Dr. Gregg Marutzky:
Good morning, church.
Good morning.
Good.
We have a great crowd this morning.
It is wonderful to see all of you.
I, uh, gonna put a little commercial out here to start with.
I don't usually do this, but, uh, I saw a movie that, uh, helped my
heart really want you, uh, men.
Especially older men like me to have a soft heart, loving heart,
full of love, full of encouragement.
And so, uh, I went to, uh, uh, I can only imagine two this week.
Yeah.
And I guess somebody else did.
All right.
But, uh, it's about a song, even if, and it ties into the sermon this morning
because it talks about even if God.
Doesn't show up.
He says, God can fix everything.
All you gotta do is say the word, but even if you don't, I'm still gonna trust you.
I'm gonna still gonna serve you.
And that's what we're gonna see here in Nehemiah chapter four, because this is one
of the great chapters of this whole book.
It's really a great chapter because it talks about how, uh, first it begins with.
Uh, demeaning, demoralizing, and discouraging words.
Isn't that a great way to start?
Oh, yeah.
But we've all experienced it, haven't we?
We've had some of our dreams dashed.
We have had some of our, our, our desires and some of the things we've hoped
for, uh, distracted and, and diverted.
And the prosecutors of God's people really wanted to stop the building
of the wall, and Satan really wants to stop the building of the church.
Yep.
He's always scheming, he'll, always trying to find some way to stop the
church from growing, stop the church from having great influence in society.
Stop Christians from becoming all that they can be, becoming like Jesus.
And so.
First he uses these kinds of words, and he used it from the mouth of
sand ballot and tobiah and ham and some others to persecute the Jews.
And fortunately, the, the, the brothers and sisters didn't listen.
They didn't listen.
Yeah, they had purpose, they had mission, they had faith, and they, they just
refused to be discouraged and beaten down.
And so they built up the wall to half its height.
You know, the wall was nine feet thick.
Wow.
That's what I say.
Having been a civil engineer.
Nine feet, that's a lot.
That's a lot of wall.
All right.
Long drag.
And they built it up to half its height.
So then what does the enemy do?
Then?
He gets very personal.
First it's personal, but then he starts to threaten with danger and death and
defeat and starts these rumors that we're gonna come and we're gonna attack,
and you're not gonna be expecting it, and you're gonna get defeated and
you're gonna, some of you're gonna die.
Yeah, it's dramatic.
It's dramatic.
And so what does Nehemiah do as the leader?
He encourages the people, gives them a new plan.
You know what his plan was?
I'm gonna give you a sword.
Gonna give you a sword.
So you can work with one hand with a trow.
And the other hand, if you gotta grab your sword, you grab the sword.
I'm gonna give you a helper.
We're gonna team up.
We're gonna pair up.
So you're gonna have somebody that covers your back and we're
gonna blow the trumpet, whatever.
We hear the enemy coming and we're all gonna meet in a
certain place and attack 'em.
'cause they'll attack where the wall is lowest, where we haven't
built it up as much where they think they can get through.
And then we'll all gather and we'll, we'll defeat 'em together, United.
But there was a time in this story, and we're gonna see it as we parse
it out, that the people listened to these threats, especially about
death, and they got discouraged.
And you know what happens?
The telephone game, you hear something, you share it with someone else,
they share it with someone else, they share it with someone else.
And by the time it gets to the end of the line, it's exaggerated.
Yeah.
And so the brothers and sisters were sharing all this discouraging stuff,
how they're gonna attack us and they're gonna surprise us and here they're
gonna come this way and that way.
And eventually it got 'em so paranoid.
'cause these superstitious people come on.
I mean, you could read, you've read the Bible and some of these wars,
God people didn't even need to fight.
He just started a rumor and they started killing each other.
Yeah.
So God's people were even a little bit superstitious and emotional at
times, but Nehemiah had a plan and the people followed through and we
don't finish building the wall today.
In fact, we get more persecution in the next chapter.
It's gonna be great.
I'm just, I'm just wetting your appetite.
But today is some really good, practical, helpful.
Spiritual principles and spiritual truths for us to keep building up God's church.
Amen.
And so let's dive into it here this morning, but first, let's
renew our confession of faith.
All right?
Say it with me.
The first line, Jesus is the son of God.
And the next line, Jesus is Lord.
That's our confession of faith.
I'm putting it before you 'cause I don't want us.
To forget it.
I want us to always know why we're building up God's
kingdom and God's church.
And it's because Jesus is divine.
He's the son of God, he's our savior, he's our messiah, and he is Lord of our lives.
Amen.
And I'll put this up for a second so you, you can get a little bit of history.
I read one of the brother's books from, uh, the Philippines.
He wrote a great book.
That applied to our series, it's titled Persia and the Bible.
So he tells us the intersection of all these Persian kings and Nehemiah and
Ezra and Mal, uh, Haggai and Zacharia.
But first it was, uh, Cyrus's decree, you know, and then Darius
was on the throne and then Xerxes.
And then, uh, we pick it up in Nehemiah with Art of Xerxes Xerxes son.
Uh, that's where our story begins, and I, and I took this next table out of, uh oh.
It didn't come through there.
Sorry.
It looks great on my iPad.
Sorry about that.
All right.
But it, a little more of the history, the, the re, the reconstruction of the
temple under re ball, the reconstruction, the restoration of the people under Ezra,
and then the rebuilding of the wall.
4, 4, 4.
That's where our story starts.
So let's dive in.
You've heard this saying, haven't you?
Oh, yeah.
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
But then some psychologists named Charles Glassman said, unless you believe
them and then they can destroy you.
Yes.
At first God's people didn't believe the word.
But halfway through this chapter, they started believing the words and it
started to cause drama and discouragement.
So let's dive in.
First, the enemies will always threaten you.
They'll always threaten you.
Satan is threat threatening us with tapes that play in our heads.
That's what mental health says, that we have these scripts from childhood
and we have these scripts from, from even before we're born, the Prime.
Before we're even born pre-birth, we have some thought.
That are planted in our heads.
We have some genetics, some ways that we're wired that give
us certain tendencies, but the enemy always threaten threatens.
It says, when sandal heard that we were rebuilding the wall,
he became angry and was greatly incensed, and he ridiculed the Jews.
Halfway through this chapter, it says that the enemies of God became very angry.
So here they're just angry.
But then they get even more angry as God's work progresses and they
start out with this demeaning and demoralizing and discouraging.
And let me, let me tell you, at this time, Jerusalem wasn't that big.
This is about a mile and a half around, all right?
But it became fortified with a nine foot wall.
It really.
Was impregnable, they thought at one time, then the Assyrians destroyed it.
And so they're trying to rebuild it so it will never be destroyed again.
And then the enemies label us.
They get, they persecute us in, uh, counseling and therapy and psychology.
Uh, there's, uh, the diagnostic statistical manual.
It tells us how to diagnose people, and there's even a wave in psychology
today to not diagnose people because that label can even make things worse.
So we've gotta be careful with labels.
But it says in verse two, and in the presence of his associates, the, and
the army of Samaria, so he's boasting.
This is the, the, the, the general of the, uh, Samaritan Army sand ballot.
What are these feeble Jews doing?
Meaning weak Jews?
Will they restore the wall?
Will they offer sacrifices?
Will they finish in a day?
Can they bring these stones back to life from those heaps
of rubble burned as they are?
And so listen to what they're saying.
And sometimes words sink in, don't they?
They sink in and sometimes it's hard to get 'em out.
Yeah.
You know.
Not to ruin the movie for you, but some of the things, one sentence that his dad said
in the original movie that dreams don't come true, stuck in his son's head, and
then it's played out a little bit in the second movie, but I won't ruin it for you.
All right.
It's a great movie, especially for us older guys, weak first,
they're called weak workers.
What are these feeble Jews doing and a weak plan?
Will they restore this?
Well, there's no way.
Not with the materials they have.
They have a weak God.
Will they offer a sacrifice?
Weak leadership.
Telling them they're gonna finish in no time, even in a day.
Weak materials, can they bring these stones back to life.
They've been burned.
They're not strong anymore, and then weak workmanship, what they're
building, even a fox could climb up on and it will fall over.
I don't know what negative tapes you have in your mind about your own
life, but I imagine you have some.
Yeah.
I don't know what negative tapes you have about the church, but
let's erase the negative ones.
All right.
Come on, Greg.
Let's put 'em behind us.
Let's throw 'em off.
Let's not let 'em burden us, and let's replace them with positive tapes.
Amen.
Because we're not weak.
We're not these things, but the opposition came from north, south, east, and west.
Sometimes you feel like it's coming at you from every direction, don't you?
Yeah.
I mean, don't you feel like life is hard sometimes?
I don't know what's in all of us, but I think within all of us,
we're like, life should be easier.
Why is it gotta be so hard?
When I was a kid, there was a song that came out named Charlie Brown.
Oh, Charlie Brown.
Charlie Brown.
And one of the lines in the song says, Charlie says.
Why is everybody always picking on me?
It was just Lucy that was picking on me.
But sometimes we feel like everything's against this sand ballot in the, in the
north, Gresham, in the south, Dubai in the east, and the ash do, uh, people
from ash, dod in the, the east, the west, they mock verse three, Tobiah the amite.
Who was at his side said, what are they building?
Even a fox climbing on it would break it down.
All right, no, that's not true.
'cause it was nine feet thick.
Verse four, it ridiculed some more.
Hear us.
So God, for we are despised, turn their insults back on their own heads.
Give them over as plunder in a land of captivity.
This is reminiscent of the Psalms.
David always said, God, turn it back on my enemies.
You deal with my enemies, God.
And that's what this is a prayer, just like the psalmist prayed.
Help us God.
Prayer is the response to opposition when you're building spiritually.
When I get discouraged, when I get demoralized, when I get depressed, I pray.
Amen.
I get away.
And I pray, I try to plug myself into the Almighty God.
And you know what's great about here in Orange County, you can go
to the ocean and there's something about the power of the waves just
coming in, starts giving you power.
The more they smash against the the shore, I just, I feel myself
getting stronger because that power gets translated to me, that energy.
The might of God prayer.
It needs to be our response.
It needs to be my response.
Look at Proverbs 16 verse three.
Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.
Plans.
OC Church.
Proverbs 1426.
Whoever fears the Lord has a secure fortress and for their children.
One of my child's here.
It will be a refuge.
I want this, this, uh, church to be a refuge for me, for you,
for my kids, for my grandkids.
Kathy and I were putting together the little chairs for our
little four year old's room.
You know, she's sitting on it today.
I made sure I, I double checked.
I didn't miss any screws.
There were more screws in those chairs than I've ever imagined.
I mean, our wrists, both of us were so sore last night, you know,
from turning the screwdriver, and I gave Kathy the good screwdriver.
All right.
I took the other one, and that's what US men should do, but.
There are so many screws, but I, I'm feeling good today that my little
granddaughter's probably sitting on my chair or Mimi's chair, all right.
And I hope she comes out of there and says, daddy, we got,
I mean, papa, we got new chairs.
They fit me perfectly.
I hope so.
I put 'em on a different level than Kathy put 'em on, so I didn't
follow her directions very well.
Verse five, believers pray.
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.
When they were insulting God's people, they were insulting God
again, the picture of what they built.
I love it.
Psalms 1 0 9 verses one through five.
Here's David.
David.
Telling us how to pray, showing us how to pray, my God, whom I
praise, do not remain silent.
For people who are wicked and deceitful have opened their mouths against me.
They have spoken against me with lying tongues, with words of hatred.
They surround me.
They attack me without cause.
In return from my friendship, they accuse me, but I'm a man of prayer.
They repay me evil for good and hatred.
For my friendship.
And you know, sometimes we felt that way.
We've had friends betray us, we've had hard times.
But then that just draws you closer to Jesus, doesn't it?
Yes.
Because he's the one that understands and feels everything we feel.
I love the book of Hebrews.
We'll go through a Hebrew series at some point.
The perfect high priest, the perfect brother, the perfect savior.
And then what do the believers do initially?
They fortify their faith.
But when sand ballot, Tobi, the Arabs and Ammonites and the people of Aashto
heard that the repairs of Jerusalem's walls had gone ahead and that the gaps
were being closed, they were very angry.
Good for them.
Let's make Satan angry.
You want to?
Yeah.
You know, we need to hate Satan.
We need to hate sin.
Yeah, we do.
We definitely need to love each other.
Amen.
And the Bible says Jesus's ethic was to even love our enemies.
So even some of these prayers, I pray a little timidly about my enemies, David.
He was bold.
He prayed, curses down.
There's one psalm that has, I counted them, 14 curses of his enemies.
I can't pray that because I don't want 'em coming on me.
What goes around comes around.
And so I have a hard time praying that one.
I won't be preaching that one.
All right.
You can if you want to.
David did, but I'm going to, I'm just trying to love my enemies.
Amen.
But I am not gonna let 'em discourage us.
Persecution comes in many forms, from anger to plots, to threats
to anything Satan can think of.
Here's the next plot, verse eight.
They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem
and stir up trouble against it.
All right?
So Satan is always trying to attack, but the believers guarded
themselves and girded themselves.
But we prayed to our God and posted a guard day and night to meet their threat.
So the workers became warriors.
Sometimes that's what you gotta do.
Sometimes you feel like, Hey, I'm working.
I'm God, why are you putting more on my plate?
But sometimes you gotta be both a worker and a warrior.
A worker and a warrior.
All right.
And so, oh, my clicker is, I need some help.
It's not working for me.
Here.
There we go.
And now the next one.
All right.
Showing you that again as they're building this wall around, you may
not need it, but you may wished you'd took a pic picture of it last week.
So I give it to you again.
Amen.
So let's keep going, but here's what we need to be careful of.
Meanwhile, the people in Judah, so they're outside of Jerusalem,
they may not be working as much.
The strength of the labors is giving out.
And there is so much rubble, they cannot rebuild the wall.
Great projects are never easy, and there's always gonna be distractors,
and there's always gonna be armchair quarterbacks that are looking on from
a distance and saying it can't be done.
It's too much.
I think they're wearing out.
I don't think they have the strength to do it either.
I don't think they can make a wall out of what's left of that rubble.
There's always gonna be people that distract in verse 11.
Then they fear also our enemies said before they know it or see us, we will
be right there among them and we'll kill them and put an end to their work.
So they're trying to make the brothers and sisters paranoid.
We need to believe the Lord's promises and reject the lies of Satan.
Amen.
Satan and his demons and his minions, but they just kept building this wall and
everybody just building their part of it, and every one of them had a part of it.
Look at verse 12, then the Jews who lived near.
Them came and told us 10 times over, so these are the Jews outside of Jerusalem.
Wherever you turn, they will attack us.
So they're repeating the lies of the enemies.
They're repeating the discouraging, demoralizing, demeaning words.
What are some of Satan's lies to us?
You can make your list.
I made this list.
We all have our lists.
You'll never change.
Why?
Why try?
You need to give up, but what's God's promise?
You can be blameless.
I'm gonna make you blame.
I'm gonna make you like Jesus.
I'm gonna fill you with the Holy Spirit, the power to raise Jesus from the
dead, and you're gonna become awesome.
You lack the power.
No, God's promise is you have resurrection power.
You are too weak.
The Bible says in Philippians, we can do anything through
Christ who gives us strength.
Satan says, you're guilty, and Jesus says, nah, you're forgiven.
Satan says, give up.
It's too hard.
And the Bible says, never give up the good that you're doing.
One Corinthians 15, your work in the Lord is not in vain.
It's not in vain.
You do not need God.
That's what the world tells us.
You don't need a crutch, just use your computer.
Especially now use ai.
You may not be that smart, but AI is,
you know, AI's a good thing.
Computers are good things.
You know, books are good things, you know, language.
Punctuation, all the different inventions, the printing pass over time.
I mean, progress is gonna continue.
We're not gonna fight progress.
But don't lose your humanity.
Amen.
And don't lose.
Who programs that?
Ai.
That's us.
Amen.
He goes on.
He says, you will miss out.
What is it?
Uh.
Fear.
FOM.
Fomo.
Oh, fomo.
That's it.
Yeah.
I don't care.
So I don't know what it, what it is.
No, you won't miss out.
You'll avoid the ugly of life.
You'll avoid falling into the pit.
You have plenty of time.
No, you'll be missing the blessings.
Why not have the good now and later.
Amen.
It's not worth it.
It's more than you can imagine.
Amen.
You can make your lists.
You know, I need to remind myself of the promises of God.
That's where faith comes from.
That's what Satan tries to destroy your faith, but your faith is
built on the promises of God.
If you're lacking faith, read the promises of God.
Renew your faith.
I've been down before I remember.
Halfway through one of my, uh, uh, scholastic endeavors, one
of my, uh, halfway through the coursework, one of my professors
say, well, you're halfway there.
Now the learning curve becomes vertical
snap.
I'm barely making it now.
Now we're going straight up, you know, are you kidding me?
And I mean, I had to get tutored every week for 30 minutes by this guy.
I didn't understand what he wanted, what he meant.
I got so discouraged I kept, felt like I was beating my head against the wall.
But you know what that does makes your head hard.
And eventually I broke through that wall and that Robert, Robert Carillo
tells us we'll all hit the wall.
Yeah, and you gotta figure out something when you hit the wall.
Either climb over it, go around it, or blast through it.
My approach in life is usually to blast through it.
Amen.
But you gotta keep going.
You gotta keep, go through that wall and then once you get through it,
it's like, oh, I get it now I get it.
It's like water skiing.
You can try to get up.
You, I mean, just over and over.
And they, and they just say, it's just balance.
It's not that hard.
Just pull yourself up.
And you, every time you do, you feel like you're drowning and they're
jerking your arms out of their socket.
And then you figure out that one mover, keep your weight behind the ski, and
all of a sudden you pop right up.
Oh, that was easy.
And every time from then on, you pop up.
It's just like riding a bike.
At first you're scared.
You fall over, you're scared.
You fall over and then you get that balance.
Yeah.
You're like, yeah, I'm a bike rider now.
I'm a big boy.
I'm a water skier now.
Yeah, it's always easy looking back, but pushing through.
Overcoming the opposition.
Are you with me there?
Yes.
All right.
Let's finish this up.
Verse 13.
Therefore, I station some of the people behind the lowest points of
the wall at the what exposed places.
Posting them by what families, 'cause they'll fight for their family
with their sword, spears and bows.
Nehemiah knew how to make things work, how to make it.
And so he regrouped.
He rallied, and he reunited to rebuild.
He rejected the thought, the threats, taunts and trauma of the enemy.
And then what did they do?
They retreated.
When the, our enemies heard that they were aware of their plots
and that God had frustrated it.
We all returned to the wall, each to our own work.
The believers partnered from that day on.
Half of my men did the work while the other half were equipped with
spears, shields, bows, and armor.
I would've rather been one of those that had the shield and
the, and the bow and the armor.
Let the other guy do the manual labor.
Let me kill somebody.
Oh, excuse me, I should've said that out loud.
The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah.
Spiritual partnership creates a band of workers and warriors to resist wickedness.
Jesus sent us out two by two.
We gotta stay connected to our partner.
Two are better than one.
We know this.
Verse two are better than one.
All right.
Two are better than one.
Because they have a good return for their labor.
The believers adapt who were building the wall.
Those who carried materials, did the work with one hand and held a
weapon in the other good for them.
This is so encouraging.
And then verse 18, he says.
Of each of the builders wore their sword at his side as he worked,
but the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me, Nehemiah.
Then I said to the nobles, the officials and the rest of the people,
the work is extensive and spread out.
We are widely separated for each other along the wall, and so what does he do?
Verse 20, when wherever you hear the sword.
Of the trumpet join us there.
Our God will what?
Fight for us.
Our God will fight for us.
You gotta have some watchmen.
That's why God's given us shepherds.
That's why God gives some people to watch over the flock.
To protect the flock watchmen, protect God's people from danger and defeat what?
By sounding the alarm.
And then some of the believers specialized.
So we continued the work with half the men holding the spears with the first
light of dawn till the stars came out.
They worked all day long, verse 22.
At that time, I also said to the people have every man and his helper stay inside
Jerusalem at night so they can serve as guards by night and workers by day.
Now where the, were the workers fired up to hear that.
You can't go home to your family, especially if they live outside the wall.
You gotta work by day and you gotta be ready to fight at night.
That's okay.
Somehow God gave his people that extra strength.
They found a way where there's a will, there's a way.
Did your mama ever say that?
My mama used to say that.
And so instead of weak workers, they were strong workers, guards by night,
workers by day, they had a strong plan.
They wore their sword at their side and they worked.
They had a strong God, our God will fight for us.
They had strong leadership station to people of the
lowest part, strong materials.
We rebuilt the wall till it reached half its height.
Strong workmanship, fight for your families.
So what's the moral of the story?
These are the things I really want you to take away.
Brothers and sisters, one Corinthians nine says, we read the Old Testament
because we need to learn these lessons.
Don't miss the lessons of the Old Testament guys.
Great projects require great sacrifice.
And service to accomplish.
God calls us to build and battle at the same time.
That may sound like too much, but we, God will give us the way.
Overcoming our fatigue and fears requires purpose and prayer.
God sustains and strengthens us at our point of exhaustion.
At the halfway point, adaptions and adjustments are required.
Satan tries to create discouragement and division.
Great work demands dawn to dusk sometimes and day and night effort.
The stress and strain of protection and production it costs.
It costs us.
Never forget God's presence and protection and what lessons can we take away?
Oppositions inevitable.
You've been discouraged in life, haven't you, but you've overcome.
Satan tries to stir up outsiders to discourage God's servant.
You do what you must to accomplish.
God's work what?
At great risk, the mind is greater than the body defines strength.
Somehow they did it night and day.
Spiritual work is never easy, especially when you have opposition and persecution.
Satan focuses us on our fears and exaggerates the danger.
Innovation occurs though when you're desperate.
That's chaos theory.
All the great inventions have happened when you had to find a way.
And lastly, partnership multiplies the effort, efficiency and safety.
Amen.
Nehemiah chapter four, they rebuilt the wall.
God bless.
Amen.