Nehemiah, The Man & The Legend” Book Available Fall of 2023
LEARN WHAT NEHEMIAH LEARNED
While work is at hand, talk is cheap. When they know they are losing, an enemy's primary technique is to devise fake peace talks.
During wartime, peace talks tend to be tactics.
Discouragement is not an option in the heat of battle. Let’s face it, when you’re discouraged, the last thing you want to do is draw your sword and go right back to the frontline and fight the battle. Discouragement is the gateway to passivity.
Leaders who flee in battle are cowards. People who follow any commander (leader) during a battle count on that leader's strength, hope, and victorious attitude to empower them to follow them right to the enemy’s door.
Becoming frightened in battle is a sin.
FORMS OF ATTACKS
Remember that these six things stack up against a leader or follower with this one goal: to frighten them. When fear becomes the most dominant force in a person’s life, they begin to make stupid decisions.
Ridicule: It begins to break down the self-view that God put in Nehemiah, the workers, and the builders of Jerusalem.
Intimidation: If ridicule doesn’t work, they will do everything possible to intimate and create fear.
Discouragement: After one submits to fear, discouragement settles in. Once someone feels discouraged, they will slip into morbid passivity.
Fear: It all implodes upon one simple tactic the enemy uses: to create fear in the lives of those they are warring against.
Selfishness: When fear consumes the heart, selfish decisions become the norm of the day.
Fake Peace: If none of the other attacks work, the enemy will come in with a fake peace deal attempting to deceive in the cleverest way stating that all those within the war need to come to a peace agreement and begin working together as one unit. We’ll discuss how this is a tactic and confession that the enemy is losing.
After Nehemiah’s enemies tried to attack from within through moral decline, they shifted to the most deceptive form of attack—global peace. When that failed, the enemy set up a conspiracy theory (a lie) to activate fear. As fear is known, it causes hearts to grow faint. With most enemies, Nehemiah’s attackers were relentless. If the threat of a sword doesn’t do the trick, they will quickly regroup and go for “peace, peace,” but it is a fake peace talk.
WELL-TIMED ATTACK
Chapter six reveals Nehemiah was not living “high off the hog.” Understanding that he had been faithful to his God and his king, a plot to defeat him was the constant threat he faced daily. As Satan would hate to admit, the peace tactic offered by his enemy was a significant turning point in Nehemiah’s leadership. Since fake diplomacy didn’t work, it was time for a new venue of attack—conspiracy, a type of diplomacy rooted in the greatest kind of deceit—that of planting lies within the hearts of Nehemiah’s people. This madness method was used toward the end of the completion of the walls. Shortly before their celebration of completing the wall, the enemy offered a peace deal, which is a confession by the enemy that they are indeed losing the battle. They knew they would be up a creek without a paddle if their conspiracy trap didn't work. I’ll give the enemy this; they were persistent—always trying to break Nehemiah and the Jews down by wearing them out through lies, lies, and more lies.
Fact: Often, the enemy wants to chew up our time in unproductive meetings or in endless debates and discussions with those they are threatened by, which is a common approach used today. When people aren’t advancing in their part of the mission within the battle they have chosen to take on, they start lying through their depraved minds to attempt to convince their leader that they don’t have what it takes to complete the mission.
The approach the enemy used with Nehemiah was a fruitless attempt. It was like a dried-up fig tree. However, it didn’t stop them from proposing a ridiculous peace offering while having no intention of keeping those peace agreements. They intended to harm Nehemiah. Remember when the enemy said, “Come, let us meet together at Chephirim in the plain of Ono?” Nehemiah said, “But they were planning to harm me.” With that, Nehemiah sent a messenger with this message, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”
Furthermore, Nehemiah didn’t stop, not for a moment. He didn’t take the time to go face-to-face with their proposal. When his people tried to protect Nehemiah by safeguarding him in the house of God, he said: “Should a man like me flee? And could one such as I go into the temple to save his life? I will not go in.” Nehemiah intuitively knew this was all part of their plot. Nehemiah refused to retreat or hide from the enemy. He knew that hiding expressed defeat, which was not in his thinking or the God-given action plans imparted to him.
These messages went back and forth four times. As any quality leader would calculate, the enemy attempted to wear them down. Remember it was said: “For all of them were trying to frighten us, thinking, ‘They will become discouraged with the work, and it will not be done.’ But now, O God, strengthen my hands.” There is no way a human could have such wisdom, insight, and foresight. The Living God was empowering Nehemiah. Since God saw and heard all the words on both sides of this battle, God simply informed Nehemiah through divine wisdom not to submit to such ridiculous ideas.
THE CONSPIRACY
After Nehemiah rejected the enemy four times, Sanballat changed the game plan. He sent a letter with conspiratorial charges to Nehemiah and his people to destroy Nehemiah’s standing with the people and undermine his authority.
What was the conspiracy? The conspiracy was that Nehemiah was seeking to position himself as “king of Judah.” How ridiculous was that? This would threaten the king and create a revolt in the land of Judah. Nehemiah responds with this:
“Such things as you are saying have not been done, but you are inventing them in your own mind.”
How did it turn out for the enemy? Nehemiah proved that Tobiah and Sanballat hired these men to write the lies to create distrust between his king, the Jews, and himself. He also proved that this tactic was a madness method to kill Nehemiah and place fear in the worker's hearts, which would ultimately block them from finishing the wall. Another tactic is dead in the water.
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Narrator | Dr. Stephen Phinney
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