How Can I Start Building and Fighting?

You know that our strategy is to build and fight. I hope by now you find it pretty exciting and inspirational. But perhaps you are still wondering, “How do I start building? What am I supposed to do when I see an opportunity to build?” Wouldn’t it be helpful if we had an example we could look at and say, “Imitate that”? Well, that is exactly what we have in Nehemiah 1:1–2:10.

At the start of Nehemiah, it is the twentieth year of the king. On the shorter chronology, it has been about thirteen years since Ezra. The temple had been completed in four years, between the second year and the sixth. So there should have been a lot of progress in Jerusalem. And there was some. In Ezra 9:9, Ezra thanks God for a wall in Judah and in Jerusalem. Some versions translate the word “protection,” because they believe it is a metaphor. But Hanani comes to Nehemiah, in Nehemiah 1:2, with the bad news that the city is broken down and the gates are burned with fire. I think they made real progress, and the enemies of God attacked and destroyed it. That is why the remnant is in trouble and shame.

Every good story needs a problem to solve, a mountain to climb, an enemy to defeat, obstacles to overcome. In Ezra, the story was about getting the temple built so that worship could be established in the land. This story will be about getting the city and the walls built so that God is honored in the land.

Since God has staked his glory and his word on his people, their trouble and shame reflect poorly on him. When they were sent into exile for judgment, their shame demonstrated God’s justice and showed his glory. But now that they have returned and are seeking to serve God, however imperfectly, their shame and trouble may make the nations wonder whether God will keep his word to rebuild his people. After all, he said in Deuteronomy 4, “The LORD will scatter you among the peoples, but from there you will seek the LORD your God and you will find him.”

Nehemiah wants to see God’s promise fulfilled. He wants to build and fight so that God’s glory is clearly evident in the fortunes of his people. And the way he gets started is an example and an inspiration to us. Like Paul says, “Follow me as I follow Christ.” We can follow Nehemiah as a good example of how to start building and fighting.

• He remains loyal to God in exile.
• He confesses his sins. He does not shift blame or feel better by comparison, but leans on God’s word.
• He trusts in God’s word.
• He prays and asks for God’s help.
• He makes a detailed, wise plan.
• He courageously acts.

Stay Loyal

Look first at Nehemiah’s example of staying loyal to God in exile. When Nehemiah receives word that the remnant is in trouble and shame, he mourns. Verse 4 says he mourned “for days.”

This is how we can see his loyalty. He still really cared about the mission of God and the remnant of his people. He did not adapt his values to his surroundings. He did not become a man of Susa while he was in Susa. He maintained his loyalty to God’s people. He ached for their setbacks. When God’s people suffered shame, he did not make light of it. He had risen to a high position, cupbearer to the king. He could have eased into a cushy life and forgotten the remnant. But he does not. His heart is motivated by God’s glory, and he knows that Jerusalem should be rebuilt for God’s glory. So he weeps when the project is in danger.

The first step in building and fighting is cultivating a deep, personal, unshakable loyalty to God. At the start, this is not the work of the will. It comes, finally, only from God. He creates in you a new heart. He gives you a new spirit in regeneration, a heart of flesh. If Christ is not your king, if your heart is still stony and cold toward him and his ways, pray to the Father and ask him for repentance, to turn from your unbelief and trust him, and to receive a heart soft to his voice, ready to obey, and cast down for its sin.

Even after God has given you a new heart, you must take care of it. “Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life” (Proverbs 4:23).

Too many Christians have given in to the passions of our nation. Their instincts no longer want to fight for Christ. They abandon their brothers and sisters who defend God’s unpopular truth. Their devotion is to ordinary American sensibilities. Instead of being salt and light for the world, they hide their light and lose their saltiness. You could call this “going native.” They live in the land and become part of it, instead of remaining a counterculture. They trade their loyalty for the comfort of fitting in.

One of the things you might be tempted to be embarrassed by is how different your Christian life will look from the world’s. The operating system of our nation’s culture is entertainment. We try to gamify everything from education to religion. The result is the shallow devotion of a constant spectator.

This “God is my belly” approach to life trivializes everything it touches. In the 1980s or ’90s, Neil Postman wrote Amusing Ourselves to Death. Even from a secular perspective, he saw that our overemphasis on passive consumption for fun would ruin us. His point is that in America everything has become a performance. From politics to church services, everything is supposed to be engaging, which is a code word for entertaining.

Now, having fun and being engaged is great. But if we make it our god, if we indulge this appetite too much, we will find that our loyalties lie either with the most interesting screen in the moment, or with our favorite talking heads on that screen.

Nehemiah’s first example to us is his tears. His tears show his loyalty. What disappoints you? Do your disappointments demonstrate your loyalty to God, or to someone else? If your building and fighting do not come from a heart loyal to God, they will be for naught. Worse than that, you will be building up your own competing kingdom instead of contributing to God’s. Test yourself, so that you are in the world, but not of the world.

Take Responsibility

When Nehemiah opens his mouth, the first thing out is a confession. “Even I and my father’s house have sinned.” He does not pretend that he has had no part in the problem that led to this shameful outcome. He takes responsibility.

This is not a perfunctory way of approaching God. He spends days in prayer and fasting. The prayer recorded here is a summary of those days, and in fact of months of praying, before he goes in before the king looking sad.

As a quick side note, before I talk about confession and taking responsibility, I want to draw your attention to the days Nehemiah spends mourning and praying and fasting. Because we can usually get anything we want with next-day shipping, we have lost the pace of heart required to fast and pray. There is no drive-through window for the spiritual life. God did not make our hearts operate at the speed of microprocessors. He did not even make them operate at the pace of our minds. That is why many of us can comprehend a situation hours, or days, or even weeks, before it sets in and “hits us.” To live wisely, to live wholeheartedly, you may need to create more space for reflection and prayer.

Often, that kind of reflection is what lets you take responsibility and make a full confession, instead of trying to deflect the blame. “They must not be turning to God with their hearts.” It would have been easy to compare: “I’m not as bad as them, Lord. They intermarried, after all.”

Reformation starts with confession. The problem is not just those other people. The fault is not with God. We are part of the problem. I am part of the problem. Nehemiah knows that God’s judgment is against his people because they have acted corruptly and ignored his statutes and commandments (1:7). Remember, sin is actually a problem. It is not just an abstract entity out there somewhere in a cosmic legal world. Sin is a relational rift, a rebellion against God that makes a separation between unholy us and holy him. God hates sin. So the first step in building and fighting is dealing with sin.

As you prepare to build back up the ruins that seem destroyed, first acknowledge the role you have played in the problem.

• If your marriage has gotten rocky, start by confessing every sin you can. Do not shift the blame to your spouse. Do not compare yourself to other husbands or wives to feel better about yourself. Take responsibility, and confess your sins.
• If your children are bucking against your authority, first confess any of your own sins, perhaps of anger or impatience. Do not misuse your parental authority to criticize them continually. Do not compare yourself to other parents and puff yourself up. Confess your sins.

And this principle holds in large-scale reformation and revival as well. If we want to see a change from the trivial, half-hearted, entertainment-focused, compromised Christian worship that is all too common in our day, then we need first to acknowledge our part. We have also trivialized God. We have said nothing when we could have spoken up. We have been willfully ignorant because we were going along with the crowd.

Trust God’s Word

Notice, though, the hope in Nehemiah’s confession. In verse 5 he reminds himself, and includes in his prayer, that God is a God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who keep his commandments. That might seem an odd thing to say for someone who is about to admit that he has acted corruptly and has not kept the commandments. What is God’s steadfast love for those who keep his commandments going to do for commandment-breakers?

Nehemiah has studied the Scriptures and knows that there is still hope. God promised that when his people returned to him, he would gather them from all the lands of exile and dwell with them again. At the beginning of the sermon I showed you this from Deuteronomy 4. Here it is again from Deuteronomy 30, after God lays out the blessings for obedience and the curses for rebellion.

And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, then the LORD your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, and he will gather you again from all the peoples where the LORD your God has scattered you. If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it. And he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers.

Nehemiah takes God at his word and trusts it with specificity. He does not pray, “Lord, maybe this return was not meant to be, and we misunderstood the Scriptures about when we would return. Perhaps you will act now, and perhaps in another generation.” He does not make God’s promises abstract and general where they are concrete and specific.

Many have observed that it is easy to love humanity in the abstract. What is difficult is to love your sibling in particular. While love stays general, it is easy to have a sentimental notion of “people.” What is difficult, and what God commands, is to love the specific people he places in your life, in the circumstances in which he brings them. Loving “generally” actually cheapens love. It gives you the notion that loving everyone will be all sunshine and rainbows and fun, fun, fun.

In much the same way, faith in the abstract is easy. What is difficult is to trust God with specificity. This is why trials are so valuable for us. They make us trust God in particular. When money is tight, you do not vaguely “trust God to provide.” You pray like crazy for God to provide some odd jobs this month so the rent check will not bounce, and with faith you trust that he will. When a child goes wayward, you do not vaguely “trust God to take care of them.” You beg him to bring them back to the faith and give them repentance.

Underneath all our lives, after God has given us new hearts, there should be a sense of general loyalty: “I’ll do anything you say, Lord.” But, like Nehemiah, that general faith should get specific in two ways.

First, it should get specific with God’s word. Notice that Nehemiah quotes God’s word back to him in verse 9. He trusts specific passages. Do not trust the word only in general. Dive in and find promises and teaching and doctrine to build your life on. Stake your marriage on words like, “Be slow to anger, quick to listen, slow to speak.” Stake your children on teaching like, “He who spares the rod hates his son.” Stake your business on passages like, “The way of the wicked will perish.”

Second, it should get specific in what it trusts God for. Nehemiah does not merely trust the passage. He interprets it rightly and applies it wisely. In verse 10 he says that the remnant are the servants and the people whom God has promised to gather and dwell with. Nehemiah looks at God’s word, and then he trusts God to fulfill it in the world right there before his eyes.

So Nehemiah had a passage, and he trusted it in the real world, asking God to do something specific for the remnant in Jerusalem. What passage should we trust? Well, all of them. Trust all of them. If you are working to rebuild your personal discipline or holiness, or your marriage, or your parenting, or your vocation, ransack God’s word, trust it, and pray specifically. As a church, as we work to build and fight, I hope you will join me in trusting the Great Commission.

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore, as you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them and teaching them to obey all that I have commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Here Jesus gives us two promises and our marching orders. The marching orders are to make disciples by baptizing and teaching them. The promises stand at the beginning and the end. Jesus has all authority, and Jesus is with us always. Now, how can you trust this with specificity?

Moms, sometime tomorrow you will be inundated with requests from a few kids. You will be trying to remember what you were going to write on the grocery list, thinking about how many places to set at the table for the people coming over that night, and wondering how so much rice is still stuck to the floor even after you tried to clean it up after dinner last night. You will be tempted to impatience or despair. But this passage gives you everything you need. Being a mom means making disciples of your own children. You are serving your Savior, the one who has all authority and has promised to be with you. So you can trust that he is with you and helping you. Respond with love for your children. Teach them, by your example, to count it all joy when you face trials. And press ahead in obedience, because you are glad Jesus has authority over you. You can trust that God will give you everything you need that afternoon to love your children, teach them to be disciples, and put dinner on the table for your guests.

Gentlemen, tomorrow you will show up at work. Your email inbox will be full. You will have a difficult problem you need to figure out. In the back of your mind you will be hoping for a raise to relieve some financial strain and provide for your house. And you will be trying to figure out how you can leave in time to drive your kids to their evening activity. You will be tempted to anger or impatience or discontentment. But again, this passage gives you everything you need. To make disciples in all of life, someone needs to figure out, and show the world, what God-honoring supply chains, financial structures, loan packages, delivery services, restaurant care, and construction look like. You are there to make disciples and to teach them to obey all that Christ has commanded. I hope you have chances to proclaim the gospel to your coworkers and employees. Even if those chances are few and far between, you are learning, and teaching them, to obey all that Christ has commanded, in honest business practices and a hard day’s work. You are one of his ambassadors in your company. So you can trust him for that day. You can trust him to be present and to give you the grace you need for your tough morning meeting. You can trust that the “all authority” Jesus has includes your boss when you are mistreated, and you can continue on without bitterness.

As a church, we can trust that God wants us to be here. He has established us here in the Stillwater area. We can trust that he wants us to stick around, and so trust him for a permanent location. We can trust God to prepare a building for us to worship him in, because we have seen great evidence that he wants us to be here and make disciples.

Pray for God’s Help

Nehemiah not only trusts God’s word. He thinks to ask God for help. He does not imagine that he is smart enough, or strong enough, or good enough to take care of this on his own. He knows that he needs God’s help. So he asks. You can see him in verse 11 asking God to be attentive to his prayer. In fact, you find out that he has recruited a group of people to pray.

There are at least two reasons we often skip prayer. The first is that we are too self-confident. We do not think we need God’s help. The second is that, just as we have been saying, we lack faith in the specifics. We do not believe that God cares about us and listens to us.

Church, do you believe that God hears your prayers and delights in you? That he cares about you specifically, not just his people generally? That he is orchestrating events and intervening in your life for your good and for others? He does. And he proves it to us over and over. He proves it doctrinally, telling us that he chose us from before the foundation of the world. He shows us poetically, assuring us that he knows the details of our lives, so interested in us that he counts the hairs on our head. He says that birds do not fall to the ground apart from him. He clothes the grass of the field and considers us more valuable than his birds and his plants. And he proves it specifically. You are here, after all, aren’t you?

Make a Wise Plan

Nehemiah does not go flying in before the king by the seat of his pants. He has a plan in mind. In fact, it is quite specific. He has a plan to leverage his station as cupbearer, and the talents that have made him successful there. He has thought about it so much, in the months between Hanani’s arrival and Nisan, when he goes to the king, that he has a departure date and a return date in mind. He knows what letters he would like. He is ready to go, and he is asking God to bless the plan.

He is not praying, “Please do something, Lord.” He has a day, a plan, a materials list, everything ready that can be ready, so that when God gives him a green light from the king, he is ready to go. Because Nehemiah has specific faith, he can make specific plans and trust God to bless them.

Andy just taught us a biblical framework for making decisions last week:

• Holy desire
• Open door
• Wise counsel
• Biblical wisdom

Notice how Nehemiah follows that pattern. When he hears that Jerusalem is in ruins, he has the holy desire to help with the rebuilding. His plans leverage his station as cupbearer and the talents that have made him successful in that role. He has an open door to the king. He has roped in others to pray and, presumably, to plan and aid him, which gives him wise counsel. He is using biblical wisdom soaked in the promises of God from his word.

You can apply this both to where you build and fight — a change of job, people to invest in, a business to start — and to the plans you make for those efforts to succeed.

Nehemiah did not plan so little that he had to say, “Well, God, you’ll just have to make it work.” Most of the time, God does not work the way he did with Gideon’s three hundred, who supernaturally terrify the opposing armies until those armies kill one another and flee. Most of the time God works through well-laid plans, as when David stored up for the building of the temple, or when Ezra prepared for years before leading the people in the worship of God. Nehemiah planned enough to say, “Lord, I have done everything I can think to do. And now, please prosper this plan.” He made plans with a reasonable likelihood of success, and he asked God to bless them.

Laying plans like this is part of how I believe God will transform this area. It will be by our brainstorming, and planning, and praying, and executing. I know some of you are planning to move strategically closer to the area. Some of you are planning a change of business or career. Some of you are making plans to improve your marriage and your parenting. And you should see, in Nehemiah’s example, that this godly planning is exactly what you ought to be doing. As you plan, you are exercising biblical wisdom and working to take dominion. It is precisely what you should be doing.

The Bible says that man makes his plans, but the Lord establishes his steps. Amen. It also says that unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain. But that does not mean the builders will show up at the jobsite and the house will already be done. It means the work requires God’s blessing in the labor, and God’s blessing in the planning and the execution.

As you plan, and as you choose which opportunities to take, take special account of the station God has given you. Nehemiah was cupbearer to the king. That is not a role you end up in by accident. At the time, it was common to try to kill the king by poisoning him. The cupbearer’s job was to taste the food before it came to the king. He was therefore highly motivated to make sure the whole kitchen and the whole supply line were free of evil actors. As one of the most trusted men in the court, he would likely have been given a good deal more authority and work, because the king believed he was working in the king’s best interest.

There is a biblical principle to note there: authority flows toward integrity and responsibility.

Act with Courage

Finally, all this faith and prayer and planning would have accomplished nothing if Nehemiah had not had the courage to act. He planned the journey. He charted the course. But he was not going to get anywhere unless he had the courage to set sail.

And do not forget how important this last part is. Many will plan and pray, and when the time for action comes, for courageous action, they shrink back. Nehemiah was afraid (2:2). He took his life in his hands, risking an awful death for appearing disloyal to the king. You might wonder why he is so afraid. The cupbearer was a very powerful role. As I said, a good deal of other authority often came with it, and it could become a Joseph-like role. This request could easily be interpreted as setting up a base from which to launch a challenge to the king. It could look as though he were trying to establish a rival capital. That is why the first thing he does is reaffirm his loyalty to the king. Then he goes on with his request.

So when he says he was very much afraid, we can take him at his word. If the king thought he was a traitor, that was going to be it for him. He would die in some awful way, likely tortured until God mercifully took his soul. It is a mark of his loyalty and his faith that he has the courage to continue even in the face of such stiff consequences.

Nehemiah shows us that building and fighting with God includes accepting risk. As John Piper has famously said, risk is right. Trust God, make a good plan, ask him to bless it, and get going.

So Nehemiah is an example of how to get our building and fighting off the ground.

• He remains loyal to God in exile.
• He confesses his sins. He does not shift blame or feel better by comparison, but leans on God’s word.
• He trusts in God’s word.
• He prays and asks for God’s help.
• He makes a detailed, wise plan.
• He courageously acts.

Whatever you are planning to build up next, follow the wisdom God has set down in Nehemiah.

• Perhaps you are trying to build a financially stable house, and you are not sure how to get there. Start by taking responsibility. Know that God will take care of you. He hears his children. Ask him for wisdom, and for help to grow in patience. Create a budget. Set spending goals. Pray about what God would bless in your plan, and then go to work and be thrifty.
• If you are not happy with your marriage, start by taking responsibility. Confess your sins to God and to your spouse. Pray for God’s help, and start to make a plan. If your affection for your spouse is wavering, consider finding mentors. Search the Scriptures. If you know people who are doing well in this area, ask for their advice. And when you have a plan you are pretty sure God will bless, ask him to bless it, and get to work.
• If you have been stagnant in your work or your career, plateaued for a while, take responsibility for where you have allowed yourself to settle. Does this honor your God, your family, or your boss? Search the Scriptures so you can appreciate God’s ideas for your work. Make a plan to get to a new level. Make a list of the accountabilities you are committing to. And then make it happen.
• Maybe you look at the world’s really big problems, increasing crime, foolish policies, and you want to see them change. Confess any part you have played in the problem. Consider where you are in life, and what you would have to do to get to a position where you could make a tangible impact. Pray for God’s blessing, and build a plan.

I hope that Nehemiah’s example, and these six pieces of it, make building and fighting less conceptual and more concrete. All you need is:

• A ruin to rebuild
• A heart to obey
• A humble spirit
• Faith in God’s word
• Time to pray
• A plan to follow
• And the courage to start

And as we go, we know that our tiny efforts are not decisive. They are blessed by God as we are swept up in the rushing tide of his plan to make sure that Christ is preeminent in all things.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, please convict us where we have been disloyal to you. Give us humility to admit our failures rather than blame others. Help us to trust your word. Please be attentive to our prayers, and bless our plans to glorify you in our lives and households and community. By your kindness, give us courage to act on wise plans. And in all of it, may you be glorified in all of life. Amen.