This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

Welcome back for our last day, day five in our second week of our look through
the book of Nehemiah. We're learning what Rebuilders do, that Rebuilders have a
vision that grows out of their problems and the way they react to those
problems, reaction, that's the first step. That Rebuilders know how to get
things started, initiation, that's the next step.

They know how to get things started when everyone else is just standing around.
We've learned the last few days that Rebuilders are those who take the time to
say thank you. Appreciation is a part of having the energy to re-energize your
life.

And today we're going to begin to look at the truth that Rebuilders have learned
to handle opposition because you are going to face opposition in this life from
people, physical opposition, from Satan, spiritual opposition, even from
yourself, psychological opposition. You're going to face it in your life.
Nehemiah chapter four through six, you see the opposition that he faced as he
rebuilt the wall and got close to the end of the rebuilding.

A prime quality of those who build up rather than give up is this ability to
face opposition because all Rebuilders face opposition. We're all going to face
it. Whenever you want to build, whatever you want to build, there are people who
want to tear it down.

Why? Why? Well, because it's easier.

It's easier to be a critic than to build something up. It's easier to tear
something down than to build something up. I remember this story I'm telling you
about rebuilding our home many, many years ago.

It was a lot easier when we had to go in and tear the sheetrock that was damaged
off the wall. It was a lot easier to tear it off than to put it back on. In
fact, it was so easy to tear it off, people actually had fun doing it.

Give them a sledgehammer, go in a room, tear all that sheetrock off. They had so
much fun that when we walked in, I mean it was our house that had been
destroyed, they're whooping it up. They're having a great time.

Then they had to look real sad again because it was our house and then when we
left they were having a great time again. And I understood that. It's fun to
tear things down sometimes.

It's fun for a moment, but you don't build anything. So that's why people tear
down. The truth also is that action always attracts critics.

When something good is happening, it attracts critics. Harry Ironside, the old
preacher used to say, "Where there is light, there are bugs. " And there is.

It's going to always draw the bugs, the people that bug you. Nehemiah, as you
look through the book of Nehemiah, he provides us with some of the best advice
you will find anywhere regarding how to handle opposition in our lives. Business
books have been written on what Nehemiah teaches us here.

Relationship books have been written on what Nehemiah teaches us here about how
to handle opposition. He's going to look together with us at four major weapons
of opponents and at four ways to defuse those weapons. We're going to start that
look this week and end into the middle of next week.

We're going to first look at each weapon and then we're going to look at what
Nehemiah teaches us about how to defeat that weapon. The first weapon of those
who want to tear you down, the first weapon of opposition, is ridicule. In
chapter four, verses one to four, let me just read through verse three,
actually.

When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became angry and was
greatly incensed. He ridiculed the Jews. And in the presence of his associates
and the army of Samaria, he said, "What are these feeble Jews doing?

Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a
day?

Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble, burned as
they are? " Tobiah, the Ammonite, who was at his side, said, "What are they
building? If even a fox climbed on it, he'd break down their wall of stones.

" So here's Sanballat and Tobiah, these two critics. By the way, they were
people who were in the land. They were leaders in the land.

If Nehemiah allowed the wall to be rebuilt, they'd lose their position, they'd
lose power, so they come with ridicule. They're opponents. They made fun of
Nehemiah.

Jokes and laughter are primary in the arsenal of opponents when you want to
rebuild. They're amidst the favorite and they're amidst the most effective of
weapons. That's why they often form the first wave of attack.

You say, "I want to rebuild my career. " People make fun of you. They laugh at
you.

"I want to rebuild this marriage. " Your friends just laugh like that's never
going to happen. Now as someone who loves to laugh, let me tell you the
difference between laughter and ridicule.

Genuine laughter can pull you up, but ridicule puts you down. Laughter helps you
relax, but ridicule makes you want to quit. Laughter is a healer, but ridicule
is a weapon.

Laughter is with you. Ridicule is against you. Oh, they're still laughing, ha,
ha, ha, but it is against you.

Every ha is like a weapon, a strike against your soul. What causes this? What
causes the ridicule, the opposition in the first place?

Its perspective. It's the way the person is looking at it. Notice that Sanballa
and Tobiah 2 called it their wall.

Not God's wall, not God's project, their project. They were looking at this from
a merely human perspective. They saw the wall as simply Nehemiah's bad idea that
was going to negatively affect their lives.

As always happens, human perspective will ridicule giant steps of faith.
Absolutely ridicule. How could that ever happen?

It couldn't happen from a human perspective. Because I don't have faith, I don't
know how to have faith in that circumstance, I'm just going to ridicule you
because it makes me feel better about myself. All of this, this ridicule that
happened, this opposition, it teaches us something about Rebuilders and leaders
of all kinds.

Rebuilders have to have thick skin because you're going to face attack. That
attack might be from an individual, it can also come from within. Satan, you
might remember, is called the accuser in the Bible.

He loves to ridicule your faith. So he'll send this thought when you want to
have a new kind of faith, begin to rebuild your faith, begin to have a ministry
again. He'll send this thought into your mind.

Who do you think you are? How do you think you could do that? You've never done
anything like that.

You've never been able to have that kind of faith, ridicule, accusation. So how
do you defuse this weapon of ridicule? Here's what Nehemiah teaches us, you
redirect your thoughts.

You don't focus on the ridicule. If you focus on the ridicule, you're going to
be drawn into it, like into a deep well. No, you redirect your thoughts.

And Nehemiah teaches us here that prayer is the key to redirecting your
thoughts. You get your thoughts off of the enemy and you get your thoughts back
on God and prayer is the key to doing that. So in Nehemiah 4, 4-6, after the
ridicule, here's Nehemiah's prayer, "Hear us, O God.

Hear us, O our God, for we are despised. Turn their insults back on their own
heads. Give them over as plunder in the land of captivity.

Do not cover up their guilt or blot out their sins from your sight, for they
have thrown insults in the face of the builders. So we rebuilt the wall till all
of it reached half its height and the people worked with all of their heart. "
Nehemiah, in his prayer, says, "Let's look at this God's way.

" So never discount the therapeutic process of time on your knees, of time
talking to God. Chuck Swindoll says, "Do you fight on your feet or do you fight
on your knees? " If you fight on your feet, you try to fight the person, you're
going to lose every time because you're going to be swallowed up by the
ridicule.

If you fight on your knees, if you redirect your thoughts to God, then all of a
sudden, all of a sudden, you have strength to begin to rebuild again. Prayer
will redirect your thoughts. Now in this prayer, Nehemiah is redirecting his
thoughts in two very important ways.

And the same thing will happen to you when you pray. When you're facing a
ridicule, an opposition, prayer redirects your thoughts to remind yourself that
number one, God's will includes opposition. You start to try to do something
good, start to try to rebuild, and all of a sudden you get opposition and your
first thought is, "Why me, God?

I'm just trying to do the right thing. How could you have me face this? " But in
prayer you realize, "I'm not the only one.

Everyone who's ever tried to live a life of faith has faced opposition. " In
fact, you've told us in your word that all who are faithful in Christ Jesus will
inevitably face opposition. So who am I to think I'm not going to face it?

Jesus faced it. Prayer reminds you of that, that God's will includes opposition.
God's will must not stop because a few people are critical of the plan.

It doesn't stop because a few are critical of the plan. God's will will go on no
matter what. So you redirect your thoughts from why me, Lord, to let's go, Lord,
by prayer, by recognizing you're not alone in this.

Prayer also helps you to realize and recognize the destructiveness of
retaliation. You notice what Nehemiah did? Instead of retaliating against the
people, he talked to God about the people.

Instead of retaliating against the person that you're bitter against, talk to
God about them. Say everything you want to God and then let it go. Let it go in
God's presence.

The human response to criticism is always retaliation. You said this about me,
I'm going to say this about you. Let God fight those battles.

Satan would love nothing more than to distract you from the rebuilding that you
need to do by getting you caught up in a battle that is not a part of the
victory. And retaliation is a battle that's not a part of the victory.
Retaliation is a battle that lends a defeat every single time.

So you're trying to rebuild your marriage and you tell some people at your
office, I'm trying to rebuild my marriage. I'm trying to get connected with my
wife again. And one of the guys in your office says, why would you keep loving
somebody like her?

You can find somebody better than that and you're angry. And that anger, you
start to focus on them and proving them wrong rather than on your marriage and
making it right. Take that anger, express it to God, let it go.

Retaliation will always lead to defeat. Letting it go in God's presence and
forgiveness, that's what leads to victory. So Nehemiah teaches us we're going to
face some opposition.

One of them is ridicule. When you face ridicule, you redirect your thoughts. Now
let's do that right now in prayer.

Just in prayer, say to God, God, I want my thoughts to be on you. So this person
that I'm angry about, this situation that is not what I want it to be, instead
of getting caught up and running that conversation again and again through my
mind or that anger again and again through my mind, I bring it to you right now.
And I tell you, I lay it before you, what this person did or what that
circumstance did to me.

And Lord, you know about it. You can handle it. You can cause retribution in
their life much greater than I ever could.

And so I give it to you. I trust it to you because you know their heart like I'm
never going to know it. You know eternity like I'm never going to know it.

So I trust this into your hands. And I ask you, God, to help me to get back to
what you want to do in my life, to the building, the rebuilding you want to do
in my life. I don't want to get caught up in proving somebody else wrong.

I want to get caught up and live in the life that you have for me. That's what I
want. That's what I pray for.

In Jesus' name, amen. We will see you back next week as we continue to look
together at Nehemiah's wisdom for facing opposition.