I've been here for a long time, and most of you have as well.

You don't put up with that easily.

We all want to be more like Christ.

We all want to grow into His image.

I wonder if they back then had,

and we today still do, given up hope.

We have no record of what they actually thought of that wall.

The only response to the wall that we get in chapter one, when this project first comes up, is from Nehemiah.

He says, this is terrible.

Do we give up hope?

Do we forget that God changes people?

Do we forget that the gospel answers everything?

Do we forget that the Holy Spirit is within us individually and as a people?

And that the Word of God is able, as James says, to save your souls.

That there really can be change effected here.

I just wonder.

Wonder along with me as we look at this text.

Why had they gone about their business with this wall in that shape, knowing that it's a terrible

derision towards God's name, ultimately.

And nothing happened until Nehemiah shows up.

I'm going to suggest, I just leave this to your conscience.

I ask this before we move on to the next portion of God's provision and this call to action.

Here's a call to action.

Restore your hope.

Are you struggling with a sin that comes up again and again and again?

Do you see a part of that image of Christ that you just know is a step away and you can never

quite make it?

I tell you, do not give up hope.

Because to give up hope in your progress is to give up hope in God.

Is to not trust the Holy Spirit is actually within.

To not trust that He is by hearing the preached Word.

By the means of grace He gives us, which is prayer and the scripture, the ordinances, the Lord's table.

That you can, in fact, change.

That you can, in fact, in reality, in time and space, here and now,

become more like Christ.

And sometimes it takes a Nehemiah to come along and say, do you know this wall's busted down?

You say, yes, I know I struggle with that.

God has provisioned you.

You've forgotten.

Let me restore your hope.

God does provide.

You

know, God has, in the past several months here in this place, stirred

up the heart of your leader.

Which at this time is me.

And Lord willing, someday soon, as we've been praying, we'll have a plurality.

So I could say leaders.

But his heart has been stirred up.

And I would say in a way not unlike Nehemiah's.

Nehemiah prayed for all those months, for four months before he went to King Artaxerxes.

Your leader here has been praying.

And his heart is a bit stirred up.

I believe there is a wall that needs to be built.

But in that sense, it's only very metaphorical.

I think we have a project.

I think we have a divine commission to the spread of the gospel.

And I believe that there are ways here in this church, we are provisioned by God to do this.

We can expand this without giving up our reformed roots, our doctrinal commitments.

I believe this place can spread the gospels, the gospel, one gospel.

I believe this place can be an expansion of God's kingdom and his gospel in ways that we've never thought of.

In ways that just seemed, maybe two years ago, impossible.

Outside the box by too much.

I have some fear of marking time.

God provides us leaders to show the way.

In the church, the pastor's way is to be according to the scripture.

Brethren, we'll see the people of Judah get behind Nehemiah's vision.

We're going to get to that fairly soon.

They're going to take all the effort they had put into marking time.

And as we hear so often today, they're going to repurpose it.

They're going to actually accomplish something.

I think this is very applicable to the church in general, and this church specifically, particularly

this place.

The vision I set forth at our business meeting a few weeks back, if you're a regular attender here, you can ask about that.

We had a mission statement we put out.

There's a lot of prayer that went into it.

There's a lot of provisioning that I see here in this place that God has given us that can be put

into further and further action.

The Silicon Valley Areopagus Forum is one of those.

It's not just a meeting, though it is a meeting.

But it is not just us doing stuff, marking time.

It has a purpose.

It's to draw in those people who believe that they are spiritual, but have no idea of spiritual realities.

It's to have a place where these things of eternal importance are discussed

and set before you for your consideration and others' considerations.

And that, for the expansion of the gospel here in this place.

And other things that we presented to you at that meeting.

I need you to hear this vision the way the people heard Nehemiah's vision for the wall.

Be real blunt about it.

I need you to get behind this.

I need you to see that God has provisioned us in a way that the leader of this place is saying, we can put this to

use.

We can move forward.

We can do some things.

That we can look back, Lord willing, not too many years from now.

And say, look what God did.

Trust me that we have a vision that's worth working for, a vision worth sacrificing for, as they did Nehemiah

then.

God provided Nehemiah to that place to stir them up to renewed efforts,

to what was needed then.

I would do the same for us this day in this

regard to this place.

In accordance with that vision, that mission statement, the things you've been hearing about, where we're trying to go.

Trust me that there's a vision worth working for, worth sacrificing for.

God provided Nehemiah and to Nehemiah he provided all these things that we mentioned, the guard, the

safe passport, the requisitions.

He even provided enemies.

Think about that.

God provided enemies.

As I said, if the passage begins and ends with Nehemiah, Nehemiah arriving and Nehemiah answering the enemies at the

beginning and end, the next verse down and up from that is the enemies.

Now it sounds strange, but God is sovereign in everything.

And if his care for his people is immediate, if his care for his people is appropriate to the need of the moment, then whatever we have,

whether it's a resource to get things done, as I believe we have much of here, or a conflict into which that

resource must be poured, it's all of him.

Judah had enemies and they show up so early in this narrative.

The church has enemies.

We know that the world outside in the end hates the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

They don't just not like it.

They don't just ignore it.

They don't just make fun of it.

They hate it.

They hate it.

Now they like the part, if they can believe it, if they can find someone who will preach it to them, that God loves you, and you're cool

the way you are, and you're going to heaven, and he doesn't care what you worship.

He doesn't care what you do on a Sunday.

Matter of fact, he doesn't have much concern with what you believe at all.

You're just pretty good the way you are.

And on, you know where I'm going with this.

But then add the gospel truth.

The gospel truth of sin.

The gospel truth of the need for repentance.

The gospel truth that there's only one God.

There's only one man and mediator between man and God.

Excuse me, there's only one mediator between man and God, the man Christ Jesus.

And there's only one way and one truth and one life and one way to the Father.

And that is but through Jesus Christ.

And we'll gather up enemies just as Judah had here.

I want you to think of it as God's provisioning.

I want you to think of the people who resist the gospel in your life.

I want you to think of those people at work who are derisive of you because of it, or downright attacking you

as provisions from God.

Provisioning of God because what?

In the end, our answers to them, the soft answer that turns

away wrath, the defense of the gospel, that God willing, he might bring to bring salvation to a soul

by the power of his word and his spirit.

It glorifies him.

So in that sense, these enemies are provisions to you.

These two, Sambalet, the Horonite, Tobiah, the Ammonite.

Did you notice that they were enraged at just the idea that Nehemiah showed up for the good of the church?

They don't even know what's happening yet.

But they're feeling evil with great evil, something like that in the original Hebrew towards them.

Just the idea that good was coming to that people.

Now, who are these men?

Who are these enemies that we have?

We know that the church is surrounded by enemies.

We know that our adversary prowls around like a roaring lion looking for whom he may

devour.

We know that the world is caught in his sway.

So we know ultimately who our enemy is.

But how long has this been happening?

Why are we given enemies in the first place?

Why doesn't God just take them all away and we can have a happy, peaceful life?

Because he's glorified when we answer them rightly.

He's glorified when we defend the gospel.

He's glorified when our soft answer turns away that wrath.

And this has been going on since the garden.

Genesis chapter three, I'll put enmity between your seed and between her seed.

You've heard this before from me.

The seed of the serpent going on following Satan's ways and the seed of the woman leading on to Christ

Jesus.

There will be enmity all that time.

It was the word of God that brought that on.

Son Bolet was the governor of Samaria.

And as I said, we have much historical record to attest this.

He was the governor of Samaria to the north.

His family might well have been planted there in 722 BC, almost 400 years earlier by the

Assyrians.

And you read about that in second Kings 17.

His name was from the Babylonian, which meant something like sin is the giver of life.

Sin, the moon God is the giver of life.

He's to the north there.

He's called a Horonite.

He may well have been and probably was a Moabite.

And then Tobiah, the Ammonite servant.

He was a member of a powerful family that ruled the lands to the east of Judah.

Why do I spend this time on them after talking about Genesis three?

You hear what I said about this too.

A Moabite and an Ammonite.

Do you know where that takes us?

These enemies of God, this constant enmity and conflict between

God's people, the seed of the woman, and the devil's people, the seed of the

serpent.

At the end of Genesis 19, after Sodom and Gomorrah had been destroyed.

Remember that terrible end of that chapter with Lot and his daughters?

The product of that incident was Moab and Ammon.

Moab is son Bolet, the Moabite.

Ammon is Tobiah, the Ammonite.

This is just a part of the enmity between the devil and our Savior, Jesus.

God provides these enemies ultimately for His glory, so that when they're defeated, He gets the glory.

Jesus Christ on the cross defeated those powers and those rulers.

That's why such venomous hatred.

This is why, for example, when you say, because of what the Scripture says, because of God,

because of my faith in Christ Jesus.

One might even say because of common sense.

I believe that a man and woman can come together and only produce a human.

That this thing growing inside that is being so often slaughtered

is not a thing.

It's not just a pile of chemicals or whatever you may think of.

I believe it's a person.

That's going to bring on hatred.

We all see it in the news.

This is where it's from, ultimately.

The Moabites and the Ammonites, the seed of the serpent, implacable, determined, vile opponents of all

that is good.

So God has provided, and God has provided us also with

adversaries.

Though we don't have them outside picketing against us or anything like that, but all resistance to the gospel is

ultimately an adversary, an enemy of God.

How is that a provision?

Because God is the first cause of everything.

He is sovereign.

In providing enemies, He's providing us with opportunity to see His working and His mighty power.

When Simbalit and Tobiah are neutralized, as they will be as we work through this history, it is God who

gets the glory.

When God's people do anything of any good, it is our opportunity to give Christ all the glory for what He did

through us.

This is how God provides for the need of the moment.

This is how God makes sure His people are moving in the right direction.

He sent a Nehemiah with all the provisioning.

He has sent you, I believe, me.

Some 15 years ago, yes.

And provision to show you the provisioning that I believe we have here in this place.

God sent enemies.

Why didn't He just take them all away?

Because He's glorified when we respond to them rightly.

You know, our enemies might like to force us to our knees.

And in fact, in a way they do, but not in subjection, but in faithful application to Jesus in prayer.

And if enemies make us go more often to God in prayer, then they are God's provision for our good.

God provides leaders.

God provides leaders to shake us out of our complacency, to remind us that the wall is a pile of rubble and we've

forgotten it.

Then to point us heavenward to God, for whom and with whom nothing shall be impossible.

You know, when God puts something on a leader's heart, it's specific, very specific.

I want us to think for a minute about Nehemiah coming in.

But look at the first thing he did when he got there, after the three days rest.

He went and checked out the wall.

And I'm not going to give you a long, detailed analysis of how he went around the wall and what he saw.

You can, after services, even after we're done, look on your smartphone, you can find that map very quickly.

And almost everything we have in Nehemiah, I forget the lady's name, but there's a famous archaeologist back in the 1960s,

who's discovered almost every part of this in archaeological evidence that we have today.

But he goes and he looks, and what is he looking for?

Is he just planning things out because he's a good, what do you call it, a logistician, a logistics expert?

He could be doing that.

But there's another way to look at this in God's provisioning.

As we think of God providing you with leaders, with a leadership that's taking the resources that we have and saying, here's where it needs

to go.

I believe that after four months of prayer, and God putting it on his heart, he needed to confirm

that what he's claiming God had on his heart was reality.

He hadn't seen the wall.

He comes to this people and says, God has put in my heart to do this thing.

But he doesn't tell them yet why.

Why did he go in silence with just a few discreet men?

To see for himself if his passion was what was needed.

I was trying to think of an illustration for this.

What would be antithetical to that in this place?

I don't know if this makes any sense.

This is what I came up with.

What if a man came in here and said, God put it on my heart.

I prayed for four months.

And what Providence Bible Church of Sunnyvale needs is to produce championship

saddles.

So you need to learn how to tan the leather, and you need to learn how to stain the leather, and you need to engrave it.

And somebody needs to learn how to put it on a horse.

Well, we would say that's ridiculous.

We have no such need.

If God put that on your heart, then you've got the wrong God, or you've got the wrong people.

Something's wrong there.

There's a disconnect.

What is Nehemiah doing?

He is confirming with his eyes, touching and seeing and counting the boulders that have turned into

rubble that he prayed about for four months.

He is addressing the provisioned need of the moment.

I think that's a wise thing.

I've alluded to this two or three times already.

What is the need of the moment for this place, for this church here in Sunnyvale?

I believe it's simply what Jesus says at the end of Matthew.

Matthew 28, go therefore and make disciples of all nations, expand this kingdom,

grow this place.

I think it's much like what we have here in this scripture.

Looking and seeing what is the reality?

What does this place actually have?

Where does it need to go?

Yeah, I want to notice something here in this passage.

I've talked about, I've wondered with you.

Hopefully you've been wondering with me.

You've been tracking along with me.

What were the people doing there for this decade when the wall was down?

For this time when Artaxerxes said, do you stop?

I'm not going to have rebellion.

Did they pray?

Did they say, how long, O Lord?

Did they have prayer meetings for repentance as they did back in Haggai's day?

Did they call it to God for his mercy?

Or again, they just get used to it.

I wonder which way you would guess if I asked you, if I had a show of hands right now, which I'm not going to do.

So don't get self conscious.

You don't have to raise your hand.

But how many would think they just got used to it?

Or they just given up hope?

Were they anxious for the walls to return to their former glory?

We can't really tell from the text, but I will point out to you that after Nehemiah inspects

the condition of the wall and the gates, and he understands that what he's been praying about for these four

months, what he's claiming God put on his heart actually needs to be done.

And they've been provisioned for it.

And the call to action is clear.

Then he goes and speaks to the ones who are going to do the work.

The ones whose necks are at risk, if our deserts didn't actually approve this.

He says, you see the trouble we are in.

You see, you know, we agree.

He's assuming that we're together on this.

You know how bad this is.

That was the report he got when he asked about the walls back in chapter one, verse two.

And the answer back was, it's terrible.

Now he's seen it for himself.

You see the trouble we're in, how Jerusalem lies in ruins with his gates burned.

He says, come, let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer suffer derision.

What would you do with that?

If your life depended on him telling the truth that the king was allowing

this.

Let's pray.

And I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good.

God told me, God told me.

You know, when someone tells me they've been praying about something,

they had a feeling, an impression.

They say, well, pastor, I prayed about this and here's my advice.

Whoa, time out.

Let's slow down for just a second here.

Understand where you're going.

You're telling me you prayed.

You know, what you're telling me is God told me.

That doesn't have to mean with an audible voice.

We don't have to go there.

God has confirmed for me, we could say.

I know that God is saying that I need to go and do this.

Hear Nehemiah.

I told them of the hand of my God that had been upon me for good.

How do we know?

I prayed for four months.

I wasn't there to hear your prayers.

How do we know that you prayed about that?

This is God's hand upon you.

And also he goes on, verse 18, also the words that the king had spoken to me.

The words that the king had spoken to me.

He could prove, because he had the papers with him, that Artaxerxes had lifted the cease

and desist and that they can move forward and do this.

But here's what I want you to notice.

I was asking before, what had they been doing for a decade?

Had they been praying?

Had they even noticed the wall?

Had we just gotten used to our sin?

Have we given up hope that God would actually change me?

That God would actually lift up this wall?

What did they say?

Look at verse 18.

Immediately.

Let us rise up and build.

You see, they saw that God had provision.

They saw that God had given all that was needed.

They saw that God had provided them a leader.

And in providing the leader, God had provided him with what he needed.

And then they saw it.

I believe this is inferred.

This is not explicit, but inferred.

They saw the wisdom of this leader in having gone and checked things out for himself.

So when he came and said, this is what God put in my heart, he could point to the wall.

Instead of my silly example, my silly illustration where somebody comes in and says, we need to learn how to make saddles.

That's the vision for this place.

That'd be ridiculous.

He points to the wall.

He said, I prayed for four months, and now I see it.

And we can do this.

Look how great God is.

Look how big the Lord God of the universe who we serve really and truly is.

Artaxerxes lifted his own order.

Artaxerxes gave me a safe passage.

Artaxerxes gave me requisitions for our materials.

Artaxerxes gave me an armed escort.

If God, because it's all by God's good hand, if God can do that, what shall be impossible for

him?

And can we then go on and say the text would infer what then can be

impossible for God's people working under the auspices of a

God and a Savior such as that?

They were expectant.

They were ready to follow this leader who showed them that he had been praying.

And the things he'd been praying about were reality.

They were, in fact, the need of the moment.

Had they been expectant for 10 years?

I'm going to suggest yes.

I'm going to say that with some

confidence, because of the immediacy of their answer.

You know, they could have said something like, well, it sounds good, Nehemiah.

We'll hear you again on this matter.

Let's get you in your apartment, get you a glass of wine and, you know, calm down over there and we'll talk about it.

We'll discuss it.

Immediately, they were ready and said, let us rise up and build so they strengthen their hands for the good

work.

God's provision is a call to action.

God has provided this church and your pastor.

It's calling us to action, to take a certain direction, to take some steps consistent with our reformed

tradition, wholly connected to our doctrines and our scripture.

I wonder if we can say together, let us rise up and build.

Let us rise up and see this kingdom grow here in this place.

We need the same provisioning here that they needed then.

We have some physical resources here.

We have a wonderful facility.

We need to use it to God's glory.

And I believe we have.

You who've been here for six or seven years, just take a few moments later and count yourself.

How many times have we administered the grace and goodness and kindness of the gospel of

Jesus Christ here in this place, in holding gospel bathed

memorials for families that couldn't afford it?

And yet we came together.

We said, let us rise up and build.

And next thing we know, we have a pastor with a message of hope and comfort and

gospel to bring to people.

And the next thing we know, the chairs are all set up and the tables are filled with food.

And the people are being greeted, and that's by you, saying together with me, let us rise up and build.

We can do this.

Early when I was a pastor here, when we were very, very small, we were small now.

And I've got to stop saying that because that's not the focus.

We have a very big God.

But back then when we were few, is that a little better?

We were 13 old people whose pastor just resigned all of a sudden and left.

And we had a big mortgage.

We owed a lot of money.

So let us rise up and build.

We can pay this thing off.

Was it six years ago, seven years?

I don't remember.

It was a few years ago.

We got the thing paid off to God's glory and to His credit and Him working through men and

women just like us.

Let us rise up and build.

God has provided.

What has God provided you with?

The gifts of the Spirit are love, joy, peace,

and so the rest of those.

Which of those do you have?

Well, we should have them all.

What has God provided you with?

What special talent has He given you?

If He has, I would say God's provision is a call to action by you.

This thing He has given you, this gifting, this 1 Corinthians 12 purpose He has for you to be here in this place,

this day, is a call to action, to put it to

use.

Not you going off and exercising your gift over here and you choosing a different gift and going over there, all of us together, under

direction, under the leader, which is me, and pushing it all together into one place.

God has provided you with something.

If you're in Christ Jesus, you have been provided with something and you then are a provision to us

that we can all together say, as did they.

They were anxious.

Are you anxious to see the gospel just explode out of this place?

Are you anxious to see there's not even enough room in here to sit down?

And why would we want people to come?

Because you have the greatest preacher in the valley?

Not by a long shot.

Only because of our great God.

Only because we hold as best we can to this gospel of the Lord Jesus

Christ and people ought to come in and hear it.

Are you anxious to see sinners converted?

This one strikes me.

We pray always for conversion.

We pray for baptisms.

And as I get discouraged because it's so long that we don't see it, I realize that there has been.

And I'm not going to count them.

I'm not going to give the names.

But as I start to think of what God has actually done in providing for us and calling us to action, how many times have we actually

filled that baptismal behind me?

How many times have I actually laid someone in the water as they associate themselves with the death of Jesus Christ

and lifted them out to new life in the Lord?

God has done remarkable work here.

And he continues to do remarkable work.

I believe it can go so much further.

I believe it's provided us with so much more.

Can we together with them look and say, we've been anxious for this for however long?

For them it was about 13 years, I believe.

And now your pastor, the leader of this place is saying, let us rise up and build.

And I want to hear it returned to me.

Let us rise and build.

We'll strengthen our hands through this work.

I want you to commit to these things.

If you're a member here, you heard it at the business meeting.

If you're an attender here, we'll share it all with you.

We have a place we're going to go.

We have directions to take.

We have the same provision by the same God that Nehemiah had, and all we need to hear

is this.

I tell you of the hand of my God that has been upon me for good, that where we want to go is something

I've wrestled in prayer over.

Our faithful deacon has worked with me to clarify things.

I tell you the hand of my God has been upon me for good, and I want to

hear back.

Let us rise up and build, because God has provisioned this place to do this work.

He's provisioned this place with, and I don't mean this with any arrogance, me.

And He's provisioned this place with you.

Most importantly, He's provisioned this place with Himself, with the Word of God,

with the presence of Christ Jesus, and the power of His Spirit.

And I would tell you, God's provision here is a call to action.

Let us rise up and build.

Amen?

Heavenly Father, I do thank you for this day that you've given us, for this time together in your Word, and for the conviction it

brings to, Lord willing, all of us, certainly to me, that you, Father, as our

provision, would guide us, would give wisdom to leadership, and enthusiasm to the rest, that we

should rise up together and say, let us build this place.

Let us move forward in the power and strength of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

In His name we pray.

Amen.