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This is day two together of our look through Nehemiah and our third week. We're
looking together right now at how to face opposition in our life and we're
trying to rebuild and re-energize. We've looked at the opposition of ridicule
and the decision to redirect your thoughts, the opposition of attack and how to
reposition your forces.

When you face discouragement you restore your confidence. And now I want to talk
about a fourth kind of attack that comes against us. And that is the attack of
distraction.

You face all the other attacks and you're able by God's grace and strength to
face those attacks and come out ahead and then he's going to get you with
distraction. He wants to distract you from what God wants done in your life.
That's what Satan would love to do.

So when nothing else will work, he will start to use distraction. Once you begin
to be a success, Satan would love nothing better than to distract you from that
success. He has a lot of ways.

We could talk about a hundred ways of distraction. But there are three
particular ones that happen here in Nehemiah that we want to learn from in the
book of Nehemiah. As Nehemiah is finishing this wall, his enemies begin to see
we're not going to be able to attack him.

We're not going to be able to intimidate him. We're not going to be able to
discourage him. So they begin to try to distract him.

First they try to distract him by false promises in verses one down through
verse two in chapter six. "When word came to Sam Ballat and Tobiah, Gisham the
Arab, and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and that not a gap
was left in it, though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates, Sam
Ballat and Gisham sent me this message, 'Come and let us meet together in one of
the villages in the plain of Ono. ' But they were scheming to harm me.

" Nehemiah was tempted to be distracted by this opportunity to go down and make
everything right with his enemies. But they were actually scheming to harm him.
Chuck Swindoll says of this, they invited him to the plain of Ono, and Swindoll
says say Ono to Ono.

Say Ono to this false promise that we're going to all be together, it's all
going to work with nothing behind it. They were just trying to distract him. And
when you start to rebuild a relationship, there's going to be someone who comes
in with the false promise of a better relationship.

Say no to that. Say no. We'll get to that a little bit more to how to say no in
just a few minutes.

He was also distracted by gossip. Look what happens next, beginning in verse 5
down through verse 7. "Then the fifth time Sam Ballat sent his aid to me with
the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written,
'It is reported among the nations,' and Gisham says, 'It's true that you and the
Jews are plotting a revolt, and therefore you're building up that wall.

Moreover, according to these reports, you are about to become their king, and
have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem.
'" There's a king in Judah. Now this report's going to get back to the king, so
come, let us confer together.

He couldn't distract him with this temptation for false unity, so now he starts
to use gossip against him. And then we're going to see that that doesn't work in
a few minutes, so he tries a third way to distract him. He tries to distract him
by fear.

Verse 10. "One day I went to the house of Shemaiah of Deliah, the son of
Mechabal, and he was shut up in his home, and he said, 'Let us meet in the house
of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are
coming to kill you. By night they're coming to kill you.

'" It almost sounds ridiculous when you read it, but it was all designed to
create fear in Nehemiah. The distraction of it's all going to fall apart. And
sometimes this distraction comes even into your mind, no one else has to say it.

Right at the pinnacle, as you're almost able to have a success, Satan sends
these doubtful thoughts it's going to fall apart, it's not going to work, men
are coming to kill you, by night they're coming to kill you, trying to scare
you. How do you face these possible distractions? Nehemiah teaches us how.

How do you face the enemy of distraction? You remember your priorities. That's
the key.

How do you remember your priorities? And I want you to notice with me how
effectively Nehemiah defeated this enemy of distraction, this opposition of
distraction. The temptation to false unity, some false promise, Nehemiah teaches
us to just say no.

In verse 3, "I sent messengers to them with this reply, 'I'm carrying on a great
project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go
down to you? ' Nehemiah saw immediately that would be a waste of time.

My project is rebuilding the wall, not making everything right with these
so-called enemies. Even if I could make things right with them, that's not my
project, that's not the goal. So I'm not going to be tempted into that by some
false promise.

No, I'm going to stay here and rebuild the wall. One of the marks of maturity is
the ability to say no. And by the way, another mark is the ability to accept a
no when God says no or someone else says no.

Nehemiah knew how to say no to that promise, that distraction for some false
thing that was never going to come to be gossip. How do you deal with that
distraction? You simply tell the truth.

I don't know of a better answer anywhere that I've ever heard or ever read than
the answer that Nehemiah gives to the gossip that was being told against him in
verse 8. I love this answer. When he hears about all the gossip in verse 8, "I
sent him this reply, 'Nothing like what you are saying is happening.

You're just making it up out of your head. '" I love that answer. It's the most
refreshing comment you could ever say about gossip.

You just tell the truth and you forget the rumor. Nothing like what you're
saying is happening. You're just making it up out of your head.

That's how you deal with gossip. You don't try to answer the gossip or try to
justify everything that the gossip is saying. They'll just make up more gossip.

They're just trying to distract you. Satan is trying to distract you from what
God wants to be happening in your life. And then what about fear?

When the distraction of fear comes against you, you just consider the source.
You recognize that God is greater than any distraction of fear. So how does
Nehemiah deal with this distraction in verses 11 to 13?

But I said, "Should a man like me run away or should one like me go into the
temple to save his life? I will not go. I realized that God had not sent him,
but that he had prophesied against me because Hobeiah and Sinballat had hired
him.

He'd been hired to intimidate me so that I'd commit a sin by doing this. And
then they would give me a bad name to discredit me. " Oh, look at Nehemiah.

He's just afraid. He's hiding out in the temple while everybody else is working.
He's letting everybody else take the work and the risk, but he's hiding out to
make sure that he's okay.

As a leader, they were trying to discredit him. When you face the fear of
something wrong could happen, Nehemiah's answer is the right answer. "I'm not
the kind of person who's going to run away.

I'm not the kind of person who's going to go into the temple to save his life
while everyone else is risking their life. I'm the kind of person who's going to
trust God in this circumstance. I'm the kind of person when I started, I was
trusting God and finishing, and I'm going to keep trusting God because that's
the kind of person God's made me to be.

" Because Nehemiah did this, because he faced all of these oppositions that came
against him, and he decided to trust God in the midst of all of them. Because he
did this, verses 15 and 16 occur. In verse 15, "So the wall was completed on the
25th of Elul in 52 days.

When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid
and they lost their self-confidence because they realized that this work had
been done with the help of our God. " So instead of Nehemiah losing his
confidence, he restored his confidence. And notice, when he restored his
confidence, all his enemies lost their confidence.

That's the power of what can happen in my life and in your life. You want a
victory, a testimony to what happens when you oppose the opponents of God's
will? Ask yourself, "How have I been responding to opposition lately?

Have you been allowing it to tear you down? Or are you determined to keep on
rebuilding that relationship, that ministry, that opportunity, that life, even
in the midst of the opposition? " I've got to tell you something.

Human determination is not enough to come up against these opponents. Nehemiah
teaches us that this ability to come against the opponents comes from your
relationship with God. He teaches us about basic commitments to God in every way
that he faces the opposition in his life, about talking to God in prayer, about
following God in the changes, about listening to God in his encouragement, about
living God's priorities for your life through his word.

So if you're trying to do it alone, of course you're feeling defeated. The big
change you need to make in your life is all of a sudden you can recognize, "I
need to do this with God's strength and not my strength. " This opposition,
maybe the greatest thing about it is it's inviting me to depend on God and not
depend on myself.

And when you do that, when you accept that invitation and God gives you victory,
then you have a testimony. Then you have something you can share with other
people. Instead of a story of how you did a great job and, wow, look at him, you
can talk about how God did a great thing.

And as you look at God, you can see God's great things in your life too. Let's
take a minute to pray together. Father, we all face opposition in this life.

Things do not work out like we want them to. We face problems we never wanted.
We face people even who are coming against us, Satan's temptations and schemes.

Lord, thank you that you're greater. You are greater than any opposition. And so
we turn to you and we say we want to follow you.

We want to listen to you. We want to live the way that you want us to live. And
Lord, when we face these opportunities to be deflected from your will, I pray
that instead of allowing that to happen, that you'd help us to look to you and
to say no to the temptations for false promises in our life, to say yes, to
listening to you and trusting in your promise above any gossip that's told about
us, to say yes to allowing you to overcome any fear in our lives.

We want to trust you even in the midst of the problems. And so we ask for your
strength right now. In Jesus' name, we ask for it.

Amen. Tomorrow, we're going to take up together the next step in re-energizing
your life, learning how to organize your successes.