R321 How To Handle The Enemy Pt.2

Welcome to The Encouraging Word featuring the Bible-based preaching of Dr. Don Wilton as we continue the series on how to handle the enemy. We're headed to God's Word with Dr. Wilton in just a moment, but know that we're here for you right now at 866-899-WORD.

That's 866-899-9673 or online at www.tewonline.org. Now today's teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. Please take a copy of God's Word and turn together with me and each one of us to the book of Nehemiah in chapter 4. In the Old Testament, the book of Nehemiah in chapter 4, the second part of a message on how to handle the enemy.

Now I've got a confession to make to you as a congregation. I remember when I was about 16 or 17 years of age, I had a motorbike. Now many of you today would say, well, your parents must have lost something to have given you a motorbike. Well, I had a motorbike. My father used to race motorbikes.

Some of you didn't know that, but he did for many years. And I guess motorbikes were a part of our family. And I had a motorbike. It was my motorbike. And I was 16 years of age. And I came home from high school one day and rode my motorbike into the backyard. And just before I got to the house, it suddenly conked out. There was no other word to describe it. It just stopped. I mean, kaboom, just boom right there with me on top of just dead right there.

Can you believe that? And here I am. So I pushed this all the way up the hill where we lived in East London. And I went back into my home, went around the back and I looked at this motorbike and I stared at it and I considered it, I contemplated it. I knew one thing, it had stopped. And so I said, self, you need to fix this motorbike. And so I began. I took the wheels off. I took the seat off.

I began to take this off. I even began to unscrew bits and parts of the engine. And my father arrived home from one of the meetings that he was in and he said to me, son, what seems to be the problem? I said, dad, my motorbike stopped. It's broken.

It just stopped on me just like that and I'm dismantling it. And I'm going to find out exactly what's wrong with it, to which he said to me, and I will never forget. He said, son, did you check the gas tank?

I said, thank you very much, dad. And of course, all that had happened was that, yes, I had run out of gas. I'm going to confess to you that if ever you see me broken down somewhere in our state, I'll probably have the hood up.

And I'll probably be walking around and doing what Michelin says you should never do, I'll be kicking some tires. But I won't know how to fix the problem. You know, in life, we many, many times have to raise the hood. We recognize that something is broken. We understand that we are being confronted by the enemy. We recognize that things are not what they ought to be, that we are facing an onslaught. And yet we don't know how to handle it. We can go to seminars, we can renew our vows, we can recognize that we need to do whatever it is that we need to do. But I think if we were honest with one another, sometimes all we end up doing is kicking the tires. We don't know how to handle the enemy.

Nehemiah's experience was no different to ours in 1996. Here he was a man of God, among a people of God, being blessed of God in an unprecedented way, being faced by all kinds of challenges, and there was the enemy. The enemy came in the form of different people, in different circumstances, on different occasions, and yet the enemy was there. And the Word of God affirms that. The Word of God tells us that the devil is alive in his will, and he's out to seek to destroy and to maim and to alter. And he's out to bring us down to our knees. We recognize that.

Most Christian people today in the world would rise up and they would say, well, pastor, there is no doubt about it whatsoever. We recognize the onslaught of the enemy. He's at work in our families. He's at work in our nation. He's at work in our schools. He's at work in our community. He's at work everywhere. We recognize that.

But how can I handle the enemy? I want you to follow with me again in Nehemiah chapter 4 and verse 10. The Bible says, meanwhile, the people in Judah said, the strength of the laborers is giving out and there is so much rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.

That is a monumentally significant statement, don't you think? You've been married for 15 years and there's so much rubble. How can I rebuild the wall? Maybe you've made many mistakes in your life.

Maybe you're a teenager here this morning and you're saying, pastor, I have spoken ill of my parents. I have got something inside of me that is a fire that won't go out. There is so much rubble. Can I ever rebuild the wall?

Listen to what happens. Verse 11, also, if this was not enough, our enemy said, before they know it or see us, we will be right there among them and we will kill them and put an end to the work. Then the Jews who lived near them came and told us how many times? Ten times over. Wherever you turn, they will attack us.

Ten times over. The relentless onslaught of the enemy. Therefore, speaking in the first person, God's prophet Nehemiah said, therefore, in verse 13, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the exposed places.

Let me just stop there for a minute. I love that word, exposed places. Do you know what that means? I want to insert our own modern day terminology in there. I would put the word Achilles heel. You know what our Achilles heel is?

All of us have an Achilles heel. It's our weakest point. It's the point at which Satan is going to aim his darts. It is the point at which he's going to bring us down. It's the point at which he knows he can get us better than any other place.

It's the point at which he know that he can cause us to crumble. He knows our weak point, our Achilles point in this church. He knows our Achilles point as the United States of America. He knows our Achilles point as individual people. Satan knows every detail about us. He is an absolute master of deception.

He wants to destroy us so badly. Look what Nehemiah did. Therefore, I stationed some of the people behind the lowest points of the wall at the Achilles heel, at the exposed places, posting them by families with their swords and spears and bows. After I looked things over, I stood up and I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, don't be afraid of them.

Remember the Lord who is great and awesome and fight for your brothers, your sons and your daughters, your wives in your homes. Now when our enemies heard that we were aware of their plot and that God had frustrated it, we all returned to the wall, each to his own work. From that day on, half of my men did the work while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall.

Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me. Then I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people, the work is extensive and spread out and we are widely separated from each other along the wall.

Wherever you hear the sound of the trumpet, join us there. Our God will fight for us. So we continued the work with half the men holding spears from the first light of dawn till the stars came out. At that time I also said to the people, have every man and his helpers stay inside Jerusalem at night so they can serve us, serve as gods by night and workmen by day. Neither I nor my brothers nor my men nor the gods with me took off our clothes.

Each had his weapon even when he went for water. May the Lord write his word upon our hearts. Seven principles, biblical principles on how to handle the enemy.

I'll use the first two as an introduction because we covered them last week. Number one, know who God is. Know who God is. Chapter four and verse 14 and chapter four and verse 20.

It is apparently clear that Nehemiah understood exactly who God is. There were four things he discovered. Number one, that God is creator in chapter nine and verse six. Number two, that God is covenant maker. That he makes a covenant with us and God never changes his mind. Number three, that he is character builder.

In chapter five and verse 12, he builds our character. He's in the business of processing us. He's in the business of refining us. He's in the business of us, of conforming us to the image of his own son. And number four, he is caretaker. Chapter four and verse 20, he takes care of the battle. He's ahead of us.

He's in charge. I said some time ago, I said, if you had 65 seconds to tell somebody something before you died, what would you tell them? If God said to you right now, you've got 65 seconds left to live and I want you to talk to your son and your daughter and your wife and your husband, what would you say in 65 seconds? Be a man, my son. Make sure you build up a good bank balance for when you retire. Invest wisely. Marry well, my daughter. My daughter. Ha ha. Buy a good motor car.

That'll never break down. Eat right. Stay alive. What would you say if you had 65 seconds? I believe what Nehemiah would have said, my friend, is number one, first and foremost, know who God is.

Why? Because friends, unless we understand who this creator is, this covenant maker, this caretaker, this character builder, you and I can never, ever be able to handle the onslaught of the enemy. If we don't know who God is, man has proved over and over again that man cannot handle the enemy. Number two, identify the enemy. Identify the enemy. Identify the enemy. Chapter six and verse 14, you can look at it with me. Identify the enemy. What does he say here? He says, remember Tobiah and Sanballat, oh my God, because of what they have done. Remember also the prophetess, Noah Dyer, and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me.

There was no question about it. This man believed that first and foremost, under God he had to identify the enemy. Some of us think the enemy is our job. Some of us think the enemy is our world. Some of us think the enemy is the environment. Some of us think the enemy is Congress. Some of us think the enemy is the IRS. Some of us think the enemy is our in-laws or our outlaws. Some of us think the enemy are our children, but the Bible says my friend, public enemy.

Number one is ourselves. the war that goes on within us. Paul put it like this. He said, the good that I would that I do not and the evil that I would not that I do. And there was a proverbial struggle, a tug of war going on within himself. Why? Because the devil is alive and well. You and I need to identify the enemy.

Here it is. What is it in your life that is causing you to stumble? What is it? Where is your Achilles heel? Identify the enemy.

There's a process by which we can go, five points. Number one, name them, name them. That's what Nehemiah did, he named them. When there was an enemy in the camp, he named them. He said, remember Tobiah and Sanballat and Noah, Dion, the other prophets, he named them. He identified them, he pointed them out. He said, you're the one, he named them.

There was no apology in him whatsoever. Name the enemy. Number two, claim them, claim them. You'll notice here in verse 14, that the prophet directed his whole prayer concerning this named enemy toward God. He claimed them for God.

You know why? Because I believe this man understood that vengeance is mine, said the Lord. And what Nehemiah did together with those people, when these people began to oppose the work of God, even in their subtle, undercurrent kinds of ways, he named them and then he claimed them for the cause of God, Jehovah.

He presented them before the throne of grace. But there's a third thing, challenge them. Not only name them and claim them, you need to challenge them. You say to me today, pastor, why do I need to challenge the enemy?

You see friend, only a criminal is afraid of a policeman. If you are living according to God's standards and you are moving in the direction that God has placed you and all of a sudden Satan begins to use people to trip you up and to drag you out, you must not only name them and claim them, you need to challenge them. You need to get up eyeball to eyeball, one-on-one, look them in the eye and say, what you're doing is not of the Lord. You need to challenge that weak point in your own life. It may be lust, it may be something you're looking at, it may be something you're saying, it may be someplace you're going, it may be the manner with which you conduct yourself, it may be the company you keep. You not only need to name it and claim it, you need to challenge it, otherwise you will never identify the enemy. But there's a fourth thing that you need to do, you need to push on despite them.

Name them, claim them, challenge them and then push on despite them. You see what Satan wants us to do as a church, my friends, is to stop doing what we're doing. You know what would give him great joy?

No, is if God's church all over America just stopped. You know how he's going to try and get God's work to stop? He's gonna raise up the enemy. He's gonna use people and he's gonna use circumstances and he's gonna use government and he's gonna use education and he's gonna use children. He's gonna use husbands and wives and preachers and pastors and priests and deacons and elders and Sunday school teachers. He's gonna use whoever he can get his hands on and he's gonna get those people to do his dirty work and he wants the church of God to stop dead in its tracks. You can identify these people.

Usually they will tell you that they've been sent with a special mission from God. It is their most earnest job description to set the record straight, to do whatever needs to be done. We need to name them and claim them. We need to challenge them, move on despite them.

But there's a fifth process in the identification process. We need to win them. How do you win the enemy? You won't win Satan, my friend. You win Satan by virtue of the victory that Jesus has already claimed upon the cross. Oh, and how we need to claim that victory, don't we?

Sometimes we find it difficult, especially when we're by ourselves. Dr. Wilton has insisted I interrupt so that I can let you know we are here to pray with you and for you about the way maybe you're handling your enemy right now. Our phone number is 866-899-WORD.

That's 866-899-9673. Available not just now during the broadcast, but 24 hours a day. As Dr. Don would say, we would be honored to be one of your 2 a.m. friends if you need someone to pray with or need some help connecting with great resources. As a matter of fact, we have a remarkable resource just released. It's the new book from Dr. Don Wilton called Saturdays with Billy.

Here's Dr. Don with more. What an incredible privilege to be the friend and pastor of Dr. Billy Graham for so many years. That's why I have just written Saturdays with Billy.

This is not a biography. It is my experience with this most precious man who has changed my life and the lives of thousands of people around the world. You want to get a copy right now, Saturdays with Billy. Now the way to get your copy is calling right now at 866-899-WORD, that's 866-899-9673, or you can order one online at our website, T-E-W online.org. That's T-E-W, the encouraging word, online.org. What's more, T-E-W online.org will connect you with not only that resource, the new book about Dr. Billy Graham, but so many more other resources, including the free daily email Dr. Don sends out every morning, you can sign up again online at T-E-W online.org.

Now back to today's great teaching with Dr. Don Wilton. And friend, if there is an individual or a situation in your life and you are a Christian person, what I mean by winning the enemy through the identification process, I mean gaining the victory over that situation. If it is something that you are looking at, stop looking at it. If it is something that you are saying, stop saying it.

If it is someplace you're going to, stop going there. I was counseling with a couple and this man said, I know what's wrong, this is wrong and that's wrong and that's wrong with me. And I looked at him and I said, brother, do I love you?

He said, yes, sir. I said, well, what have you done about it? You can sit there until you're blue in the face and tell me or tell your wife that you're this and that and the next thing, the issue is this, know who God is. Number two, identify the enemy. Number three, pray for God's protection.

Pray for God's protection. Look at chapter four and verse nine, marvelous passage. Chapter four and verse nine. But we prayed to our God. Go back to verse eight.

Now let's go back to verse seven, just look at this. But when here they are identifying the enemy again, remember point number two. But when Sanballat, Tobiah, the Arabs, the Ammonites and the men of Ashdod heard that the repairs to Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps were being closed, they were what?

What were they? They were angry, they were very angry. Now folks, these were not people outside, these were people inside. They were part of the status quo. They sang in the choir, excuse me.

I shouldn't have said that while I was facing that way. They sang in the choir, they sat in the pews, they preached from the pulpit. Do you know that some of the greatest opposition to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ comes from preachers, from ministers of the gospel, from churches, that's right. Look what happened, look at verse eight.

And so what happened? They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem, here it is, watch it coming and to stir up trouble, isn't that just like Satan? I'm just gonna go there and I'm gonna just stir that all pot up.

Man, I'm God's personal gift to mankind. I'm just gonna go and stir it up. I'm gonna stand in the corridors and I'm going to start rumors and I'm going to begin innuendo and I'm going to attack and I'm gonna question and I'm gonna do this, I'm just gonna stir up the pot. That's what Satan does. He's doing it in our education system, folks. He's doing it with the mass murder of children all across America, freedom of choice they call it. When it comes to sexual matters, it's called safe sex. I'm just gonna stir up the pot.

I'm gonna give it a nice name. I'm gonna talk about the rights of people. Everybody's got a right.

Today, it's a matter of sexual preference. Who cares what God's Word says? Here it is, they stirred up trouble against it, verse nine. But we prayed to our God.

Isn't that incredible? Ha, there it is. Pray for God's protection. You say, pastor, how simplistic could they be?

Pray for God's protection. Peter put it like this in 1 Peter chapter one. He said, we must not only guard the gospel, but we are shielded by God's power. There is a garrison that is placed around about us. We are completely overtaken by God's armaments, by God's battlements.

God has drawn the battle station. And He says, if you want to handle the enemy in your life, pray for God's protection. Do we really pray for our children? Do we really pray for one another? Number four, take practical action.

Take practical action. The fourth principle on how to handle the enemy. I want to look at the second part of verse nine. You see, they didn't just stop at prayer. I call that the God bless you, my brother syndrome. I picked that up when I was at seminary in New Orleans.

We were all so good. We used to walk around those hallowed halls and we would hear about needs and we would say, well, God bless you, my brother. Now folks, I believe in the power of prayer. I believe we should pray.

I believe we need to be in the forefront of prayer, but sometimes we've got to put our prayer into action. You see, it's no good just for the church to talk about moral decay. We've got to do something about moral decay.

It's no good for us to just get up, my friend, and say God's Word says that abortion is an abomination in the nostril of God. We've got to do something about it. It's no good getting up and saying that the world is in such trouble and that we need to give to our people a haven of rest and a fellowship of encouragement. We've got to do something about it. You see, they took practical action.

Look what happened. Verse nine, but we prayed to our God and posted a God, how often, day and night to meet this threat. Indeed, we do need to be active. We've got to start doing things. And one of the things that Dr. Wilton reminds us often is God can't steer a bicycle that's not moving, a car that's not moving. You need to be in motion.

Are we in motion in the right way? Know that we're here to pray with you and for you about what God's dealing with in your life as you've been hearing the encouraging Word of God, the Bible itself from Dr. Don Wilton. You can connect with us at 866-899-WORD. That's 866-899-9673 or online at tewonline.org.

That's tewonline.org. Before we get away, though, closing thoughts from our pastor and chief encourager, Dr. Don Wilton. Are you ready to give your heart and life to the Lord Jesus Christ? Why don't you pray this prayer with me right now? Dear God, I know that I'm a sinner, and I know that Jesus died for me on the cross. Today, I repent of my sin, and by faith, I receive you into my heart. In Jesus' name. My friend, I welcome you today into the family of God.

This is exciting news. If you just prayed to receive Jesus Christ as your savior with Dr. Wilton moments ago, welcome to the family of God. Maybe you were praying to rededicate your life, and if so, welcome home.

We wanna encourage you. Matter of fact, Dr. Don has some specific resources that he wants to put in your hands. If you gave your life to Christ or rededicated your life, you can call for those resources at 866-899-WORD.

They're absolutely free. 866-899-9673 is the number to call, or meet us online at TEWONLINE.ORG. That's TEWONLINE.ORG. While you're there, discover all the resources like Dr. Don's book on Billy Graham you mentioned earlier today, and so many other opportunities to just grow closer in our faith. That's online at TEWONLINE.ORG. The Encouraging Word.