Message: 07-15-2018 Given By: Geoff Kohler Series: Nehemiah: Man of focus Scripture: Nehemiah 6:1-4,16-7:2; 1 Peter 5:6-11 Title: The Subtle Danger Facing evil in our world is a regular, important task for Christians. We aren t called to be believers but followers. We are called to move into the world as servants of God and this means that we must come up against evil. We must respond to it both internally and externally. Let s consider that evil is anything that separates us from God or other people. This is usually the way I describe sin. Anything that separates us from God or other people is sin. There are things that obviously seek to separate us from God or others and there are things that do it in a more indirect way. We need to be prepared for both. This is the primary battle of Christians in the world. In the letter to the Ephesians, the apostle Paul writes: 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything, to stand. We re called to fight against the influence of evil and, for ourselves, to not give in to evil. Evil is a tangible force in our world and we need to stand against it. So, we need to understand it, how it works and what it is seeking to accomplish. So, let s clear up one thing that might stand in our way. We need to remind ourselves of the strength of good. If you hang around actors for any period of time you ll hear someone in a play or a movie tell you that it s so much more interesting to play an evil person than a good person. There is a general notion that evil is more attractive than good, even that evil is stronger than good. But, when that happens, I don t believe we re talking about good. I believe we re talking about apathy. As many people have said, the opposite of love is not
hate it s apathy. It s not caring. Too much of what gets referred to as good is actually not being involved, not engaging, not caring. This is the core problem with the idolatry of purity. Purity is held up in some Christian settings as the point of Christianity. Those Christians who make purity an idol find ways of separating themselves from others. They can t be with those who are not pure which leads to Phariseeism. It leads to becoming fixated on accomplishing our own righteousness. That separates us from others instead of engaging us in life. When a Christian or Christ-follower chooses to avoid sin, Jesus walks them into the reality of the world. They walk into poverty. They walk into heart-ache. They walk into bigotry. They walk into the destruction of relationship. We have painted a picture that good as being untouched, separated, not tempted. Christians aren t looking to be good. They re looking toward getting closer to other people, closer to God, not separating themselves. When a Christian faces evil and stands up against it, they grow dependent on God. They seek out those who understand what they re dealing with, people who will stand with them and encourage them. But most of all they deal with the reality of how life works. The writer who is seeking to create a good person in a story or an actor who is trying to portray one must understand what this person has worked against, stood up to, or been tempted by in order for them to be a living person. It s not the person who has kept themselves separated from the world that reveals the strength and goodness of God. It s the person who has relied on God and others, whose rallied others to deal with the evil that reveals that God is strong and good. C. S. Lewis once wrote: No man knows how bad he is till he has tried very hard to be good. A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of [an] army by fighting it, not by giving in. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. That is why bad people, in one sense, know very little about badness. They have lived a sheltered life by always giving in.
So, let s look at evil and consider how we resist it. You may have heard me use this favorite analogy that evil comes to us like a lion or a bear. When evil comes at us like a lion it is obvious. It s blatant. It s even ferocious. More than anything else it is clear. Cheating on a test, lying to get our own way, doing damage to our marriage through other relationships are the kinds of things we recognize plainly as evil. This is when evil is a lion, loud, ferocious and in our face. But, when evil comes to us as a bear we have to really recognize it for what it is. Human beings have done an interesting thing with bears. We ve turned them into toys. I realize we can have a toy lion, but we ve created teddy bears, a pervasive, perspective on this wild animal as something to cuddle, that is cuddly and can be part of our household. We ve acted like bears are friendly. Every year people get hurt in our parks trying to feed bears. The way we resist these is different than we might think. When evil shows up as a lion, our instinct is to run away. When evil shows up like a bear, our instinct is to draw close, to see how close we can get. But we should do exactly the opposite in each case. When evil roars like a lion we should run toward it, face it directly. The lion who roars is trying to make us run in the opposite direction and right into the teeth and claws of the lionesses death. Instead of running away we need to face loud and obvious evil with loud and obvious response. We need to do our best on the test and allow ourselves to fail, and then do the work that s needed to pass. We need to tell the truth and deal with things as they are. We need to admit to infatuation, maybe not to our spouse, but at least to a good friend who can stand with us. We need to respond to this evil by announcing what we are doing instead getting about the work that God s called us to do. When evil comes to us as a bear, then we need to run away. We need to pull back and to recognize that it is wild, uncontrollable and deadly. The image of evil as a bear is that it is something we can draw close to, something that we understand and can deal with, something which we can embrace and allow to embrace us. We even use the term bear hug as a sign of affection. But, in the arms of bears as they are, we can be hugged to death. Whether evil comes to us as a lion or comes to us as a bear, it comes with one objective to devour us. Evil wants to kill us. In the story of Nehemiah, we have this example of dealing with evil, both as a lion and as a bear. And we also have the picture of how Nehemiah deals with this and the alternative he
chose. I shared in another message that sometimes Nehemiah makes wrong choices. Next week we ll look at a seriously damaging choice he made, but this week he is the hero we hope him to be. The wall is finished and Jerusalem is preparing to become a center of economic strength and confidence for the people of Israel. The enemies of the work Sanballat and Tobiah and Geshem are upset. But watch how they deal with Nehemiah. They come at him two different ways. The first is by Sanballat and Geshem. They and their allies live in the areas surrounding Jerusalem. They call Nehemiah to meet them out west of the city. But Nehemiah recognizes this as evil coming at him obviously, like a Lion. They weren t looking to negotiate. They wanted to take him out. They wanted to kill him so that the final pieces of the wall wouldn t be done and the people would lose heart through the loss of their leader. Nehemiah can see that obvious danger and so announces the work he has been called to do. God called me to build this wall sorry got to be about the work of the wall. The next danger is subtler however. While Sanballat and Geshem are scheming outwardly, Tobiah is scheming inwardly. Tobiah has made allegiances with the nobles of Jerusalem. He s created connection through promises and through marriage with those who live within the city. They come to Nehemiah telling him of the good that Tobiah does. Embrace him, welcome him, allow him to get close, Nehemiah. This is evil as enticement, evil as a bear. It doesn t seem so bad. It seems friendly. It seems like someone who can come over to our side we just have to invite him in. Nehemiah recognizes this evil as well, evil as the bear and he just walks away from it. He never lets it get close to him. So, Tobiah sends letters to shake Nehemiah s confidence. Nehemiah won t even respond. And this is where wisdom is shown. Nehemiah: Stays out of the designs of the lion and bear he gets in its face or he stays away from it He chooses to continue the work God s called him to do
He chooses to stick with those he can trust who have the same purpose and love God Nehemiah tells us that he sets into place people he trusts who can keep the work going. He chooses people who live out their love for God. We are called to be wise. It is so easy to run away from evil when it looks like a lion and it is so hard to run away from evil when it looks like a bear. We need to be wise. We need to gather as a community and get to know each other so we can learn to trust each other. We need to confess the truth of our lives and hearts to each other. We need to learn to call on each other when we are facing something that we get anxious about that it seems to be leading us away from trusting in God We need to trust in God and to learn that it isn t about believing but following Essentially, we need to act humbly, grow deep in gratitude and get engaged in what God has called us to do that is life giving. As you go into this week, start talking with others about what you see as evil in the world what comes like a lion and even more importantly, what comes like a bear. The bear is the one we need to recognize because it does the most damage.