1816. Danger In the Middle Part

I love the series on Nehemiah.

I think it's a great choice for Dr. Benson to go over with Student Body. One thing that stood out when he was talking to Nehemiah 7, he pointed out that the purpose wasn't just to build the walls, it was to see the product after building the walls. Nehemiah really did it to see the worship and see the relationships with God. Nehemiah Chapel has been such a blessing to me this semester in some very specific ways. One of them was the important principle of when you're tired, when you're weary, simplify and focus. It's been a good reminder to me to cut out the unnecessary things and then to focus on what my priorities really need to be, especially when it comes to spending time in the Word and with the Lord.

And how they're rebuilding the wall and how they kind of get stopped in the middle of it and they have to defend the wall. So it's kind of like you're just in the middle of work and you kind of stop and you have to focus on other things. But you have to keep persevering through that and just resume the work no matter what. I've been really inspired by Nehemiah and his resilience and I hope I can apply that more in my life. I love the two parts of that message about God being in your middle.

I thought that was awesome. I learned that it's okay to be discouraged in the middle, but you can't stay there. You've got to keep moving.

And it's really hard because you've already done half the work, but you're still sitting in the middle and you've got to do the rest of it. But you can keep going and God's going to help you through. One thing I've learned from the Nehemiah Chapel theme this semester is that when you get really close to the end, you should just continue to push, continue to grind, never quit, stay solid. Welcome to The Daily Platform, a radio program featuring chapel messages from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. You just heard several BJU students talking about chapel sermons preached during a study series from the book of Nehemiah. Take your Bibles and turn with me again to Nehemiah. We're going to be at the end of chapter four and on into chapter five. While you're turning, I've got a little poem for you. Bear with me, if you will. Two frogs fell into a deep cream bowl.

One was an optimistic soul, but the other took the gloomy view. We shall drown, he cried, without more ado. So with a last despairing cry, he flung up his legs and said goodbye.

Quote the other frog with a merry grin. I can't get out, but I won't give in. I'll just swim around till my strength is spent.

Then I'll die the more content. Bravely, he swam till it would seem his struggles began to churn the cream. On the top of the butter, at last he stopped and out of the bowl he gaily hopped. What are the morals?

It is easily found. If you can't hop out, keep swimming around. I like that. We finished chapel on Monday and I gave you this injunction. Don't quit. Don't quit. You never know what God has next.

So how are things in the middle? I hope since Monday you've been thinking about where you're living and what God is doing and actually seeing how in the middle God is using life circumstances to form Christ in you. As we finished up in chapter four, I just want to run through them quickly because we did it quickly at the end of chapel. We looked at the right responses or the responses to discouragement.

So let me highlight those for you again. Verses four and five of chapter four and then verse nine. We see that the first response of Nehemiah, and we're going to see this throughout this book, times of discouragement, times of question and needing wisdom, and even times of praise, he always responds with prayer. That is the first and right response of any believer to every circumstance in life. Say that again. Prayer is always the right first response of any believer to every circumstance in life.

Is it good? Pray. Is it challenging? Pray. Is it doubtful? Pray.

Is it uncertain? Pray. Nehemiah teaches us that lesson. And so he responds in prayer. And I hope you see in these sometimes short but often direct little prayers of Nehemiah that his communication with his God is real.

What's interesting to me about Nehemiah is there doesn't seem to be a lot of prayer ease with him. He doesn't have his own special little prayer language. He actually just talks to his God in the midst of the circumstances in real time. He's attuned to heaven and communicating with God about all things, whether it is the most powerful man in his known world says, hey, what do you need? So I prayed to the God of heaven.

He's facing outside criticism that actually then turns to real threats. And so he prays to the God of heaven. You're going to find him as he leads the people to re initiate the feast of tabernacles or booths that he leads them in reading the word of God and then to a time not of mourning over their sin, but actually rejoicing over the goodness of a God that is faithful to them. And he says, go celebrate your relationship with God. Prayer becomes real, a real part of a real relationship with a real God.

When you look at your prayer life, does your communication with your God convince your heart that your God is real? The middle teaches us that. So prayer, but then secondly, perseverance.

All of us return to the wall. Verse 15, verse 21, we carried on the work. Sometimes when we find ourselves in the middle and we begin to have questions and there begins to be problems, our initial response is stop. And do you know that the bigger problems come because we aren't doing what we're supposed to do than the problems we started with? You ever find that? All of a sudden we've got this problem and it bothers me. And so I let myself get distracted or I think I'm going to take some time off or I'm just going to set that aside for now. And now, because we did, we have a big problem.

People are emailing me wondering where that assignment is. Perseverance. A simple mantra. Always do the next right thing.

It's really simple. But no matter what I'm facing or no matter what challenges come into my life, always do the next right thing. And you will find that that next right thing is the doorway to a right path that you might not have seen before choosing to do the right thing. Always do the next right thing. But then thirdly, a right response to discouragement is planning. Life in the middle with the challenges that come, whenever we are tired, actually can lead us to becoming scattered. We run here, we run there. We get ourselves into a tizzy.

We actually forget some things that would never normally we would forget and then it begins to mount and I begin to wonder to myself, what is going on in my life? You know the right thing to do? Sit down and make a plan.

What do I have to do? And there may be times that in making that plan you say it doesn't all add up, but now you actually have an action plan for what to do when it doesn't all add up. I say, well, you know what? I need to go talk to that teacher. I need to go ask about that assignment. I need to go figure out that job responsibility because it doesn't all work.

But now I've actually thought through life and understand what it is that doesn't work so I can have a conversation. Before we do that kind of planning, we actually just kind of get overwhelmed by everything and we don't deal with anything. And so get yourself a plan. What do I actually have to do? When is it actually expected of me?

And it might be that you're just feeling overwhelmed, but there's actually a timeline you could follow. And then positive reinforcement. Speak the truth to your own heart. Nehemiah speaks the truth to these people when he says, remember the Lord. Remember what he's done. Remember what he said. Part of what he was saying to them is, hey, remember when I brought this idea to you and I challenged you? I told you of the good hand of my God upon me and of the response of the king and you said, wow, let's rise up and build. In a sense, he says to them, you remember that? The wall's half done and look what God has done. He's been faithful to this point.

Don't you think you'll trust him to be faithful for the rest? Remember the Lord. There are times in the middle that because of the fog of war, because of the smoke of the fires of life, because of the panicked voices and noise that's all around us, friends, it's easy to forget the Lord in the midst of the everyday circumstances of life.

The challenges of every day in the middle cause most of us to default to practical atheism. I forget that God is there. I forget that God cares.

But the truth is very real. That anyone that comes to God must remember that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that, you say it with me, what are the next two words? Diligently seek him. This is a call to remember the Lord.

Whenever I find myself in those circumstances, I must find a way to clear the rubble, clear the path, clear the smoke, and allow my view to fall fully on the sovereign God of my circumstances. Do you believe that God is? Yeah, I believe he's out there. Do you believe that God is who he says he is?

Say, well I'm not sure about that. Then it's time to go remind yourself who God says he is. In the midst of the middle, remember the Lord. Who is your God?

We sang about him this morning. Your God created the world. Your God opened seas. Your God knocked down walls.

Your God stopped the sun. Do you believe that he is who he says he is? And do you believe that he can and will do what he says he will do?

He's a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. God, I believe you're on my side. It may not feel to me right now that you're doing what I want done, but I believe you're actually going to do more than I want done.

I'm asking you to help me get this project done, and you're saying in the midst of doing a project, I want to get you done. And God, that's the greater work that I want done in my life. Remember the Lord, and ready yourself for battle. I think you need to take truth to your life in such a way that you have truth to speak to your trouble. Treasure up, Psalm 119, or hide God's word in your heart that you might not sin against God.

You need to get truth for your trouble. In the midst of the circumstances of life, trouble is an amazing revealer. When do I get anxious? When do I get overwhelmed?

When do I sin? And in the midst of the middle, identifying those things and then saying, you know what? That's going to happen again. I'll find myself in challenging circumstances again.

I'll be in a place where I've got as much, if not more to do, only now I'm tired. And God is using this set of circumstances to prepare me for that by letting me see where my weaknesses are, and I need to get truth for my trouble. When trouble comes, does it come out of your tongue? Is it complaining?

Is it accusing? Does it come out of your heart? Is it anger? Is it bitterness? Is it pride? Does it come out of your thinking?

Get in God's word and get God's word in you and give yourself truth for your trouble so that the word of God becomes, listen, your knee-jerk reaction to the temptations of life. What do I mean by that? How many of you have had a physical? Do you remember crossing your legs and the doctor taking that weird little triangle thing and thumping your knee? That's a knee-jerk reaction. So when I say that little phrase, that's what that's talking about. He doesn't ask you to kind of time when you move your foot as he swings.

He just wants to see you and your foot move. That's a knee-jerk reaction. What is your knee-jerk reaction to the temptations of life?

When they come, how do you naturally respond? What God is calling us to do and treasuring up His word in our heart is that we would get to the place that we have so equipped our heart, that when that comes, one of the responses is God's truth. I'll let no corrupt communication proceed out of my mouth if that's my challenge. And thus it led to preparedness. What is so interesting about that is we come to chapter 5 and we actually see a very interesting response. There's all this problem and conflict and threat that comes from the outside. And one of the interesting things is that when we live in a world that's marked by that, one of the inclinations of our hearts is to turn against or to take advantage of the people that are closest to us. It's so interesting to me that I and others who find themselves out in a workaday world, they do their job, they deal with all their stresses, they have all their problems, yet somehow in the midst of all of that, they manage to be kind and nice and everything else. But what happens when they go home? We make assumptions that lead us to presumptions about how the people that are closest to us are going to respond because they love us.

And it's really, really easy to think I need an outlet and to become carnal in those settings. There's a sense in which as we come to chapter 5, we go from external conflict to internal and we see, interestingly, look at chapter 5 and verse 1, and there was a great cry, remember, a great God who had a great work that led to great trouble and now the people put up a great cry. And of their wives against who? Their brethren, the Jews, for there were that said, we, our sons and our daughters are many. Therefore, we take up corn for them that we may eat and live. Some also there were that said, we have mortgaged our lands, vineyards and houses that we might buy corn because of the dearth of famine. There were also that said, we have borrowed money for the king's tribute and that upon our lands and vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children. And lo, we bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants.

And some of our daughters are brought into bondage already. Neither is it in our power to redeem them for other men have our lands and vineyards. Basically, what you have happening here is Israel finds a way because of desperation to take advantage of the people closest to them in disobedience to God's clear instruction. Unusual circumstances, but they were not. They were instructed by God clearly never to enslave their brethren.

They were not supposed to charge usury. And they're actually doing that because of their desperation. What is interesting is when you look at the problems or you look at the situation, the cause of the problem was a divine one. There's a famine, a dearth. Now that could have been because of their circumstances. It could have been because the walls weren't built and they're living among enemies.

But it seems like there's something going on regionally that there's some sort of famine that everyday life isn't working. And how do they respond to a divinely appointed difficulty? They respond in a sinful way and thus we see the complaints of the people.

But notice who they are because maybe this describes you and maybe it puts on your radar that I better be thinking differently. Notice they are exhausted. They're people, verse 2, who owned no land but needed food. They're exposed. They're landowners who had mortgaged their property in order to buy food, verse 3.

So the assets that normally they would rest in, they don't have. In that condition then they're exploited, verse 4. They complained that the taxes were too high. People were forced to borrow money just to pay their tax bills. And because of that they were finding it more and more difficult just to survive. Exposed, exhausted, and exploited. And in that condition they found themselves in the hands of people who were extorters.

They were taking advantage of that. Life in the middle often leaves us feeling this way. And so I want you to see in the light of that that Nehemiah takes an unusual course. In verses 6 through 13. Look at verse 6.

Notice this. And I was very angry when I heard their cry and these words. That's a natural human response. Some of you would read that and say, oh look, Nehemiah sinned.

The text doesn't actually say that. We can be angry and sin not. Because we handle that anger right. What is anger? Anger is a God-given heightened state of emotion through which he intends for us to do more good than we otherwise would. What is anger? It is a God-given heightened state of emotion through which God intends for us to do more good than we otherwise would.

It's when we use it for selfish ends that it becomes sinful. So notice what he does next. I think this is really wise counsel.

Then I consulted with myself. You know what he does? He doesn't let his heart get angry and then just run out and do stuff. He actually stops and he thinks, if I know Nehemiah it doesn't say it here but I'm thinking somewhere in this process. He prayed.

Nehemiah controlled himself. What is the right thing to be done here? What is the right pathway? God has given me this emotional response because I'm an image bearer. Because there's good that needs to be done that I might not otherwise be motivated to do. There are some of you that are going to go back to a room today and you've already failed in this and been angry with your roommate. There are some of you that don't understand exactly what's going on but you feel desperate, you feel exposed, and maybe you're even looking at people that are making demands of you and you feel somewhat extorted and the response to that has been, you have been unbelievably unkind and angry to your parents. And they don't have a clue. It's like, what is going on with her? You know what? God is giving you those emotions.

Why? Because in the middle, there's more good to do than you might otherwise do and you need to get yourself under control by the Spirit of God and God's truth so that you can actually put those energies to the right ends. He started out by controlling himself.

And then in doing so, he rightly confronted the people. Because he's thinking clearly. The emotion God has given him has led him to right thinking that leads then to right action.

We often take wrong action and then maybe apologize. And while that actually helps us relationally, it doesn't help us accomplish maybe what it was God was wanting us to do in the first place. So notice what he does. Verses 7 and 8, he appeals to their love. He reminded them that they were robbing their own countrymen, not the Gentiles. He uses the word brother four different times in his speech. And so he appeals to their understanding of relationship.

Would I actually take out all of my frustrations and my anger on the people that I know love me most if I was thinking clearly? Then secondly, he appeals to God's redemptive purposes in verse 8. Look what he says. And I said unto them, we after our ability have redeemed our brethren the Jews which were sold unto the heathen. And will you even sell your brethren?

Or shall they be sold unto us? Then held they their peace and found nothing to answer. He actually calls them to the truth and to the redemptive purposes of God. Think about what God has been doing relationally and you're now doing the opposite of that. You are living among people that yes you might be angry with, but if you'll stop for a moment and say, wait a minute, what did Jesus do for them? What did Jesus do that they might be redeemed so that we could call each other brother and it might affect the way I think about them, the way I speak to them, and the way I treat them. Then he appealed to their testimony. Verse 9.

There would be a light to the nations. And because of this the heathen around them saw and thought there's no difference between you and us. Does the gospel make a difference in the way you treat people when life is hard? See this is the power of the gospel. If you want to see if Jesus is changing your life in the middle, stop for a moment and ask yourself when I find myself there, how do I actually treat people? Because when you treat them rightly you can step away and say only the gospel does that. God's at work in my life. And then he called them to restoration.

And I love this. Because Nehemiah includes himself. I think it's because he took himself in hand, he controlled himself that he actually is not setting himself outside as some authority. He includes himself. And then he invited a response. This wasn't just wise advice. He actually said you know what?

You need to do something different. Verse 11. And as they responded he intentionally called them to a commitment. Because in the middle when life is hard it's not just the feelings or the emotions that matter. We must process through them and come to the place that we actually engage our will. I am going to by God's grace do something different. God wants me to live differently in the midst of difficult circumstances. And so he calls them to a covenanted decision and the people at the end of it all say, amen, let it be so.

We're making a change. And ultimately then I want you to see as we close the care that Nehemiah showed. And what he does is he was devoted to the great commandment to love God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength. This is what matters in the middle.

How can I do that in these circumstances? And out of that he personally determined that he was going to give generously. He has this record here at the end that he didn't take the wages that could have come to him.

Why? Because those wages came from taxes on the very people that were burdened. And the other side of that he looked at people that were working and had need. He said I'm going to take from what I have and I'm going to try and meet their needs. And I believe that personal testimony gave him the context in which he had the right to speak into their lives. That's what testimony does. And he ends this chapter, chapter 5, by saying this, Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people. He's not turning God into a cash register.

He actually is coming back and again praying and talking to his God. And he's saying you know what God? The good that is true in my life is because of you. This is because of your working in my life. And God I want to continue to be used in this way. So would you favor me? So that I can display your goodness and I can demonstrate goodness to others.

How's life in the middle? Let's pray. Father, dismiss us with your blessing. Help us to live for your glory. In Jesus' name, Amen. In Jesus' name, Amen. .