Chuck Swindoll tells an incident in the life of the great inventor Thomas Edison. Thanks to his genius, today we enjoy the microphone, the phonograph, the incandescent light, the storage battery, talking movies, and more than a thousand other inventions. But above and beyond all that, he was a man who refused to be discouraged. His contagious optimism affected all those around him.
His son recalled a freezing December night in 1914. It was at a time when still unfruitful experiments on the nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery, to which his dad had devoted almost ten years, had put Edison on a financial tightrope. The only reason he was still solvent was the profit from the movie and record production.
On that December evening the cry of “Fire!” echoed through the plant. Spontaneous combustion had broken out in the film room. Within minutes all the packing compounds, celluloid for records and film, and other flammable goods were in flames. Fire companies from eight surrounding towns arrived, but the heat was so intense and the water pressure so low that the attempt to douse the flames was futile. Everything was destroyed.
When Edison’s son couldn’t find his father, the son became concerned. Was he safe? With all his assets going up in a whoosh, would his spirit be broken? After all, he was 67---no age to start all over thought his son. Then---in the distance---young Edison saw his father in the plant yard running toward him.
“Where’s Mom?” shouted the inventor. “Go get her, Son! Tell her to hurry up and bring her friends! They’ll never see a fire like this again!”
Early the next morning, long before dawn, with the fire barely under control, Edison called his employees together and made an incredible announcement: “We’re rebuilding!”
He told one man to lease all the machine shops in the area. He told another to obtain a wrecking crane from the Erie Railroad Company. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, “Oh, by the way. Anybody know where we can get some money?”
Later he explained, “We’ve just cleared out a bunch of old rubbish. We’ll build bigger and better on the ruins.” Shortly after that he yawned, rolled up his coat for a pillow, curled up on a table, and immediately fell asleep” (Hand Me Another Brick, pages 82-83).
Maybe you are discouraged as you face rebuilding a relationship with your mate, renewing your walk with the Lord, or just rebuilding your life which is a mess. Nehemiah shows us how.
Now in addition to the opposition of ridicule and threats to rebuild, Nehemiah faces the opposition of discouragement.
1. The Opposition of Ridicule (4:1-6)
2. The Opposition of Threats (4:7-9)
3. The Opposition of Discouragement (4:10-23)
The criticism, insults, and threats finally took their toll on Nehemiah’s workers, and discouragement set in. What caused their discouragement? They focused on their weaknesses, the rubbish of the torn-down wall, their inabilities, and the enemy instead of concentrating on the wall that would protect them, their families who needed their ministry, what they already accomplished, and the Lord who was great and awesome.
Nehemiah in the face of equal discouragement Nehemiah likewise said, “We are rebuilding.”
1. Who Gets Discouraged?
A. Leaders
A new scene begins in 4:10 with the dialogue of Judah. Judah, in 4:10-11, the tribe who would produce the Messiah according to Genesis 49:8-10 was spreading discouraging words. Yes, even leaders can experience discouragement. Charles H. Spurgeon had his fits of depression because of relentless criticism. You can read about his discouragement and depression in “The Minister’s Fainting Fits” in Lectures to My Students. Click here for a workshop on “The Minister’s Fainting Fits.” Here is one Spurgeon quote: “The life of Luther might suffice to give a thousand instances, and he was by no means of the weaker sort. His great spirit was often in the seventh heaven of exultation, and as frequently on the borders of despair” (159).
B. People with negative friends
The next new scene begins with “And it came to pass” the grammatical clue for a new episode or scene. In 4:12, the Jews who lived near the enemies were listening to these discouraging people. We know from chapter three that some of the Jews lived outside of Jerusalem. The residents of Tekoa, Gibeon, and Mizpah were listening to the naysayers and being defeated by them.
“It’s important to note that the discouraging information came from people who lived ‘near' it. You cannot constantly hear negativism without having some of it rub off on you. If you are prone to discouragement, you can’t run the risk of spending a lot of your time with people who traffic in discouraging information” (Hand Me Another Brick, page 84).
2. Why Do We Get Discouraged? Notice that each of the reasons for discouragement is self-centered.
A. We focus on our weakness “The strength of the burden bearers is decayed” (4:10a). Edwin M. Yamauchi wrote that the complaint “The strength of the laborers is giving out” by workers “depicts a worker tottering under the weight of his load and ready to fall at any step” (“Ezra-Nehemiah” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Grand Rapids: Zonderman, ed. Frank . E. Gaebelein, 1988, 703). The laborers were exhausted.
God’s people agreed with the ridicule of God’s enemies in 4:2: “What do these feeble Jews?” Remember Elijah wanting to die when he was physically exhausted in 1 Kings 19?
B. We focus on the negatives “There is much rubbish” (4:10b). They are like the 12 spies whom Moses sent to check out the land promised to them by God. Ten of the spies focused on the giant obstacles and two, Joshua and Caleb, focused on the flowing milk and honey.
Moses recounts the impact of the ten negative spies: “For when they went up unto the valley of Eshcol and saw the land, they discouraged the heart of the children of Israel, that they should not go into the land which the Lord had given them” (Numbers 32:9).
The result of the negative discouragement was forty years of wandering in the wilderness of an entire generation instead of conquering the Promised Land. Listening to discouraging talk can be damaging.
C. We focus on our inability “We are not able to build the wall” (4:10c).
They had already built the wall to the halfway mark.
D. We focus on the opponents “Our adversaries said” (4:11a)
The Jews who lived outside of Jerusalem kept bringing the leaks from the enemy that a surprise attack (4:11) was imminent (4:12).
We remember the cartoon character Pogo saying, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Here is one person’s response on the internet. “Yes, my greatest enemy is not the old woman in my neighborhood who is always finding fault with me, my enemy is not my stepmother, my enemy is not my boss nor my fellow staff who is always reporting me to my boss, my greatest enemy is me.
You see, most of the time when I attend church and we are asked to bind the enemy, most of the time, I feel reluctant because I know I can cause myself more harm than 1000 enemies put together. I know you want to ask me how you are your greatest enemy. If you refuse to work when you are supposed to work, you are plotting your own downfall, if you have a meeting that will lead to a major contract but you don't make it to the meeting, you can't blame anybody for not getting that contract, If you are always late to work and your boss sacks you, you have no one to blame. If you are always sleeping on duty and that gets you suspended from work, no one is to blame but yourself. All I am saying is, you need to start taking responsibility for your actions instead of trading blame.”
3. How Can We Deal With Discouragement?
A. Focus on the ministry instead of the negatives (4:13a)
A new scene is identified with a location change. Focus now is placed on the wall. Instead of focusing on the rubbish concentrate on the wall. “Therefore set I in the lower places behind the wall and on the higher places.” Nehemiah placed these workers behind the wall so they could not so easily see the rubbish.
Life is not Atlantis on Paradise Island in the Bahamas petting porpoises and riding water slides. Have you seen the commercial? Life has rubbish!
The rubbish of abusive parents, mates who walk away, ungrateful children, sin in your life, or failure in the past. Focus on the ministry of rebuilding your life or a testimony for God. John Mark who failed (Acts 14) could have remained defeated because of his failure. But he rebuilt his testimony and regained the confidence of Paul (2 Tim 4:11).
Focus on the ministry instead of the problems. Not the rubbish but your ministry to your mate, children, grandchildren, friends, co-workers, or members at church.
B. Focus on your people instead of the opponents (4:13b)
“I even set the people after their families with swords, spears, and bows.” Focus on those people who will respond to your ministry. Henry Blackaby says that 20% of our people do 80% of the work in the ministry. Why not as leaders devote 80% of our mentoring time to the 20% who are devoted to the Lord rather than to the 80% who are uninvolved?
I am going to build relationships with people who will encourage me and people I can encourage. God gave Elisha to a discouraged Elijah. Ask God to give you a Jonathan (who ministered to David) or a Barnabas (who ministered to Paul).
C. Focus on the spiritual, not your physical weakness (4:14a)
“And I looked, and rose up, and said unto the nobles, and to the rulers, and to the rest of the people.”
Nehemiah stopped the work project and conducted a brief spiritual retreat. They rested physically and were renewed spiritually.
Nehemiah speaks publicly three times to his people
Mark Dever in 9Marks of a Healthy Church lists as the first mark: Expositional Preaching. The other eight marks flow out of the first. God’s Word gives life if you will read it and hear it. Therefore as preachers and spiritual leaders, we must lead our people to spend time in God’s Word. This year we are reading through the Bible. On Sunday evenings, I preach and survey the chapters our people will read for the week. Many have testified of the great blessing God’s Word has been in their lives.
Take a spiritual retreat. Spend extra time in prayer to your Great and Awesome God and Bible study. When you are tempted to pick up the phone and spread discouragement, pick up God’s Word. Read, meditate, and pray a Praise Psalm like Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord oh my soul and all that is within me bless His holy name.”
D. Focus on the Lord and not your inability (4:14b-15)
In Nehemiah’s first speech he emphasized that the Lord is great: “Be not afraid of them: remember the Lord, who is great and terrible.”
The original problem was great (1:3). Nehemiah did not focus on the great problem but he prayed to his God who was greater (1:5). Now he faces another great problem but he focuses on his great and awesome God at his spiritual retreat. Nehemiah challenged his physically exhausted and discouraged workers to focus on the greatness of God and then “remember” that is respond by fighting for their families. “Remember” means respond. In Ecclesiastes 12:1 Solomon exhorted young potential leaders, “Remember now your Creator in the days of your youth.” Solomon who is old, warns young men: “Don’t make the same mistakes I made when I was your age. Don’t turn away from the Lord.” Nehemiah is challenging his leaders to respond to what they have heard about their great God and protect their families.
Nehemiah shows how his great God was already working (4:15). A new scene is identified with the words “And it came to pass” in 4:15 (A new episode begins in 4:1 marked with the words: “But it came to pass” (וַיְהִ֞י vayehi) which marks scene changes). Once the people focus on the Lord instead of their inability, they go back to work at 4:15.
Mark Dever said, “35% of self-professed born-again Christians say they are still searching for the meaning of life---the very same percentage as for non-Christians. What good does it do for you to think you have the Word of God if you won’t give attention to it if you won’t read it and pray over it and put your life under it?” (9Marks of a Healthy Church, 54).
E. We must build the positives in our lives and fight the negatives (4:16-23)
We are both builders and battlers.
1. We Fight the Negatives. A new scene is identified in 4:16 with the words “And it came to pass” (וַיְהִ֞י vayehi) which marks scene changes and introduces a new strategy. Nehemiah converted his workplace into an armed camp. Half of his men worked and half of his men stood guard (4:16). Nehemiah divided his workforce into two groups: Some carried a tool in one hand and a weapon in the other (4:17). Others wore a sword on their side and worked with both hands (4:18).
When Charles Spurgeon started his church magazine in 1865, he borrowed the title from Nehemiah and called the publication The Sword and Trowel. He said it was “a record of combat with sin and labor for the Lord.” (W. W. Wiersbe, Determined).
We must battle the negatives in our lives, such as all the imperfect people around us. We should always remember when we are pointing one finger at someone else three fingers are pointing back at us.
2. We Build the Positives. Build because “The work is great” (4:19). A new scene is introduced with a content change which includes dialogue.
This is Nehemiah’s second speech. In Nehemiah’s first speech, he emphasized that the “Lord is great” (4:14). Now Nehemiah stressed “The work is great” (4:19). Whatever ministry we are involved in, it is a “great work.”
3. Fight the negatives and let God fight your battles in 4:20. Rebuilding the wall was not simply a building project. Nehemiah was battling for the Lord and with the Lord.
4. Report or even record God’s work (4:21-23)
This scene is identified with a time change in 4:21. Nehemiah records that the workers were at their tasks from sunup to sunset.
Nehemiah gives his third speech in 4:22: In Nehemiah’s third speech, he proclaimed: Our sacrifice must be great. Nehemiah exemplified his message. Josephus wrote that Nehemiah “himself made the rounds of the city by night, never tiring either through work or lack of food and sleep, neither of which he took for pleasure but as a necessity” (Antiquities XI, 177, v. 8)
I once heard Tim Lee preach. His legs were blown off in the Vietnam War. He could have focused on this huge negative in his life, his physical handicap, or his inabilities. But he doesn’t! He serves the Lord with great joy and effectiveness.
Nehemiah publically spoke to his discouraged people three times and helped them
What made his speeches so powerful? He knew his people because he was on the job with them. He addressed the needs he was aware of. Pastoral preaching also addresses the needs of the congregation. Pastoral preaching and counseling have been connected not as two separate ministries but as complimenting ministries. Both Jay Adams and Martin Lloyd-Jones used the term “pastoral preaching.”
Jay Adams notes that counseling during the week makes the pastor’s preaching on Sunday more effective:
The pastoral preacher also benefits from counseling …. If he is not truly a pastoral preacher — i.e., one who meets the needs of the flock, giving individual attention to the sheep— he will not preach well. If he spends this time during the week with commentaries alone, when he preaches he will sound like a book. But the man who puts his exegesis to work, not just on Sunday in the pulpit, but all week long in the counseling room, ministering the Word to those in trouble …. They will say to themselves, “He understands!” [We know there are other ways to minister to our flock during the week. Counseling is one of those ways].
Moreover, the counseling preacher can work preventively. What he regularly sees in the study he can warn against in the pulpit. What he learns about people … he can use to the advantage of all. Nothing enables a preacher to ring the bell in a Sunday sermon like knowing that in counseling he has already helped five persons with what he is about to say .… The man who puts his exegesis to work, not just on Sunday in the pulpit, but all week long in the counseling room, ministering the Word to those in trouble will rattle his people’s windows when he preaches (Jay Adams, Preaching With Purpose: The Urgent Task of Homiletics, Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982, 36–38).
Martin Lloyd-Jones advocated that biblical pastoral preaching can counsel and help many on a Sunday morning and eliminate an inordinate time of counseling during the week:
So the argument runs, that you ought to preach less and spend more time in doing personal work and counseling and interviewing …. True preaching does deal with personal problems, so much that true preaching saves a great deal of time for the pastor. I am speaking out of forty years of experience …. The Puritans are justly famous for their pastoral preaching. They would take up what they called “cases of conscience” and deal with them in other sermons, and as they dealt with these problems they were solving the personal individual problems of those who were listening to them.
The preaching of the gospel from the pulpit, applied by the Holy Spirit to the individuals who are listening has been the means of dealing with personal problems of which I as the preacher knew nothing until people came to me at the end of the service saying, I want to thank you for that sermon because if you had known I was there and the exact nature of my problem, you could not have answered my various questions more perfectly.
Do not misunderstand me, I am not saying that the preacher should never do any personal work; far from it. But I do contend that preaching must always come first and that it must not be replaced by anything else.”
Martin Lloyd-Jones gave an example of a young woman who was partially paralyzed because of “disappointment in her emotional life.” As a result of Martin Lloyd-Jones’ visit, she started attending his church and listening to his preaching. She was converted and all of her physical and emotional problems disappeared. Martin Lloyd-Jones never spoke to her personally after the initial visit.
Martin Lloyd-Jones added, Now I am not arguing that this will happen every time. My contention is that if the Gospel is truly preached, in a most astonishing manner it can be so applied by the Spirit to these individual cases and problems that they are dealt with without the preacher knowing it at all.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones .... was actually trained as a physician. He pointed out that depression and certain mental illnesses often have causes that are physical rather than spiritual. Pernicious anemia, arteriosclerosis, porphyria, and even gout are all examples Lloyd-Jones suggested of physical diseases that can cause dementia or produce depression (Healing and Medicine. Eastbourne: Kingsway, 1987, 144-45).
That is what I meant by saying that it saves the pastor a lot of time. If he had to see all these people one by one his life would be impossible, he found he could not do it; but in one sermon he can cover quite a number of problems at one and the same time”(Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Preaching and Preachers, Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 1972, 37-39).
In summation, pastoral preaching and counseling are inseparable. Both Jay Adams and Martin Lloyd-Jones in their books of preaching discuss counseling as an internal part of pastoral preaching.
Counseling individuals one-on-one during the week helps the pastors preach on Sunday with relevance. Pastors who have studied counseling or have done a lot of counseling are excellent in the application of their sermons because in counseling the pastor applies God’s Word to specific problems.
The pastors preaching biblical and pastoral sermons on Sundays can help many more with their sermons and lighten their counseling load.
Sometimes a sermon can cause a member to seek out the pastor for counseling because the Holy Spirit convicted sin in his/her life.
Pastoral preaching follows the example of Nehemiah, who while ministering along side his people admonished them in their discouragement and motivated them to continue in their wall building ministry.