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Grace City Church Nehemiah (Part 7) – Work Hard and Make War Josh McPherson – November 1, 2015 Nehemiah 4 Good morning. If you're new, welcome. My name is Josh. I'm lead pastor here at Grace City Church. We are working our way through the book of Nehemiah, and we are syncing the study of Nehemiah with the launching of an initiative we're calling Mission Advance. It's the biggest, most audacious mountain we've ever endeavored to tackle in the very short history of our church family. We're very, very excited. If you weren't here last week and you're a member of our church family, I just want to encourage you to go on the website and check out last week's sermon. I don't normally ask you to go back and listen to old messages because I can hardly stand to listen to myself. I wouldn't ask you to do that again, but if you can go back and listen to the sermon from last week, it'll kind of paint the full picture for you, hopefully answer all of your questions, or maybe even generate some good questions you can ask us so we can make this better. It was a really, really important sermon last week explaining what Mission Advance is, why Mission Advance is, and how Mission Advance is going to work. So if you missed that, I just want to strongly encourage you to check that out this week so we can all get on the same page, have the same dialogue as a church family, and be prepared to launch from base camp November 22 on a Commitment Sunday, which you will not want to miss. It's going to be a big Sunday morning. So are you excited about it? Yeah! Well, let's pray, and then we'll dive in together.

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Father, we're grateful for your Word that is everlasting. It's unshakable. It's unmoving. It's unwavering. It doesn't shift and change its colors with the blowing winds of the culture. It's just there like a rock, immovable. It's the place we can run to and have assurance that it's true and right and it hasn't changed. We can know exactly what it's going to say and what it's going to do. It's going to call us to follow Jesus. It's going to show us who Jesus is. It's going to paint for us the picture of the gospel and call us into the work of the kingdom. We pray this morning as we open your Word that you would do a life-giving work, that you would do a life-changing work, that by your Holy Spirit you would speak to us. Take the words you authored through men, Father, and do your work in the men and women here in this room this morning we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. This morning's sermon is entitled Work Hard and Make War. If you have a Bible, I want to invite you to turn to Nehemiah, chapter 4. Last time we picked up the story, things were going great. Chapter 3, Nehemiah has gotten permission from the king to leave Susa, go to Jerusalem, and take up the rebuilding effort to take the old bricks and the new lumber and build the wall and the gates. He has rallied the people of Israel, and they're excited and going about the work. In chapter 3 he lists all of the 41 different captains who are leading the entire people of God, priests and laypeople, nobles and simpletons, white collar, blue collar, men, women. All of them are doing the work of building the wall together to establish a strong city of God in Jerusalem. It's exciting. Then we hit chapter 4. We realize that not only will there be work to do for the kingdom of God, but there will be war to be waged by the people of God who are doing great things for God. There is a dark side to spiritual leadership. It's not all roses. It's not just this skipping trip through the tulips. It's a call to walk a path of war. Anyone doing anything worthwhile that has kingdom value will be resisted, maligned, ridiculed, mocked, and attacked. Jesus promised it.

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Paul promised it in the New Testament, and we're going to see that illustrated for us here in the story of Nehemiah. One of the things I love about the Word of God is it's a deeply human book. It's a divine book authored by the Holy Spirit. It's also a human book written by the hand of men. It does not color over things so as to paint some rose-colored picture of life that's not in reality. Things go wrong. The reality of it is in your life nothing went right this week, and if it did that's the exception not the rule. Our theological worldview, as given to us from the Word of God, tells us that from page 3 things have been broken. They don't work in your relationship with your children, your relationship with your parents. Things don't go like they should with the relationship with your spouse. Things don't go the way they should in your relationship with your boss or your employees or your friends at school or the members on your team, because the first thing the fall broke was relationships. Relationships are fractured, and they've been difficult ever since. There was no mocking, jeering, gossiping, slandering, and criticizing in the garden before the fall. Then man decided to live out from underneath God's rule and reign and authority and do it their own way, and we've been paying the consequences for it ever since. Nothing works. In fact, the fall stained things like food. There will come a day when Jesus will come back and restore all things and make all things new, and I will be able to eat as many maple bars as I want and not gain any weight, but until then I just look at a carb and blow up. I turned 36 and something changed in my body, because it's broken. When things are as it should be, I'll eat bacon and doughnuts on Christmas morning and I won't be comatose Christmas afternoon. Your cars don't work. The tires wear out. All of work in life is simply working against the curse and fixing problems, because nothing is the way it should be. Here we have an incredible picture of that. Remember Luke Skywalker? At some point he blasts off for the Dagobah Grace City Church

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system. He's going to go look for Yoda. He finds Yoda, and he's young and full of zeal and probably a little naïveté. He's like, "I'm not afraid of the dark side." Do you remember what Yoda says to him? "You will be." The man who has never seen the enemy and espouses no fear of them obviously has never met them. So too is spiritual leadership. If you're walking through life endeavoring to be a leader in your family or your home or your workplace or your church, to have influence for the kingdom of God wherever you're at, and you have no sense of fear of the Enemy, it's because you've never met the Enemy. We have here in this story an incredible picture of the reality that ministry is war. It's crazy. Nehemiah has been called of God. He has been enabled and empowered by God. He has been provided for by God. I mean, he got a Persian pagan king to not only permit the rebellion of the wall but to fund it. Remember that? I mean, we've had God move and work and provide over and over and over again, and nothing goes as planned. What a great picture for us, this raw and real story of a man who has a holy ambition for God and everything continually goes wrong in trying to accomplish it. It should be very instructive for us when we consider taking up a holy calling. So the big idea this morning is simply this: A holy ambition for God will always be met with opposition. I think it's a timely word for us as we move into what I think is going to be the greatest endeavor we've ever taken up to date for the kingdom of God. We're asking God to move us from a simple outpost for the kingdom to a headquarters for the kingdom. We're taking up a great endeavor. We're asking God to give us a holy ambition, and we need to be prepared for the reality that we will face opposition. So too in anything you take up of greatness for God. You want to be a man of God? You want to be a holy leader in your home? Guess what? You're going to be opposed.

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You want to see kids on your ball team meet Jesus? You're going to be opposed. You want to be salt and light at your place of employment? You're going to be opposed. You take up the name of Jesus and you will be opposed. Let's just get that on the table. The question becomes…How does a godly man or woman handle the dark shadows of spiritual leadership? How does a godly man or woman respond to attack and opposition when it comes their way and stands against them? Work and war. 1. When facing attack, pray to God and trust his vindication. "That sounds like such a pastoral, spiritual thing to say. What do you mean?" It's actually more practical than you think. Let's open our Bibles and look at the story. Chapter 4: "Now when Sanballat…" Remember from a couple of weeks ago? This is a bad dude. There's like a fin in the water, and it's heading toward the swimmer on the surfboard. Sanballat is a bad dude, and he's on the scene again. "Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews." This is the craziest thing. This isn't just a slight annoyance with this. This is an emotional, visceral response. Why do you think that is? I mean, they're not bugging anybody. They're not harassing anybody. They're not horning in on somebody else's business. They're just there trying to rebuild their own city, and this guy goes ballistic, angry, greatly enraged to the point of jeering at them. What is that about? Here are a few things to note about critics. They're irrational, everything is personal, and when they attack they have a sense of fire that doesn't seem to match the issue or the bone they're picking. Sometimes critics arise because they're being threatened by the success of another organization or person. Sometimes critics arise because they're jealous of the success of another person. Think about this at work. You're doing your job well, and all of a sudden you're getting criticized by coworkers. They're talking behind your back. They're running you down to the boss. Every chance they get, they run you down. You've been successful. They haven't been successful.

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Now they're jealous of your success, and they become a critic of you. They can't celebrate with you. They can't come humbly to you and say, "Hey, how are you doing that?" Their default broken, fallen worldview tells them, "I need to attack this person because they're making me look bad." It happens all the time in the workplace. You're advancing in your career. Joe Blow is there playing World of Warcraft on his computer and downloading free porn, wondering why he can't get anything done at work, and you're actually doing your job and advancing. He's like, "Hey man, you're making us all look bad. Knock it off!" So he begins to criticize you. It's everywhere. I notice this in my own life, and it's embarrassing to admit it. As a young man, there is this proneness to think you know it all, see it all, get it all, understand it all, and you have it all dialed in, and you give yourself permission to chirp at older people who are faithful and fruitful but aren't quite doing it right. It's just embarrassing. I remember totally running down pastors like Rick Warren. "Oh, The Purpose Driven Life. Total compromise. Blah, blah, blah, secret sins." Hey, wake up, idiot Josh McPherson. Rick Warren has done more with his life in three minutes than I will do in three lifetimes of work. There will be more people serving Jesus in the kingdom of God forever because of what he has done than what I could do with three lifetimes, and I'm going to sit back and chirp? Really? As I've gotten older, it's just embarrassing to reflect on things I've thought and done and said. If I were to really press down, I wouldn't be surprised if one of the sources of my criticism wasn't this distant objective place of wisdom but rather this small and petty jealousy, watching a man with extraordinary gifts do more in a day with his life than I would probably do in a lifetime and going, "Well, it can't be all perfect. There has to be something missing there. I bet he's broken somewhere." Of course he is. He's a human working in a fallen world and by God's grace is doing some incredible things, and I sat back and chirped at him. It's embarrassing.

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That was a long time ago. I don't do that anymore. I mean, just look at the wisdom rolling off me here. I got a lot of great traits from the McPherson clan, but one of the things I got that I battle to this day is we make quick assessments of people. Boom! Boom! Boom! Label, cut, dried, on the shelf, move on. Half the time we're probably right on, and half the time we're totally missing the boat. That's one of my things I continually fight against, just being critical of other people. Sometimes critics have an agenda that is in conflict with the mission of God and his people. They're not jealous. They're just angry because they're on the other team. Sometimes critics feel excluded by the power and influence they believe they are entitled to have in an organization. I've experienced this all the time. Acts 29, a growing church-planting network… Guys say, "Josh, we just want to be heard." What they mean is, "We want to be obeyed. We don't have influence, position, power, or any responsibility to lead, but we want our voice to be heard," meaning, "We want our agenda to be played on the field. When we don't get it, we're going to gripe and email and complain and chirp and mock and malign and gossip, the whole nine yards." That is not coming from the heart of a big-hearted, kingdom-minded man. It's a small-hearted, self-kingdom man. Some people are traditionalists and simply oppose change in any form. "You can't do that!" "Why?" "We've always done it this way." That's like the card they can play that shuts you up. Really? That's the best answer you have? What if what you've always been doing totally stunk? Good reason to change I think. Some people are demonically inspired to hate God, hate God's people, and hate God's work. Some people have been rebuked or disciplined by leadership or an organization. They become angry and seek revenge. "How dare you fire me for not doing my job and underperforming and never showing up for work? I'll show you." It's totally irrational, emotionally-charged driven. How does Nehemiah respond? Verse 2: "And [Sanballat] said in the presence of his brothers Grace City Church

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and of the army of Samaria…" Critics never criticize in a vacuum. They always gather a crowd. Who wants to be a critic alone, right? "What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore [the wall] for themselves? Will they [offer] sacrifice[s]? Will they finish up [the work] in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?" What's he doing? Just chirping, chipping away. Tobiah picks up the ball and runs with it. "Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, 'Yeah, that's a great point there, Sanballat. What are they building anyway? If a fox goes up on it, he's going to break down their wall of stone.'" He's making fun of them now. "They don't know what they're doing. They bit off too much. They can't get it done. They'll never finish, and if they did, the work would be total garbage and a fox could jump on it and it would fall away." What does Nehemiah do? "Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders." Notice Nehemiah's first instinctive knee-jerk response. He doesn't mount a counterattack. He doesn't put together a PR campaign to correct their mistakes. He doesn't defend himself. He doesn't take up the mantle of correcting all of their miscues and false understandings to make sure everyone knows he is right. He simply turns away from the critic to God, and he prays. You think, "Well, yeah, but should we pray like this? Wasn't this like a pre-gospel prayer and we're supposed to turn the other cheek now?" No, look at what he does when he prays. The beauty of this is it's raw. It's real. It's not filtered by some over-spiritualized, "Father, thou art blah, blah, blah." It's right from the gut, like, "God, they're ticking me off. I'm frustrated. This is hard. They're sandbagging our work. You need to deal with them." Here's the brilliance of what he does. When you come under attack, it's going to create an emotional response in you, and there are three ways you can go with it. You can punch back. Grace City Church

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That normally won't do any good. You can go dump on people around you like your friends or spouse or relatives. That creates gossip and massive complications. Or you can turn to God, the only one who can do anything about it anyways, and you can dump it all on him, and in doing so you entrust the work of vindication to God, not you. That's an important note to make, because the work of vindication is a holy endeavor. When something does something that's wrong, for the universe to be right and God to be holy, that wrong needs to be paid for. That wrong needs to be fixed. That wrong needs to be addressed and turned over again. The problem comes when you and I take up the mantle of vindication to fix what's wrong. "You abused me; now you're going to pay for it. You hurt me; now I'm going to punch you in the mouth. You attacked me; strap on, brother. I'm coming with both guns blazing." In Romans 12, Jesus said, "Vindication is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord." The believer can have hope not in the fact that those who attack us will go scot-free but that those who attack us will experience justice, not from our hands but from the hand of God. When you're there in that place, you can entrust your reputation and your livelihood into the good hands of the mighty God who will one day in his perfect timing make all wrongs right. You don't have to fight for yourself. Jesus will fight for you. That's the good news of the gospel that comforts the heart of the abused and the broken who want to take up the mantle of vindication and fix it. Guess what? You could never repay someone who has wronged you enough. You just couldn't. Sexually abused when you were 6 years old. You could never repay the person enough to make up for the pain you've experienced. God will. God satisfies the wrath of his vindication in two places. Either the vindication and wrath that sin deserves will be poured out on his Son Jesus Christ when that perpetrator puts their faith in Jesus so that his or her sin is now paid for by Jesus, or they will die apart from God and pay for the cost of their sin in constant eternal torment in a place called hell God designed to make all

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wrongs right. You can entrust the work of vindication to the hand of God. You don't need to take it up yourself. If you take up the work of vindication, you're essentially saying, "It's my turn to be god," and it will bury you. No man and no woman can do the work of God, because you're not God. Nehemiah is unjustly attacked as he follows the holy calling of God, living out the ambition of God that God put on his heart. He's attacked. He doesn't defend himself. He turns to God and says, "I need your help. This is frustrating me. Deal with them as you would." When you pray, it puts criticism into perspective. The perspective is you see criticism and the finiteness and smallness of it in light of the infinite size and power of God, and all of a sudden the criticism doesn't have as much bite anymore. When facing attack, you pray to God and trust his vindication. This sounds pastorally spiritual, Sunday-school-class simple, but there's profundity underneath that point, especially for those who have been hurt, which includes all of us. 2. When facing attack, focus on the critical mission, not on the critics of the mission. When criticized, you need to stay focused on the critical mission, not the critics of the mission. Look at verse 5. "Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders. So we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work." How much energy did Nehemiah give to facing and addressing and responding to the critics? About two seconds' worth, and then he got back to work. The tactic of the Enemy will be to get you to be distracted from the work of God. Notice you can't do step two if you first did not do step one. You get attacked. You get oppressed. You get resisted. If you do not go to God and trust his work of vindication against the ones who are attacking you, you will then have to turn and deal with them yourself, which will then mean you are now off track and off mission, burning energy on things and people and fights you should not be Grace City Church

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burning energy on. The mission is not moving forward. Now you've made the mission the critics, not the mission. Nehemiah didn't defend himself. He didn't engage or argue. He just kept his head down and did his job. Leaders don't get distracted by criticism; they stay on mission in the face of criticism. If the Enemy can't get you to sin, he'll just get you discouraged and preoccupied. He'll get you distracted. He'll discredit you. He'll dishearten you. He'll divide you, and ultimately his goal is to destroy you. Never forget the endgame on the road of distraction is always destruction. You get distracted from your primary mission of being a godly husband in your home, a godly father in your home, a godly wife or mother in your home, a godly son or daughter in your home… You get distracted from the mission God has called you and the role he has given you in your home, your family, your church, your city, your place of employment, your school… You get distracted, and you will run down the road to destruction. That's all there is to it. Satan didn't come down with a pitchfork and put it in your throat. He just got you distracted, and you ran off the rails yourself. The endgame of distraction is always destruction. It's interesting to note in this entire passage of increased opposition, Nehemiah never once engages the critics. Very instructive for us. Most critics don't understand criticism on the receiving end because they've never been criticized. Nobody criticizes somebody who's not doing anything. If you're sitting on the couch with your finger up your nose, you're not a threat to anybody. When you get out on the field and put on the jersey, you become a threat. I remember reading an article a number of years ago. It totally struck me. It was so frustrating. It was an article written by a critic in the New York Times, and they were criticizing Kiefer Sutherland. When you go after my boy Jack Bauer… You mess with the horns you might get this bull. I know he's no angel, but I love my man Kiefer. Kiefer had just come out and done some Broadway thing or whatever, and this guy had the audacity to tear Kiefer limb from limb. The thought struck me, "This guy is a professional critic," Grace City Church

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meaning he does nothing. All he does is sit back and take potshots at all of the risk-takers. What kind of horrible existence is that? They have to be on the very bottom of the food chain, and we give them microphones and 3,000-word articles in papers. Compare one person who sat at their computer all week in the safety and anonymity of their office and did nothing but criticize compared to the one who has been up early, up late, memorizing lines and where to be on the stage, and then takes the risk to step out in front of God and everybody and put all on the line and risk failing and losing reputation and the fickle nature of stardom and celebrity. He takes that risk, and this guy had the audacity to go, "Eh, Cplus." From the loser! That's the nature of a critic. One of the big takeaways to this morning is not just how to respond to criticism, but the backside of that is don't become a critic. Good lord! Don't become a critic. Stay so busy doing something that you don't have time to criticize other people who are doing things, especially for young guys like me. It's so easy to think we have it all figured out. News flash, moron. We don't. Have a little humility and take the energy you would use to criticize and put it to work in doing something productive. Move the ball forward somewhere. Okay, here's something you can take away that might be helpful. When a person criticizes you, you should ask these four questions: "Is this a person I respect? Is this a person I'm in relationship with? Is this a person who cares about me? And is this a person whose advice I would seek out?" If the answer to those is, "No, no, no, no," guess what? Delete the email. Tune them out, because they're not there for your good; they're there working for your destruction. This does not mean you don't seek counsel. This does not mean you turn critics into coaches, because in reality, every critic has an ounce of truth within their message of poison. I mean, the reality is everything Sanballat said was true. They are feeble. They won't be able to restore it themselves. They won't be able to finish it in a day, and there's no way they can restore the

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stones and rubbish and ashes to a wall unless they had help from outside themselves. Those things are all true. They're just said with a vindictive and ill-motive heart. I've learned when I get criticized… It happens often. It's weird. Not from anybody in our church family, but people who drive by and come in for Sunday. Last week it was, "You don't preach the gospel" in an email. I got an email saying, "All you do is preach love and grace. You never preach justice." I was like, "Well, you've never been here more than three weeks in a row, because that's my favorite part. You know, 'God wants to burn you!'" I'm like, "Who are you talking about?" So apparently I don't preach a full gospel, and all I do is elevate God's grace and love, and something else they said I can't remember. It was anonymous, so we don't listen to it. What I do do is I go to the guys and go, "Is there any truth in this?" I don't trust myself to properly filter criticism and learn how it can become my coach, because I'm very thin-skinned. I get hurt quickly. I don't like when people don't like me. Nobody likes that. So I go, "Okay, is there something here I need to hear?" I trust my wife. I trust Adam, Kent, and Chris. I love the men I'm in community with, and I trust those men to go, "You know what? There's a seed of truth in this. I would reject the spirit in which it was said, but I would receive the content of it, or at least a portion of it, because I think it's true." I've made a practice of that, because I just don't trust myself to filter out the good from the bad. If it gets said in a harsh tone, guess what? It's gone. I'll think about it forever, but physically it's gone. So just a pastoral word of counsel. Don't write off criticism, but filter it and use others to help you filter it so that you can take out the good from the bad and it can improve you. 3. When facing attack, make a tactical action plan. The reason I put this point in there is because I simply wanted to say the word tactical in a sermon. For those of us who have this spiritual propensity, we always miss this thing. This might be one of my favorite verses in this

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book. Let's read it together. You talk to God and trust him to vindicate you. You stay focused on the critical mission, not the critics of the mission. Then you make a tactical action plan. Look at verse 7. "But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry." Track what's happening here. It's growing now. We have Sanballat to the north. We have Tobiah in the east. We have the Arabs and Ammonites in the south. We have the Ashdodites to the west. They are geographically surrounded by an enemy who's not just criticizing now. Now they begin plotting. Verse 8: "And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it." They've criticized. They've verbally attacked. Now they're plotting to physically attack, and what does Nehemiah do? He makes a tactical action plan. Watch verse 9. For some of you guys, this is going to become your life verse. "And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night." "We prayed to our God, and we posted an armed guard." I love that. We trust in God and we lock and load. Praise Jesus and pass the ammunition. Hope in God and keep your powder dry. Trust in Jesus and sharpen your saber. I could keep going on. I thought about this this week. It was interesting. I thought, "Man, this is a very, very helpful word for us as believers." So often we over-spiritualize things. You know what I mean? "Oh, I'm trying to stop looking at pornography." "Cool, man. That's honorable. Do you want to serve Jesus?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Do you want to stop defiling your mind and your wife's body and your family and dripping toxic poison generationally to those below you because you're a pervert looking at other

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women when no one else is around, defiling their bodies and dishonoring their fathers? Because those girls have fathers somewhere. Do you want to stop doing that?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Do you want to stop living in the dark and walk in the light?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "Do you want to stand up and be an honorable man for once in your life?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah." "What are you doing?" "Well, I've been praying." "And? Do you still have Internet at your house?" "Yeah." "What, did you not wear a bike helmet as a kid? Pray and post a guard, dude. Pray and make a tactical action plan, a strategic action plan, a strategic, tactical plan. Get tactical. Get strategic so you can be tactical in the moment you need to." (I'm going to say it like 20 times before the sermon is over because it's one of my favorite words.) Make a plan, bro. It's not enough to just kind of want to do something. You have to will it into existence. Nehemiah doesn't go, "Well, because I'm going to be an example for generations to come of spiritual leadership, we're just going to pray and trust God." No, we're going to pray, trust God,

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and post an armed guard, because there are times when we war against things spiritually, and that works itself into the physical realm, and we prepare and plan physically as well. Case in point. As a church family, we have armed guards on this property every Sunday, the reason being it's a crazy day and age, and wackos and wing nuts want to get their name in the paper or do something stupid, so we're just going to prepare. Our job is to protect the flock. We trust ultimately in the hand of God, not in the hand of man, and we post a guard. You can't walk into Grace Kids and just grab any kid you want. You have to have ID. You have to have a matching ID badge with the kids. We know all of the exit doors. We know the closest doors from the outside to Grace Kids. We have guards out there right now. We're not stupid. We're not naïve. Following Jesus does not mean you're a pushover. It means you get together with smart guys and gals and make a tactical action plan to think through any resistance or opposition you might face, and you make a plan to meet it, and then you trust in God to protect you. This is a good word for us as a church family. In your personal life, in us corporately, we trust and hope in God, and we keep our powder dry, ready to rock. So what happens? The war of nerves begins. It's interesting to note that the more success they experienced, the more progress they made, the more resistance that came against them. They're halfway done with the wall now, and the resistance is only intensifying, meaning the more you follow Jesus, the more you be intentional about being the spiritual leader of your home, the more you become a threat, men, to the Enemy. You're like, "Man, this has never been so hard before." Yeah, because you've been a spiritual deadbeat until three weeks ago or until three years ago when you took seriously your role as the head of your home to seek the Father, to be a lover and follower of Jesus, and to shepherd and lead your family, and all of a sudden you got resisted. Why? Because for the first time in your grown adult life, you became a threat to the Enemy. Good news and congratulations. You're finally in the game. Grace City Church

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The old Vietnam pilot. Our radar didn't work, we had low-quality technology in our airplanes, and the jungle was thick, but it was easy to find the enemy. We knew we were off target when nobody was shooting at us. We knew we were on target when we were taking fire. So we'd just fly around until they'd shoot at us, and then we'd drop our bombs. Getting shot at was a good thing. When you're in war, if you're on a path that no one cares about, it's probably because the path isn't that important. When you take up a meaningful holy ambition to be a godly husband, a godly wife, or a godly son or daughter, to be salt and light in your school, your place of employment, in your home raising your kids, or wherever God has you… Wherever you are, you take seriously God's call in your life, and guess what? Opposition. Congratulations! You're now a threat. What a way to live. I want to keep the Enemy up at night because of how I'm dreaming and scheming to move and advance the gospel forward, not arrogantly but fearfully, knowing that if I saw the Enemy I'd probably mess my pants up. But I don't post a guard and then place all my hope in the guard; I post a guard and place my hope in the God overseeing all things. Look at what happens. Progress gets made on the wall. Increased resistance comes. They all go away. It gets better. The enemy gives up. The enemy loses heart. Nuh-uh, it gets worse. Verse 10: "In Judah it was said, 'The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.'" Where was that coming from? Was it coming from Sanballat and the enemies of God? No, that was coming from the people of God, Judah. It's interesting to note. "We're too weak to get it done. There's too much work to get done. The enemy is too strong to complete the project." Where did they get that?

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It's the very thing the critics said a few verses ago, and now they've picked up the song, and they're beating the critic's drum. That's how toxic poison works. It works its way into the camp, and then the leaders have a problem, because now they're not just facing an enemy from without; they're facing whiners from within. A leader's worst enemy is whiners. 4. In facing attack, you have to remember as a leader that God is awesome. Look at verse 10. "In Judah it was said, 'The strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall.'" Then verse 11: "And our enemies said, 'They will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.' At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, 'You must return to us.'" Do you see what's happening now? The toxic poison of the enemy leaks into the camp. Now they believe it too. They become their own worst enemies, and they quit. They walk away from the wall. They drop their shovels and trowels, and they walk away. Then the enemy goes from spreading a rumor to publicly criticizing them to plotting and planning against them to now issuing open threats of death. Nehemiah shows up at 5:30 ready to go, all excited. "We prayed to God. We posted a guard. We're in the will of God. This is all going to work out." And nobody is there that morning. Where did they all go? "Nehemiah, they're going to attack us." "Shut up!" "We're not going to be able to get it done." What does Nehemiah do? Look at verse 13. "So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places…" What's he saying? In the soft places, in the weak places, in the most vulnerable places. "…I stationed the people by their clans, with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, 'Do not be afraid of them.'" "Why? We're awesome and they're weak? No. They're incredible. We're a bunch of losers. Obviously we're proving that right now. But do this." "Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome…"

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Do you see what he does? "Why are you afraid of those little weasels? They can't do anything to us. He who is in us and with us is greater than he who's out there against us. Why are you acting like we have no one to defend us? God will act on his behalf, and if we walk with him and for him, he will act for himself and defend us. We have nothing to fear. Pick up your sword, pick up your armor, pick up your shield, and get back to work, not because you're great but because our God is great." Do you see what he's doing? He's saying, "Look, don't have confidence based on who you are. In fact, the things they said about us are probably true. We're feeble. We're weak. We won't be able to finish the wall in our own strength. We probably never should have started this audacious task, but God is in it, so we're going to go for it." There are things God will call you to do in your life, like beat pornography, like submit to your husband and serve him sacrificially even when he's not honorable and deserving of it, like submit to your parents and obey them even when you don't think they deserve it, like talk to someone about Jesus at your school or your place of employment that scares the daylights out of you. God will ask you to do things that will require you to look beyond the strength you possess in yourself to a foreign source of strength, namely the God who is our rock. Then what does he say? "Don't be afraid of them. You're looking at the wrong thing. Remember the Lord, our high tower the righteous run to, the Proverbs say, who is great and awesome. He's the one whose very presence causes the enemies to cower in shame and fear. Fight for your brothers. Fight for your sons. Fight for your daughters. Fight for your wives. Fight for your homes." Do you see what he's saying? "Man up! Get a spine, and lean into the enemy. Don't run away from adversity; run to it." If you do not remember God and stand and fight, there will be consequences to your cowardice, and the consequences will roll out in the lives of your wife, your son, your daughter, your sisters, those in your home, and those in your community. There are people hanging in the balance on the other side of your courageous obedience to Jesus. Will somebody stand up and Grace City Church

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follow him into the wind of adversity? Jesus is saying, "Don't get cocky and arrogant and think you're all that, because what the critics say is probably true. You're a loser. You're a sinner. You're a failure. You never follow through." Never once does Nehemiah go, "That's not true!" He says, "Uh-huh, you got me, but my God is awesome. I've been vindicated through Jesus Christ, my past, present, and future sin nailed to the cross in his broken body. I may be a broken, quitting, tail-tucking, cowardly, running loser like you're saying. I'm going to give you that, but what I'm not going to give you is that my God is awesome, and he hasn't given up on me. In fact, he's going to fight for me. So here I stand." You can do that, men. You can do that, ladies. You can have a boldness and a courage bordering on audacious because of how awesome your God is. Nehemiah remembered it wasn't his idea to come to Jerusalem. It was God's idea. Nehemiah remembered, "It wasn't my idea to rebuild the wall; it was God's idea to rebuild the wall." When he remembered who God was, it renewed his courage to move forward. 5. When facing attack, revise the plan. Look at verse 15. "When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work." Meaning, "We'd all left. We'd all turned tail and run away. When we were reminded of who God was and what was at stake, we returned to the work on the wall." Some of you have left the work on the wall in your home. Some of you in your own personal life have left the work on the wall. God is calling you this morning to quit playing games and making someone else take up your spot on the wall, and get back to work yourself. Verse 16: "From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction, and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah, who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built. The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me. And I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people…" Grace City Church

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I love it. This isn't like inside conference. This is like, "Hey, let everybody know this truth." "The work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall, far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us." There is so much here to unpack. Leaders realize when they face adversity they need to adapt the plan. It was never Nehemiah's plan to arm the dudes with AR-15s, put a trowel in one hand, a shovel in another, and a pistol in another. That was not his plan at all, but things got crazy, things got dangerous, so he adapted the plan. The warrior who fails to adapt on the battlefield will die on the battlefield. He adapts the plan. I was thinking about this this summer. I was out framing my house thinking, "It would be a total pain to have my tool belt on right now, a nail gun in one hand, my hammer in another, and my AR-15 across my front, locked and loaded. That would be a pain. I'd be knocking it around and trying to sling it around. It would slow things up." Nehemiah adapted the plan to face the growing threat that was coming. Posting a guard and arming the workers wasn't demonstrating lack of faith. Nehemiah was under no impression that the measures they were taking would secure success. He knew the odds as Sanballat invaded. With his trained army, they probably wouldn't stand a chance unless God intervened. Here's the point: the vision will never change; the plan will always change. You need to set a vision for your life, a mission for your family. We've set a mission and a vision for Mission Advance. We know where we're going. We know what God has called us to do. We're rock solid, crystal clear on that goal. How we get there, who knows? A plan is your best guess at what might get you there. It's always going to change. You start out from base camp. Rock slide, mudslide, avalanche, ice breakup, crevasses pull up, ropes snap, ladders fall into the abyss, and you have to change your route. Okay, whatever. Grace City Church

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We're still going to get to the top. We're just going to get there a different way. Vision and mission never changes. Plans are always up for grabs. Strategy is always changing. If the army is not changing their strategy to adapt to the battlefield they're on, we'll fail. Mission never changes. Vision never changes. The plan is always up for grabs. Lastly, what a great picture of Nehemiah's confidence in the sovereign work of God and their necessary responsibility. When the horn blows, get your tail there, locked and loaded, ready to throw lead downrange, and God is going to fight for us. 6. Stay vigilant and work on. Look at verse 21. "So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at that time, 'Let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.' So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me, none of us took off our clothes; each kept his weapon at his right hand." What's he saying? He's saying the cost of safety and success is vigilance. Men, you will not lead your homes if you're not vigilant. We will not make the goal of Mission Advance unless we're vigilant with our finances. It requires vigilance to be ready to engage the enemy when they come. "We didn't eat very much. We hardly slept, and we stayed ready to rock at all times. The boots didn't come off. They stayed on, ready to go." If you're going to successfully lead things and participate in kingdom work, you will need to learn how to spiritually keep your head on a swivel. As I said, we have volunteer security officers and we have armed professional officers here every week to protect us and watch over us. That's taking steps in the physical realm. In the spiritual realm, last night there was a wacky weird event here that would not please God. It would delight demonic activity.

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So this morning, 15 or 20 warriors showed up an hour and a half early to walk the aisles you're sitting in and to walk backstage and to pray the blood of Jesus over this place, that the name of Jesus might have victory against all of the distracting, discouraging, disheartening, dividing, destructive work the Enemy would love to do as a result of what happened here last night on this stage. Because of the blood of Jesus and the power of the gospel, less than 12 hours later I get to stand on a stage where evil demonic things were celebrated and proclaim to you the good news of the gospel. Here's the big idea. He prayed and trusted God. He didn't engage the critics. He took tactical action to pray and post guards. He remembered the power of God. He took very concerted and careful efforts to revise the plan where needed. He stayed vigilant and worked on, entrusting the results to God. What are the takeaways? Leaders don't pick fights, but they don't lose them either. Not once in this text does Nehemiah aggressively go to attack the enemy. He's just doing his thing. We don't go out and obnoxiously, obtusely, angrily attack other people, but neither do we lose fights when they pick them with us. Your job is not to go out and be a demon hunter, hunting down Satan, but when he comes knocking on your door, you'd better be ready to do business. Following Jesus doesn't mean you're a pushover. Kingdom work will be resisted physically and spiritually. We need to know that. Don't be paralyzed by inaction. Don't be foolishly indifferent with a renewed resolve and awareness of the Enemy. Dig in and defend yourself, because it's work and war. It's dig and defend. It's build and battle. It's forge the wall and fight the war, because what God calls you to build for his kingdom and his glory you will also need to defend from the attack of the Enemy. The big ideas for us to take away are, first, there's no meaningful kingdom progress without personal pain. We like the idea of victory, but we often resist that or we fall prey to the enemy when they resist us. We liked the idea, but we didn't know it was going to cost us something. Following Jesus will cost you something. Second, kingdom advancement will be met with Grace City Church

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intentional resistance. Congratulations! You're finally on the right path. Third, pray to God and post a guard. Fourth, don't pick fights, but don't lose fights either. Now let me make 60 seconds worth of Mission Advance application for us, because I believe we're moving into one of the most critical times in our church's history, and I would not be a good leader if I didn't prepare us for what is coming. If I was just rah-rah, cheer, cheer, fun, fun, I would not be serving you well and telling you the whole story, because passion alone without a willingness for pain will not produce progress. So application number one. I just want to ask you…Do you love the idea of Mission Advance or are you owning the vision of Mission Advance? The idea is that we collectively could do more together than we could on our own, so we take real concrete steps to establish a permanent base of operations for generational and regional kingdom impact and influence in our city that we pray will be happening long after we're dead and gone. That's a wonderful idea. No one here is going, "I don't want to see more people meet Jesus in my city." That's awesome. We all get really excited about the idea, but you can love the idea, not being owner of the vision, and when the Enemy comes, you walk away from the wall. Everybody was on the wall like, "This is a great idea! Hey, let's build a wall. Woo-hoo! Jerusalem is going to be great again. Aah!" And they were gone. It will take more than us being excited about the idea. It will take each one of us owning the vision if we're going to get there. That's not like a hammer. That's just an observation. When they were excited about the idea, they ran in the face of opposition. When they owned the vision, they stood in the face of opposition. So Mission Advance coming. Historic moment, historic ask. Do you love the idea or do you own the vision? If you're new here, let that question go by. You don't need to wrestle with it. If GCC is your home church, you need to wrestle with it.

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Second, the bigger the project, the more essential every person. There is this fallacy I just want to address right up front. I see it all the time. "Oh, I want to be part of a smaller church, because they'll really need me." Here's what I've seen as I've led a smaller church, as I've coached pastors of smaller churches. The reality in almost every church I've led, been a part of, or coached is a few people do everything. There's this idyllic picture. "Oh, in a small church everyone is involved." It never happens, because in a small church it's like three people cutting checks to pay the pastor's salary. It's one or two people doing all of the pastoral visits and all the discipleship work and all the ministry work, and everybody else comes along for the ride. That's the unspoken reality of the idyllic small church that I see everywhere, because the work isn't large enough to require more than one or two people to do it. If Nehemiah had been trying to build a wall around his house and everybody left, it wouldn't have been that big of a deal, because given enough time he could have finished it himself. The fallacy is, "Well, it's a big church; I'm not needed." Just the opposite. The more we grow, the more essential every person. The larger the project, the more devastating it is when they all leave, because Nehemiah in a lifetime could not have finished that project on his own. So too as the Lord brings those who do not yet know Jesus into faith with Jesus and as we grow as a church family and spread the light of Jesus through our community and through our region, it will not require less of all of us; it will require more from all of us. I want us to get that. I don't want us to think, "As we grow, I'm less important." No, as we grow, you're more essential to the work getting done. I want all of you to feel that, because that's the truth of the matter. The more ground we take, the bigger the wall gets, the more spread out we get, the more essential every person on that wall becomes to finishing the work.

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Lastly, we're going to pray it up. One of the things we've been convicted with as leaders is that we have not done a good job of intentionally calling you to pray as a church family. If there's one thing we should be about doing, it is the work of prayer. That started everything that Nehemiah did in this story. So this Wednesday, 7:00 to 8:00, we're starting 40 days of prayer. Pastor Adam has written a book for us. He's going to walk us through it. We're going to launch it with a gathering here of prayer and worship. I'm asking you as your pastor to be here. Cancel plans. Leave practice early. Do what you can to get here on Wednesday night. If that's when your gospel community meets, perfect. Do dinner at 5:30. Show up here at 7:00. We have child care 0-8, and we're going to pray together. We're going to get past the awkwardness of, "Oh, I don't pray publicly," and we're going to get together and do the work of prayer. I'm telling you what. When I use warrior language, I don't want you to infer that the greatest warriors in our church are men. Some of the greatest kingdom warriors in our church are women who know how to pray. This isn't a gender-specific war we're in. This is all-inclusive, man, woman, young, and old on the battlefield, praying and doing the work of real warfare. So I'm calling us as a church to come together and pray. If you can't make it, you're out of town, totally get it. We're going to talk about it next Sunday as well, and together we're going to pray through these 40 days together individually and collectively. Out in the Connect center today you can sign up to take a day of the week. We're going to ask gospel communities to do it, individuals to do it, to take a day, and that's your day over this 40-day period. You know, Tuesday, December whatever. "That's my day. I'm going to fast. I'm going to pray. I'm going to beseech God. I'm going to war against the Enemy. I'm going to make prayers to God for us on our behalf, so that every day between now and Victory Day is covered in prayer by the people of Grace City Church."

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We're going to organize ourselves to do the work of warfare. Start this Wednesday night. We'd love to see all of you there, because the work we're taking up will not be done in our own strength, with our own power, fueled by our own resources. It will only be done if Jesus shows up and does a work beyond what we can do. That's why we're excited to bite off more than we can chew, because we're counting on seeing God work. Father, we love you. Thank you for Nehemiah, a reminder that when we take up a holy ambition, there will be unholy resistance, but we do not need to live in fear. We can pray and trust you for vindication. We can reallocate resources and reorient our plans and prepare to go to war. Father, I pray that the posture that would mark us as a church is a people who have a shovel in one hand and a sword in the other. Would you drill down in our hearts today the reality that what you call us to build you will require us to fight for, that we would be a church that does not attack people but fights for the name and glory of Jesus. Prepare our hearts to do war on the fronts that matter, in our own heart first, in our own home where you've given us responsibility. Father, as we come to the Communion table, would you remind us that the decisive war was already fought. The decisive blow has already been delivered through the greatest Warrior, Jesus Christ. So we stand under his blood. We stand under his sacrifice. We stand on his merit before you this morning, remembering that we've been blood-bought by the King, and he will fight for us. We don't have to defend ourselves and attack other people and try to make our name right. Our name has been written in the Book of Life. You've defended us. You've fought for us. You've rescued us, so we look to you, Jesus, the great Warrior, the great King, and the great Victor. We stand in your victory today, and we sing and rejoice that we can work and live and breathe from that place of victory.

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Would you be honored in all things said and sung here today, Father, we ask? Would you fill your people with hope and power and courage and vigor to fight the battle another day? The prize is worth it. The King is worthy of it. For Jesus' sake we pray, amen.

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