Nehemiah’s Opponents

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All right, tonight we are going to be in Nehemiah chapter 4. Nehemiah chapter 4, I’ll give you just a second to turn there. And we’re going to look at it a little more in depth than what we looked at last Wednesday night.

If you recall last Wednesday night, I told you one of the rare times, I’m not actually going to read you the passage that I’m teaching about because chapter 3 is a long list, basically, of people who worked on the wall and the sections they did. And I encourage you, as I did last week, I encourage you to go read that for yourself sometime. It’s important that it’s in there.

I mean, God didn’t put things in Scripture unnecessarily. It’s important that it’s in there, but for our purposes, it was enough to hit the highlights last Wednesday night. But tonight we’re going to look at chapter 4 that talks about how Nehemiah faced opposition from those around him who wanted to see Jerusalem remain vulnerable.

And we’ll read through this, and I may interject a few thoughts as we go through the text so that I don’t forget some of the details. And then we’ll come back and talk about what’s going on here. So, starting in chapter 4, verse 1, it says, But it so happened, when Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, that he was furious and very indignant and mocked the Jews.

And he spoke before his brethren and the army of Samaria and said, What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they fortify themselves? Will they offer sacrifices?

Will they complete it in a day? Will they revive the stones from the heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned? He’s upset that they’re rebuilding the wall.

And the question occurred to me this week as I was studying this passage again, the question occurred to me that I don’t think has ever occurred to me before, and that was to ask myself, why was Sanballat so upset? You know, I’ve heard this story for years and just took it for granted that Sanballat and Tobiah and Gashem and whoever else that they were, you know, they were just upset. But I never thought about why.

And I still don’t know that I have a definitive answer, but I did some digging into Sanballat to try to get some insight. Sanballat, his name comes from, is it Aramaic? I can’t remember.

one of the ancient Middle Eastern languages, and says sin, which is not what we think of as disobedience to God, but that was the name of one of the Babylonian deities, kind of fitting, the sin God, one of the false gods of Babylon, that sin, the God, gives life, or sin redeems, or something along those lines. And I believe sin is a moon god. So by his very name, he’s somebody whose parents evidently dedicated him to this Babylonian deity.

Now, Sanballat also had, history tells us, some children whose names reflected a belief in the God of Israel. So, Sanballat, and here in Nehemiah, it refers to him as Sanballat the Horonite. That means that he came from a town called Beth-Haron, that depending on which notes you look at, was somewhere between 10 and 20 miles northwest of Jerusalem.

So he was in that area, and I’m trying to remember the name here, but Beth-horon came from the name of a Canaanite deity, one of their gods of the underworld. So it sounds to me like Sanballat the Horonite, he’s dedicated to the Babylonian moon god, and he comes from, I don’t know, hell, I guess, the house of the god of the underworld, if you look at it that way. And so what we see with Sanballat is he probably was an Israelite, but he was probably an Israelite whose family was not carried off into captivity, was among the few that were left, so he wasn’t among the best and brightest who were carried off to Babylon.

And what we know from history is that those Israelites were forced by the Babylonians and the Assyrians to intermix with the pagan countries around them. So Sanballat probably came from a mixed family of Jewish and pagan origin. And so as a result, if that’s the case, you study this out for yourself, I’m just telling you what I think possibly happened here, that Sanballat, if he came from a mixed family like that, he would have been looked down on by the Jews.

We know that that’s the sort of relationship that the Samaritans came from. And think of the relationship between the Jews and Samaritans in the New Testament. It was ugly.

They hated each other. And the Samaritans hated the Israelites because the Israelites looked down on them. And so I could, if that’s the case with Sanballat, I could easily see somebody coming from this mixed Jewish pagan background being resentful of the Jews who were coming back from Babylon, the pure ones.

I could see somebody like that being resentful of Jerusalem and the religious importance of Jerusalem and the political importance of Jerusalem and the kingdom, I could see somebody like that saying, we don’t want Jerusalem to rise again. We don’t want to see the temple refurbished and the walls rebuilt. We like things the way they are.

Keep the Jews down where they belong. Not my words, but what somebody from that thought process would would say. And so that to me seems like a really likely scenario of where Sanballat came from and why he was so irritated that the Jews were coming back and rebuilding the wall.

And so he’s throwing out all sorts of accusations. Are they going to fortify themselves? And the implication there is that they’re about to start an insurrection, a rebellion against the Persians, which they’ve already tried to convince the king of that.

Will they offer sacrifices? How are they supposed to offer sacrifices in their temple when it’s trashed. Will they revive the stone?

Do they think they’re going to complete it in a day? Because Nehemiah and those who had come with him were hard after the work. And he said, do they really think they’re going to complete it that fast?

You’d think they’re going to try to complete it in a day. Will they revive the stones from heaps of rubbish, stones that are burned? So he looks at the rubble and he says, what kind of city are they going to rebuild from the rubble, from the ashes of what’s been destroyed here in Jerusalem?

But we know that God can revive stones out of rubbish. We know that God can bring beauty from ashes, the scriptures say. And so God’s capable of doing any of that.

Don’t forget, don’t ever forget, this looks on the surface like the story of what Nehemiah did. It’s really the story of what God did in the life of Nehemiah. So if you’re looking at Nehemiah saying, how are you going to rebuild a wall out of rubbish?

You’re asking the wrong question. What you really need to be asking about is whether or not God plans to rebuild a wall out of rubbish. Okay, that’s just the first two verses.

I need to move a little faster. Now, Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, whatever they build, if even a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. And I’ve heard for years that this is him mocking them.

And apparently this is what passed for wit among them. Oh, your wall is so feeble that if a fox went up there, He’d make it collapse. You’ve got to do better than that.

But this is evidently what they thought was funny. Your wall is so feeble, a fox could bring it down. Verse 4, Hear, O our God, for we are despised.

Now this is Nehemiah’s prayer here. Again, notice that any time things got difficult, Nehemiah stopped and prayed. Hear, O our God, for we are despised.

Turn their reproach on their own heads and give them as a plunder to a land of captivity. Do not cover their iniquity and do not let their sin be blotted out from before you, for they have provoked you to anger before the builders. So he says we are despised, we’re being mocked, we’re being mistreated.

But really Nehemiah understood that when they were mocking God’s people, they were actually mocking God. Because they were mocking what God intended to do and what God called them to do and what God promised to do through them. And so he said, don’t let them get by with this.

Don’t let them get away with it. They’re mocking how your people have been taken captive. Let them be taken captive.

You know, the things that they say you’re not capable of handling on our behalf, it’s sort of this idea, well, where was your God when he let you be taken into captivity? Nehemiah is praying, God, you show them where our God is and who you are. Don’t let their sin be blotted out from before you.

This is sort of the idea that we know God is so merciful. So, God, don’t show them mercy just yet. That was his idea.

For they have provoked you to anger before the builders. Now, apparently they’re mocking the builders, but as they’re mocking the builders, he said, they have provoked you to anger before the builders. Again, they were mocking and questioning what God wanted to do.

Verse 6 says, So we built the wall, and the entire wall was joined together up to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. Now, it happened when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites, the Ashdodites, and the Ashdodites heard that the walls of Jerusalem were being restored and the gaps were beginning to be closed, that they became very angry and all of them conspired to come and attack Jerusalem and create confusion. So they heard that the wall was progressing.

They got very upset about this for various reasons, not just Sanballat’s reason, but there were others around from these pagan countries that did not want Jerusalem rebuilt. And so they came up with an idea, we’ll go and we’ll attack Jerusalem together and we’ll create confusion. Because one of the most effective tactics you can use with the enemy is to multiply your own force by causing confusion among them so they fight against themselves.

We see multiple times in the Old Testament, God doing that or God doing that through the Israelites. There were times the Israelites didn’t have to fire off a single arrow because God got their enemies to fight amongst themselves in the confusion. So they came up with this plan.

Let’s go and attack their lines and create such confusion that not only are they dealing with the attack from us, but they’re attacking each other. But it says in verse 9, Nevertheless, we made our prayer to our God, and because of them we set a watch against them day and night. And we don’t know exactly.

If it says in here how they found out, I don’t recall. We don’t know how they found out about the plan and about the plot. They just found out.

Again, if I run across it again and I’ve missed it all this time, I’ll correct that. But I suspect God told them as they were walking in constant fellowship and in constant prayer during this project, God brought it to their attention. And I tell you what, even if somebody else brought them the news, I have no doubt in my mind, God orchestrated for them to find out.

So, nevertheless, we made our prayer to God, and because of them, we set a watch against them day and night. So they continued to work and watch at the same time. Verse 10, then Judah said, the strength of the laborers is failing, and there is so much rubbish that we are not able to build the wall.

So they realized there’s so much junk that has to be moved, they can’t even build stuff. And that’s kind of where I am with the new property. I’m a little overwhelmed because I’ve got all these plans, and I’m wanting to build a chicken coop and I’m wanting to turn this rickety old thing into a greenhouse, but I’m looking at it going, there’s trash and there’s brush and there’s stuff I’ve got to remove.

There’s so much rubbish that’s got to be removed. So I have room to build. Well, they, they, they were dealing with the rubbish that they couldn’t even get through to build the wall.

And verse 11 says, and our adversary said, they will neither know nor see anything until we come in their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease. So they’re still worried about what their enemies are planning because they’re saying here we’re stuck with we’re trying to work around all this rubbish that we’ve got here. These people are saying they’re going to come get us and we’re not even going to see it coming.

And then in verse 12, so it was when the Jews who dwelt near them came that they told us 10 times from whatever place you turn they will be upon us. So there was this idea once they had found out about their plans they said when these pagan nations come they’re just going to be all over In every direction we turn, they’re going to surround us. Verse 13, Therefore I positioned men behind the lower parts of the wall at the openings, and I set the people according to their families with their swords, their spears, and their bows.

And I looked and arose and said to the nobles, to the leaders, and to the rest of the people, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord great and awesome, and fight for your brethren, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your houses. He put his men at the openings in the wall, and as they were working, he told them to have their weapons ready.

And he says, do not be afraid. Remember the Lord. The Lord is with you.

The Lord is going to fight for you. That idea comes up numerous times in here. He says, but you fight for what’s important here.

You’re not just defending a city. You are defending your wives, your children. You’re defending your homes.

Verse 15, and it happened when our enemies heard that it was known to us, and that God had brought their plot to nothing, that all of us returned to the wall, everyone to His work. So it was from that time on that half of my servants worked at construction, while the other half held the spears, the shields, the bows, and wore armor. And the leaders were behind all the house of Judah.

Those who built on the wall and those who carried burdens loaded themselves so that with one hand they worked at construction, and with the other held a weapon. Every one of the builders had his sword girded at his side as he built, and the one who sounded the trumpet was beside me. He said, so eventually, because of their preparations, the enemies found out, oh, they know about our plans.

And it appears they kind of called it off because they realized the God of Israel had caused the Israelites to be prepared. But even still, they went to work and they went to build, And they were building with one hand and holding their weapon with the other. Now, I imagine that’s pretty hard to do.

I can’t imagine trying to lay bricks with one hand while holding my nine millimeter in the other. But they, you know, all sorts of accidents could happen that way. But that’s what they did.

They’re building with one hand and arming themselves with another. And he had half on the watch and half building. Verse 19, Then I said to the nobles, the rulers, and the rest of the people, The work is great and extensive, and we are separated far from one another on the wall.

He said this really is a big project, and we’re getting to the point where we’re getting so spread out. We need to be able to come together quickly if something comes up. And so he says in verse 20, Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there.

Now don’t miss this last part of verse 20. He says our God will fight for us. You come when you hear the trumpet, you gather together, And we’re going to do what God called us to do, but rest assured, it’s really not us who are responsible for the battle.

Our God will fight for us. So we labored in the work, and half of the men held the spears from daybreak until the stars appeared. At the same time, I also said to the people, Let each man and his servants stay at night in Jerusalem, that they may be our guard by night and a working party by day.

He said, We’re not going to go home. We’re not going to go out to the villages. We’re going to stay right here in the streets of Jerusalem.

So we can be here to guard as we need to, and we can be here to work as we need to. We are here on the job site until this is done. So neither I, my brethren, my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me took off our clothes, except that everyone took them off for washing.

And that’s a blessing. They’re saying they bathed and they did laundry. I mean, that’s important, especially when you’ve got all those men out there working.

That’s important that they were keeping up their cleanliness. But when he says we didn’t take our clothes off, that’s an odd way to say it. It’s an odd way.

It would be an odd way for us to phrase it today, but he’s just basically, I think what he’s saying there is we didn’t get ready for bed. We were always ready to jump up at a day’s notice. I remember the day Carly Jo was born and she was immediately, well, immediately, within a few hours, she was taken on a helicopter from Ada to OU Children’s Hospital. And I had just planned to stay overnight at the hospital, but I was where I could come back to the house and shower and change and all that.

So I really hadn’t brought changes of clothes. I ran to, I drove, not run, but I drove really fast to Seminole and just threw some things in a bag and went to the city so I could get there as quickly as possible after Carly Jo did. I was going to stay at my parents’ house.

And I remember after about two nights being at my parents’ house, my dad saying, did you not bring any pajamas? I said, number one, I didn’t think about it. But even if I had thought about it, I wouldn’t be switching into pajamas.

I was sleeping in my regular clothes because if I got a call from the NICU that something was going on with Carly Joe, I wanted to be able to be out that door in 30 seconds and go. And that’s sort of the attitude that they had. We’re not bedding down for the night.

I mean, they had to sleep somewhere, but they weren’t getting comfortable and putting on their pajamas and their bunny slippers and taking their stuffed toys off to the other room. No, they were staying ready where if something and they could be ready to go at a moment’s notice. And so they were on guard because of all this opposition, but Nehemiah and his men pressed forward in spite of the opposition.

They prepared for it, and they planned because of it, but they didn’t let it stop them from what God had actually called them to do. They pressed forward because they trusted God to prosper their work. They trusted God to take care of the building.

They trusted God ultimately to be in charge of the defense of the city. They realized, too, that they needed God because their opponents were really opposed to God. And the work that God had called them to do looked impossible.

So they had those two big things working against them. They had these opponents that weren’t just a little mildly annoyed. They were standing in direct opposition and defiance to God’s plan.

And God’s plan constituted them doing this work that seemed impossible. We see this in the first few verses. I mean, Sanballat points out they were trying to rebuild defensible city walls out of trash and do it quickly and do it well.

This was a monumental task they’d been given. We see that they were mocking what God had called them to do. Had nothing to do with Nehemiah.

These people were upset because God’s temple and the walls of his city were going to be restored. They wanted the city of God to lie in ruins because they liked being able to point to that city and say, see what it used to be and see what it is now. Where is their God?

That’s something that happened all throughout the Old Testament. Moses even talked to God about this and said, you know, God, you can’t kill him. And it’s fortunate for them that God and Moses never got on the same page about killing the Israelites at the same time.

But Moses would cry out and ask God to be merciful to the Israelites, even when they didn’t deserve it, and say, God, you can’t kill them because if you kill them here in the wilderness, the Egyptians and everybody else will just say their God was powerless to protect them out in the wilderness. So that was usually the question, where is their God? And they wanted to still be able to ask that question and mock God.

And in verse 4, we see how they were turning to God to deal with their situation. He starts out with this prayer in verse 4, Hear, O our God. He’s calling on God to do what only God could do.

It wasn’t dependent on Nehemiah. I think I told you a few weeks ago, all that God had told them to do, it required their obedience, but it didn’t depend on their obedience or even their involvement. It depended on God.

God said, I want your involvement. I want you to be obedient. But it all depended on God doing what only God could do.

And he’s calling on God to deal with these opponents Specifically, you know, in verse 4, he says, turn their reproach on their own heads. He’s calling on God to deal with their spiritual issue, their opponent’s spiritual issue. Do not cover their sin.

Do not cover their iniquity. Do not let their sin be blotted out. He’s calling on God.

God, we’ve got these opponents we can’t handle. We’ve got this job to do that we’re not big enough to do. He was calling on God to do all of it.

He was trusting God. And so we see in verse 6, they resolved to be obedient to God’s commands and let Him handle the opposition. He said, we built the wall for the people had a mind to work.

They were eager to go out and be obedient to what God called them to do and let Him handle the results. And I know I’ve told you this before, but as I read through the book of Nehemiah over again, I keep hearing in my mind what Charles Stanley has said for years, just obey God and leave the consequences to Him. And I think that’s a lot of the theme of this book.

They were supposed to build the wall or be used of God to build the wall and let Him handle the actual making sure it worked and handle the opposition. Even as they prepared to defend themselves, they kept their trust in God. And you know, sometimes we’ll plan and we’ll prepare and we think, oh, it depends on us.

We think we’ve got to do this because we’ve got to handle this. We’ve got to make sure everything’s okay. I think God calls us to use wisdom.

God calls us to prepare. Jesus said you wouldn’t go to war without making sure you could. .

. A king wouldn’t go to war without making sure he had the soldiers. He wouldn’t build a tower without making sure he’s got the supplies and the manpower.

We should plan and we should use wisdom. But ultimately, we’ve got to remember that God is responsible for all of it. You know, I’ve tried to be financially responsible and build up some savings and build up some investments and this, but I realize, wisdom or not, God has got to be in that and God’s got to take care of it because all of that could go tomorrow.

And we’re dependent on God now and we’re dependent on God then. And so even as they’re preparing, he says in verse 9, nevertheless, we made our prayer to God. As they’re preparing in verse 14, he says, remember the Lord, great and awesome.

He doesn’t say, get your weapons together, you can do this. He says, get your weapons together and remember the Lord, great and awesome. That word awesome, we have cheapened that word.

That word awesome means awe-inspiring. Verse 15, we see the acknowledgement that God had brought the plot of the enemy to nothing. And in verse 20, which really has just struck me anew as being so important, verse 20, our God will fight for us.

Yes, we’ve got the weapons in hand. Yes, we’re standing here in the gap, but our God will fight for us. So all throughout this, they trusted God to take care of them, to take care of the work they had to do, to take care of the defense they had to raise here.

And as we get close to the end of my notes here, one of the things that I like to do when I’m studying an Old Testament passage is I like to think about how it ties in with the New Testament, how it ties in with what God showed there. And what we see here is an example of the way God operates in a way that we see God operating to fulfill His plans even in the New Testament. You know, this was one of those times when the enemy thought they had won, when the enemy of God’s people thought they had won, and the enemies of God thought they had won.

And then God went to battle for his people. That’s what’s happening in this story. That is not the only time this happens in Scripture.

It happens over and over and over. They thought, we have them surrounded. We have a wonderful plan.

We’re going to go get rid of the Israelites. It’s going to be great. And then God stepped in just when the enemy thought he had won.

When Jesus went to the cross, Satan undoubtedly thought he had won. I mean, think about it. From any perspective other than God, the cross, the crucifixion looked like a major defeat.

And I think if Satan had understood what was going on at the cross, I mean, he’s pretty crafty, but he’s not as smart as God. I think if Satan had really understood what was going on with the cross, he would have fought against it. Now, he couldn’t have stopped it.

It’s God’s plan. But I think he would have fought against it. Instead, we see where Satan put it in Judas’ heart to betray Jesus, and Satan was a pawn in God’s plan there.

But when Jesus went to the cross, Satan, I’m sure, thought he had won. But what he didn’t realize was that was the fulfillment. He thought not only has he defeated God and God’s plans, but he’s got God’s people right where he wanted because here’s the Messiah, and he’s not going to be able to do anything because he’s being crucified.

He’s being murdered in the most objectionable, the most agonizing way possible, the most humiliating way that the Romans knew how. He’s not going to be able to do any messiah-ing as far as people understood it. He had to have thought he won.

But this was the fulfillment of what God had said back in Genesis 3, that Satan was going to inflict a wound that he thought was his big victory. But God told the serpent, he said, I’ll put enmity between you and the seed of the woman, between your seed and the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman is Jesus.

He said, I’ll make those two enemies, and you’ll bruise his heel. The serpent would strike out at his heel. A snake bite on your heel, serious thing, right?

Even if they’re not venomous, I still don’t want to be bitten in the heel. I don’t want to even get close enough. I told some of y’all a story about that today.

But he thought he’d inflicted a real wound. You’ll bruise the heel of the seed of the woman. But he said, he’ll crush your head.

So where Satan thought he had inflicted this great wound, when Satan thought he had won, in that very act that was what Satan thought he had won, he defeated Jesus, was actually the act of Jesus putting Satan and his plans to death once and for all. Jesus inflicted a knockout blow as he came to do battle for his people there at the cross. He did battle for us just as it said the Father would do in verse 20.

Our God will fight for us. This is what God does. Just when things are at their darkest, just when it looks like the enemy is won, just when the enemy is convinced he is invincible and he is immovable and there’s nothing that can snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory for Him, our God steps up to do battle and He wins every single time.

He did it at the walls of Jerusalem. And more importantly, He did it at the cross. When Jesus once and for all defeated death and hell and the grave for us.

And I love looking for those parallels. I mean, I don’t want to read too much into the text, but I love looking for those parallels between the Old Testament and the New Testament because we realize that the God who showed up in the New Testament is the same God who was showing up all the time in the Old Testament. And we can learn so much about who He is, the God He is, and the things that He does for us.

And we can see so much of the character of who He continues to be for us when He shows up for us and when He fights for us for when He defends His people.