Derek Grier - Let's Give People Something To Talk About
Open your bibles to Nehemiah 2:8. We're in part three in our Nehemiah series and we're gonna pick up where we left off last week. "And the king granted his request, according to the good hand of my God upon me". So, as I said before, Nehemiah has really written a memoir here and he served namelessly, faithfully, and loyally for many years, but God puts us in places for reasons, but he only explains them or reveals the purpose of them in the right season, and timing is everything, and if God told us everything too soon, it'll make us way nervous, it just mess up everything.
So in God's wisdom, only at the right time, does he typically share things that need to be shared. Now I, in my life, have said many times, you know why God, why? But God has spoken back to my heart, wait, Derek, wait, and the reality is I just have to hang in there and trust God. "The just shall walk by," what? Faith, and if you can't praise God in the waiting room, you're not ready for your next appointment. And I've learned that I gotta worship God in the hallways, in the in-between places, in order for me to be ready for the open door when it opens.
And then it says in verse nine, "Then I went". So this is after Nehemiah fasted, and he prayed, and he was commissioned by the king, and we talked about that last week, all the wisdom used in his appeal, and you have to learn how to make an appeal if you're gonna be successful in life. But what I want you to see here, Nehemiah, didn't just talk about the vision. He went about the vision. Talkers are often more articulate than doers because talk is really their only specialty. But Nehemiah, he rolled up his sleeves, and he got busy.
"I went to the governors in the region beyond the river". And he crossed the river Euphrates. He traveled about 800 miles from Persia to Jerusalem. "And gave the governor the king's letters". Because the king, his leader, his boss, really, because he was his cup bearer, because the king vouched for him, he was given safe passage. And there are some doors in our lives that will not be open without a reference from the last place we served, so don't burn bridges and expect people to still send you a boat. You know, we may have to cross over those bridges again. And he served so faithfully that the king sent him off into his next season.
"Now the king had sent captains of the army and horseman with me". Again, it's in the first person, this is a memoir of Nehemiah. And when you're truly sent, those who serve you will not only approve, they'll also send with you resources. So the king sent soldiers, and we learned in past chapters, he sent wood in order to rebuild the walls, et cetera. And you know, I was a grown man by the time I got married. I was in my later twenties and my wife, she was in her early twenties, but as grown as both of us were, I still asked my wife's father for her hand in marriage. And yeah, surely some people abuse authority and all the rest, but I do wanna say to you, everything good gets abused. Bad is really just good distorted.
Satan can't create anything, he just distorts what is. Kinda like a baseball bat. A baseball bat used from the proper purpose, causes thousands of people to sit in stadiums, and people to cheer, and people to work hard, you know, in order to win a game. The ball will hit the bat and we will have a great time of fun, but that same bat used wrongly, can destroy a person for life. I've seen people beaten with bats, so it's a very serious thing. So we don't cancel the game of baseball because some people have misused bats. Likewise, we don't dismiss all authority because some people have abused authority.
I want you to think about something. The high priest that led in the crucifixion of Jesus, actually in John 11:50-51, he was used of God to prophesy that Jesus would be crucified. So we're not always obligated to respect the person, but we must always respect the office. And God can even use wicked people at times to speak righteous things, because he's a wise God. And "When Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah the Ammonite". it sounds like these folks are not Jews, but actually they're Jewish leaders, we find that out a little bit later. When they "heard of it, they were deeply disturbed that a man had come to seek the wellbeing of the children of Israel".
You see, everyone that you think is for you, is not always for you, and this is the reality here. And the temple had been functioning since the time of Ezra. People were going into the temple to worship and worship was happening, forgive me, but because the walls around Jerusalem had not been built up and they were broken down, their worship remained vulnerable to attack. Now our worship is sacred to God and God wants us to protect it from everything that will distract. So you know, we can't do big things constantly distracted by the small things. So he wanted to make sure that people could focus and we have to learn to arrange our lives in a way that Sunday is the Lord's. At least a couple hours of Sunday is the Lord's.
You know, I was traveling in a foreign country, and the service went on for hours and hours, and I was like, man, what's goin' on here? This is really long now. But they were like, Sunday is the Lord's day. They were serious about the Lord's day. So we were all day in church. So listen, if you just got, you know, an hour with me, you guys got it easy, okay? So take advantage of these moments that we have together and make sure you're learning and growing.
Anyway, verse 11, "So I came to Jerusalem and I was there for three days". So Nehemiah came to the city from Persia and he basically just walks around the city streets, and listens to the people, and he takes the city's spiritual temperature. So you know, as a leader, it's important not only to be aware of your task, but also your environment, and that was one of my challenges early in ministry. I knew God's word, but I didn't always know how to relate it to people and I wasn't always as aware of my environment as I needed to be. You know sure God told you to cross the street but also be street wise enough to look both ways before you cross.
So Nehemiah was looking both ways, paying attention, yes, I have an assignment, a mandate from God, but I want to do it in the way that's fitting and appropriate to the place that I'm in. And I know I'm talking to someone right now. Verse 12, "Then I arose in the night". Now he does this in secret. And Jesus tells us in Matthew 6 that the most important things we do in life are actually done in secret. We give in secret, we pray in secret, we fast in secret. We seek the Lord in the secret place of the most high, God. And if everyone has to be watching for you to do the right thing, you're not ready yet. And he says, " I and a few men with me".
So when you're in the early stages, you know, everyone's not gonna get it, and be willing to start small, even though you're dreaming big, and this is what Nehemiah did. "I told no one". No one. "What my God had put in my heart to do at Jerusalem". Just like a baby at conception, it's fully human, it's a person, it is a baby. That's why, if you harmed a pregnant woman, you would not only be prosecuted for harming the woman. If the baby was miscarried, you'd be charged with death, but just as a baby is a baby at conception, it's fully human, but it must mature, pay attention here, hidden in the womb of the mother, before it can survive in the hostile environment, outside the womb of the mother.
So even if you have a legitimate word from God, you must let it grow big enough first on the inside of you, before that word can be released and survive in the environment outside of you. So there are things that I'm kind of noodling in my head, and I'm not sure about, and if I tell everybody, I'm gonna have everyone's voice in my head. So what I've learned to do is get quiet, keep taking it to the Lord, until it grows big enough on the inside for me to have a conversation with someone else about it. I just gave you a lotta wisdom there. Pay attention to what I'm saying today. "Nor was there any animal with me except the one on which I rode".
So you know, he was so serious and secretive, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but just you don't have to tell everybody your business all the time. I mean, you texting everything. You know, you're putting everything on Snapchat and all the rest. You need some privacy and you need some time to give some things time to grow and develop. But here, he even limits the animals that he allowed to overhear his conversation. Imagine you're so serious about not letting folks get involved in what the Lord has started in you that you're not even gonna let your hamster know, your dog, or your cat know. So he didn't let any other animals know, except the one he was riding. And he says, "And I went out by night through the valley gate".
So he went out to personally inspect all the gates, and the Bible talks about all the different gates he went to. We're not gonna cover all that but here's another important point. Please pay attention to what I'm saying today. Stop believing everything you hear. Study to show yourself, approved. You know, investigate. He had heard what Jerusalem looked like, but he wanted to hear and see for himself. You know, the story you hear often depends on the person who's telling it, and he understood that, so he wanted to investigate the gates for himself. He wanted to see what was happening in the city for himself.
This is a principle I live by, Proverbs 18:17. It says this, "The first one to plead a case seems right". So if I, or you, only hear one side of a story, but refuse to listen to people on the other side, we're not only naive, we're irresponsible. This is why I listen to Fox News and MSNBC. "The Washington Post," "The Wall Street Journal". I listen to old folks, I listen to young folks. I listen to leaders, I listen to followers. In order for me to really get a sense of things, I have to hear the various perspectives and it's vital that we don't allow people to pigeonhole us so we only hear one side. You're too smart for that. You need to expose yourself to all the information so you can make right judgements.
It says, "The first one to plead his cause seems". Seems? Right, how many of y'all heard a story from someone and then you mad at somebody until you heard the other side? We've all done that. And watch this, there's a comma here and then it says, "Until," until, "his neighbor comes and examines him". So if an issue has not been cross examined, if people with other interests are not allowed to offer input, we are not obligated to accept it as legitimate. And I know you say, well, Bishop that went right over my head. I don't get what you're saying.
Let's look at this in the New Testament. You're gonna see something, perhaps you've not seen before. Matthew 3:17, Jesus was just baptized by John in the Jordan, he's about to begin in ministry, watch what it reads, "And suddenly a voice came from heaven saying, 'This is My beloved Son.'" So God is speaking from heaven, outta the clouds, everyone hears His voice. "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased". But watch what the next verse says. "Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit, into the wilderness, to be tempted by the devil".
So God called him Son, but God immediately allowed this claim to be cross-examined by the devil. You see, God is a God of principle, he is a God of order, and he would not require us to fully rely on that until it was cross examined. And by the way, this is sometimes why we have to face the tests that we do. You know, as beloved as Peter was, he was like, you know, Lord, Lord, even if I have to die with you, I will never deny you. And God heard him, and Jesus was like, You know when you made that statement, the enemy immediately began to inquire because God allows us to be cross-examined.
So immediately the devil tested him in the area of that confession, and we all know that happened. He walked away crying and weeping. So you said you loved your spouse. You know, it was a bright day, and you walked down that aisle. She was beautiful. You were smelling good. And you said, I love you, but guess what? God let life test you, and you had to prove in life what you said at that altar. So you say you trust God, but guess what happens? Then you face something and then you're tested about, you know, what it is you really, really believe about God and how much you trust God.
Even as a congregation, we say we're a congregation. We are Grace Church. God says let's see how much of a church you are. I'm gonna allow some opposition and we gonna see who remains, who sticks, and who stays, and who stands. You see God lets, this is important, God lets our lives and our faith be tested because he loves us too much to let us live in delusion. He wants us to have a proper estimation of ourselves so he will allow us to go through things ultimately to prove our faith, but if our faith's not where it is, or where it's supposed to be, we'll also learn we're not where we wanna be yet and he'll use that as an opportunity for us to reach out to him in order to grow.
All right back to Nehemiah, let's move to verse 16. "And the officials did not know where I had gone or what I had done. I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials". And by the way, in the New Testament, often John and others referred to the Pharisees, the Sadduces, as the Jews, and then people, you know, thousands of years removed say it's anti-Jewish. That makes no sense, first of all, they were Jews, and forgive me, I digress, this is a squirrel moment, okay? But these were Jewish guys writing these words and here, often, the Jews were spoken of as a group. It wasn't intended to be derogatory.
Some people use the term Jew as derogatory, but you know, I love the Jewish people as much as I love any other people, and it's not a derogatory term to me. Again, squirrel, let's get back to the message. "I had not yet told the Jews, the priests, the nobles, the officials, or the others who did the work". This verse here is really, really rich. Nehemiah did not approach the majority of the leaders here, and by the way, he does speak first to the leaders, until he finished all his homework.
So he had to do the research and all the rest before he made this appeal. "Then I said to them, you see the distress that we are in". He didn't say y'all are in, pointing the finger, he said we are in, even though he came from Persia, the mess that we are in. You see, we gotta either learn to live together as brothers or perish as fools, and he recognized that he was part of the problem. Every time I read about what Jewish people do wrong in the Bible, I see myself, because we're all in this boat together. They represent me in many ways. I'm for God, then I'm not for God the way I thought I was for God, and you know, this up and down type of thing, and we read about ourselves in this book over and over again.
"How Jerusalem lies in waste and its gates are burned with fire. Come and let us build the walls of Jerusalem that we may no longer be a reproach". So Nehemiah didn't use gimmicks, he didn't use tricks, or sleight of hand, he just appealed to their sense of dignity, their sense of responsibility, their sense of love for God, and God's work in them, and God then confirmed the word given to Nehemiah by the way the people responded. And then watch the result, let's skip a little bit and it says, "So they said, 'Let us,' by the way, it takes a village, 'Rise up and build.'"
You see, the road to spiritual success is always under construction. We're always gonna be building something. If you're not growing, you're dying. Everything good that God has ever used me to build, ended up building me. And then as I watch all that's going on here, God is not just building a building, he's building us. He's stretching our patience, our endurance, our perseverance. He's causing us to be a little bit more disciplined. He's also gonna cause us to be a little bit more grateful because we've been without, so we're gonna be so grateful. "Then they set their hands to do this good work".
Again, they didn't just talk about it, they went about it. They didn't just pray about it, they did it. They rolled up their sleeves and they did the work. Now watch the next two verses here and I'm done for this Sunday. "But when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Gesham, the Arab, heard of it". And again, I said these men were Jews, and I'd have to point you to scriptures elsewhere to see that but we're not gonna dig into that. You could do your own research a little bit later. "They laughed at us".
Now most of us can handle being beaten up better than we could handle being laughed at. And there's something in us, we don't wanna be laughed at. So the adversary knows that so he uses that, and sometimes people will laugh at us, make fun of us, and it's all a design to get us or keep us from what God has for us. It says, "they laughed at us and despised us and said, 'What is this thing that you are doing?'" You see what they were saying is Nehemiah, you know, what you're doing right now, this is just so parallel to where we are. What you're doing right now cannot be done in this environment. What you're doing right now, just hasn't been done in recent history.
But like Mandela said, "It always seems impossible until it's done". "It always seems impossible 'til it's done". So na na na na yeah, you know, we're doing it. We got it done by God's grace. They said, "Will you rebel against the king"? They thought that if they could turn the heart of the king, they could stop God. So later they send letters and all the rest of stuff, trying to ruin the relationship and the favor that Nehemiah had with the king. But when God gives you favor, you know, the devil's just not gonna be successful turning it around, but watch verse 20. I know this is just a small part of the sentence, but pay attention here. It says, "So I answered them".
You got to learn to speak up for yourself. You gotta learn to give an answer. I've learned it's not what people call you that matters. It's what you answer to that really, really matters. And the day that you become silent about the things that matter is the day that you will no longer matter. And he said to them, so, you know that scripture says, "No weapon formed against me shall prosper. Every tongue that rises up against us in judgment you shall condemn". We miss that last part. We just say, well, "No weapon formed against us shall prosper". That's not just what it says. It says "Every tongue that rises up in judgment we shall condemn".
So you gotta learn to speak up against things that are said. Every now and then, God just says, ya know, bite your tongue. But even when I see something on television, I'll speak up. I refuse to let that thing live on the inside of me and I will talk back to the television. When people say certain things, I used to let stuff slide, but I'm learning, you know what? The way that I handle this issue is to speak back. The devil came at Jesus three times when he was in the wilderness and the devil started quoting scripture, but Jesus responded by saying. So our spiritual warfare is not just in the head. It's in the mouth.