It is very easy, at the best of times, to become “weary in well-doing” (Gal. 6:9). Physical tiredness alone can do this, but spiritual distractions and difficulties can more profoundly discourage faithful discipleship and cool our love for the Lord.

When Nehemiah fires the question, “Why should the work cease?” at enemies of God who were attempting to thwart the rebuilding of Jerusalem, there is no evidence that he was tempted to throw in the towel just because a bunch of pagans wanted to squash the spiritual freedom and revival of God’s people.

Doubtless, many people in Jerusalem were discouraged and ready to quit. Accordingly, the crisis in Nehemiah 6 gives us a window into how God works in and through His church and how we ought to tackle our own discouragements in His service, whether their source is from outside of ourselves or from within our own weary souls.

Nehemiah 6 also reminds us of our mission to our own time, and specifically that the Lord means to save sinners in every generation. When Jesus tells His disciples that the (evangelistic) fields “are already white for harvest” (John 4:35), He is not talking about something that only happens once in a while as a special event. He is describing the permanent, ongoing condition of the world as a mission field. Crops are ripening, and if they are not reaped for the Lord, generation by generation, they will inevitably rot for the devil.

1. God Is Always at Work (Nehemiah 6:1-3)

It is 445 B.C. Nehemiah is a Jewish noble in the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes. He hears of Ezra’s troubles in the task of rebuilding Jerusalem. He is being hindered by faithless people within the covenant community and by hostile Persians and others without. Nehemiah asks Artaxerxes if he can go and help the returned exiles in Jerusalem, and the king appoints him governor of Judea (Neh. 2:1-10). Nehemiah goes and leads the rebuilding.

The question for us is, “What is this telling us about the work of God?” It is more than merely a matter of a king’s favor being shown to a tiny minority in his empire. This surely emphasizes some significant truths that God’s people, then and now, need to grasp.

First, in Nehemiah’s world, God was building His church and His kingdom—however weak they looked to people at that time. Nehemiah saw God at work with his own eyes and was enabled to give himself to the Lord’s leading. Notice also that a pagan king was used by God to build God’s kingdom! “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord as the rivers of water. He turns it wherever He wishes” (Prov. 21:1). Nehemiah understood that the hand of God was in all of his circumstances, including the king’s willingness to endorse Nehemiah in the work of God.

Nehemiah knew God had called him to this work. Nehemiah, and Ezra before him, did not create their own jobs. Neither do God’s servants in any a generation, past, present or future, make their jobs: “No man takes this honor to himself, except he who is called by God, just as Aaron was” (Heb. 5:4). God calls His servants. God calls His churches. God saves. God initiates. God is at work!

Second, God is still building His church today, in our world. Nehemiah understood that what he was doing by the leading of the Lord was “a great work”—God’s great work (v. 3). The Apostle Paul mirrored this understanding when he wrote to Timothy, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry” (1 Tim. 1:12).

Nehemiah also understood that his faithfulness was crucial to the advance of the Lord’s cause. If he flinched or fell away or was discredited, then the church would take a massive hit (vv. 9, 11). A Christian’s committed willingness to serve God as God commands him is vitally necessary in the fulfillment of God’s eternal decree for the advance of His kingdom.

Suppose Asaph had denied God when he was “envious of the arrogant” (Ps. 73:3). He tells us, “If I had said, ‘I will speak thus,’ behold, I would have been untrue to the generation of Your children” (Ps. 73:15). He would have done real damage to God’s people and cause in the sight of the world.

Suppose Jesus had given in to the devil’s tempting in the wilderness (Matt. 4:1-11). That would have sunk the gospel altogether and forever! Only a sinless savior can be a savior of sinners. Now suppose you decide to give up the work God has given you—personally, in your families, and as a community of Christ? Remember Esther the queen, who in God’s providence had in her hands the opportunity to influence vitally the future of the people of God. She had to risk her life by going into the king’s presence, but Mordecai did not let her off the hook: “For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” (Esther 4:14)

This was a unique moment in the redemptive history of the people of God, for the absolute extinction of the church was threatened. Scripture makes clear that this can never happen again. But are we—each Christians, in every place—not called to God’s kingdom for the time and circumstances in which God’s providence finds us?

What does that tell you about your calling today, tomorrow morning, this week? Is it not that your personal calling is to be consciously and committedly working with Him? Is that not the bottom line for every day of grace our Savior is giving you?

2. God’s Work Always Faces Opposition (6:4-14)

Opposition to God’s work is especially active when progress is being made in church and kingdom. Notice how this works out in Nehemiah’s Jerusalem. Notice three ploys, and also that there is nothing new under the sun.

The first ploy is negotiation. As Winston Churchill once asserted, “To jaw, jaw is better than to war, war.” Talking is cheaper and less painful in most cases. For Adolf Hitler, negotation netted the Rhineland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia without a shot. Sanballat, whose name means “Sin [the name of the moon god] gives life,” tried no fewer than four times to get Nehemiah to negotiate. Nehemiah wasn’t fooled. “They sought to do me harm,” he says (vv. 1-4).

Rebuffed by Nehemiah, Sanballat’s next ploy is to put public pressure upon Nehemiah from his own people. His fifth approach is an “open letter” (vv. 5-9). This was clearly a scare tactic designed to exploit the low state of the Jewish people. Similarly, in the recent past, a Russian general made the (silly) threat of nuking Poland if the Poles agreed to install a NATO antiballistic missile system in their territory.

The final ploy is to inspire terror in Nehemiah himself (vv. 10-13). This new tack involves a spy (Shemaiah), a prophetess (Noadiah), and others conspiring to discredit Nehemiah by scaring him into holing up in the temple for fear of assassins. This is not terrorism such as we are seeing in the death and destruction so routinely reported from the Middle East. Sanballat and his co-conspirators know Nehemiah is the governor appointed by King Artaxerxes. In comparison with the murderous states and factions in that same part of the world today, they are mere paper tigers. They have to watch their step. There is murder in their hearts, however, and opportunity, not intention, is the measure of their potential actions. However, Nehemiah is a man of principle, who realizes that the cost of cowardice is apostasy from God. He will not scurry into a bolthole!

Remember that opposition goes with the territory for God’s faithful people in this world. One of our ministerial brethren at Synod, who is a native of an Asian country, was asked privately where the persecution of the church was worst at the present time. His surprising answer was, “in America.” His explanation basically was that the persecution here is so effective that we are afraid to open our mouths and unwilling to risk appearing too critical or intolerant of anything in our society. We are cowed into spiritual ineffectiveness by and before an increasingly neo-pagan culture.

Here is a challenge for Christians in North America: Are we to be spooked into silence? Or shamed into silence? Jesus says to us clearly, “In the world you will have tribulation.” He goes on to say, however, “But take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). Be clear on this: Jesus does not abolish the opposition, or exempt His followers from having to face persecution squarely, even suffering martyrdom itself. God does not promise you a rose garden, but He has promised to bring you through to glory.

We can apply the lessons of Nehemiah’s experience to ourselves. Make opposition to the gospel of Christ an opportunity to redouble your faithfulness. You all know the clichés: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going” and “No pain, no gain.” Every serious, competitive runner looks at the opposition as an encouragement to train harder and to run faster.

Many years ago, minutes before going in to conduct a worship service, the old elder who had prayed with me noted that I was looking sad, and asked what troubled me. I told him I was under severe criticism and pressure in the congregation where I was the pastor. He put his hand on my shoulder, and with his deep Scottish burr, paraphrased Jesus’ words in His sermon on the plain, “Gordon, beware when all men shall speak well of you!” (Luke 6:26).

Nehemiah refused to cave in to the pressures and seductions of the traitors within the church and the enemies outside. The latter wanted him to come and compromise “in the plain of Ono” (v. 2). Notice two elements in Nehemiah’s response, action and prayer:

Nehemiah acted decisively, knowing God’s will: his answer to his enemies is a resounding no. Maybe you think it’s too easy to “Just say no,” but if you never say no, just remember you are really saying no to the Lord!

Nehemiah prayed to the Lord throughout his trouble. In verse 9 he prayed, “Now therefore, O God, strengthen my hands,” and in verse 14 he asked, “My God, remember Tobiah and Sanballat, according to these their works, and the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who would have made me afraid.”

Nehemiah acts in faith and prays for God’s help—and in that order. Frequently, we pray but put off acting, often on the ground we are not sure what God wants. Yet in fact His will is plainly known by us.

Let us be clear that we are not called to court trouble or look for persecutors under every bush and behind every tree. We have no warrant to develop a martyr complex. If, however, persecution should come to us personally, the Lord tells us—astoundingly—to count it a privilege!

Notice what Paul says in Philippians 3:7-11:

But whatever things were gain to me, these I have counted as loss for Christ. More than that I count all things as loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God on the basis of faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Nehemiah had entered into “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings.” He could enter suffering because he already knew in his soul something of the “power of His resurrection.”

Ask yourself if anything is achieved without some kind of struggle. Remember we are not above our Master, who suffered and died for us precisely that we might live, now and forevermore.

3. God’s Work Always Accomplishes His Goals (6:15-16)

The work of God’s kingdom seems to ebb and flow like the tide. The truth is, however, that God “does according to His will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can restrain His hand or say to Him, ‘What have You done?’” (Dan. 4:35).

God is always fulfilling His purposes. This is true however sinful people and nations are, or however lukewarm local Christians and churches may be. The Babylonian exile, out of which Ezra and Nehemiah came, was still God accomplishing His work and will.

At the end of this account, Nehemiah prevailed. The walls are completed “in 52 days” (v. 15). Jesus points out that his believers will “never perish….Neither shall anyone snatch them out of [his] hand” (John 10:28-29).

God’s kingdom grows one saved soul at the time, and He never loses anyone that He saves. His kingdom never shrinks (even if churches go up and down in numbers). His kingdom advances every day towards the fullness of His eternal, immutable will. The full company of the elect will gather for the first time on the day Christ consummates His kingdom, and they will praise and serve the Lord in perfect and unending unity in the glory of heaven.

The gospel is actually unstoppable. Nehemiah understood this, and his faithfulness was his application of this truth to what he does with God’s known will. God’s enemies also see this and fear (v. 16).

Furthermore, God calls us to set our hand to the plow He is giving us (to our personal callings) and never look back: In Luke 9:62, Jesus says, “No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.” Second Corinthians 5:14 states, “The love of Christ compels us.”

Therefore, let us resolve that we will never cease in our service to the Lord in His work: So desire to please God, that you are ready cheerfully to oppose his enemies (Neh. 6:13). So desire the glory of God, that you refuse to bring shame on yourself, your Savior, your heavenly Father, and His church and kingdom (unlike David in 2 Sam. 12:14).

So desire the help of God, that He would turn all your trembling, doubt, and fear into prayerful trust in the Lord for His promises and His blessings (Neh. 6:9).

So desire the salvation by the Lord Jesus Christ for others, as well as yourself, that you look to Him as your Savior, persevere in solid discipleship, and believe that “in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart” (Gal. 6:9).

Why indeed should the work cease? Let us follow Jesus, with our eyes fixed upon Him.

Gordon Keddie recently retired as pastor of the Southside Indianapolis, Ind., RPC. He is the author of many books including Christ’s Covenant and Your Life (Crown & Covenant). This article is based on a sermon preached at Immanuel Chapel RP Mission in Dayton, Tenn.