The
enemies of righteousness live in unbelief.
Therefore, they always fail to enter the God-factor into the equation of existence. They evaluate the work of righteous believers
according to numbers and according to the physical strengths. They are willfully blind to what is added to
the circumstances of life when the God-factor is entered into the
equation. We should expect that of
unbelievers. However, it is quite sad
indeed when the righteous live in fear and trembling before the threat that the
unrighteous pose to the Christian life.
The fact is they pose no threat at all.
When true believers are exposed to the threat of worldly onslaughts,
they should simply be consumed with knowing and doing the will of God. In that reality they can be confident that
God is sovereignly involved in every intimate detail of their existence. They can faithfully pray – “Thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven.”
“1 But it came to
pass, that when Sanballat heard that we builded the wall, he was wroth, and
took great indignation, and mocked the Jews. 2 And he spake before
his brethren and the army of Samaria, and said, What do these feeble Jews? will
they fortify themselves? will they sacrifice? will they make an end in a day?
will they revive the stones out of the heaps of the rubbish which are burned? 3
Now Tobiah the Ammonite was by him, and he said, Even that which they build,
if a fox go up, he shall even break down their stone wall. 4 Hear, O
our God; for we are despised: and turn their reproach upon their own head, and
give them for a prey in the land of captivity: 5 And cover not their
iniquity, and let not their sin be blotted out from before thee: for they have
provoked thee to anger before the builders. 6 So built we the
wall; and all the wall was joined together unto the half thereof: for the
people had a mind to work. 7 But it came to pass, that when
Sanballat, and Tobiah, and the Arabians, and the Ammonites, and the Ashdodites,
heard that the walls of Jerusalem were made up, and that the breaches
began to be stopped, then they were very wroth, 8 And conspired all
of them together to come and to fight against Jerusalem, and to hinder
it. 9 Nevertheless we made our prayer unto our God, and set a watch
against them day and night, because of them” (Nehemiah
4:1-9).
Sometimes
it amazes me how easily Christians get defeated in their “work of the
ministry.” It seems as if we expect to
do the Lord’s work without any opposition.
At the first sign of resistance, we dash back to our comfort zones and cower in the shadows until the moment of conflict passes by. The other scenario is that we get on the
defensive against the opposition and the opposition accomplishes their goal
anyway. The work stops. The first is an act of cowardice, the second
an act of foolish pride.
Satan
has learned to use our fears and pride against us. Sin made fear and pride a major part of our
fallen nature. Many Christians are so
spiritually crippled by fear and pride that they are rendered useless as
partners with God in His “work of the ministry.” As Christians, we should never forget that as
soon as God’s people begin to get involved in the “work of the ministry,” Satan
becomes involved in opposition. (Of
course, Satan uses fear and pride to keep us from getting involved in the first
place.) David gives us the God-inspired
twenty-seventh Psalm to confront and reinforce our faith with the God-factor.
“1 <<A Psalm of David.>>
The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? the LORD is
the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid? 2 When the
wicked, even mine enemies and my foes, came upon me to eat up my flesh,
they stumbled and fell. 3 Though an host should encamp against me,
my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will
I be confident. 4 One thing have I desired of the
LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the
days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to enquire in his
temple” (Psalm 27:1-4).
“To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David.>> Hear
my voice, O God, in my prayer: preserve my life from fear of the enemy” (Psalm
64:1).
“14 And unto the angel of the church of the
Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness,
the beginning of the creation of God; 15 I know thy works,
that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. 16
So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee
out of my mouth. 17 Because thou sayest {out of pride}, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need
of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor,
and blind, and naked: 18 I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in
the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be
clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint
thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see” (Revelation 3:14-18).
In order for a local church to maintain
any momentum in the “work of the ministry,” its people must possess two things:
VISION and PASSION. They must possess a vision of God’s missional purpose
and a passion to win souls and make disciples (the “work of the ministry”). Neither of these things can be manufactured. They come to the believer when he finally
owns and accepts the realities of Heaven and Hell. God’s missional vision is that men everywhere
repent and be saved.
“22 Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars’
hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are
too superstitious. 23 For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions,
I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye
ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 24 God that made the
world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth,
dwelleth not in temples made with hands; 25 Neither is worshipped
with men’s hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life,
and breath, and all things; 26 And hath made of one blood all
nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined
the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; 27
That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him {as
blind men that grope in the darkness}, and find him, though he be
not far from every one of us: 28 For in him we live, and move, and
have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also
his offspring. 29 Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we
ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone,
graven by art and man’s device. 30 And the times of this ignorance
God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent: 31
Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained {Jesus Christ}; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men,
in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:22-31).
The passion to win souls and make
disciples for Jesus Christ comes when the believer finally understands that the
means God has chosen to realize His missional vision is through a partnership
(“fellowship”) with professing believers in getting the message of the Gospel
to lost sinners (that is why the epistle of I John is so important as well as
Romans chapters six, seven, and eight). Believers
have been given spiritual sight
(faith) to lead their fellowman out of the darkness and into the light of the
knowledge of God and His wonderful salvation by grace through faith in the
finished work of Christ.
Someone has said most Christians are so
heavenly minded that they are no earthly good.
Let me plainly say, I have never seen that phenomenon in all my years as
a Christian. In fact, most Christians
are so earthly minded that they are no heavenly good.
A vision without a work to accompany it
makes a person a visionary. A work without a vision to accomplish it
makes the work drudgery. A work of ministry accompanied by God’s
vision of ministry makes a person a missionary.
Nehemiah had both a VISION of the work
God wanted done and a PASSION to get it completed. We
call that kind of person DRIVEN. That is
why God called him to lead.
Satan filled men’s hearts to oppose
Nehemiah, redirect his vision, and quench the fire of his passion for God’s
work. Nehemiah was raised up by God
during a particular time of need to direct the people of God in their “work of
the ministry” and to lead God’s people in a stand against the opposition. There are certain truths that must be emphasized
in this scenario.
1. God raised up a man, not a committee.
2. God raised up a man, not an angel.
3. God raised up a man who could grasp onto His vision and who had a
passion to get that vision realized.
4. God raised up a man He had chosen that He could use and bless.
Understand this: when God opens the windows of Heaven to bless
us, Satan opens the gates of Hell to blast us.
“God’s smile means the devil’s frown.”
Nehemiah was a prophet of God. That means he was preoccupied with “Thus
sayeth the Lord.” The prophet’s job is to communicate God’s vision to
God’s people without compromise. The
prophet’s job (in partnership with the Holy Spirit) is to stir people to do
what God wants them to do, his way, and without compromise. When that happens, some people will get mad. Some people do not want to come out of their comfort zones and even the pressure to do
so angers them.
Most people want to go with the flow, but the prophet knows God has called him to go against the flow and to lead as many
people against the flow as he can. The prophet’s main goal in life is to exalt
the God he serves by strictly keeping himself focused on God’s vision and by
carefully keeping his passion in the perspective of that vision. The prophet of God understands that work is
not about him, or for him. The “work of
the ministry” is about God and for God.
The man
of righteousness understands that when he gets sidetracked and leads people
away from God’s missional purpose, it is God Who is robbed of the glory He
deserves. He understands that when
people are sidetracked due to his misdirection that it is the Lord Jesus Who is
ignored. He understands that when people
fail to do what he tells them that God wants them to do, it is God’s laws and
commandments they break, not his. He
understands that when people choose to live in sin and selfishness, it is God’s
Name that is taken in vain, not the prophet’s.
The man of righteousness understands it is
God’s Book that people ignore, not the prophet’s book. He understands it is God’s house of worship
that is ignored, not the prophet’s house.
He understands all those things, yet he is DRIVEN. He has a PASSION and he will join himself to
any other person sanctified to God who is intent on doing things God’s
way. If no one else will join him, he
will do what he can with what he has by himself.
The prophet of God understands some things
most people never understand. He
understands that the world’s problem is not Communism, or Romanism, or
Modernism, or even Liberalism. Therefore, he does not spend all his time
opposing them (being on the defensive). The
prophet of God understands that the world’s problem has historically remained
unchanged. The world’s problem is the
problem of dead fundamentalism that fails to live the Spirit-filled life. The world’s problem is the problem of
professing Bible believers being dead to conviction, dead to obedience, dead to
prayer, dead to worship, dead to evangelism, and dead to living faith.
The man
of righteousness understands he can only tell others of God’s vision. He cannot make them accept it or follow his
leadership. Most people give themselves
to realizing only possible hopes and possible dreams. The prophet of God understands he is called
to give himself to a task that (by all human measurements) is impossible to
accomplish and to convince others to follow him in the work. That will not happen if he does not have a
VISION and PASSION.
The
prophet of God is confronted with the problem of trying to lead people doped up with the pleasures of this
world, whose main focus in life is where they will get their next fix, and whose concern for God’s vision
(missional purpose) is at the bottom of their itinerary. He understands that before God can use
people to accomplish the impossible task before them, he must teach them the Truths
of God’s Word to correct the accumulated pseudo-intellectualism the world has
been pouring into them for a lifetime. He
understands he will be trying to lead a volunteer workforce who, in most part,
have spent their lifetimes insulated against spiritual realities by large doses
of cultural indifference to the will of God.
Our churches are filled with people who
like to appease sin, but refuse to oppose it. Then they stand in amazement as they watch
their children grow up to shake their fists at God’s demand for holiness. It ought to amaze every Christian that we can
be as simple-minded as to think we can get others to follow the righteous
standards of Jesus Christ when we live in such a sub-standard way.
The prophet of God understands the many
forms of opposition.
1. There is opposition by ridicule
(Nehemiah 4:3).
2. There is opposition by hostility
(Nehemiah 4:7-8).
3. There is opposition by discouragement
(Nehemiah 4:10).
The prophet of God has a biblical way
of dealing with all forms of opposition.
Opposition is dealt with
through prayer (Nehemiah 4:9). The
opposition of discouragement is dealt with through the process of rubbish
removal. Nothing drains our
spiritual strength more than having to constantly deal with problems. House cleaning, garbage removal, and weed
removal are part of a regularly maintenance routine. Do not expect to make forward progress until the
obstacles (problems) are removed (Nehemiah 4:10b).
“Small foxes spoil the vines.” One of the reasons why forward spiritual
progress is stopped in many local churches is because they are forced to spend
all their time dealing with church mice
when lions devour the land.
Can you
imagine what would happen in our cities if Christians everywhere began to pray
- “God move upon my heart in such a way that I cannot resist your will. God expose any area of my life to me that is
a hindrance to your using me for your glory.
God purge me of pride and open my eyes to see your face in the light of
your glory.”
It is our attitudes towards God that hold
back His revival. It is the attitude
of hearts hardened against the working of the Holy Spirit. God is a consuming fire. The Church where the Spirit of God is active
will be hot. The pulpit will be
regularly ablaze if the prophet has God’s missional vision and a passion to see
it realized. At the same time,
opposition will be raising its ugly head intent on putting out any fires of
revival God starts because that will force them out of their comfort zones or
expose them for the hypocrites they really are.
True people of faith need to learn to live in the midst of the
fire! That is the lesson God wants us to
learn from Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego (Daniel 3:19-27).
The
Church with the fires of revival burning in the hearts of each of its members
will be like the “burning bush.” It will
be a living testimony to the wonders and powers of God, but yet it will never
be consumed. The emphasis of that Church
will be on re-creation, not recreation, prayer not promotion, propagation not
propaganda, and holiness not happiness.
It is
said of these people in Nehemiah 4:6, “For the people had a mind to work.” God’s call to all Christians is a call to the
work. I must raise the challenge of
Joshua of old. “And if it seem evil unto
you to serve the LORD, choose you this day whom ye will serve; whether the gods
which your fathers served that were on the other side of the flood, or
the gods of the Amorites, in whose land ye dwell: but as for me and my
house, we will serve the LORD” (Joshua 24:15). Who
will you chose to serve? When God
dismisses us from a church service, we are dismissed to “the work of the
ministry.” To the work should be the marching cry of all true believers.
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Numerous studies and series are available free of charge for local churches at: http://www.disciplemakerministries.org/
Dr. Lance Ketchum serves the Lord as a Church Planter, Evangelist/Revivalist.
He has served the Lord for over 40 years.
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