Nehemiah refuses to let opposition deter him. He renews his commitment to the goal and redoubles his efforts…The difference between success and failure often boils down to the willingness to stay at it and persevere.

In the most biographical of all his writings, 2 Corinthians, Paul says, “We have been given the great privilege of stewarding the gospel. God has chosen to put that gospel in us—but God recognizes that humans are as frail as jars of clay. He writes,

We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies. (vs 7-10).

There is no power or strength in a clay pot. Tt is fragile and ugly. It often leaks. The passing of time only makes the vessel weaker. Paul was saying that any manifestation of power comes not from the pot but rather from what the pot contains. Paul then describes the life of a pot. I love the JB Phillips description, as 2 Corinthians 4 continues. “We are handicapped on all sides, but we are never frustrated. We are puzzled but never in despair. We are persecuted but we never have to stand it alone. We may be knocked down but we are never knocked out. Every day we experience something of the death of the Lord Jesus, so that we may also know the power of the life of Jesus in these bodies of ours.” Perhaps the key word in this description is every day. Opposition is relentless. It is inevitable, especially when you are seeking to accomplish God’s mission.

Nehemiah 4 describes opposition to Nehemiah’s mission. You’ll remember that when this book began Nehemiah, though he was a Jew, was in Sousa, the capital of Persia. The year was about 430 BC. The reason Nehemiah was in Persia was because his people had seriously rebelled against God and his law. In judgment, God permitted Nebuchadnezzar to capture Jerusalem and Judah, deporting its inhabitants to Persia and utterly destroying the city of Jerusalem, its temple, and its walls. But after 70 years in captivity the people had repented and the Persian kings, Cyrus and Artaxerxes, had granted permission to the Jews to return to their homeland. Nehemiah’s formidable mission is to rebuild the two-mile wall around the city. In chapter 3, we saw Nehemiah’s brilliant strategy to organize and motivate the people. As chapter 4 opens opposition rises to rebuilding the wall.

Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, “What are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish, and burned ones at that?” Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, “Yes, what they are building—if a fox goes up on it he will break down their stone wall!” 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.

So we built the wall. And all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work. 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. And they all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night (4:1-9).

Three Reasons for the Opposition We Face

A. We live in a fallen world.

The world is not the way it is supposed to be. Our first parents’ sin brought devastation upon creation, as God cursed the ground that Adam worked, and the family relationships that Eve was the center of. Accomplishment is hard, resisting our efforts until we sweat. Life will always be tough in this world so long as it remains under the curse of sin. WE made it that way through our rebellion against God. When God regenerates us and calls us to himself, he does not put us in a bubble that protects us from the curse he put upon the earth—as much as we would like him to.

Furthermore, in a fallen world everyone looks out for number one. Nehemiah’s success rebuilding the Jerusalem wall was a threat to Sanballat and Tobiah. Sanballat was the governor of Samaria, and he lived in Beth Haran, a fortified city with walls about 8 miles northwest of Jerusalem. Tobia was governor of Amnon, across the Jordan to the east of Jerusalem. In those days several lucrative trade routes went through Judea connecting Egypt, Persia, Arabia, and Asia Minor. Sanballat and Tobiah were getting rich from that trade and knew that if Jerusalem were rebuilt, much of this valuable trade would return to it. In a fallen, overly competitive world, our success may be a threat to someone else.

B. Our mission from the Lord faces extreme spiritual opposition.

We know that God was the one behind the mission to rebuild the wall around his city. He had worked miraculously to provide Nehemiah permission from King Artaxerxes to take an extended period of leave to accomplish the task, even providing timber for the project from the king’s own forest. Nehemiah saw the opposition of Sanballat and Tobiah to be spiritual in nature, which is why he took the matter to God in prayer and prayed as he did.

When we consider the mission that Jesus assigned us to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, it is worth pondering, what action Jesus envisioned by using the word, “seek.” Listen to the intentionality behind Webster’s dictionary definition of this word. “Seek” means, “to go to, to go in search of, to look for, to try to discover, to ask for, to request, to try to acquire or gain, to aim at, to make an attempt at.” Every one of these descriptions requires making an intentional effort. Our mission is: to be intentionally preoccupied with spreading Christ’s kingdom of righteousness and wholeness into every corner of our heart and over every inch of planet earth where we have influence. If you are living out that mission, you will face opposition from three enemies, the fallen world system, your own sinful nature and that of others, and Satan. As C.S. Lewis stated, “this world is occupied territory.” Opposition, wherever we are seeking to implement Christ’s agenda of righteousness, is always to be expected, and usually means we are on the right track.

C. God uses opposition to build our character.

This opposition was part of God’s plan. He ordained it. Don’t brush past that truth too quickly. The hardship, difficulty, pain, wounds experienced at the hands of others—suffering and stress that life brings, painful though it is, has a good purpose. We all remember the promise, “All things work together for good for those who love God for those who are pursuing God’s plan.” What is that plan? The next verse tells us: building our character, becoming like Christ.  I’m told that in the ancient world shipbuilders had a very precise way of selecting the wood for their masts. They would locate a tree on the top of a mountain or hill where it was exposed to violent winds and fierce storms. Shipbuilders knew that such trees would grow strong because the adverse conditions forced them to put their roots deep down, enlarging their roots and strengthening the inner composition of the tree. Only the toughest of trees would be fit for being the mast of a great ship. In the same way the blows we take, the difficulties and pain, are intended by God to force us to put our roots down deep into Jesus the Vine. The more we do that the stronger becomes our character and the greater becomes our usefulness to our master.

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