Sermon Tone Analysis

Everyone struggles with discouragement from time to time, and it seems like Christians struggle with it more than others because the Lord uses it to teach us to rely only upon him.

Even so, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to live with.

There are many examples of discouragement in the Bible itself.

After Elijah defeated the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel, he ran more than a hundred miles to Beersheba at the southern tip of Judah.

He left his servant there, traveled another fifteen miles or so, sat down under juniper tree and prayed that he might die (I Kgs.

19).

Likewise, Numbers 21 records the discouragement of the whole nation of God’s people after their defeat of the Canaanites.

The Lord had given them an amazing victory, but as soon as they took their eyes off of him, everything started to look really bad.

They even complained about the bread that God gave them.

They called it “light bread.”

In this case, the Lord punished them by sending them a plague of fiery serpents.

The fact is that discouragement takes no work at all.

It comes naturally to each and every one of us, being sinners that we are, the moment that we fail to trust the goodness and wisdom of our God.

Fighting discouragement can be at times a full-time job.

So, how do we do it?

We have to remember that the Jews in today’s text were just like us.

They were discouraged.

From a merely human and empirical perspective they had good reason to be.

Everything seemed to be against them, and nothing was in their favor.

When we are in situations like this, we tend to think that our situation is unique.

Even if we don’t say it, we might think to ourselves that no one has ever been in my shoes before.

But this really denies that the Bible is sufficient for your life and that it deals with your problems.

Remember what Paul wrote to the Corinthians: /There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it/ (I Cor.

10:13).

In his mercy to his people, God gave the Jews of Nehemiah’s day a leader to show them how to overcome their discouragement.

We not only have his example before us, but we have even more —a great trailblazer, the author and finisher of our faith, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He suffered the entire range of human woes, so that nothing that God brings into our lives can do us any lasting harm.

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Four Reasons for Discouragement

Today’s text begins with a list of four reasons for the discouragement of Nehemiah’s contemporaries.

Note that these reasons came in rapid-fire succession.

One at a time might have been manageable, but coming all at once they were just overwhelming.

The first two reasons for their discouragement, which are both mentioned in verse 10, go together.

Even in our English translation we can see that the fact that the Jews recognized their inability to rebuild the wall as the result of failing strength and too much work.

But the Hebrew here is even more interesting.

Verse 10 takes the form of Hebrew poetry.

Some commentators even believe that the workers might have sung it as a lamentation when they were growing weary.

If so, they were not only complaining but using this song to increase their unhappiness.

It’s a song that really has no hope.

Looking now at the reasons for their discouragement one at a time, we turn to the first one.

The people of Judah said that they had too little strength and too much work to do: /The strength of the bearers of burdens is decayed, and there is much rubbish/ (v.

10).

They were physically and psychologically drained.

This makes sense.

We’re not usually frustrated when we go away on vacation.

That’s a time to relax and get away from the doldrums of the daily grind.

Rather, we become frustrated and discouraged when we work eighty hours a week, our problems pile up one on top of the other, and we still have to go home, cut the grass, clean the gutters, repair the fence, and so on.

In our text, the wall was about half done and the people were getting tired.

It’s often true that any given project looks manageable before we start it, and after it’s over we wonder how we finished it so fast, but right in the middle it starts to look impossible.

What the project requires probably hasn’t changed that much, but our exhaustion can make it look a lot bigger than it really is.

The amount of rubbish had not increased any.

The Jews were just tired of dealing with it.

The second reason for the discouragement of the Jews comes at the end of verse 10.

They had lost their confidence in the sufficiency of God’s grace and focused instead on their own inability to do the work.

They said, /We are not able to build the wall/.

Recognizing our inability is a good thing.

We need to understand that we cannot come to God in our own strength or on our terms.

We must confess that we cannot do the work of Christ’s Kingdom by relying on our own might or wisdom.

Our success, which is really God’s success working in us, comes only when we beg him in prayer to bless our efforts.

Why?

Because God has chosen to glorify himself by using means that the world considers foolish and weak.

And at the top of this list is the death of Christ.

The eternal Son of God humbled himself and died as a condemned felon in order to secure our release from God’s just condemnation.

This wonderful truth is completely incompatible with the naturalistic axioms of unbelievers and can only be accepted by faith, which is itself a gift of God.

Recognizing our own inability, therefore, is not an end in itself.

Its purpose is to teach us that we must trust the sovereign power and goodness of our God.

Otherwise, it leaves us without any place to go for help.

The third source of discouragement that Nehemiah and his contemporaries faced came from their enemies, who were making threats against them under their breath.

According to verse 11 they were saying, /They shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst among them, and slay them, and cause the work to cease/.

The purpose of these whispers of secret attack was to dishearten the people, and it worked.

It was bad enough that Sanballet, Tobiah and their cronies disapproved of Nehemiah’s desire to rebuild the wall and secure Jerusalem.

It was unconscionable that they hated the Jews so much that they laughed and scorned and mocked them.

But to spread these insidious rumors that they never acted on, and probably had no real intention of acting on, is beyond belief.

Satan, whose name means “adversary,” is never at rest.

He knows how to get around.

He sought to destroy the early church by a vicious program of persecution — first using the Jews, then later the Romans.

When that started to fail, he stepped up his assault on the doctrines of the gospel: the Trinity, the person work of Christ, the Holy Spirit and Biblical church government.

In the Middle Ages he tried to hide the Word of God in monasteries, where few people other than monks had access to it.

Today he has convinced a large part of the visible church that the Bible is mostly a human book.

It serves a guide to truth, but is not truth itself.

If you think Satan will leave you alone, fellow Christian, wake up!

He will whisper things in your ears and you may not know where these thoughts come from.

The devil will try to tell you that being faithful to the Lord hurts: it’s not what you really want to do, it takes too much time away from other things, and it just isn’t worth it.

His arguments often sound plausible because there is just a little bit of truth in them.

But what are your alternatives?

Is apostasy a viable option?

Should you just give up on daily Bible reading and prayer, public worship or catechizing your children so that you can claim the time as your own?

Are you really willing to gain the whole world at the expense of your own soul or the souls of your children?

The fourth reason for discouragement among the workers came from the Jews who lived in the surrounding villages.

Believing defeat to be inevitable, they encouraged those who were lived outside Jerusalem to go back to their homes.

After all, it really wasn’t possible to complete the work as things stood.

It’s bad enough when one’s enemies threaten the work that we do for the kingdom of God, but it’s even worse when our “friends” pour salt into our irritated wounds.

This is exactly what Job’s three so-called friends did, as they pretended to bring him comfort.

In John 6, after the multitude that Jesus fed went away and /walked no more with him/, Jesus turned to the twelve and asked them if they also wanted to abandon him (vv.

66–67).

Barnabas left Paul on his second missionary journey, though he did not leave the Lord (Acts 15:39).

Demas, who /loved this present world/, forsook both (II Tim.

4:10).

Each of these situations reminds us that we must never put our trust in men.

Psalm 20:7 says, /Some trust in chariots, and some and horses/.

This seems like an especially foolish thing to do.

In the exodus God threw the Pharaoh’s horses and chariots into the sea (Exod.

15:19).

Psalm 146:3 warns us not to take comfort in the actions of civil leaders: /Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help/.

Why would we, since the princes of the world like to shake their fist at God?

The things of this world offer no comfort whatsoever.

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Nehemiah’s Response