Rejoice!
One of these Israelites was a man named Nehemiah. He was living in Susa, and he was the cupbearer to the King of Susa. One day Nehemiah heard news that some Israelites had gone back into Jerusalem and had rebuilt the Temple, but the walls around Jerusalem were still broken down, and the gates had been burned.
Nehemiah was absolutely devastated when he heard that the walls were still broken down. He cried for days, he fasted, and he repented. Finally, he got permission from the King of Susa to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the wall. It became a battle from that point on, because enemies fought Nehemiah the whole way. I want to look at that battle tonight because it’s our battle too.
In Biblical times, every large city had a giant wall that surrounded it. It was made of stones, and it would have gates that would open during the day and close during the night. The wall was built to protect the people from their enemies. The reason that Nehemiah was distressed about the wall was because without a wall, enemies could easily come in and attack not only the people, but also the Temple of God.
Do you realize that in Christ, you are the Temple of God?
your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you… (1 Corinthians 6:19) (NIV)
You are a Temple, and you’ve got an enemy, and he, as always, wants nothing more than to destroy the Temple of God. So you need to have a wall to protect yourself, and you need to have gates, and watchtowers, and guards.
Our enemy is the devil; Nehemiah’s enemies were people, of course, but there are a lot of similarities. When Nehemiah decided to rebuild, his enemies got angry. Nehemiah wrote:
when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us. “What is this you are doing?” they asked. “Are you rebelling against the king?” (Nehemiah 2:19) (NIV)
What did Nehemiah do? He said:
I answered them by saying, “The God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding…” (Nehemiah 2:20) (NIV)
He seemed to understand these men were liars, that they were enemies, and that they wanted they wall to stay broken.
Nehemiah continued to believe God. He continued to pray. He continued to rebuild. The enemy came back. They ridiculed and mocked again. They said:
“What are those feeble Israelites doing? Will they restore their wall? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they finish in a day? Can they bring the stones back to life from those heaps of rubble—burned as they are?”
… What they are building—even a fox climbing up on it would break down their wall of stones!” (Nehemiah 4:2,3) (NIV)
How did Nehemiah respond? He prayed, and he kept on building. He said that he prayed:
Hear us, our God, for we are despised... (And) … we rebuilt the wall till all of it reached half its height, for the people worked with all their heart. (Nehemiah 4:4-6) (NIV)
I love that!!! They just kept building!! They ignored their enemies!! Unfortunately, the enemies stepped it up a bit. The Bible says:
they were very angry… They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and stir up trouble against it. (Nehemiah 4:7,8) (NIV)
Now at this point some of the Israelites got scared and were thinking about quitting. Nehemiah was told that the strength of the workers was “giving out” (Nehemiah 4:10) (NIV). The Israelite builders began to say there was so much “rubble that we cannot rebuild the wall.” (Nehemiah 4:10) (NIV). And all the people were saying, “wherever you turn, they will attack.” (Nehemiah 4:12) (NIV). What did Nehemiah do? He said,
“Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families (Nehemiah 4:14) (NIV).
Nehemiah also stepped up the protection. He said:
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall … and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. But the man who sounded the trumpet stayed with me. (Nehemiah 4:16-18) (NIV)
When the enemy turned up the threats, Nehemiah turned up his defense!! He brought out the weapons, and he brought out the guards! And he completed that wall in 52 days!
Now let’s look at what Nehemiah’s story has to do with us. We already read how when we turn to Jesus, we become His Temple, and His Holy Spirit lives in us. Imagine that! God Almighty lives in us!
And we have to protect that relationship! Proverbs 4:23 says:
Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it. (Proverbs 4:23) (NIV)
Guard your heart. Because you carry the Holy Spirit in there! The Holy Spirit loves you, and empowers you, and transforms you!! When you are filled with the Holy Spirit not even the gates of Hell can stand against you. If God is for us who can be against us? David said with God’s help we can…
Pursue our enemies
Overtake our enemies
Destroy our enemies
Trample our enemies
And crush them as fine as windblown dust (see Psalm 18)
Do you see why the enemy hates us? He wants to destroy us before we destroy him!! We need to guard our Temples!! How? Philippians says:
Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. (Philippians 3:1) (NIV)
Rejoice rejoice rejoice!! All through the Bible we are told to rejoice!
Rejoice in the Lord
Rejoice in our Promises
Rejoice in our Blessings
Rejoice in the Abundance of all things!
And now we see why- rejoicing is our safeguard!!
When Nehemiah was building that wall, who was stationed behind the workers? Their guards-let’s read it again!
From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah who were building the wall… and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked. (Nehemiah 4:16-18) (NIV)
The builders were building the wall and the guards were standing behind them, equipped with weapons and ready to fight off the enemy!! The builders kept their guards with them at all times. As you go through your life, every day, every minute, do you make sure your guard is with you? In other words, are you always rejoicing? Because your enemy is watching you.
1 Peter 5:8 says, “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” (NIV) And he will sneak up behind you and mock you, ridicule you, accuse you and lie to you. Jesus said that the devil:
was a murderer from the beginning… there is no truth in him… he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44) (NIV)
The devil, working through somebody close to you, will tell you that you’re no good…
he’ll tell you that you have no hope
you have no future
you’ll never make it
he’ll tell you God doesn’t love you
that God won’t forgive you
that God doesn’t hear your prayers.
So you’ve got to know the truth! You’ve got to hang on to the truth! You’ve got to rejoice in the truth! That’s your safeguard. Rejoicing is our greatest defense!!
And something else about rejoicing… Isaiah 12:3 tells us that it is with joy – with rejoicing – that you shall draw water from the wells of salvation!!!
Imagine if you were in a desert dying of thirst and you came upon a well that tapped into an underground River. And imagine that as you looked down into the well, you saw beautiful crystal-clear water – but it was 30 feet down into the well. How would you get that water up to you???
You’d get a bucket and a rope, and you would lower it into the well and draw the water up to you. Well, you have the Holy Spirit in you!! He’s like a River that flows within you. And in this River flow over 3,000 blessings. How do you draw this River out?
Isaiah says, “rejoice!” Rejoicing is your bucket and rope to draw water out of the River of Life!!! As we rejoice, not only are we able to destroy our enemies, we also cause the Holy Spirit, that River of Life and Blessings, to begin to flow!!
An evangelist named William Ward discovered this River one day. I will tell the story in his words:
During the Great Depression I was pastor in Attleboro, Massachusetts. I was only twenty years old and was $600 in debt. I was supporting five people on ten or fifteen dollars a week. I saw no way that I could pay my debt, but God gave me a revelation when I read in His Word: “there is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High” (Psalm 46:4) (Ward 1998).
Now at this point, Brother Ward was like a builder back in Nehemiah’s day, building that wall. And the enemy came along and started talking…
There’s no way you’ll ever pay your debt
There’s no way you’ll ever be able to support all these people
There’s no way you’ll ever make it as a preacher
Might as well give it up
And just like those wall builders, he had come to a breaking point. He was discouraged, overwhelmed, afraid. Have you ever been to that point?
Do you remember what Nehemiah said? “Don’t be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your families!!”
Powerful words then, powerful words now. Don’t be afraid, remember the Lord, and fight!! How do we fight? We find a promise of God, and we choose to rejoice in it. That’s what Brother Ward did. He ignored the taunts of the enemy, he ignored his problem, and he found a promise of God and he began to rejoice in it. I’ll continue his story now:
About nine o’clock one morning, I sat on a chair in our kitchen, and all day long I said, “there is a RIVER, there IS a river, there is a river THAT SHALL MAKE GLAD.” I don’t think that I said any other words than these all day long. I sat there until probably three in the afternoon. Then I jumped into the river that by faith I could see flowing right though my kitchen. Then, as my faith increased, I took every one of my debts and threw them in the river. I said, “I drown my debts in the river that makes glad.”
Soon there was a knock at the door. Three people came in: a deacon, Ad Powers, his mother, and a lady in the church. They said, “We understand that you have a debt of “93.00. Please give us the papers on that, and we are going to pay $31.00 apiece and pay that debt for you.
I gave them the papers. When they left, I began to shout, “Dear God I see how THIS RIVER MAKES GLAD.”
As I was shouting, there was another knock on the door. Someone came in and said, “God tells me that you have a debt of so much money. Just give me the papers. I want to pay that debt for you.” I gave him the papers on the debt.
When he left, it was not long until someone else knocked on the door, saying, “I could not sleep all last night. God told me that you have a debt of so much money and He told me to pay it for you. Just give me the papers. I will gladly pay it right away.”
I tell you that I slept in victory that night. I had thrown the $600 of debt into THE RIVER THAT MAKES GLAD, and I was full of joy; for God saw to it, even in the middle of the Great Depression, that the entire amount was paid quickly, and I did not have to pay a penny of it myself. I learned a lesson that has helped me through the years. When I get a burden too hard to carry, I head for THE RIVER THAT MAKES GLAD and hurl my burdens and problems into God’s River. (Ward 1998)
William Ward started to rejoice in the invisible River within him and discovered that the blessings started to flow!
You have the River of Life living inside you. It’s with rejoicing that we draw this River out, with all the blessings!!! Start rejoicing in the River of Life today!! Rejoicing is your safeguard – your protection against the devil, and rejoicing is your key to drawing out the River of Blessings within you!
References:
Strong, James. Strongs Exhaustive Concordance: Showing Every Word of the Text of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurrence of Each Word in Regular Order, Together with Dictionaries of the Hebrew and Greek Words of the Original, with References to the English Words. Baker Book House, 1983.
Ward, William Arthur. Miracles That I Have Seen. Hagerstown, MD: McDougal Pub., 1998. 166-167. Print.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
Scripture quotations marked (TLB) are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.