Nehemiah 4:1-23; A Foundation of Humble Confidence

Jamie Peterson October 12, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Chapters

• 0:00 The True Focus: God’s Presence
• 2:29 Reading Nehemiah 4
• 7:30 Hard Work Under Threat
• 12:43 Prayer Before Plans
• 18:26 Guarding and Building Together
• 24:08 Trusting God and Using Means
• 28:43 Hope Beyond Stones
• 33:23 Humble Confidence and Closing Prayer

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:23

Turn with me now to Nehemiah chapter 4, verses 1 through 23. As we are continuing on with our series of Ezra and Nehemiah, I just felt like it was important to draw our attention to a very important fact about these two books and scripture, scripture in general. Steve, we independently are making references to toddlers at the beginning of the worship service, the beginning of this sermon. We didn't know each other were going to be doing that. But many of us have seen a toddler open up a Christmas gift or a birthday gift. And it's something that's really nice. Usually it's something that's a that's a toy that they perhaps have uh longed for, or you know that they will like, and they open it up and they see what it is, and what do they resort to doing? They play with a wrapper. Uh they put they play with the bow and they're enamored with that for for hours. Uh we have to be very careful that we what we see is the true gift and the true focus uh in uh Nehemiah is uh God's presence. It's his faithfulness, it's his work amongst his people. And this is what this book is all about uh and scripture is all about. Uh what we as Christians can often do if we're not careful, uh we can look at the book of Nehemiah as a uh Christian uh Patrick Lincioni book, uh, that it's a narrative uh with some anodotes, some things that can help us grow as Christian leaders. And there's certainly some uh elements of Christian leadership there and planning and and things of that nature, but that's peripheral. Uh that is uh uh that is that is a byproduct of who God is and what he is doing. And that's what we're gonna be looking at today, further, this God who loves his people, uh, that continues to work through his people, who is faithful uh to uh carry out his promises that he has made. So before we get into this passage, uh let's uh look to the Lord for help. Father, we thank you uh that you are a God who loves us, uh, that you are unwavering, that your promises are yes and amen. And uh and even though uh much of the Christian life, this side of glory is very hard, uh Lord, you use that to draw us to yourself. Lord, may we see your faithfulness in this word. Uh, may we see what you're doing within the immediate context, both of the people of Nehemiah and us as well. And Lord, for the for the big picture of where all things are heading. So that is the return of your Son, Jesus Christ, and the establishment of the new heavens and new earth, where there will be no more hardships, there will be no more crying, there will be no more sadness. And we thank you for your purposefulness and how you're doing that in and through your people. And we pray all this in Jesus' name, amen. Uh Nehemiah chapter four, we'll be reading the entire uh chapter, uh, all twenty-three verses. So hear the word of the Lord. Now when Sanbalat heard that they were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews, and he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish it up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burn ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, Yes, what are they building? If a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their heads, and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, do not let their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. So we built the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. And when Sambal and Tobian the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that we heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward, and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry, and they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. In Judah it was said, The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much trouble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall. And our enemy said, They will not now they will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work. At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, You must return to us. So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows, and I looked and I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. When our enemies heard it was known to us, and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me, and he said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. So we labor at the work, and half of them held their s held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at the time, Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day. So neither I nor my brothers, nor my servants, nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes. Each kept his weapon at his right hand. Here ends a reading of God's word. I had a friend who was a youth pastor for many years. And there was one particular summer where he took the senior high students at his church on a mission trip to Mexico. Um, the primary uh work that they were going to be doing down there was helping a uh a church build a private Christian school for the uh for the underserved uh children there in that particular area. So they go down there and they're doing all the work that that involves, mixing semen and uh putting the blocks up and putting rebar uh within the within the wall. And my friend noticed that off to the side, a decent ways away from uh from the building out in the out that they were building uh out in a field, that there was this uh this wall, just a kind of a nondescript wall out in the middle of nowhere. And he said it looked kind of weird, trying to figure out what kind of purpose it was serving. Uh, maybe you've wondered about that wall that's over here in this parking lot. Uh, it serves purposes uh for inspectors as see what all's behind the walls, but he couldn't figure out what in the world this wall was for. So finally he speaks to the missionary who is there and said, I see this wall out here. You know, what's the deal? What purpose is this serving? And he says, Well, every now and then, and don't tell anybody I told you this, uh, every now and then we'll get a group uh that comes here and they start working on the building and they don't want to do what we tell them to do. Uh they don't get along, uh, they don't show respect to us. And at the end of the day, if we keep them letting them do the work here, they're going to create more work for us to do when they leave. They're actually undoing a lot of things that we're doing. So what we do is uh instead of destroying the work that we're already doing and creating more work for us, we'll just go them out there and put them at the work on that wall out there in the middle of that field just to keep them, just to keep them busy. Um, maybe if you go on a mission trip and you're put out in the middle of a field putting up a wall, maybe that's not uh maybe that's not a good sign. Uh thankfully, God does not treat us people uh this way. In spite of our sin, our dysfunction, bickering, uh you name it, he has bestowed upon us the dignity of being a nation of priests, to be his kingdom agents, to do his work along with him that has both immediate and eternal significance. Uh, for our immediate context, through the leadership of uh Nehemiah, uh God is bringing together his people to rebuild the city walls of Jerusalem, uh, not just to give them something to do, but to demonstrate his love and grace and mercy in and through them, uh, to employ the gifts that he has given them, as we saw last week in Nehemiah 3. So much is going on with the people and so many different responsibilities and so many gifts that are being used by God for God for his glory. So that once again that people would grow in their trust in him, that they would worship him, that they would glorify him, and they would be a blessing to the nations. Um, however, um, as we see in this passage, and it's quite clear this work uh was not easy. Uh, even under the most ideal circumstances, on a beautiful day like today, if you're to go out and pick up rocks from a from a rubble and move them around and stack of them, it's gonna be hard work. Uh there are few things that are more hard than moving stones around. Uh, many of you know about this. Whether they're big, whether they're small, it's very, very hard taxing work. Um, and also, too, one of the things that's important to notice, too, is that when they're rebuilding this wall, it's not like they went to Werner's or went to Home Depot and got these nice pallets of rocks uh to sit beside where they're they're gonna put the walls up. No, they're having to go through the rubble. Imagine a building being blown up that's made of brick or stone, and that's what you have to work with. So they're having to go and they're having to pick amongst the rubble, uh, stones at work, maybe this one will fit. Uh, if stone had been burned, the temperature had gotten too hot, it would compromise the structure of it. Uh, so it's not going to do what's supposed to do. So it's really, really hard. But to make matters worse, leaders from the surrounding kingdoms were not only jeering at them and making fun of their work, but they were threatening to come and kill them and stop the work altogether. Think about how hard this was. Uh your back trying to build this wall, you're working hard from sunup to sundown, uh, your hands are blistered, your sunburned, and at the same time, you have this imminent threat of a foreign country that is going to come and wipe you out. Uh, they were not only text physically, but they were text emotionally and psychologically, and this was compounding their hardships. While we as a New Testament church are not rebuilding city walls like they were per se, God has called us, his people, to do significant kingdom work that is no less physically, mentally, spiritually, and emotionally exhausting. As his kingdom ages, he has called us to bring him glory and to be a blessing to others by loving him with all of our heart, soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He has called husbands to love their wives as Christ has loved the church, for wives to respect their husbands, for children to honor their mothers and their fathers, to promote life rather than to kill, to honor marriage rather than infidelity, to be generous rather than to steal, to promote truth rather than to lie, and to be grateful rather than to covet, and to top it all off, as hard as this is, there's a battle that's going on within us, the sin that we stole battle. We have a battle on the outside of the world that makes fun of God's people for these things, that jeers at us, seeks to do us harm, and depending on what part of the world or part of the country in, we'll actually seek to try to kill you. This is serious stuff. We're not just put out to a wall to kill the time until Jesus comes back. God calls us the hard work, but he's in the midst of that work, and he is working in and through us for his glory and for our good. And that is the good news that we see in this passage, as well as through the entirety of Scripture, is that we see a God who acknowledges his people. And that he's with us. He's in the midst of our mess. And he also fights on our behalf. So, how do we respond? This passage shows us that God's people are to have a foundation of humble confidence. And this humble confidence shows itself in three things that we see in this passage. The first is prayer, is the first aspect of this humble confidence. The second thing we see is trust. And then the third thing is hope. So it's prayer, trust, and hope. So let's first look at look at prayer. One of the great blessings of being here at faith, and I think some of the things through which God is blessing our people, the opportunities we have to meet in smaller groups. Uh we have our kingdom communities, or we call our KCs. And if you're here with us for the first time, that's just our fancied name for uh for Sunday school. Uh we have our grace groups, which are our small group ministries. We have one-on-ones. Uh, we have other times that uh people get together for special fellowships, meeting out in the upper gathering hall or the lower gathering hall. And inevitably, and rightfully so, what happens within these smaller group meetings, whether it be something as large as a kingdom community or a one-on-one, there are a prayer request. And we write these prayer requests down. We email these prayer requests, we send them on group meet, we text them, we follow up with each other, we let other people know about these things. And I want to come, I want, I want to confess something to you. As a pastor, I've often find myself focusing more on who knows these things, how they're communicated, how God's showing up and actually praying for them. We must pray, actually pray for these things. And this is what we see Noah do, Noah, this is what we see the first thing that Nehemiah is doing right here is he prays. Uh, when these people or uh when when Sanbalat and Tobiah are saying these things, he doesn't send a message back to the bullies to tell them to stop or to knock it off. Uh he doesn't use the note that he has from the king of Persia that has consent for them to be going about that that project. And if they don't stop, he's gonna call mom and dad, so to speak, to stop. He doesn't go into spreadering spreading uh a word amongst the people uh there that are building the wall, which probably would have unnecessarily roused uh fear. And he doesn't immediately tell them to go and take up arms. Uh, we're gonna see how these things come into play later on, but the first thing he does is he turns his attention to God. What a convicting thing. What a thing for me to learn from here. So, what are we to make of this, especially such strong language as we see in verses four and five? Uh first thing is uh to build on the first point of going to God first, we need to know that it's okay to unload on God. That may disturb us a little bit, but think about how often we unload on other people. Uh, there's certainly a time and a place for that. But also know that uh other people like yourself, they're sinful, they're finite, and there's only so much of a burden that they can bury, that they can that they can bear. Uh we also would go to counselors, trained counselors, people who are highly trained for to go and talk to about our problems, and that's great. I highly uh recommended making use of a of a counselor who who loves the Lord and will love you, but they are finite. They can only be able to deal with your burdens so much. But this isn't the case with God. We must first cry out to God. He is not gonna turn you away any more than a godly mother or father would would turn away a crying child in their time of need. The very thing that you think that would drive God away, your sin or your struggles, is not gonna not just drive, is not going to drive him away, but it's actually the thing that brings him to run towards you and to be with you. The second thing that we see here about this this prayer of Nehemiah's and verses four and five is that he acknowledges these threats are against God himself. Yes, there's an imminent danger that the people are facing, and yes, on the surface it involves threats against God's people. But we see in God's word is that he is so intimately tied to his people that a threat against them is a threat against themselves against himself. Think about it in terms of our familial relationships, husbands. If someone says something about your wife, may even be very complimentary towards you, but they have a derogatory remark against your wife, are you not going to take that personally? Someone saying something about her is the same as saying it to you or to your children. And the list goes on and on. If that is true for us in our human relationships, how much more so it is for God and the way he is tied to us? This is why when Jesus meets Paul on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter 9, uh, Paul who's going and killing Christians, that's why he doesn't say, Yo, why are you persecuting Christians or why are you persecuting the church? He says, Why are you persecuting me? He is that tied to us. That's how much a vested interest that he has in us, his people, and that's a great comfort. Also, notice he has a cry for justice. If we think that this is too harsh, do we not rightly cry out for justice with regards to other wrongs that we see in the world? When we see the abuse of children, we see sex trafficking, we see mass shootings, we rightly call out for justice and for the guilty parties to be rightfully handled. Why should the cry for justice against those who rob God for his glory be any less? Not to minimize the other things, but far too often we minimize the glory of God. We need to pray for justice in these things. And not only that, but he also is crying out, putting his money where his mouth is in so many ways, is that look, we were unfaithful to you. We are your children, uh, the ones that you love, and you're the one who has uh brought desolation upon us. We're not asking anything for them that you haven't put on us. So he's asking God to be consistent with the justice that he would met out. And last, it demonstrates a trust in God to do something about it. At the end of the day, vengeance is ultimately his. Only he can rightly judge, and only he can change a heart. Think about the danger if he had gone and appealed to the king of Persia first. Imagine what that would have been like. Uh he already sensed that you know this was a real grace of God that he worked through the king of Persia, Nehemiah, uh king of Persia, to go and rebuild the wall. And if he gets some chatter back saying, hey, there's there's some turmoil here, he's gonna take away all their stuff. Say, no more of this wall building. Y'all aren't worth the y'all aren't worth the headaches here. So he was really kind of humanly speaking, caught between a rock and a hard place. Uh he knows that they can't really defeat these foreign armies in and of themselves. He can't go to the king of Persia, but here they are. As such, our first reaction to the sins against God, his people, and his work must be prayer. Only he is the one who can ultimately do anything about it. And it turns our trust from our own wisdom and devices towards him, which brings us to our second point, which is trust. Um, I have a friend who once went to a uh huge, well-attended Christian conference a number of years ago where there are a lot of notable pastors and theologians who would be speaking. And one of these theologians and speakers was going to be uh Dr. J.I. Packer, uh, one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century. Uh his uh notable book, uh Knowing God, is uh one that's on my shelf. Uh many of you have it. Pages are falling out, it's all been marked up, and I cannot recommend it enough. Uh but one of the things that Dr. Packer wrote on was uh actually had a book called Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God. In other words, it's addressing this issue that uh that you know we have personal responsibility, but God is also uh also sovereign. So my friend sees Dr. Packer in this bookstore at this conference, and he says, okay, here's my chance. I'm gonna go ask Dr. Packer what I've always wanted to ask. And he goes up to Dr. Packer and he says this. He says, How in the world does the Bible reconcile uh the doctrine of God's sovereignty, that he's in control of all things, and at the same time that man has a free will? And he said, Dr. Packer looked at him, and if you ever heard his audible voice, his kind of high-pitched, shrill British accent, he goes, No, no, no, no, no, shakes his finger in my friend's uh face. He says, the Bible teaches that God is sovereign. It teaches that man has a free will, but nowhere in the Bible does it seek to reconcile these things. Only that is left to the counsels of God. But what we do see, we see these two things uh coexisting. They do exist. And we do have responsibility. God does call us to participate in his work. How does he attain his work? How does he get things done? It's like what Jason has said several times during the course of this sermon or the sermon series is that God has not only ordained the end, but he's also ordained the means through which he accomplishes that. Think about this. Uh he uses us, but he ultimately calls us to trust him. If we go on a long trip, we have a car, we go get the tires checked, make sure that the tread is right, make sure that they're inflated to the right at the right amount of uh with the right amount of air. Uh we get in, we buckle up, we have airbags that'll be deployed if we get into an accident. We also know that we live in a dangerous enough of a world that we still need more than that. We pray for God's protection, even in the greatest of vehicles. Uh if he has some type of diagnosis, let's say that it's let's say that it's cancer. You go to the doctor, you go to a world-renowned oncologist, and we make use of those things. But we also know that there are certain things that are going on within our body that even the best of physicians, the most highly trained, are not going to be able to figure out. Therefore, we make use of those things, but we still pray that God would show up. When we go to bed at night, we set our alarms, we lock the doors, but we still pray for God's protection. We make use of these things, but ultimately it comes down to trusting God. As we come in here and we come to this point where they're called to take up their swords and shields and spears and bows. I reminded of my uh my grandmother, uh, my mother's mother, who was one of the dearest human beings that I've ever gotten to know, played a huge role in me coming to faith in Christ. But uh she was widowed when she was in her early 50s, about my age. And she lived for another 35 years before she went to go be with the Lord. And in her early 50s, she was widowed, still had three of her four children living at home. And I found out after she had passed away, and I don't know who gave this to her, but someone had given her a revolver uh to keep in her nightstand and in a drawer. And I'm glad I didn't find out about that until after she had uh had had passed away. So the idea was that she would have this revolver. If someone broke in, she would be able to defend herself. Sounds great. Maybe I'm a little romantic. Let's be real about this. Uh my grandmother was five feet tall on a good day. Uh she was she was she was a little bitty thing. She was fiery, uh, but yet physically uh she was uh she was not uh she was didn't have a have much of a presence. And then you think about this as you know, you're woken up in the middle of the night and you're in a house all by yourself, it's dark. Unless you're a trained military or a police officer, you're not going to be able to gather your senses and your wits to be able to think clearly about what's going on. And it's dark. And also, if you know anything about handguns, they're very, very hard to aim at a target and hit a target, even when you're out on a range and you've got time to think about it, it's very, very hard to hit. So, as great as this was that she had this handgun to be able to defend herself, there wasn't a whole lot there that we could really trust, was there? Use it. There's responsibility there that's to be taken. But really, we had to pray and trust that the Lord would be there to protect her. While there is a call for the Jews to take up their arms in the event of an attack, it was up to God to protect them. In and of themselves, their swords and their spears and their bows had no more power to save them than David's slingshot had in and of itself to kill Goliath. While there is a responsibility to make use of the resources that God has given us and to step forward in faith, God must be the one who shows up and works. He uses these things. And this is how these two things work together. We must also realize that there are also things that only God fully understands and controls. This is to what Paul is referring in Ephesians chapter six, when he says, For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against rulers, against authorities, against cosmic powers, over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. But in the midst of this, think of what God has given us. He's given us his helmet of salvation, the breastplate of his righteousness, the sword, the sword of his word, the belt of his truth, the shoes of the gospel to move forward. And he establishes his kingdom through us, his people. We are called first to trust God and then use the means that he has put at our disposal and place in our hands. But I have to be honest with you, I often get these things uh mixed up. I get these things backwards. So often I trust my gifts, I trust my resources, I trust a building, I trust this, I trust that, and then I kind of use God. Uh God, I hope you show up. Um I hope you'll be there. When instead we've got to remember that God is the one to be trusted. Yes, we have responsibility, yes, we make use of the things that He has given, but ultimately we must trust in Him. The third thing that we see is we see we see hope. I think it's worth stopping and asking ourselves with all this fuss of what took place nearly 2,500 years ago in the rebuilding of this wall. Where is this wall now? Truth is, it doesn't exist. Uh yes, there are rocks that still uh lay and and and rubble uh beneath the surface. There are there are archaeologists that have gone and discovered these, uh these these rocks that once comprised the wall that was around that was around Jerusalem. But after this wall has been built, there would be other times over the next few hundred years where uh there would be other armies that would come and they would uh they would knock these walls down. They would come and attack God's people, they would come and besiege the city of Jerusalem, and then ultimately in 70 AD, the Romans would come and totally raise the temple. However, this doesn't diminish what God was doing through this particular building project 2,500 years ago and the eternal hope to which it pointed. This project, as I've said, just wasn't busy work. It was a means through which God brought his people back together. It developed their faith. It gave them opportunity to grow in their trust in God. This wall was a step towards them returning back to a temple that would be rebuilt for the worship of the one true and living God and to remind them of the Messiah that was to come. In a similar way, as great as this building project is that we are starting to see wind down, this building is not eternal. The building we're in right now is not eternal. That new beautiful building out there is not eternal. We do hope and pray that it will be used by God for many generations to come as a way to build up Christ's body, to connect his people with one another and a place for us to come and to worship. We've been seeing presently presently about how the prayers we offer up each week for this building and uh people praying through their gifts and their resources and how to be able to give for it. Yes, God is using it and using it in very profound ways, but that building is not eternal. We don't know what the future holds. Will there be a day coming when we are attacked by foreign armies and that building will be destroyed? Will we worship as we know right now, or it will become illegal? And it would be more wise for us to meet in homes for worship rather than in a sanctuary. Well, in a hundred years or more, will this sanctuary need to be totally torn down and rebuilt because it no longer meets code? We don't know, but we do know right now that this project is drawing together God's people in unique ways, to grow us in the trust of God, to bride for his project, and that will provide and that it will provide a place for us to gather and worship our great God for many years to come. But the wall around Jerusalem, our building project and other things like it are ultimately pointers to a church that God is building, not with stones, not with sticks, not with bricks or anything like that, but with living stones, with you and me. That he has pulled out of the rebel pile of humanity, that he has dusted off, that he has washed clean with the blood of his son, Jesus Christ, and placed us upon him, Jesus Christ, the cornerstone to the praise and glory of his name. By his grace, he has picked us up, like I said, brought us into his people and set us upon Jesus Christ. While unseen, this is a there is a certain reality that will never ever be destroyed. His people will never ever be breached and never be raised, but it will exist for forever and ever to the glory and praise of Jesus Christ. We also think about Jesus Christ, who the temple that would eventually be rebuilt, that would point towards him. Jesus said that this temple is going to be torn down, it's going to be destroyed, and it will be raised back up in three days. That temple, the temple made of stone, points to the eternal temple, the eternal dwelling place of God and his people. But here we are, we're in the here and now. And our call is to have a uh have a humble confidence, to pray, to trust God. And yes, make use of the resources that he has given, but within the context of trusting him and with an eternal hope to which all this is pointing, and that is his bride being with him around the great wedding banquet table of the Lamb for all of eternity. Let us pray. Lord in heaven, we thank you that you are a God who is at work, that you are a God who is with your people, that you are a God who fights with your people or for your people, and you are a God who is working all things together for good, and that you will one day bring all things to an end, and there will be no more weeping. Uh, there will be no more sorrow, there will be no more death, for the old things will have gone away. God, we pray that we would be established in this humble confidence, that you would establish to be a people of prayer, that we would turn to you first, that we would trust in you first, and their hope that would be in you and what you are doing, both now and for all of eternity. We pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.