Building amidst Opposition

One of the hardest things for Christians to cope with in a strange and foreign culture is to be laughed at.

We can stand overt hostility, but to be belittled or scorned or held in contempt to be the butt of a cultural joke is more than we can bear. Science is common to most Christians, and it happened in Nehemiah's day as well. Today we'll be in the book of Nehemiah as we visit various Old Testament books and people all week on Renewing Your Mind. So how should we live and pursue the Great Commission when we're in a time of opposition?

How do we relate to those in government, especially if they disagree with our God-given agenda? Nehemiah found himself in a similar situation, and R.C. Sproul draws many lessons for us from his story. I found this message encouraging and challenging, especially as I look around and see what is taking place, and I hope you do too.

Here's Dr. Sproul. We continue now with our study of Nehemiah, and we recall that when Nehemiah received word from his friends of the state of affairs back in Jerusalem, he was deeply grieved and gave himself to a period of protracted mourning and then went into a period of prayer and fasting before God. So that the first thing he did in his life to address the problems that he saw in his own culture was to go to God, and he asked God to do something about the situation. Now that may seem simplistic to you, but one of the differences between Nehemiah and so many of us today is that this man really believed in the sovereignty of God, and he really believed in the providence of God and was really convinced that the future destiny of Jerusalem and of the people of Israel were in the hands of God.

And so that's where he goes, and he asks God to work, but he doesn't stop there. The next thing he does is makes a request of the civil magistrate, of the pagan civil magistrate, of the king of Persia himself, and let's see how that transpires as Nehemiah records it for us in the second chapter of his book. He said at the end of chapter 1 that he was the cup bearer to the king. In chapter 2 he says, Now I had never been sad in his presence before, therefore the king said to me, Why is your face sad since you are not sick? This is nothing but sorrow of heart.

Now let me stop there for a second. First of all, a comment about the office that Nehemiah performed. He was an official in the political court of a pagan king. That says something about the legitimacy of Christians serving in non-Christian arenas such as this, and he's an official of the king, and his job is to be the cup bearer. Now usually what the cup bearer did was not only served as a waiter to the king, bringing in the wine before the monarch, but it was also the task of the cup bearer to taste the wine, not to see if it was of good vintage, but to make sure it wasn't poisoned because one of the things that was commonplace in the intrigue among royalty in the day was assassination of monarchs by poisoning their food or their drink.

So these powerful monarchs employed wine tasters and food tasters to sample their provisions before they ate or drank themselves, so that if poison was there, it would be the cup bearer who would die, not the king. And so here as a political officer, Nehemiah is a servant, and he's a servant to the king, and he comes in to perform his task, but this day is different from any other day in the past. And the king is sensitive to his own servant and to the mood of Nehemiah, which says a lot about Artaxerxes, actually.

Artaxerxes noticed that this man, who was normally cheerful, whom he had never seen downcast or gloomy in the past, which is quite a remarkable testimony of the witness in the character of Nehemiah, now he sees that Nehemiah is obviously troubled, and so Artaxerxes inquires, What's wrong? he says, and this is the response of Nehemiah, So I became dreadfully afraid, and said to the king, May the king live forever. Now he's afraid of the potential wrath of the king because he's supposed to have a joyful countenance there. He's not supposed to carry the burdens of his own heart and disrupt the mood of the king. He's supposed to be a bundle of joy and light as he carries out his duties, and so now he's afraid because the king has noticed his sorrow, and the king may be displeased. And he said, And so I was dreadfully afraid, and I said to the king, May the king live forever, but why should my face not be sad, when the city, the place of my father's tombs, lies waste and its gates are burned with fire? He's saying, King, my heart is broken because my homeland is in ashes. Well, he doesn't say, and it's your fault, but he says, that's why I'm unhappy. And so the king said, Well, what do you request?

Now here's an interesting interlude. It doesn't say, So I said to the king, but rather when the king says, What do you want? Nehemiah said, So I prayed to the God in heaven, and I said to the king. He first prayed, and then he spoke to the king. If it pleases the king, and if your servant has found favor in your sight, I ask that you send me to Judah, to the city of my father's tombs, that I may rebuild it. He didn't picket the king. He made no demand of the king.

He first requests of the king. Remember the New Testament teaching of how we are as Christians to relate to the civil magistrates. There are times, of course, as we will see even with Nehemiah, that the call of God may be that we must disobey the civil magistrates. The basic working principle that I often give on this is anytime the civil magistrate commands us to do something God forbids or forbids us from doing something God commands, not only may we disobey that lesser magistrate, but we must disobey them, just as the disciples did when the Sanhedrin in the New Testament forbade them from ever preaching Christ again. Now they had a conflict between the rule of the state and the command of Christ, and they had to be faithful to God over men, which was the response of the disciples. Must we not obey God rather than men? But all things being equal, the basic tenor of the New Testament is that we are to be models of cooperation, of bending over backwards, even in an oppressive situation, because when Paul calls us to be subject to the earthly rulers, he's writing that to the Romans who are under the tyranny of Rome. And so Nehemiah models that posture of humility before the king when he makes a request that the king will grant him a leave of absence to give him temporary release from his duties there in the court to go to Jerusalem and to rebuild the walls.

And the astonishing thing is that Artaxerxes says yes. Verse 6, then the king said to me, the queen also sitting beside him, how long will your journey be and when will you return? And so it pleased the king to send me, and I set him a time. Furthermore, I said to the king, if it pleases the king, let letters be given to me for the governors of the region beyond the river, that they must permit me to pass through till I come to Judah, and a letter to Asaph, the keeper of the king's forest, that he must give me timber to make beams for the gates of the citadel which pertains to the temple, for the city wall, and for the house that I will occupy. What's he doing here? He's asking for two things. He's asking for imperial protection. He wants a safe conduct passage signed by the king himself that puts Nehemiah under the protection of the civil government. And then he asks, of all things, for a government grant to fulfill this building program. That's astonishing.

I wonder what happened to us. If we asked Washington for a government grant to build our churches, I don't think we'd get very far. But Nehemiah made these requests to Artaxerxes, and we read, and the king granted them to me according to the good hand of my God upon me. And so he proceeds then to the regions on the way, and as he meets the governors along the route to Jerusalem, he demonstrates these, he shows the letters that the king had given him, and so on. Now, in verse 10, the whole atmosphere, verse 10 of chapter 2, the whole atmosphere of the story changes.

So far, everything was going great. Nehemiah asked for the king's blessing, asked for the king's resources. He got the safe conduct. He got the financial grant. Now he's all excited. He gets to go back to Jerusalem.

He's got all the money, all the materials he needs to rebuild the city. Then Nehemiah encounters opposition. We're in a culture war, and if you think you can rebuild the church of Christ in your day without opposition, you're dreaming. There is always opposition to the building of the city of God, always opposition. Jesus Himself said, what man going into battle doesn't first assess the strength of his enemy?

What man, when he undergoes a construction project, doesn't first consider the cost? And He tells us about the cost of discipleship. This is one reason it bothers me sometimes when I hear enthusiastic preachers who are trying to persuade people to become Christians that kind of overstate the thing and say, you come to Christ and all your problems will be over. I don't know anything about that religion because it seems to me my life didn't get complicated until I became a Christian.

In some respects, that's when your troubles really start. Instead I hear Jesus say, in the world you have tribulation, they hated me, they're going to hate you, and you better be prepared for opposition. You better count the cost of discipleship. And some of those who heard Jesus counted the cost and went home. But we need to do that and not be surprised when opposition arises against the mission of the church.

The blood of the martyrs has always been the seed of the church, historically. And so I remember going to Billy Graham headquarters several years ago when George Wilson was the executive vice president of the Graham organization, and we had a private conversation on that occasion, and I said, you know, how do you handle all of the vicious attacks that come against Billy and against the organization? Because as soon as you're as visible as somebody like Billy Graham is, you're a target for everybody who is opposed to religion or preaching or anything. And he said, we have one rule around here.

I said, what's that? He said, the rule is never let your critics determine your agenda. Well, when I heard that, I mean, I know that George was not saying don't ever pay attention to criticism because the criticism may be valid, but what he meant by that is the opposition that you are having for the Lord's work cannot determine the agenda. And one of the reasons why Jerusalem today, our Jerusalem, is in ruins is that because so many Christian leaders and pastors and so on have allowed the critics to determine the agenda, because we don't want to face opposition, because we don't want to stir up controversy, because we don't want people to be engaged in conflict, we will water the gospel down to such a degree of dilution that nobody's going to be controversial about it because who needs to?

There's nothing threatening about it. But opposition does come, and it came for Nehemiah. Let's look at it in verse 10 of chapter 2. When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite official heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel.

Listen to that. This is not the king now. These are subordinate political rulers under the regime of Artaxerxes. These are local regional governors.

It would be like analogous to our getting permission from the federal government, from the President of the United States to engage in a project for the building of a church, and the mayor of the town in which we live did everything he could to oppose it. That happens, and it happened to Nehemiah. We read again that Sanballat and Tobiah were deeply disturbed for what reason? That a man had come to seek the well-being of the children of Israel for the simple reason that Sanballat and Tobiah did not want the well-being of Israel, and they feared the well-being of Israel. I'm fascinated when I listen to talk shows on the radio and hear people talk about how frightened they are by the Christian coalition and how they talk about the conservative Christian right or the radical right. It's never the radical left, it's always the radical right and so on, that these people want to introduce a new kind of fascism and control your children as mind police and all of that kind of thing, take away all your liberties. There may be people in the Christian coalition or on the Christian right who have that agenda.

I've never met one. What I see as the heart of the concern of the Christian coalition is to maintain the integrity and the freedom and the liberty of Christian expression that is already guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, but which liberties are being eroded by the hour. But in any case, the plan and the agenda for reformation of the city of Jerusalem did not meet with the approval of everybody, and it certainly did not gain the blessing of these sinners who greatly feared what would happen if Jerusalem were restored. So then Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem and he gets to view the condition of the cities. And he says in verse 17, you see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lies waste and its gates are burned with fire. Come let us build the wall of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach. And now he's talking to his own countrymen. And I told them of the hand of my God which had been good upon me and also the king's word that he had spoken to me. So now he comes on the scene.

He assesses the damage. He rallies the people. And as a great spiritual leader, he says, let's go. Let's engage and embark upon this mission for God. It's like Moses coming down from the Midianite wilderness after speaking with God and saying to the people of Israel, we're going to be free. God is going to deliver us. Let's go. And everybody gets all whooped up here at this speech, and what do they say? Let's do it.

Let's go ahead. All this time Nehemiah has not recorded any incident of anger. We will see pretty soon that the first time he gets angry is not with Sanballat and Tobiah, not with his opponents, not with Artaxerxes, the monarch in power, but he gets angry with his own people because though they pledged themselves to the mission, as soon as the mission created hardships, as soon as the mission met with resistance, as soon as the opposition frightened the people of Israel, they wanted to quit. They wanted to back out. Can we table this motion and retreat from our commitment?

Do you see how often that happens? They start with this big speech, let's go. Well, as soon as they take two steps, they get opposition, let's not go. Let's think it over. Let's back up. And so he said, so they set their hands to the good work.

They began the task. And verse 19 gives us that ominous word, but when Sanballat, the Horonite, and Tobiah and others heard of it, they laughed at us and despised us and said, what is this thing you are doing? Will you rebel against the king? And I answered and said to them, the God of heaven himself will prosper us, therefore we his servants will arise and build, but you have no heritage or right or memorial in Jerusalem. One of the hardest things for Christians to cope with in a strange and foreign culture is to be laughed at.

We can stand overt hostility, but to be belittled or scorned or held in contempt, to be the butt of a cultural joke is more than we can bear. We'll see how it undermines the resolve of the people of Israel. The church in our day has a mission every bit as strategic, as crucial, and as important as the mission God gave to Nehemiah to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Every Christian who's been a Christian for six weeks understands that there is an enormous task in front of the church to rebuild our walls, and we've heard countless speeches encouraging us and giving inspiration to set our hand to that task. I want to ask you today where you are involved in the rebuilding of the church of Christ. How strong is your resolve and your commitment to bear witness to the kingdom of Jesus Christ?

The last mandate that Jesus gave before he left this planet was, you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth. Every one of us is called to be engaged in this venture. I want you to ask yourself today where you are involved and how you have been hindered by opposition and by the reproach, the derision, or the scorn of your neighbors. A challenge there from R.C.

Sproul, and I'm sure each of us could list various things that have gotten in the way in our own lives. May each of us, by God's grace, have the resolve to follow Christ no matter the opposition. Today's message was from R.C. Sproul's series on Nehemiah, and the entire series can be yours to stream again and again as our thanks for your donation of any amount at renewingyourmind.org. Not only is your support keeping Renewing Your Mind freely available to countless people around the world every single day, they're also helping support youth apologetics conferences.

We call them Always Ready, and we're hosting them across the United States and maybe even in Canada next year. These day-long events for young teenagers are designed to provide answers to the opposition that they're facing and to give them the confidence to stand up for truth and to stand tall as they do, knowing that the body of Christ is praying earnestly for this next generation. So give generously at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343 and know that your support is having an impact. In addition to digital access to the Nehemiah series, we'll also send you R.C. Sproul's 57-part series Dust to Glory. This is his introduction to the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. And as always, you'll have digital access to those messages and the study guide as well. So give your gift at renewingyourmind.org or by calling us at 800-435-4343. This resource package is available today only, so respond while there's still time. We can try to run from God, but it's really a futile effort.

So why, even as Christians, do we sometimes try to run from what we know God has called us to do? R.C. Sproul will consider that question as he looks to Jonah. That's tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. .