Nehemiah Part VIII - Our God will Fight for Us [Dealing with Opposition, Part II] (4:7-23)

In our day and age, many Christians have bought into the lie that if we are facing opposition, we must be doing something wrong. Hence, it is easy to give way to fear. When others mock or scorn us, we can be induced – through fear – to abandon a laudable project. And particularly when opposition moves beyond verbal insult to physical threatening, we can frequently be moved through fear to desert our designs. Solomon declares in Proverbs 29:25: “The fear of man brings a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord shall be safe.” It is this temptation to be ensnared by fear that we find our fathers facing in our text today. Nehemiah’s response to this temptation will equip us to deal with our own fears, to be men and women who are not caught in the snare of fear but who are empowered with courage by the grace of God.