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Now let's dive into today's teaching from Pastor Skip's son Nate Heitzig. Nehemiah chapter 4, verse 10 through 23. We're continuing in our series, City in Shambles. And I want to open by asking you a question. Have you ever been in a season of life?
Where you're trying to build, you're trying to progress, you're trying to make an impact for the kingdom, for your family, you're trying to rebuild the walls of your life. And yet it seems like you're always under attack every time that you take a step. Anyone ever felt that way before? Every win you have, every victory you have, it's met with opposition. It's met with an attack from Satan.
It's like you finally start praying again. You finally start making time for church again. You finally start putting in effort to restore that broken relationship. And the moment you get traction, bam, Satan sucker punches you in the face. Right.
Anyone know what that feels like? I do. It's hard. It's rough. As a matter of fact, just the other day I experienced this in a very real way.
And this story sounds crazy, but it actually happened. Yesterday, I was at a coffee shop by our Westside campus, and I was studying to prepare this message. And a guy walks in, a homeless guy, and he begins berating a young lady who's sitting there, calling her a number of terrible things and threatening to accost her and threatening violence upon her. And I stood up and I said, Hey, I will not tolerate anyone talking to a woman like that in my presence. You need to get out of here.
I'm going to kick you out of here. And this escalated to me and a couple of guys having to escort this man out into the parking lot where he proceeded to punch me in the face. Um And so he punched me in the face, and I have a little bit of makeup on right now, a little bit swollen. It's not because I have an abusive wife, it's because of Albuquerque. Don't worry, I didn't punch him back, but I did tell him that he punches like a girl.
Sorry. But I find in a very spiritual way this happens within our lives. The second we start building for the kingdom, the second we start making progress, the second that we become a threat to the enemy, here comes the opposition. It's like the devil has an alert system. Oh, they're trying to rebuild?
Not on my watch. Quick, send in the stress. Send in the bills. Send in the emotional breakdowns. Let's bring up that one cousin who only calls you when their life is in a dumpster fire.
You're trying to rebuild your faith. You're trying to restore your marriage. You're trying to reclaim your purpose. And all of a sudden, it feels like the enemy has a sniper scope on your soul. And that's exactly where Nehemiah chapter 4 meets us.
The people of God are doing exactly what God has called them to do. They're rebuilding Jerusalem's walls. They have vision, they have unity, they have momentum. And then discouragement sets in. Threats come, fatigue creeps up, and instead of just holding a shovel, they're forced to pick up their sword as well.
Now, I don't know about you, but I like it better when life is simple. Right? Those simple seasons. Anyone experienced those where it's like, hey, everything, everything's working. My marriage is good.
My kids are loving the Lord. The house is in order. The bills are being paid. I'm attending church. I love those simple seasons where I can just build.
Where I can just serve, where I can just follow Jesus without getting spiritually jumped every other week. But that's not how life recalling works, is it? Nehemiah shows us that if you're going to build something that matters, you better be ready to fight for it. And, church, we need to fight for our families. We need to fight for our church.
We need to fight for our city. And our vision of taking ground, I've seen this very much happen this year. We cast this bold vision that we want to take back ground that the enemy has stolen. And it's almost like the second we announce that, the enemy's like, uh-uh. You're not taking back what I took.
I'm going to stop you. And I've seen in our church staff, our pastoral staff, people in our church, what seems like more spiritual warfare than what I've seen in a long time. Where the enemy is attacking, he's trying to oppose what God is trying to build. See, the Christian life isn't just blueprints and progress. It's battlegrounds and perseverance.
It's not just praying sweet prayers.
Sometimes it's praying while swinging a sword. Nehemiah 4, 17 says, With one hand they worked at construction, and with the other they held a weapon. I love that image. You know what that is? That's an image of a believer with grit.
It's a believer of a it's a picture of a believer with purpose a picture of a believer with a mission to recognize I want to build this city. I want to build my family. I want to build our future, but I also recognize that I have to defend it. I have to fight for it. I have to fight for my family's future.
I have to fight for this city. That's someone who's not just talking faith, they're living faith, they're swinging faith, they're showing up in faith. Because listen, anything God calls you to build. Your faith. Your family, your future, it is going to be opposed.
But I want you to know at the forefront, opposition. Is not the absence of God's will. As a matter of fact, oftentimes it's confirmation that you're walking in it. You know, it's so interesting. And I find when believers experience opposition, when we experience tribulation and persecution, one of the first questions we ask is: what am I doing wrong?
What am I doing wrong, God? What am I doing to displease you? What am I doing to make you angry? Why is this happening to me? What did I do?
And yet oftentimes the answer is you're not doing anything wrong. As a matter of fact, you're doing exactly what you're supposed to do and it's just ticking off Satan and making him come at you with all that he has.
Now, of course, sometimes we experience hardship because of our own dumb mistakes. But I find often in a believer's life, it's because we're where we're supposed to be and Satan is attacking. And so if you're here today and you felt like giving up lately. If you've been staring at the rubble of your life, the rubble of your relationships, the rubble of your work situation, the rubble of this city, and you've been wondering what's the point? This message is for you.
And I want to let you know, you don't need to choose between being a builder and a battler. God has called you to do both.
So today we're going to learn what it means to build with one hand and fight with the other and not give up even when the enemy comes knocking. Because when God gives you a wall to build, he also gives you the strength to stand.
So let's pick up the shovel and the sword. And in this message, we're going to see two issues that Nehemiah and the Israelites faced. And then we're going to see two solutions that they found to fight the enemy of discouragement and fight the threats from the enemy. And we're going to see that these things apply to our lives as well. These same issues that they faced, we faced.
And these same solutions that they found are available to us. Let's look at our first point: the first issue that they faced, and that is that they were buried in the rubble. Look at verse 10. It says Then Judah said, The strength of the laborers is failing. And there is so much rubbish that we're not able to build the wall.
Here we see the first issue present itself. And I want to point out: it says, Then Judah said, Now, I want to point this out because we would read this, and I think instinctively we would believe that this is speaking of an individual named Judah, but this isn't speaking of an individual. Rather, this is speaking of the group, the people of Judah, the people of Israel. The people of Israel are discouraged. They're tired.
And this isn't isolated. It's not just one guy coming to Nehemiah and saying, hey, Nehemiah, I need a vacation day. I'm burnt out. I'm tired. This is a hard job.
Can I just have a day off? It's not just one person, it's a widespread sense of discouragement that has permeated the people's minds and their hearts and is causing them to fall apart. Why? Because of fatigue. I want to point that out.
They're discouraged. Not from fighting an enemy. They're discouraged from the sheer volume of the rubble around them. There's no indication that this is coming up because of Sanbala and Tobias and because of the other enemies of Israel, but rather this is coming up because the people are exhausted. It's a great work that God has given them.
There's a lot of work to be done. The walls are destroyed. There's big gaps. They've got to rebuild the gates, rebuild the walls. They've got to do all this stuff.
And the enormity of the task. is causing them to fall apart. The discouragement comes from dealing with the mess. They're looking at all the rubble, all the mess, and they're thinking, this is impossible. Have you ever felt that way in your life?
When you look at the mess of your life, you look at all the broken down walls, all the rubble, all the things that have happened, you say, this is impossible. How am I ever going to clean up this mess? The people lost sight of the vision. Because they were staring at the mess. I'm going to say that again because I think there's some people in here today who need to hear that.
The people lost sight of the vision, what God had called them to do, the goal, what they were meant to accomplish. They lost sight of the vision. Because their eyes were just staring at the mess. And how real is this for our lives? And not just spirits, though.
Let's just find a fun illustration to make this come home for us. Anyone in here ever allow your home or your car to get so messy that when it finally comes time to clean it? Staring at the mess becomes so overwhelming that you just say, not today. That ever happened to anyone? This happens to me all the time.
I actually like my things neat and tidy, but I allow them to get wildly out of hand and that overwhelms me.
So I'll open my car and I'll be like, all right, today I'm cleaning my car. I open it up and I see all the stuff. And rather than just starting to clean, I say, oh. Not today.
Next week. I'll do this next week. And then next week becomes next week and next week. And then time passes by and months have passed, and you just can't bring yourself to cleaning up that mess. Why?
Because you've lost sight of the vision because you're staring at the mess. Instead of just following the vision and say, all right, I'm going to pick up this one thing and put it away. And then I'm going to come back and I'm going to grab one more thing and put that away. I'm just going to chip away at this task until it's done. We don't even start because the idea of it is so overwhelming.
But how true is this in our own spiritual lives as well? Maybe that failed relationship, that failing marriage that is so broken down. It's in so much rubble and there's so much mess that when you think about starting to fix it, you don't even know where to start. This is Connect with Skip Heidzig. We'll return to Nate Heitzig's teaching in just a moment.
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Now let's get back to the teaching of Nate Heitzig. You say, I don't even know how to begin. I don't know how to repair this relationship. When you look at your kids and they've fallen away or walked away from the Lord and you want to bring them back, you want to preach the gospel, but you don't even know where to start. You don't even know where to begin.
When you look at the city and we look at the crime and we look at the poverty and we look at the issues that we have and we say, I want to fix it. I know God's given us a vision, but I don't even know where to start. It's impossible. And we begin to lose sight of what God has called us to do because we're just staring at the mess. Here's the reality: the rubble wears you out before the enemy does.
You can be spiritually strong and still get exhausted by the mess. That's what Elijah felt in 1 Kings 19. In one chapter, he's calling fire down from heaven. In the next, he's under a broom tree praying to die. Why?
Because he's tired. He's fatigued from the rubble, the emotional, mental, and spiritual exhaustion. But pain and weariness don't mean that you're far from God. They might just mean that you're in the middle of your greatest fight. As a matter of fact, the word of God tells us that he is near to the brokenhearted.
So, in those moments when we feel like God is far from us and we're exhausted from the rubble, it doesn't mean God's not there. It probably actually means he's closer to you than you've ever been before. You just have to open your eyes and get your eyes back on the vision and off of the mess. We need to open our eyes to the reality of the battle. I want you to notice something else.
This discouragement that spreads through the people doesn't come from outside. It comes from inside. It's the people of God. Looking around at what's happening, they begin to get discouraged. They begin to complain, and nothing spreads quicker or weakens morale more than complaining.
You'll see this in your house with your family, at your business, in the church. When we start complaining, it weakens morale. It discourages the troops. It's why complaining needs to be nipped as quick as it can, otherwise, it will spread like wildfire and demoralize the troops. Does this sound familiar?
Sometimes the thing that breaks you doesn't come from outside, it comes from inside. We see this in marriage counseling all the time. You'll see a couple come in and they're worn down, they're defeated, they're discouraged, but it's not from forces outside, it's from inside. They've been tearing one another down. They've been demeaning one another.
They've been talking poorly about one another. And the discouragement, the dysfunction hasn't come from outside. It's come from inside. It's not because of an affair. It's just because they're discouraging one another.
They're complaining to one another, and it's permeated. The family. Discouragement is an inside job. And this happens with Christians far too often. We look around at the rubble.
We look around at the decisions that are being made. We look around at the crime. We look around at the homeless problem. We look around at our city and we see the rubble and we start staring at the mess and we become so callous that all we do is start complaining. Oh this city.
Oh, it's so hard. Our governor did. I can't believe our governor did this. Oh, the crime. Oh, the poverty.
Oh, look at those other states. It must be so nice to live in one of those states where they don't have these problems. And we just start complaining and complaining. What it does is it spreads discouragement among the people of God. And we all start bearing this weight of discouragement, and we stop looking at the vision God has given us.
We stop building and we start lamenting. And if we're honest, it's a lot easier to complain than it is to do something, isn't it? Because when I complain, all of a sudden, it's not my problem, it's someone else's problem. And can we be honest? Anyone in here like me loved to complain?
This isn't a gotcha moment. This is like, I love to complain, if I'm super honest. I love it. I love having a long car ride and complaining, oh, my back hurts, oh, I'm tired of driving. I love going to Disneyland and complaining about the lines and complaining about the food and complaining about the heat and complaining about my kids screaming.
I love complaining about gas prices. Right? Because it puts the problem on someone else. What's your problem now? Maybe you weren't even thinking about any of those things, but now you are.
Now you're thinking about it.
Now it's bugging you just as much as it's bugging me. We complain about everything.
Well, the country this.
Well, the city that. Things don't look the way that they should. Our governor did this. Look, I'll be the first to say there's a lot of rubble around us. There's a lot of mess to be cleaned up, and I wish the world looked different.
I wish things weren't the way that they are. I wish we didn't have the crime we have. I wish I didn't get punched at a coffee shop by a homeless person. I wish the economy wasn't what it is. I wish we had different politicians that stood against evil, not against good.
I wish things were different. But if we don't stop complaining and start caring, realizing that our city is worth saving, then nothing's going to change. And in 10 years, it's just going to be worse and we'll just be complaining more. It's just like the car. We need to open it up and just pick up a piece of mess, pick up a piece of trash, pick up that stone, put it away, keep our eyes on the vision, stop complaining, start caring and make a difference.
We just need to get to work. Hebrews 12:1 says, Let us throw off everything. that hinders. Church You can't raise new walls if you're stuck tripping over yesterday's wreckage. If you stay in the rubble, you'll never see the wall rise.
We're called to build. We're called to rebuild. We're called to be doers. not complainers.
So what's the rubble in your life? Is it bitterness? Is it shame? Is it past mistakes that you've made? Is it a mindset that you haven't surrendered?
Because I want you to know you can't build a future if you're camped in the rubble of your past. You can't build your future on top of what God is trying to remove. We all know how important it is to have a firm foundation. And the life that God wants us to build has to be built on a firm foundation. Yet, some of us are trying to build our lives on the foundation of the rubble of our past.
And God is never going to honor that. God is never going to allow you to build the future He wants for you on the things He wants to remove from your life. You got to get rid of it. You got to clear out the rubble. You have to clear out the mess.
All of those things, those aren't your foundation. Your foundation is Jesus Christ. Your foundation is what he accomplished for you on the cross. That you are forgiven, that you are called, that you are chosen, that you have a purpose to accomplish. We need to start building our foundation on the right thing.
You have to make space for what he is building, and the rubble of your past will become a roadblock to your future if you don't clear it out. Vision dies in the rubble. When we let it pile up instead of clearing it out.
So clear the rubble. Don't camp in it. Stop staring at the mess and start rebuilding. Because the wall doesn't go up when you feel strong. The wall goes up when you show up.
Number two, the next issue that we see, now it shifts from the internal struggle, the discouragement, and we see the external threat. And that's the next issue is threats in the shadows. Let's look at verse 11 to 12. Continues on, and it says, And our adversaries said, They will neither know. Nor see anything till we come into their midst and kill them and cause the work to cease.
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 first we have this discouragement, the people are looking at the mess. And they're so discouraged by the mess and the rubble that they get paralyzed to do the work. Then the threats come in, the threats from the shadows. The enemy says, Hey, even if you build a wall, we're going to kill you and we're going to stop you building it. And now we see fear permeate the Israelites' camp.
Wherever we go, whatever we do, they're going to be upon us. How are we going to get out of this situation?
Now, the present, the pressure isn't just internal, it's external. The enemy is threatening secret and sudden attacks. And we see this throughout the whole book of Nehemiah. Last week, we were introduced to Sanbalat Tobias and these enemies of the Israelites. In chapter 4, verse 2 through 3, the Israelites are ridiculed for what they're trying to do.
In chapter 4, verse 7 to 8, they're threatened. Later on in chapter 6, verse 1 through 4, they make a plot to try and kidnap Nehemiah. In chapter 6, verse 5 through 9, they fabricate lies and false accusations saying, well, you guys just want to be your own king and we're going to tell on you. We're going to tell the real king what you're doing and the rebellion you're trying to cause. In chapter 6, verse 10 through 14, they try intimidating Nehemiah by hiring a man who comes to him and says, Let us meet together in the house of God.
and let us close the doors of the temple because they're coming to kill you. By the way, that's exactly what the world does today. Hey, you Christians, just shut up and go to your church and stop coming out and trying to tell us what to do. You just stay in your bubble. Stay in your church.
Protect yourself in your little pews and don't come out and be a part of the world. The world does the same thing. They give us these false accusations. They fabricate lies about us, tell people that we're trying to overthrow governments. They ridicule us.
They threaten us. And we need to be prepared. that when we start working, the attacks will start coming. But I want you to notice something fascinating about this. These attacks weren't direct.
They were cover. As a matter of fact, at no point do we see in Nehemiah they ever act on these threats. We never see them mount an army of rebellion and come in and tear down the walls and kill the Israelites. We never see them actually use their swords. The enemy uses threats.
Not swords. And that's what the enemy does today. Satan whispers fear far more than he wields force. The Bible tells us that the Lord stands at the door and knocks, but the enemy doesn't knock, the enemy sneaks. He tries to come in through the back entrance.
He tries to sneak around your life. He tries to get a foothold in your mind. The enemy doesn't need to overpower you, he just needs to intimidate you. Satan doesn't need to defeat you if he can just distract you. And sometimes the loudest weapons are the ones that you never see coming.
Why? Because you can't build if you're always looking over your shoulder. Remember, we're supposed to keep our eyes set on Jesus, set on the vision that he's given us. And if Satan can get you to look over your shoulder and take your eyes off Jesus, your eyes off the prize, he's already winning because he's stalling the work that God wants to do. We're so glad you joined us for Connect with Skip Heitzig, today featuring Pastor Skip's son Nate Heitzig.
Before you go, here's a reminder. When you give $50 or more this month, we'll send you the Expound Nehemiah 7 Message C D series with digital download, along with Pastor Skiff's booklet, Overcoming an Anxious Mind, as our thanks. These resources offer biblical insight and encouragement to help you trust God in challenging seasons and experience His peace as you follow Him. Your support helps keep this Bible teaching ministry on the air, connecting more people to God's word. Give today at connectwithskiff.com slash offer or call 800-922-1888.
See you next time. Make a connection. Shouldn't I'm the foot of the crossing. Castle perfect. Insomnia.
Connect with Skip Heitzig is a presentation of connection communications, connecting you to God's never-changing truth in ever-changing times.
