The enemies of Nehemiah have one aim in mind, to make him
afraid to do the work the Lord had given him to do. That is nearly always the aim of our
enemies. They want to cause us to give
up, walk away in fear, and not fulfill our calling and, if they cannot do so,
they will try and destroy us. Nehemiah
was a man who knew what he was called to do, he had passion and purpose that
were from the Lord, not some invention of his heart, and the work had to be
done. He refused to allow himself to be
drawn into discussion with his enemies, refused to listen to rumors and refused
to allow fear to cause him to sin. In
all these things did you notice the two short prayers in this passage, one in
verse 9 and one in verse 14. Those
little prayers are important as part of the work. Nehemiah recognized that he had work to do
and focused on it but he also knew that there were things beyond his control
that required God to take care of them.
He believed with all his being that the work was of God and he kept at
it no matter what and trusted the Lord that He would do all that was necessary
on the spiritual warfare end to enable the work. In the end, the work was done in rapid time,
just over seven weeks.
At the end of that Nehemiah passage we see something
interesting about one of the chief enemies of the work, Tobiah. Tobiah is actually related to many who worked
on the wall and some were bound by oath to him.
Among the people working within were those who had loyalty to this man
and who were passing information along to him and, we can assume, working
within to sow the seeds of dissent and fear.
In other words, even among the people working to rebuild the walls, to
do the work of God, were those whom Jesus describes as weeds, sons of the
enemy. Nehemiah seems to have been well
aware of this but didn’t worry about it.
We need to be aware of this reality as well, Jesus saw fit to teach on
it, but His point is that we don’t need to worry about it, God knows and has
the situation in hand.
Can you imagine being told to go to what John has called a
mighty angel, large enough to have one foot on land and one on the sea, and
demand the scroll in his hand? The seven
thunders speak and he is told not to write.
The angel says there will be no delay in the judgment of God and then
the voice tells John to approach this fearsome angel. John does as instructed not in fear but in
faithful obedience and receives the scroll with a promise, it will taste sweet
in his mouth but turn bitter in his stomach.
Prophecy has that affect, Ezekiel had the same experience. We can appreciate the judgment of God on a
base level, when we have enemies who have made our lives miserable for
instance, but ultimately the effect on us should be to make us despise the
reality of judgment, in grief for those who experience it. We aren’t to applaud the demise or
destruction of our enemies.
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