Built Despite Opposition

I think the hardest thing to teach the next generation is this word commitment. How to be committed to a family, how to be committed to church, how to be committed to your faith because commitment is not in their vocabulary. Commitment is not in our culture. Far from it. When we act as a church, we need to act together. We need to be committed to one another. Hey, man. It's so it's such a privilege to be with you guys this morning. Um, we are going to be in Nehemiah 4 1-23. That is where we're going to be studying this morning. So, if you guys want to grab a Bible in front of you, open up your Bible to Nehemiah 4 1-23. Man, I feel like God has always designed me for tough conversations, for tough things in my life. I have constantly, I feel like, been put in positions to endure opposition constantly in my life by God. And that's what we're going to see today. We're going to see Nehemiah endure tough things, endure opposition in his life. But but first, before we get there, u me and Andrew were invited to one of our local universities here in Surprise. And um as we attended there, we were asked to partner with them to help mold the next generation to to just be with them. and we ended up talking to um the president of the university and he started telling us this story of like who he was going to interview um just recently he's hiring new professors for this university and as he was telling this story he he said that he was going to interview this 45year-old man and as he brought this 45year-old man he called him up brought him into his office left the door open and as this 45-year-old man came in through the door He also had another person with him. It was his dad with him walking in through the office door. And so this president, he's having this conversation. He's having this interview. He is interviewing this son and dad together. And why do I tell you this story? Because guys, like I really believe that I I love my job. I love investing in the students. I love investing in kids ministry. I love investing in shephering the next generation. absolutely love my job. But from my position and where I have been put by God, I have observed something very real in our culture today. I have realized that man, we are struggling to raise tough teenagers. We are struggling to raise tough kids. We are struggling to raise kids that will lead the church in the future. And it all starts in our home. It starts with us. It starts with me in my own house. Here's a statistic by Fox News. Fox News did a statistic. They did a survey of interviewing Gen Z in the workplace. And this is some of the statistics that they brought up. 77% of them admitted of bringing a parent to a job interview. 53% of parents spoke with a hiring manager on their behalf. 73% help complete work assignments. 45% regularly have a parent talk to the current manager. Could you imagine that? Hey, how's Timmy doing flipping those burgers? Right, man. You wonder why youth pastors is so low right now? Why it's so hard to keep a youth pastor in ministry? If this is going on in the workforce today, only imagine what is going on in church life today. I had a mom come up to me two weeks into my job here at Cross Church. She came up to me and she's like, "Hey, Kyle, do you think you could just have a little bit more fun? Do you think you could dial down your tone and not act so tough or teach on tough things in real life? Just be more fluff, be more fun for us." And so I walked through this kind of um objection she had the way I was running the ministry, the way I was doing things in the ministry. And and I remember getting towards the end of the conversation, I just remember looking at her and I just go, "You know what, ma'am? Um I'm going to stand behind what our lead pastor has always preached. You're entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own Bible." That's what I told her. And then that hence for that it's okay. That's what Pastor Ashley Ashley uh Ashley Pastor uh Jackie always talks about. And guys, this is what we need to hold on to. We need to stand firm into what God says. We need to speak truth into our next generation. We need to be able to be raising the next leaders, the next leaders for the church. So, this is my question that I want to address today. What do you do when the going gets tough? What do you do when things get tough in your life? Nehemiah gives us some amazing skills of how to overcome tough things in our life. Today we are going to see the Israelites. They're going to encounter tough things inside their camp and outside their camp. We are going to see Nehemiah be a tough guy and he is wellprepared to endure the tough things that God is going to command him to do. So let's start reading in verses 1-5. It says this, "When Sambbleot heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became furious. He mocked the Jews before his colleagues and the power and the powerful men of Samaria and said, "What are these pathetic Jews doing? Can they restore it by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they ever finish it? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble? Then Tobaya the Ammonite who was beside him said, "Indeed, even if a fox climbed up what they are building, he would break down their stone wall." Nehemiah responds, "Listen our God, for we are despised. Make their insults return on their own heads and let them be taken as plunder to the land of captivity. Do not cover their guilt or let their sin be erased from your sight because they have angered the builders. The first point I want you guys to see right here is that we don't respond with our anger, but we respond with heavenly justice. We need to respond like Nehemiah. Think about this scene right here. Sambala and Tobaya, they are literally making insults to the Israelites as they're building this wall. They are making these insults face to face to them. This is not like our world today where we hide behind a screen. We make a comment and we put it in the the the social media platform, the comment section, and we just sit in the comfort of our home. No, they are literally making these insults to their face day after day. It is furious anger is described. furious mockery to the Jews. It is like if you walked outside your front door and a crowd of people would be mocking you as soon as you got outside that door and they would throw insults of you and tell you how stupid you are for believing in Jesus day after day. That is what it's like. It's for everyone to hear. He calls them pathetic Jews. He mocks them. But he mocks them about their restoration. And he mocks them about their worship, about them being faithful to their God. And here's the kicker, the question that I absolutely love with this. Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble? I think a lot of us, when I start looking at us as a culture, we spend way too much time online. We spend way too much time in the comment section in particular. A lot of times we look at a comment online and we're like,"I have the perfect response for that." Our anger, it gets puffed up in these comments. We respond, we say, "Man, I have the perfect response for that for that thing they said about our faith, for that thing they said about our church." And we are overflowing online with our angry comments to the world. You see, every time I am tempted to respond in my own anger, I am reminded about a savior and how he responded when he was nailed to the cross. In Luke 23:34, he responded in this way. Nailed to the cross. Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing. Nehemiah sounds a lot like Jesus right here. Nehemiah demonstrated how to respond. How to allow God to respond. He said, "You need to cast them, God. You need to cast them into captivity. You need to expose their sins. This is the God we believe in. This is the powerful God we believe in. We need to rely on you to prove them wrong. We rely on you for our joy." One story that I I want to kind of bring this to light even more is that when I decided to leave the Mormon church and get baptized and I invited all my friends and my family to this day of baptism and just to celebrate like man the transformation that Jesus did in my life and I invited them to this day and there was a family friend named Kim Gerber. She's been in her and her husband were investing in my life ever since I was 15 to 16 years of age. And man, they were so excited for me. They were so excited to attend this day and to watch me get baptized. But my mom, Tina Gallagher, she was friends with Kim ever since they were in the sixth grade. And she told Kim, she was like, "Hey, if you attend this baptism, Kim, I will never talk to you. I will never speak to you again." And Kim being a godly woman that she is, she said, "Tina, I'm going to that baptism. I'm going to watch your son get baptized because I know what he's doing is right." And I remember celebrating this day and I remember putting something on Facebook and I said, "Man, sometimes your family is not your blood family. Sometimes your family is your spiritual family." And I remember putting that comment on there and I got all of these mean texts from my family members from the Mormon side, the outside of the Mormon side. I got all of these things from them and me and my wife had to navigate how we were going to respond through these texts and these phone calls coming in. We chose not to respond. We chose to delete my personal account and to finally make our account together. So when you guys look us up on Facebook, we are together because we decide to make posts together. That we are going to respond to things together. Guys, the application I want you to see right here is that we don't respond in our own anger. We respond with the cross's anger. Every single time we respond with the cross's anger as Jesus did. So now Nehemiah, he's building this wall. He's encouraging his troops. He's encouraging the people to continue on. Sambalot and Tobaya, they start hearing that the gaps are being filled. The gaps are filling up. They're having success building this wall. So, they start coming up with a plan. And this is where we pick up on verse 9. It says this. So, we pray to our God and stationed a guard because of them day and night. In Judah, it was said, "The strength of the laborer fails. Since there is so much rubble, we will never be able to rebuild the wall." They said, "And our enemy said, they won't realize it until we are among them and can kill them and stop the work." Then the Jews who live nearby arrived. They said, they said to us time and again, "Wherever you turn, they attack us." So I stationed people behind the lowest sections of the wall at the vulnerable areas. I stationed them by families with their swords, their spears, and bows. After I made an inspection, I stood up and said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, "Do not be afraid of them. Remember the great and awe inspiring Lord and fight for your countrymen, your sons and daughters, your wives and homes." The second point I want you to see, when things get tough, we remember to fight for a godly home. We remember to fight for a godly home. Think about this right here. The tribe of Judah, the first ones to complain on scene, the is the tribe of Judah. The first ones to not accept doubts and not to accept the suffering that is going on is the tribe of Judah. Look what it says in the text. It says, "We will never be able to rebuild the wall." That is their attitude towards this. That is their posture towards this. The tribe of Israel was supposed to be the battle guys. They were supposed to be the tribe to lean on, the ones going fighting for Israel, stand up for Israel. And they are the ones that are doubting the God of their go of their God of their tribe. It says, "We will never That's how they respond to this." Guys, we just finished up a series with with the students and we led them through this series called chaos. And we went through the book of Judges and we went through all the book of Judges and we saw judge after judge, fail after fail. They constantly rejected God. They constantly did not choose God. And and we started showing them that this is what it led up to to where they are at today, to where their city is crumbled, to where the wall is. This is what happens. And we saw a reoccurring theme, a reoccurring verse throughout this study that we did with the students. And it says this, the Israelites did what was evil in the Lord's sight. See, the thing about the Israelites that you need to know about and how they got to the place that they're at is that they started worshiping the Canaanites. They started worshiping the Ammonites. They started worshiping the Ashodites. They started worshiping their gods. They fell in love with their arts. They fell in love with their ele their their literature, their architecture. They fell in love with their trade, their politics. They fell in love so much with their type of worship. They had a type of worship of sexual orientation that they would worship in. And this led them to forget their God. Guys, look at the attitude of the Jews. It says, "Everywhere you turn, they attack us. They have forgotten how powerful their God is. They have forgotten the Yahweh that they believed in today. We see this in the church of Jesus Christ all the time. We see this in the members of the church all the time. We have so much trusted and felt trust to our self-help books, our counseling sessions, our influencers, our social media accounts. We trust our politics more than the God that can provide everything for us. We have become a very angry people. We have become a very anxious people. We have become a very angered people and we respond in angry ways because we don't remember the great and awe inspiring God that Nehemiah points us to. See, I challenged my Bible group this last week before we went into Thanksgiving. I was leading my Bible group and I challenged them with this. Find your life verse. Find your life verse for your life. But not only that, find your life verse for your family. See, I think it's super important that when things get hard, you need to have something that you're anchored to. You need to have something that you are anchored to. when things get hard in your life that you can lean on to my anchor verse, my my my worship that I always go back to is Colossians 2:6-8. This is how I want my marriage to be recognized. This is how I want my kids to be recognized. This is how I want our family to be recognized. How my home is going to be run. And I've made this a priority in my my life because I want to remember the God the awe inspiring God the powerful God that has always existed right in front of me. See this this third point leads us to our our second application is this is that we remember to fight our fight for our great God of Judah who rules all our homes. We need to remember that God. Look at 15-20. It says this. When our enemies heard that we knew their scheme and that God had frustrated it, every one of us returned to his own work on the wall. From that day on, half of my men did the work while the other half had spears, shields, bows, and armor. The officers support the officers supported all the people of Judah who were rebuilding the wall. The laborers who carried the loads worked with one hand and held a weapon with the other. Each of the builders had his sword strapped around his waist while he was building. And the one who sounded the ram's horn was beside me. Then I said to the nobles, the officials, and the rest of the people, "The work is enormous and spread out, and we all are separated far from one another along the wall. Wherever you hear the sound of the ram's horn, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. Our third point I want us to see right here is that we rally around each other for his glory. We rally around each other for his glory. You know what phrase really gets me fired up when I hear from church members is this. Where's your home church? Where's your home church? I think the hardest thing to teach right now in students and kids ministry is commitment. This word commitment. I think the hardest thing to teach the next generation is this word commitment. How to be committed to a family. How to be committed to church, how to be committed to your faith. Because commitment is not in their vocabulary. Commitment is not in our culture. It is far from it. When we act as a church, we need to act together. We need to be committed to one another just like Nehemiah teaches us here. See, I see this firsthand. I know you guys see this firsthand just as much. A bunch of people sometimes get together. We call this church, but in reality, we like to operate in our own comfort zones. But in reality, we would like to stick to our own section in the wall. I'm not going to go outside this box. I'm not going to go outside this area. That's the exact opposite of what Nehemiah asked to do. See, for so long, we have treated church as a social club more than a hospital. For so long, we've been treating church as a restaurant, as a church that needs to be for a hospital. To help people find Jesus, to help you have a rest, to hear the word of God, to be united as a people. See, when I hear this phrase, where is your home church? I hear people bouncing around. Hey, we're going to go here this Sunday. We're going to go there this Sunday. We're going to do this this Sunday. And then they they encourage their students. Hey, you can get committed to this group, that group, this group, that group. And they're scattered all over the community, their kids ministries. They're they're scattered all throughout all the community because like I got church everywhere. But when disaster strikes, when the ram horn sounds, where does your student or your kid turn to? They got no community around them. They got no commitment around them because we're not acting and being committed to the whole body, the whole church. We're not being committed to where God said, "This is where you're going to be." I've only been a part of three churches since I came to Christ. And those three churches, I've given my all to those churches. Me and my wife have given our all to those churches because that's where God commanded us to be. We were committed to stay in that church. We were committed to support his kingdom work wherever God tells us to go. I can I can experience this firsthand. Guys, when you are committed to a church, every time there's disaster that strikes in my life, every time there is something that goes wrong in my life, man, I have people around me surround me and that will run to my rescue. I have men right now that invest time with my boys that are raising them to be godly men. I have women in the church that are investing time with my girls and raising them to be godly women. Every time something goes wrong in my wife's life, I have godly women speaking into my wife, helping her along her hurt or things that are going wrong in her life. I have men in my inner circle that hold me accountable, that show me how to get back to Jesus when things go wrong in my life. When disaster strikes, where do you turn to? To really drive this home, in my student ministry, I I have seen four students decide to make this place their place. Four students that decided to make this their commitment. Crossurch students is going to be their community, their place. And they and through them through their little bit of faith they have broughten their family to church. They have broughten their families to church and they are hearing the message of Jesus Christ for the first time because of these four students in their little bit of faith. And all it said was that I'm going to be committed here. Guys, we need to see this application from it. We rally around as a church for his glorious work of saving souls. If you're never committed anywhere, you're never going to see Jesus save a soul in your life. Be committed somewhere. Verse 21, let's pick it up. So, we continue to work while half of the men were holding spears from daybreak until the stars came out. that at that time I also said to people, "Let everyone uh and his servants spend the night inside Jerusalem, so that they can stand guard by night and work by day." And I, my brothers, my servants, and the men of the guard with me, never took off our clothes. Each carried his weapon even when washing. See, the third point I want you guys to see here is that we are ready to endure all opposition. We are ready to endure all opposition. I think the hardest thing you could ever do in your life is be is is live the Christian life. The hardest thing you could ever do on this side of heaven is be a Christian. Why? Because being Christian, you get are exhausted. You're tired all the time. It is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is claiming that I followed Jesus. It's kind of like running a marathon. Any marathon runners in here? Cool. Sweet. Awesome. Perfect. A lot of you guys, there was none in first service. So glad there's some in here. So, hey, a lot of you guys know my story. I was a D1 athlete. I got accepted to the University of Florida, which I'm sorry, Don. We laid some hurt down on your seinals, bro. I'm all about them Gators, bro. So, just to just to say, man, I knew you were going to sit in the front row. I had to say that. But I I that was my life before Jesus. I was all about, hey, can I be the best cross country runner? Can I be the best athlete at this D1 university? And I made this full ride. And a lot of people sometimes they ask me about how to how to shave time off their marathon, how to train for a marathon, how do they get better at running? But nobody ever asked me the question, where is the hardest part in the marathon? Where is the hardest part in the marathon? Something I think you guys need to know about me is that I'm always pushing myself to do tough things. I am always pushing myself to do tough things. Why? Because I want to be molded. I want to be shaped. I want to be stretched. I am always pushing my kids to do tough things. A lot of times they don't agree with me why I'm pushing them so hard and they complain about it. But I am always pushing them to do tough things. I am always pushing my ministries to do tough things, to stretch themselves, to go against the grain. I'm always pushing them to do tough things. I think I drive Pastor Andrew nuts about this. I constantly have objections. I constantly have things that I bring up and I'm like, "That's not tough enough. We need to stretch it a little bit more." And he gets so frustrated with me at staff meetings sometimes. I think it's okay. I get frustrated with him when he preaches in skinny jeans and a woman's shirt every single Sunday. Oh, we have a great relationship. Oh, but guys, the hardest part about a marathon is right in the middle of the race for mile 13 to 17. Statistics show that this is the most likely where a runner will drop out of a race is right in the middle of the race. For mile 13 to 17. Guys, I think Jesus said it the best. when we endure, when we follow him, when we endure hard things for him, he said it the best in Matthew 10:22. He said this, "You will be hated by everyone because of my name, but the one who endures to the end will be saved." Jesus says we need to do tough things. See, at the end of this chapter, we tend to glance right past of what's going on here. we tend to just skip it and go right into chapter 5 and we don't stop and reflect of what's going on. Guys, following Jesus is not is not going to be an easy thing. It is going to be a tough thing to do. It is not the coolest or sexiest thing to do all the time. It is not the coolest or funnest thing to do all the time. But it is the thing that is more worth it than anything. The thing we see Nehemiah here, Nehemiah's not done with the wall. Nehemiah is pushing his people to do tough things to get to the end product. Nehemiah is teaching his people that in this moment this is they're going to find their worth in this moment. They're going to find the value of their God. They are ready to endure tough things. They are ready to endure tough things for the Lord. They are ready to fall asleep in a city that is still broken. They are ready to work all day in his work. They are ready to live in the suffering of where they're at. Guys, I was trying to think of a story about how to tie this all up in a nice little bow and and I was trying to think about several stories of my life. But to be honest, I'm just going to be real with you for a second. There's times in my life, like I said in the beginning, I think God has molded me to do tough things. God has shaped me to do tough things, to have tough conversations. When I left the Mormon church, I underwent several interviews of why I needed to show them what's the difference with this Jesus to the Jesus they believe into. Several times I had interviews with apostles, with 70s, with all these higherups in the Mormon church and I had to constantly plead my case of why this Jesus is more powerful than their Jesus. Why this Jesus is more than anything else they could offer me. It was the hardest time I think for my family because they had to realize that man, there was a black sheep in their family. There was a guy that wasn't going to say yes to everything. There was a guy that was going to stand on what he believed. And that's exactly what I had to do. I had to go a trial to which led to my excommunication in that church. Fast forward a couple years later, the last church I pastored, I went undergo the same thing in a Christian church. I didn't agree with some of the theology stuff that they were they were teaching. And I said, "You know what? We need to sit down. We need to talk about this. We need to go through this with scripture. I need to see where you're coming from. You need to show me what's going on and how you get there. And again, I found myself standing on truth. Again, I found myself sticking up for the word of God, for the Bible, and how I fell in love with Jesus is through this book. And eventually, I was asked to just leave. But guys, through all of that experience, through all the things that I went through to get to this place today, God was showing me something greater, he was showing me, "Are you going to impress people, Kyle, or are you going to impress me? Are you going to impress people for a brand, for what they believe in? Or are you going to follow me even when it's hard and you might lose everything in sight? Guys, I chose this side. I chose to follow Jesus. I'm not here to impress people. I'm not here to impress the brand or anything. I am here to preach the message of Jesus Christ that he is coming again. That you can be saved by him through his cross and you can have eternal life if you believe in him. That's the message I stand for. Right. Our bottom line I want to leave you guys with today is that we are ready. Are you ready to endure until he says it's done? Nehemiah is not done. His people are not done. There is a lot of suffering that is still left to do. But are you ready to endure until he says you are done? I'm still going to preach the truth. I'm still going to push students to do hard things. is I'm going to push kids to do hard things. I'm going to push you non-believer in the room today. If you do not believe in Jesus Christ, man, give your life to Jesus. Give your life to Christ. It will be the best decision you have ever done in your life. Jesus has risen me from the dead stones into eternal life. He can do the same thing in your life. If you feel disaster, if you feel destruction all around you, you feel temptation going on around you, give your life to Jesus and just watch him transform your life. A lot of you are believers in this room today. A lot of you have probably backsliden. A lot of you have probably traded in your faith for something of this world. Guys, that's what the cross is all about. The cross is a great place to come and repent and say, "Jesus, I put this in front of you. I'm no longer willing to do that. I'm willing to be ready and endure whatever you command me to go endure." And if that's you today, I hope that you turn away from whatever you have traded in Jesus for and you turn back to the cross. you turn back to him and you start enduring hard things for Christ because there's no greater joy in that. Are you ready? Are you ready to go endure hard things until he says it is done?