Hard-Pressed but Not Crushed (Part 2 of 4)

When you read the Old Testament book of Nehemiah, you would think that the removal of the rubble in Jerusalem would be something everyone would celebrate. Instead, as God's people rebuilt Jerusalem's walls, they found themselves ridiculed. We'll find out why today on Truth for Life, and we'll learn from Nehemiah's response.

Alistair Begg is teaching from Nehemiah chapters three and four. So what you have in chapter three, if we could summarize it, is a classic illustration of the principle of interdependence—not living in independence but living in interdependence, connected with one another, dependent upon one another. Let me summarize it in these statements. Interdependence involves every individual taking responsibility for something. Secondly, interdependence means setting aside personal disagreements. And the third thing, skating across the top, is that interdependence means keeping the overall purpose in view. Every one of these wee groups had an objective, and that was to meet the next group. Problem? If one wee group gets so focused in its little project that it forgets what it's actually endeavoring to do, then it diminishes the totality of what's going on.

The principle's obvious. If I get so consumed with preaching the Bible that I lose sense of what my part is in the overarching purpose of Parkside Church, I'm going to be a jolly nuisance. And if you get into some project in this church that consumes you the kind of I-me-mine deal you can't see beyond your deck and your orange juice, then loved ones, check and see whether you haven't lost sight of the overarching purpose of the church. The church ultimately does not exist to rearrange the furniture so that all who are inside it feel comfy. It exists so that people who are outside of it may be brought inside of it. The church exists not for itself.

It exists for other people who don't know Jesus. That's why we exist. So you see, when you get in your small group, ask yourself the question, Am I in sync?

Or am I building a deck? We don't exist for ourselves. We don't exist to draw attention to ourselves. We don't exist to become notorious.

We don't exist to become well-spoken of. If someone walked in here and asked the question, And what is Parkside Church doing? There's only one legitimate answer. Namely, we are helping, by the power of the Spirit, to do the work of our head and Lord Jesus Christ who determined he would build the church. That's what we're doing. And that's all we're doing.

And that's the only thing we have a mandate to do. Now, you see, this is so vitally important. That spirit of unanimity, of harmony, of working together is crucial, because when you turn the page into chapter 4, you realize another foundational principle. And we'll just hit this this morning and come back to it next time.

Here it is. Whenever God's people endeavor to do God's work in God's way, it will not go unopposed. Anyone who thinks that they can be involved in doing God's work and not be opposed is living with an empty head and a closed Bible. The whole of history—biblical history and secular history beyond—points to the fact that whenever any individual or group of people have taken a stand for the things of God, they have faced an onslaught of opposition.

And it is no less true this morning. Leadership needs to understand it. Leaders need to lead. Leaders need to lead by conviction—a conviction which then becomes the basis for consensus.

That is biblical leadership. Leaders have conviction that is a God-given conviction, and then they call people to consensus on the basis of the conviction. That needs to be understood, because largely the political model with which most of us have lived for the last while is simply this—that leaders lead on the basis of consensus.

They form consensus by the lowest common denominator, and then they build conviction out of the consensus—which is usually no conviction at all. Now, Nehemiah was not a man of consensus but a man of conviction. And consequently, he was going to take it in the neck. Whatever your responsibility—you're a team leader in your sales force, you are a teacher, and you have a responsibility for others, you're a principal in a school, you head up an office, you are overseeing some nurses on your floor, whatever it might be, certainly true in the church—anyone who steps into the arena of leadership must be prepared to pay a price. Let me quote Swindoll, True leadership exacts a heavy toll on the whole person, and the more effective the leadership, the higher the price. The leader must soon face the fact that he will be the target of critical darts. Unpleasant though it may sound, you haven't really led until you have become familiar with the stinging barbs of criticism. Good leaders must have thick skin. And Nehemiah had been given thick skin. I came across a quote by someone that I don't know or you'll be known to many of you, a guy called Sonny Jurgensen, played as a quarterback, I believe, for the Washington Redskins. And he was being interviewed after a very poor performance one afternoon in the locker room. And the interviewers had said, you know, why did you do this? And how did you do that? And do you think you're washed up?

And do you think you'll be able to play again? And all these kind of things. And they beat him up very good. And eventually one reporter, when most of the crowd had dispelled, said to Sonny, he said, you know, how do you put up with this?

I mean, how can you cope with this? Doesn't this discourage you forever? And Sonny said, no. He said, when I became a quarterback, I understood this, that I will either live in the penthouse or in the outhouse, but I seldom live in between. And that's true of leaders. If you're a leader, you are for some a hero of the most monolithic dimensions.

You are for others the ultimate villain in the plot. You are respected by some, you're frankly hated by others. And leaders cannot lead if they simply allow themselves to go up and down on the yo-yo of popular opinion. That, incidentally, is why the average stay of a pastor in a church in the United States is somewhere around twenty months.

A year and eight months is the average length when you take it right across the board. And that doesn't just have to do with the fact that he ran out of sermons in eighteen months. It has to do with the peculiar challenges of it. The man with whom I served in Edinburgh, when I was an assistant, he used to say that when you assume leadership amongst the people of God as you become a church leader, an elder, he said, you need to be prepared for the fact that in the first year they idolize you, in the second year they criticize you, and then the third year they ostracize you. I was thinking again about that this week, and I said, well, here we go. I said, I wonder, are there any other words that end in I's that could summarize, you know, a ten-year cycle? So I decided the first year they idolize you, the second year they criticize you, the third year they ostracize you, the fourth year they try and liquidize you. Just completely squeeze all the juice out of you. The fifth year they tyrannize you, the sixth year they analyze you.

Let's just see if we know who this person is. The seventh year they paralyze you, the eighth year they fossilize you, the ninth year they stigmatize you, the tenth year they feel sorry for you and try and galvanize you, and by the time you get to the eleventh year, they write articles about you and memorialize you. But you never go back to being idolized.

I know that for sure. Now, the opening verses of chapter 4 record for us, then, the reaction of these people to this amazing work that was taking place before their eyes. Remember that for ninety years, most recently, all that had been here was rubble.

And under the cover of darkness, this man has come from Susa. He's taken time to rest, he's taken time for reconnaissance, and all of a sudden, he makes a preemptive strike, and before the reactionary forces can move their hands to stop it, the wall has begun to be rebuilt right before their eyes. And the response is that they are absolutely infuriated.

That's what we're told of this man Sanballat. He was greatly incensed. He didn't like this newfound enthusiasm amongst these people, this vigorous spirit of independence that now pervaded them, he didn't like. You see, whenever the church rises with a united voice in a generation, people don't like that. By and large, Western culture wants to hold on to religion. They know that a wee bit of it is nice.

It's good when visiting dignitaries come, and it brings a measure of cohesion to the culture. But whenever the church stands up and says, Thus saith the LORD," unequivocally says, Jesus is the only way, that Calvary is the pivotal event of human history, that monogamy in marriage is the only way, that premarital sex is absolutely out, that homosexuality is a deviation, that heaven will be gained by those who trust in Christ, and hell will be the abode of those who reject him. Whenever the work of God goes on like that, all hell breaks loose against it. And the first strategy is ridicule. It wasn't that Stan Ballard was apathetic to what was going on.

He was antagonistic to what was going on. And loved ones, don't believe this nonsense about the fact that the world around us is benign, that it doesn't really care, that it doesn't have an opinion, that it is happy for us to go on and do what we want to do, to build the work of God as we choose. That is ridiculous.

The world around us—Satan and his hosts—is ticked, feverishly aggravated, by seeing Jesus continuing as he promised to build his church. Now, the reason for ridicule is because they were unable to do anything else at all. And ridicule, says Howard Voss, is a marvelous tactic, because it requires no wrestling with facts, no intelligent argument.

It requires no brains, no light, only heat. Isn't that true? You made fun of somebody in your school? You don't have to have any brilliant argument behind it. You just have to choose something and make fun of them. And if you can do it in a way that brings the support of others around you, then you can make somebody look like an absolute clown, and you've got no basis for it whatsoever, but you become a master of ridicule. And Sanballat wasn't good enough to be a master of ridicule. Because for ridicule to really work, it can't have any rage in it. Ridicule has to be on ice. Ridicule has to be controlled. The caustic statements of ridicule need to come from a very controlled tongue.

And Sanballat had lost that, therefore his dismissive taunts couldn't really crush. Look at what he says. What are those feeble Jews doing? Here he comes and puts on a big show, brings the army, brings a few of his friends, makes his little speech, plays well in front of the home crowd. Won't play in away games.

You're not gonna be able to say this on away games. What are the feeble Jews doing? And all the people go, Yeah, feeble Jews. Will they restore their wall? No chance. Will they offer sacrifices? I doubt it. Do you think they can pray the wall back up? No. Will they finish in a day? They'll never finish at all. Can they bring the stones back to life?

Never. That's all he does. Shouts.

Makes these caustic statements. And verse 3, birds of a feather flock together. He's got his sidekick.

Laurel has got Hardy with him, or Hardy's got Laurel, or whatever you like. Tobiah the Ammonite, who was at his side. Now, I may be completely wrong, but I think this guy was a creep. I think this guy was a real cringing rascal.

I don't think he had enough smarts to be able to make the speech himself, but he was the kind of fellow that's always standing beside the big guy, you know, and he's going, Yeah, and I agree with that too. Yeah. Yes. You know? And so, he musters himself up. He comes up with a little joke. Look at his little joke. Oh, what they're building.

If even a fox climbed up on it, he would break down their wall of stones. That's exactly right. The people going, What? Tobiah? What? Yeah. Did you like the joke?

I thought that if a fox climbed up on it, they would break down the wall of stones. Even Sanballa's going, Cut it out, Tobiah. We don't need that stuff. Derek Kidner says, Even from a man of importance, so fatuous a joke needs a little help from the atmosphere. In other words, you had to be there.

And even if you were there, it wasn't that good. So here are the people of God united in their project, determined in the task, and up comes Sanballa in his sidekick, Tobiah, and they employ ridicule. What's the reaction? Prayer. Verses 4 and 5. Have you trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged.

Take it to the Lord in prayer. He doesn't start a shouting match with him. He doesn't say, Oh, yes, we can. Oh, no, you can. Oh, yes, we can.

No! He says, Hey, God, give them a taste of their own medicine. The things they want to do to us, you do it to them, God.

Now, we've got a real problem with that. We read the Psalms, and the Psalmist does the same thing. We know that Jesus gave us a better way, and that is, Do not repay evil with evil, but overcome evil with good. But the principle is this. When we are set upon, vindication and vengeance is not ours, but God's. And now am I understood that? So he receives all this aggravation and this ridicule, and his reaction is to pray.

The principle is clear. And what was going on while he was praying? The rebuilding. So you have ridicule, you have reaction, and you have rebuilding.

Verse 6, and we're through. So we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height. All of it reached half its height. Now, there's a principle there, and we shouldn't miss it. It would have been possible for them to build one section at a time and build the whole wall, and then wait till they build the whole wall before they go to build the next piece. But if they did that, they wouldn't have been able to complete the circle quick enough. They knew the only way they could close the gaps was build it up half the height and keep going all the way around. There's a principle.

Some of us are very perfectionistic, and this is how we go. Now, we're going to start this area of ministry. Once we start this area of ministry, we're going to build it to its complete height.

It will have four liters, two of these, one of those. It will have this and a manual and three instruction sheets and tapes and diagrams and charts and implements of destruction. And once we do that, then we will move to the second one. What happens is you get one thing, this gigantic thing that gets built, built, built, built, built. Meanwhile, the whole rest of the wall is in disrepair.

Here's the principle, loved ones. We're going to have to determine right now at this juncture in our church's history what the key elements are that we need to build in this wall, and then we better start building them. And we're not going to get them all built up to the top. We're only going to get some of them built a quarter-height, half-height, but they need to be built because we need to close the gaps.

And loved ones, you are the key to the closing of the gaps. You are the builders. You are the builders. You're on the wall. You're by the gates. You've seen the rubble.

You're the key to the future of this church under God. Not me. Not the leaders. Now Maya could have gone, they put another one in. But those people in their place were vital. And that's the encouragement of it, and with that word of encouragement, let's finish. Notice the people worked with all their heart. Look at what God is able to do without big names and big splashes, just with people prepared to do their work.

Unknown people! Do you think you'll be remembered in history? I don't think I will. I don't think I'll be a footnote in an appendix in the fattest book you ever saw.

Not a chance of it. Most of us will be frail as summer's flower, we flourish, blows the wind, and it is gone. We're gone. We're out of here. But we're here today. We play our part.

We grab our trowel, and we build our piece of the wall. You see, the people here got the a-word and the e-word clear. Do you know about the a-word and the e-word?

I have these two words with my children all the time. The a-word is attitude. I tell my kids, you can't control how tall you're gonna grow. You can't control ultimately how bright you're gonna be. You can't control many things, but you can control your attitude when you wake up in the morning. You can't control many of the things that are going on around you.

You can't control ministry in this church any more than I can. There's a million things over which we have no control, but we can control our attitude. Secondly, the e-word is effort.

We can control the effort level. And in the report cards that come on from school, I've noticed there are two columns. There's the column that you get, the thing with A, B, C, and D, and it goes down to F, with which I can speak, about which I can speak with some conviction and familiarity.

It goes down there. And there's another column, which we never had at school, which we should have had at school, which is the effort column. And you get between a one and a four for effort.

Let me tell you something, and you can hold me to this as well. If you're prepared to go for a one in effort, I don't care whether you get C's, D's, A's, B's, minuses, whatever it is. If you'll just commit to the effort column, going for number one, and I will too. Because I can guarantee you that personally, I can't get straight A's. I'm not good enough at enough things.

I'm not smart enough, bright enough, committed enough. But I will give you my best in the effort column. That is all that we can ultimately ask of one another. And that kind of attitude, with that kind of effort, enabled by the Spirit of God and guided by the Word of God, we can turn the world upside down in our generation for Jesus Christ. So I say to you this morning, get by a gate, get a trowel, and get going. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

Alistair returns shortly to close today's program. As we're learning from Nehemiah, leaders often face opposition from within as well as outside the church. So since October is Pastor Appreciation Month, we want to recommend a collection of messages that will encourage you if you're a pastor. It's titled The Basics of Pastoral Ministry, and in this collection of 30 messages, Alistair explores the Bible's teaching on what a God-given ministry looks like, how you can communicate the Gospel vision to your congregation. Look for The Basics of Pastoral Ministry when you visit truthforlife.org. As we study the book of Nehemiah, we're reminded of the significant role that revival plays in the story of God and his people, and today we want to recommend to you a video called Revival, the Work of God. You can request it when you donate to Truth for Life. This is an engrossing film that explores periods of Gospel transformation, beginning all the way back at Pentecost. You'll learn about some of the great church reformers, and you'll be encouraged to pray for revival in our day.

When you request the revival video, you'll receive both a DVD and a streaming link so you can watch the documentary in whatever way works best for you. Ask for your copy when you donate to the Ministry of Truth for Life at truthforlife.org slash donate. Now here's Alistair to close. God our Father, we are just struck by the amazing way in which you used Nehemiah and took all these unknown names and faces and galvanized them for your purpose. In our generation, we humbly ask, you might be pleased to do the same. We're just such a strange group of people, united by a common love for you and for your Word. We don't all get A's.

Far from it. But, Lord, give us the right kind of attitude. Help us to make the right kind of effort. And over it all, pull the blanket of love, so that coming generations may be able to build on the foundations that we lay for the glory of your name. May the love of the Lord Jesus draw us to himself. May the power of the Lord Jesus strengthen us as we seek to serve him. May the joy of the Lord Jesus be our encouragement in the hours of this day and in the days of this week. For it's in his name we pray. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. What do you do when you're despised for your faith or ridicule intensifies around you? Tomorrow we'll hear how Nehemiah faced those challenges. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.