Neh No.8 Under Pressure

2nd Corinthians and chapter 4. Here the Apostle is spelling out just what it costs him to be a servant of Jesus Christ. We'll start reading from the fifth verse and if you've got the authorized version please come in on the even numbered verses. That's 2nd Corinthians chapter 4 and verse 5. For we preach not ourselves but Christ Jesus the Lord and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us. Persecuted but not forsaken, cast down but not destroyed. For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.

We having the same spirit of faith according as it is written I believed and therefore have I spoken we also believe and therefore speak. For all things are for your sakes that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God. For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

Now let's turn again to the book of Nehemiah and I think it would be helpful to you if you were to keep your Bibles open at the fourth chapter. This chapter we read from last week and engaged in a preliminary study and there's much more teaching that we are to benefit by as we continue to sift its contents. Nehemiah is a classic book, a textbook for those who would engage in the service of Jesus Christ.

There are some people who perhaps would question the value of proceeding on a Sunday morning through a series of studies in an Old Testament book. After all are we not here on a Sunday to extol the Lord Jesus? Therefore should not the center of our meditation be around him? Well such a comment would indicate a complete lack of understanding of the very purposes why the Old Testament scriptures were given and preserved down the years. In these volumes are to be found examples, illustrations which will excite us in our service of the Nazarene to be more disciplined, to be more consistent.

Jesus our master said I work the works of him that sent me and we are to continue the very labors of the Galilean. But how are we to conduct ourselves? Well I say that the Old Testament scriptures are replete with examples which illustrate something of the ministry of our Lord Jesus and demonstrate for us that type of person that you, that I, are to be as we continue to serve our great God and Father. I tell you that if the church in the 20th century needs anything it's a veritable battalion of Nehemiahs, men who will have a trowel in one hand and who will shoulder responsibility and put their whole talents and times as an investment in the service of the King of Kings.

Let me remind you for the sake of those who are with us for the first time this Sunday morning as to what has transpired so far in the life story of this man. He has been back in Jerusalem for some while. He was, you remember, a very privileged Jew almost holding a position which could be described as unique.

He had previously been the cupbearer of Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, and one day, you recall, he was in the palace waiting upon the monarch and his countenance was sad. The reason for his distress? Well, he had to confide in the king. It was because he had received news about Jerusalem, the capital city of his home, his native land of Palestine.

The walls of Jerusalem and the gates thereof, they were broken down. They had been burnt. They were in an absolute shambles and no sensitive Jew could contemplate such a tragedy as that without reflecting his remorse and his distress in his face.

So Nehemiah applies for leave and the king is remarkably disposed to grant the request of his Jewish servant and not only so, he makes provisions, materials available to Nehemiah so that he can engage upon his task and that successfully. And you recall that when Nehemiah gets to Jerusalem, he engages in a tour around the area that he wants to attend to. One night, he sees for himself the sorry state of the fortifications of Jerusalem and then he describes, he reveals to the inhabitants of the city and those in the communes a little way from Jerusalem, the reason that compelled him to visit Palestine.

And he forges together a mighty army of laborers who will work with Nehemiah and under Nehemiah in the realization of his purposes. Now let's break off there for a moment. You see, here is a servant of God who is being eminently successful.

He's gone from one success to another and the opposition that he has encountered has been somewhat reduced, relatively unimportant. But on those of you who are engaged in spiritual leadership, let this message be from God to your hearts this morning. You will know more than anyone else in the Christian community that when you go from one success to another success to another, ultimately there will great testings and trials.

You can't be a co-laborer with Jesus Christ and not endure the same strictures as he had to confront. And so we discover in this very chapter three pressure points which were placed upon Nehemiah to test the quality of man, to see what metal there was within his personality. And it's within the providence of God for pressure points, my dear brother and sister, to be applied to you in your Christian life.

Now if it be the case that you are to be a spiritual Nehemiah in the 20th century, then I feel that you've got a lot to learn from this chapter concerning pressure points. And it seems to me that there are three made reference to, referred to, in the tenth verse of chapter four. Listen to this piece of speech directed towards the Lord's servant.

And Judah said, the strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed and there is much rubbish so that we are not able to build the wall. Here is someone, a representative of the tribe of Judah, who should have been a confidant of Nehemiah. And they are saying, he is saying, that the task that Nehemiah is about is absolutely impossible, there aren't sufficient laborers and it's about time they closed down the shop.

And everybody went home. Three pressure points. Number one, the friend who lets you down.

Number two, the co-workers who grow weary. And number three, the rubbish that constantly piles up and needs to be removed. Most problems in Christian discipleship revolve around those three pressure points, of that I'm convinced.

So let's take the first. The friend who lets you down. Nehemiah had had problems before but they were of a secondary nature to those I alluded.

They came from non-Jewish people who were not enchanted by Nehemiah attending to the task of rebuilding the walls. But it's Judah who comes alongside Nehemiah and says there's decaying strength, accumulating rubbish and an impossible task. This is in effect the essence of the objection in this tenth verse.

The friend who lets you down. Let's split this into two. Notice first of all that it was unanticipated.

Unanticipated. The psalmist in Psalm 41 speaks about treachery amongst the circle of his own friends. The apostle Paul was let down by one whose name was Demas.

The Lord Jesus Christ was let down on several occasions by all of his disciples and one became a traitor. Nehemiah expected opposition. He did not think he would sail through the achieving of God's task with no problem at all.

But you see the crunch came. The thing got particularly difficult when the problems came from within the ranks. Now that's always the case in Christian service.

We can cope with external problems and pressures. The pressures of a godless environment, we expect those. Those are the external problems.

But it's when the difficulty comes from within, then we've got a real difficulty, a real problem to face. Completely unanticipated. Judah of all people, this representative from this particular tribe, do you know what it was said of Judah? The scepter shall not depart from Judah nor a lawgiver from between his feet until Shiloh come.

In other words, the descendants of Judah have a special privileged position in the outworking of the plan of God. But it's Judah who's providing the difficulty here. This crack regiment amongst the Jews, the cream of the Hebrew people, they come alongside Nehemiah and they say, you know something, it's no good.

We can't do the task that you want us to do. And I say the objection was unanticipated. Who would have thought that Judah would let Nehemiah down? And what's more, the difficulty was not only unanticipated, it was unequivocal.

It was final. This wasn't a brother coming alongside his leader and saying, have you thought about this problem and this area? Let's get down, let's pray about it. Let's bring it before the Lord of glory.

We see dimensions of difficulty that have never been noticed by yourself. So let's come together and let's discuss it through. No, this is unequivocal.

The work is no good, Nehemiah. It's impossible. The pressure point of a friend who lets you down.

This has happened throughout the centuries of Christian history. Men working together, confiding together, the second-in-command, so to speak, who has been lent upon as much as Moses lent upon Aaron and suddenly Aaron's no longer there. Aaron's given up.

Judas called it a day. Your right-hand man has resigned. How do you cope when that pressure point is touched in your own discipleship? Couple to that, almost the same point but in such an extension of it that it needs a separate treatment.

How do you cope when your co-labourers grow weary? The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed and there is much rubbish so that we're not able to build the wall. How many missions, how many church organizations, how many local churches have their problems outlined in those few words? The bearers of burdens is decayed and there's much rubbish so we're not able to build the wall. In other words, the labourers have dwindled in size.

The work is still as gigantic but the numbers are down. And this was probably the reason, incidentally, why Judah was no longer prepared to continue. He saw what was happening.

Here is Nehemiah, here is the representative of the tribe of Judah. Nehemiah seems to have blinkers on. He doesn't realize that the strength of these men is depleted, the ranks are diminished.

And it's because of this decreasing number of people who can attend to God's task that Judah quits, resigns. Well, I say, when God not only touches that pressure point of your friend leaving you, but when your co-labourers also grow weary, how do you react? Notice when this happened, when it happened. That's very important.

It happened when the job was half way through. Look at verse 6. So built we the wall and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof for the people had a mind to work. Unto the half thereof.

The wall was half as high as was intended all the way around. That was a considerable achievement, but they were only fifty percent towards the realization of the goal. Now in Christian work it's the halfway stage that's always the difficult one.

It's never the beginning. You check it through in the history of this church, whenever we've learned something new, we've always had people with us. You know it's, I mean the illustration itself is perhaps somewhat trivial, but whenever I start a new series of Bible studies, I know that I'll get a good compliment of people out for the first one, then for the next one, then the third.

Well, it starts to dwindle a little bit. It may have something to do with the quality of the study, I recognize that. But you see the point, you see the illustration.

Take early morning prayer meetings, or take people who will say to me, well why not have a regular day of prayer? Well, the problem is there. Whenever you get regularity at the beginning, there's always enthusiasm, but it's persevering. It's when you get halfway, then you're looking for your laborers, and those who were enthusiastic at the beginning, no longer with you.

Remember one man who came to this church some years ago, he's not with us now. He got great schemes, what we were to do in the tabernacle. It's amazing how we were going to make an impact upon local government down here.

Tremendous. It all worked out. Got the letters in my file, and he would have launched us on a period of work which, well if it had been successful, would have been great.

After a few months, we never saw him for dust. The Christian Church has never been short of beginners, it's always been short of finishers. Paul writing to the Galatians, you did run well, what did hinder you? You see, at the halfway stage, there are other issues that you've got to cope with which aren't present at the beginning.

Energy has been taken up in achieving God's work up to that particular point, and enthusiasm, that initial enthusiasm, that initial zeal has burned away. Here you're really in the nitty-gritty of God's work, and I say that when it reaches the halfway stage, you've generally got problems. That's why the New Testament has to say such a lot about completing.

He that endureth till the end shall be saved. Jesus was not a halfway man. The disciples perhaps would have had it in that fashion.

They came to him on one or two occasions and endeavored to detract him from completing the work that God had given him to do. But Jesus will not offer a half-finished work to the Lord. It will be complete, it will be final, it will be perfect.

The co-labourers grew weary halfway through the job. You know, in a moment or so, we're going to be singing that hymn in our hymn book, facing a task unfinished that drives us to our knees, a need that undiminished rebukes our slothful ease. I tell you that what the Christian Church needs today is not starters but finishers.

Why did this happen? Well, I would put this down to a comment that I made at the conclusion of our study last week. Do you remember in the third chapter there are a number of groups that are listed, and I suggested to you that you ought to work through that chapter and spot the odd man out. And you come across a group of people who are concerned about Nehemiah's work, the rebuilding of the walls, the rehanging of the gates and so on, probably sent even a contribution towards the expenses, but they themselves did nothing.

With the net result that an awful amount of work fell on just a relatively few people. So many more could have been involved. And then the labourers who had been faithful up to the halfway mark would not have felt their strength so dissipated and therefore had to quit.

Now in the Church of Jesus it's not so much that it's lacking in size, it's not the quantity, it's the quality. People who opt out, opt out of service with the net result that in a local community, be it a church, a mission organization, any Christian concern, there's a handful, a nucleus of workers who are doing too much. And some who are interested parties, and they would be offended if you confronted them on a personal basis and challenged them about their lack of concern.

But these interested parties are not interested enough to be 24 hour a day, seven days a week, four weeks a month involved in the work. Let the others do it. With the result that you get this problem and another pressure point comes upon the people who are in leadership.

So here's poor Nehemiah, left out on a limb. Can he cope? His friends let him down, his co-laborers have grown weary. And the third pressure point is this, the rubbish.

It still needs to be removed. The rubbish continues to be piled high. Now Nebuchadnezzar is concerned, obviously, to do his... Nehemiah is concerned to do his job well.

But he's got problems because the man that I referred to a moment ago by mistake, Nebuchadnezzar, he was the one who had led his armies against Jerusalem. The armies had destroyed those walls and they had pounded the stones into powder. With the net result that when Nehemiah starts to rebuild the wall, first of all he has to clear the site so that the foundations are exposed.

So you see this reference to those people who have to move away the rubbish. You can't build a wall, not even literally, on a building site unless you're back to the foundations and you build on top of the foundations. Otherwise you've got a jerry-structure.

The wall will crumble and the very taunt of one of the enemies of the Jewish people would come true that when a fox stood on the wall it would fall down. Now Nehemiah then is left with this problem. He's got an inadequate supply of labourers and the temptation therefore is ignore the rubbish, continue to build.

But you see you can't build on top of rubbish. So here's your third pressure point. What does Nehemiah do when he is confronted with an awful amount of rubbish which has to be cleared? Well he still maintains good principles of building and he'll have the rubbish cleared away even if he has to take the rubbish piece by piece and put it into his wheelbarrow and cart it off himself.

Now this holds true on the spiritual front down the years of church history. Go back to your abiding principle in 2nd Corinthians or rather 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 11. On no other foundation can any man lay than that which is laid, the Lord Jesus Christ.

There are times in the history of the Christian Church when you have to attend to the building of the walls but before you can put one stone on top of another stone you've got to move away the debris that has accumulated down the years. You've got to move the rubbish and rubbish moving can be a very very difficult business and the temptation can come. Leave the rubbish where it stands.

Just you build. Don't get too upset about not doing the job properly. You put one stone upon another stone.

Ah but you can't have a good structure unless you get down to the foundation. So witnessed John Calvin or Martin Luther. Here is a church.

It's been reduced to a most ineffective group of people. The wall around the church has crumbled. Luther knows this.

Calvin knows this. There's the superstition. There's the error of the years that has accumulated and God has given to them the great notion of justification by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ that before that can be preached around Europe.

My dear friend what happens? Luther has to excavate. He has to move the rubbish piece by piece and sometimes it seems as though he's almost down to his own pair of hands in engaging in his task. It's not easy to be a rubbish remover in the Church of Jesus.

Sometimes in the 20th century the spiritual nehemiahs have seen what has to be done. Some inefficient organization. The rubble has come.

The tradition has come. There are beliefs and practices which were never warranted by scripture and a work of excavation has to be attempted by these men and you've got the opposing ranks. Those who are within the church themselves and they say well that's been there ever since the beginning.

We've always done this. We've always done that this way but never was there an appeal to biblical principles and that nehemiah knew that the rubbish would have to be moved for a wall to be built that would stand for time and for eternity. I tell you it's not easy to be in the rubbish disposal business in the Church of Jesus Christ but it's so necessary.

Clear away the rubbish. Clear away the superstition. Clear away an unbiblical traditionalism and then build build tall, build strong for Jesus.

But it seems to me that you can continue this particular application from this verse of scripture and not only refer to rubbish in terms of what needs to be done for the Church of Jesus Christ as a whole but within your own life. You see constantly you've got to move out the rubbish. The devil's spewing it on us every day.

Not a nice word but it's not a very elegant task that he's about. So much rubbish comes into our minds. So much rubbish can get bound up with our personalities.

We live in a godless environment and for us to have a testimony that is akin to that of Nehemiah or indeed better the master builder even the Lord Jesus Christ we must always be moving the rubbish out of our own lives. Says the Apostle Paul I know that in me dwelleth no good thing. There's a tendency for pride, for jealousy, the tendency for compromise.

Oh I ask you my friend not just in terms of your organization that you belong to if you're in spiritual leadership in any way. I'm not just asking you in terms of this local church those of you who are members. I'm talking about your personal life, your own personality.

Go on examine yourself. Forget about the 400 or however many people there are in this tabernacle this morning. Just think about yourself.

Have a good look. Is there rubbish there? You've been trying to build on rubbish that has no right to be in your life. Those vessels, those men who bear the vessels of the Lord are to be holy.

Do you not know that the the life that you have is the temple of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit cannot indwell a temple without embarrassment that lacks purity and righteousness? How many of us have to look at the walls of our own lives just to ensure that we're back to a right foundation? Pressure points. Three pressure points that were applied to Nehemiah that were also applied to our blessed Savior, the friend who lets you down, the co-laborers who grow weary, and the rubbish which must constantly be removed even if you've got nobody to help you. Full marks to Nehemiah.

He coped with the situation. I try to show you a little bit more next week how he went about this but the answer is found in the first part of the 14th verse where we read that Nehemiah, despite all these restrictions and pressures, looked up. I looked and I rose up and the remainder of the verse indicates the attitude of prayer in which he had been in and it says, Be not ye afraid of them.

Remember the Lord which is great and terrible and fight for your brethren, your sons and your daughters, your wives and your houses. The only way that you can withstand pressure points in your own life is by looking up to the Lord Jesus. And when you come to the conclusion as Nehemiah might have done and as the disbite did, I only I am left.

When you say as did the Apostle Paul, who is sufficient for these things? Look, if it's a work of God your sufficiency in the end is of God himself. And if all your friends left you and if all your co-laborers went away and if you had to do all the rubbish removal yourself, God would give you the ability to do that. Amen.

Now again Father as we examine our own lives and the testimony of this church, help us to use your Word as a corrective. We pray that we may all be burden bearers. We pray that we may all show fidelity to you and to our brothers and sisters.

Should it be the case that the pressure points have been applied on anyone's life in this sanctuary during these last few days and weeks. Now Lord just bless them, give to them that same refreshing as you gave to Nehemiah, who from amidst the debris looked up and recognized that his work was the Lord's work. And whether God did it by many or by one, the walls would be built.

Give us that same confidence please we ask of you for Jesus' sake. Amen.