But in Judah, it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There's too much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. And our enemy 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 10 times, you must return to us. Amen, dear saints, you may be seated. I was struck by that passage a moment ago and three times it was said, it was said, it was said. But before we go into tonight's, as always, let's approach the throne again in prayer. Father, we need Jesus. Feed us Him and the Word again tonight so that we're even more nourished for the week before us. We know that words are important and you give them to us. You build your church through words, and you created the world, the universe, through the Word of God, Jesus Christ. And we come now and ask you to speak His grace, His person to us by the power of your Holy Spirit. Communicate that grace to us by these words, in Jesus' name, Amen. Have you ever heard the words of the old song, Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam and the deer and the antelope play? Where seldom is heard a discouraging word and the skies are not cloudy all day. Well down here in this world and the church militant it's not always the case that the words that are heard by us are are discouraging in a seldom way. It is not our universal experience that seldom is heard a discouraging word. One of the reasons that this is the case is because we live in a fallen world. and discouraging words are going to happen, but they're not always untrue and they're not always from devious or nefarious sources. We're going to find all that out tonight as well. Now tonight's text, verses 10 through 12, are just full of discouraging words. It's a very interesting passage actually. Verse 10, Very discouraging. Verse 11, even worse. Verse 12, well, not as bad, but still discouraging. So, we are to be like Nehemiah, though, who, in light even of hearing discouraging words, did not lose his head, but kept his faith, and so must we. Martin Luther was famous for making the comment, we cannot keep the birds from flying over our heads, but we can prevent them from building nests there. And we ought to have something of that attitude tonight. In light of all this, let's make it our goal this evening to handle discouraging words in God-honoring ways, looking together at Nehemiah 4, 10-12. Discouraging words, the doctrine. Sometimes the church is deluged with discouraging words, D-E-L-U-G-E-D, which means flooded over. Another old saying, when it rains, it pours. This is true in church life and our individual Christian experiences. Sometimes God allows that. Satan, of course, wants to pile on anything he can when we're down and out. And our good and gracious Heavenly Father sometimes tests our faith by the reception of our ears and hearts of the hearing of discouraging words. despair over that, let's learn what to do when negativity tends to sweep over us. So, sometimes the church is deluged with discouraging words, but this should not rattle us, R-A-T-T-L-E. I'm using a lot of quaint sayings tonight, probably appropriate given the title of the sermon, but The Lord never promised us a rose garden down here, and the fact is that troubling and disturbing words and circumstances are going to descend on us in certain ways that we cannot control or even anticipate. Now, we're going to go into a week here, and we're going to talk to people, and those people are, like us, going to be sinners, and they're going to be fallen. and they're going to have all kinds of things in their hearts, and those things are going to come out. Some of those things will be good, but lots of those things aren't going to be so good. So tonight's going to help us prepare ourselves for how to receive those with grace. So the issue is not whether discouraging words will come to us, but how we are to act when they do. And again, this is where preparation comes to the fore. That's what you're doing here tonight, what you did here this morning, what you'll do throughout the week as you use the ordinary means of grace of prayer, seek the Lord, put on the armor of God and be ready. for the days ahead. The wise Christian churchman says, discouraging words are bound to come, how will I respond to them when they reach my ears? You know, unprepared people panic when that happens, but that's not to be our situation. We're to be prepared and armed, ready for action, and this usually starts in the form of words. So, as Christ Church, let us do that, even tonight. So, this should not rattle us, instead it should make us intensify our faith resolve. After all, what do we read was the result of the discouragement found in tonight's text? Well, in just two more verses, verse 14, which Lord willing we'll get to next Sunday night, we read these amazing words. And they come from Nehemiah. Do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. So our hero, Nehemiah, instead of being intimidated by all this discouragement, and again, it's not all from bad people, rather comes back and speaks great encouragement to the church and builds her up. Take note, however, that discouraging words are not to be ignored or treated as if there is no objective truth content in them at all, because on the contrary, sometimes there is. And discouraging words actually can lead to responsible action which prior to their hearing maybe wasn't being done. And that actually seems to be the case in this chapter four of Nehemiah as well. After all, dears, the gospel of grace itself is, in a sense, first bad news for us before it's good news. Because it has to reveal to our hearts the fact that we're completely lost, dead, rebellious sinners without any hope. safe for the Lord Jesus Christ. So God uses the law to do that. And then he brings us the gospel of grace and shows us his tender mercy and kindness in his Son and his blood atonement. So let's look at these interesting verses tonight and observe the various sources of discouraging words, 10 through 12 of Nehemiah 4. And again, not all these springs of disheartening tidings are bad or evil. That's for sure, as we'll soon see, in fact, right away in verse 10. The various sources Verse 10, struggling faithful believers. So the first volley of discouragement actually comes from God's people and obedient, good saints of God who are seeking to walk with Him. Here's what we read. In Judah, it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing. There's too much rubble. By ourselves, we will not be able to rebuild the wall. So Judah was the largest tribe in Israel, and all these tribes were starting to regather in Jerusalem to do the work of the rebuilding of the wall. They had been there for a while, and the temple had actually been started. But Judah is just simply telling their brave and noble leader, Nehemiah, the truth. They're just sharing their heart. They're just saying this is really, really hard, we're tired, and the work is difficult. They were being honest with him. They weren't trying to discourage him by any means. And they aren't even saying they want to give up or go home or go back to Persia or something like that. They're not. And one of the things I think as churchmen, whether we're in officer corps or we're just, we're parishioners that are so, So precious to God. We need to be able to listen to that from each other from time to time in a gracious way and allow people to vent their feelings. And so here's an example of it. Nehemiah doesn't say to them, oh you guys are just a bunch of wimps and you gotta get back there and get to work and just buck up and try real hard. He listens to what they had to say. They were with him. They were comrades with him. And so they're simply trying to let him know how they feel. And the church's work, the ministry, is very difficult. Not only for pastors and elders and deacons, but for all the faithful parish. There isn't a faithful church member who doesn't bear a difficult burden and load in this world. Everyone does. In a church like ours where almost everybody has an active ministry, you know exactly what I'm talking about. And it is true. Getting to heaven is extremely difficult. True saving grace in Christ's blood and resurrection, however, includes with it persevering grace. So the fact that they were struggling and the work was hard and they were tired didn't mean that they wouldn't persevere because persevering grace is part of the means of grace and the wonders of the gospel. We talk about it in the five points of Calvinism, P, perseverance of the saints. We persevere to the very end. In the context of the church doing the work of the ministry, So do we sometimes feel as though God's, as God's church has children, that our strength is failing and that the rubbish in the way of our progress is so great that it's almost impossible to succeed? And that can not just, it starts here in our church lives and context, but you know, when you go into the world tomorrow and this week, you're taking your gospel ministrations there. Your ministers there where you go. And it can be hard there too, whether it's a school or a business, an office, whatever it might be, a home, neighborhood, a family. It's just not easy. And in this world, in the fallen world, it is definitely challenging. But if we do feel sometimes like that, we're not alone, and we're not unfaithful, we're just being honest. But even in the midst of how difficult ministry or life is, we should never ever, ever give up. That is really the key. And we will give up if we're not truly elect unto grace as regenerate Christian churchmen like so many people do. Because it is a miracle not to give up and to persevere Sunday to Sunday. That's a miracle of the first magnitude. So the very first source of discouraging words are people we love, people that are our friends, they're people we respect, they're people that we work with and minister with. They are struggling faithful believers, but now look at verse 11, conniving hateful foes, the exact opposite, F-O-E-S, where we read, and our enemies said, and there's the word said again, they will not know or see till we come upon them and kill them and stop the work. Now these words are completely evil and wicked and nefarious and violent. But they're also discouraging words. It's on the opposite end of the pole of the people giving it. You've got the faithful believers here and the sons of Satan over here. Now, there's not an ounce of encouragement, obviously, in these words. Instead, they're designed entirely to tear down the ministry and the people of the God. of the Church of the Lord Jesus. So, how Nehemiah became privy to these negative utterances and the plans and schemes of the Church's adversaries is not known by us with certainty, but the Holy Spirit obviously knew, and he inspired these words to be recorded in verse 11 of chapter 4. of this book called Nehemiah. So discouraging words from enemies are to be taken seriously, as Nehemiah does so here. He takes the words of the Judeans seriously. The work is hard, the rubbish is all over the place, we're really getting worn down. And he takes the words of these opponents seriously, too. But he doesn't take them as absolute. There's a difference between taking negativity from enemies seriously and taking their words as absolute. In other words, the church's foes really believe that they would kill God's people and cause the work of the ministry to cease, but that doesn't mean that it would actually happen. What the Church's antagonists did not realize was that while they conspired against the people of the Covenant, the God of the Covenant was planning and putting together events and circumstances that would make null and void all of their threats and intimidation against his children. And that's a beautiful thing that we always need to know is happening in the background, even if we can't see it or sense it. So the various sources of discouraging words, struggling faithful believers, conniving hateful foes, verse 12, watchful and persistent allies, A-L-L-I-E-S, allies are friends, they're people that are on our side, if you will, verse 12, at that time, The Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us ten times, you must return to us. Now these people, whoever they were, were specifically obviously in league with Nehemiah and the workers on the wall. They lived near Jerusalem and they were Jews. but it seems like they perhaps were not yet part of the action for some reason. Maybe they were, but in any case, there's some ambiguity about verse 12. Let me explain. The exact meaning of verse 12, the Hebrew, is unclear. Most translations, and I know we have several, take it that the Allies are warning the wall-builders of the enemy's plans. But the ESV, which is what I just read from, and I know some of you have it before you too, takes a different tack altogether and has the Allies urging the workers to quote, return to us. Presumably the words meaning, hey, get out of Jerusalem because, you know, you're under a real threat. I mean, it's a red alert. The alarms are going off all over the place. The sirens are blaring. Of course, they didn't have those, but you know what I'm saying. So at any rate, whichever the translation, it doesn't too much matter because The fact is that these folks were on the side of Nehemiah and the people in Jerusalem, and they kept telling him ten times that the threat was serious and that it appeared that it would not or could not fail. And again, it wasn't that God's people here were being faithless, or like rebellious, or didn't have hope in Yahweh. ultimately in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, but they were definitely concerned, and their pleas just so happened to be the third consecutive set of discouraging words for Nehemiah and the pillars on the wall. So, maybe you're going to go into work this week or somewhere, and you're going to be in a responsible position, and you're going to get one set, two sets, and three sets. And even if this happens to you, we should seek to be like Nehemiah and be faithful in the midst of it. So, notice that being bombed with a bunch of disheartening information does not lead these people to say, I give up, I quit. Rather, they pressed on, they still believed in the Lord despite all kinds of legitimate apprehension. And it was legitimate apprehension. I mean this really, you can kind of feel it and sense it because these people were really in a difficult spot right here. But God was on their side and he was watching over them. Let's do a little more application tonight and learn how the church may actually profit from discouraging words. Yes, even that which would normally tear us down may be put to good and noble uses in building us up. So let's consider how we may actually benefit from this by our understanding that the life of faithfulness is tough. And it is. It's hard. I just shared with you it's impossible to get to heaven on one's own. It's impossible to remain faithful in the covenant on one's own. it is a difficult thing. But this is what distinguishes a true church or a true saint from a hypocritical one or a false one. The ability to hear hard words, some true, some false, and yet not to be undone by them, but rather to be made better through them. Now isn't that amazing? I would say that Nehemiah and the faithful people in Jerusalem, that were God's covenant community, actually became better through this information, which is remarkable if you think about it. When they actually, I'm looking ahead, they actually start doing things that maybe they weren't doing before, and they begin to strengthen themselves in the Lord. See, this is part of Christian maturity, I think, is that our initial reaction, and young people experience it understandably so, you get a bunch of discouragement, it kind of gets you down. But as we grow and mature, we can understand that we don't have to have that happen to us. First of all, we have to be wise and understand it's going to come, but to be prepared for it. and not to be undone by it, but actually to be made better through it. You know, if the Christian church life was easy, everybody would be doing it, but it's a challenge. And it gives God glory when he miraculously causes us to persevere in this most holy faith. You know, our characters are tested more through the crucible of hearing discouraging words than they are in the midst of great encouragement, although I hasten to say that we need the latter, i.e. good encouragement, and can't get by without it. And that's one of the reasons that passage from Ephesians 4, which Elder Craig read earlier, is so key and important. We need to build each other up. with utterances that uplift our hearts in Christ. So how the church may actually profit from this? By understanding that the life of faithfulness is tough, we are more motivated to seek Christ by faith. That's precisely what Nehemiah and his fellow Christian or churchmen did. They said, okay, we've got a problem, and our solution is not going to be to fear, despair, or give in. Instead, our answer will be to keep believing, keep ministering, reinforce our efforts with even more prayer and diligence. That's good. You know, it's really interesting if you can look at life in the full orb of everything. We realize that everything, really Romans 8.28, which you heard last Sunday morning from Pastor Hopwood. I haven't listened to the sermon yet, but I've heard great things. God causes all things to work together for good. You know, even the poor devil, everything he does ends up, in the end, for the elect church benefiting us. It doesn't mean, though, that it's not hard and it's not uncomfortable, but in the end we actually become more like Christ through it. So, will discouraging words come our way this week? Well, yep, they sure will, dears, but every Sunday we get to come back to church and hear good news. and good words of Jesus' gracious gospel. And our response is one of faith, just like theirs was. And they needed it as well. That the blood, atonement, and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ is secured for us forever, our eternal and temporal salvation. And that we have in Him everything we need for life and godliness for this world and the world to come. And this faith leads us to love God, which then leads us, of course, to be willing to press on and keep doing the ministry. Even when it's hard. Even when we don't feel like doing it. Even when people are telling us not to do it. And the whole world is screaming at us that they want us to do their thing. So discouraging words, dears, are never to be sought after, that's for sure, unduly given out, but they're also never, ever to succeed in destroying us, Christ's church. Let's pray. Father, thank you for that, that here with Nehemiah and the faithful covenant people of the old covenant church, they were bombed with some discouragement here, and yet they They just did better because of it. And it didn't stop them. It really reinforced them. It stiffened their backbone of faith. It caused them to speak the truth and love and encourage one another in their work of ministry. And we pray that you would continue to do that with us. Thank you that you build us up. with the gospel today in the morning and evening. May we remember Jesus throughout this week we pray in his name. Amen.