Sermon Transcript
When all I see is the battle, you see my victory.
When all I see is a mountain, you see a mountain.
And as I walk through the shadow, your love surrounds me.
There’s nothing to fear now, for I am safe with you. So when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high. Oh God.
The battle belongs to you, and every fear I lay at your feet. I’ll sing through the night, oh God, the battle belongs to you.
And if you are for me, who can be against me?
For Jesus lives.
There’s nothing impossible for you.
When all I see are the ashes, you see a beauty.
When all I see is a cross, God, you see the empty tomb.
So when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees with my Hands lifted high. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I’ll sing through the night. Oh God, the battle belongs to you.
Almighty fortress, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. You shine in You shine in the shadows, you win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. Almighty fortress, you go before us.
Nothing can stand against the power of our God. You shine in the shadows, you win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God.
Almighty Fortress, you go before us. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. You shine in the shadows, you win every battle. Nothing can stand against the power of our God. So when I fight, I’ll fight on my knees with my hands lifted high.
Oh God, the battle belongs to you. And every fear I lay at your feet. I’ll sing through the night. Oh God, the battle belongs to you. Oh God, the battle belongs to you.
Welcome to the online service for Bridges Community Church. My name is Nate. I’m one of the pastors on staff here at Bridges, and we’d like to welcome you and say thanks for joining us. If you’re new to Bridges, we would love a chance to connect with you. So if you could let us know you’re here by clicking the link that says New to BCC, click here, fill out the little form, let us know that you were here.
And this week, one of our pastors will reach out and find out how we can be praying for you, how we can answer any questions you might have, or find out how we can help get you connected to our community, our community. Later in today’s service we’re also going to have an opportunity where we’re going to take communion together. So if you need to pause the video for a moment and get some juice or some wine and some bread or a cracker so we can have that time all together wherever you are right now whenever you’re watching this. But until then let’s take some time right now to sing together as we worship.
A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing.
Our helper he amid the flood of mortal ills prevailing. For still our ancient foe doth seek to work us woe. His craft and power are great and armed with cruel hate. On earth is not his equal.
Did we in our own strength confide, our striving would be losing. Were not the right men on our side, the men of God’s own choosing, lost as Ask who that may be. Christ Jesus, it is he. Lords, I bow at his name. From age to age the same, and he must win the battle.
And though this world with devils filled should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed his truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness’ grip we trample Not for him, his rage we can endure. For woe is to be sure, one little bruise how bad it is.
That word above all earthly powers, no thanks to them The Spirit and the gifts are ours through him who is assigned. Food and drink bring glory, it’s mortal life also. The body they make king, God’s truth Abide it still. His kingdom is forever.
Mighty God, greater than all we seek, greater than all we ask. He has done great things, lifted up. He defeated the grave, raised to life. Our God is able. In his name we overcome.
For The Lord our God is able. God is with us, God is on our side. He will make a way far above all we know, far above all we He has done great things, lifted up, given the grave place to life. Our God is able. In his name we overcome, for the Lord our God is able.
God is with us. He will go before. He will never leave us. He will never leave us. God is for us.
He has open arms. He will never fail us. He will never fail us. Lift it up.
He defeated the grave, raised to life. Our God is able. In his name we overcome. For the Lord our God is able. He defeated the grave, raised to life.
Our God is able.
He is able, oh Lord our God.
Oh Lord our God is able. Oh Lord our God is able.
Now when Sanballat heard that we were building the wall, he was angry and greatly enraged, and he jeered at the Jews. And he said in the presence of his brothers and of the army of Samaria, what are these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice? Will they finish up in a day?
Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of rubbish and burned ones at that? Tobiah the Ammonite was beside him, and he said, yes, what they are building, if a fox goes up on it, he will break down their stone wall. Hear, O our God, for we are despised. Turn back their taunt on their own heads and give them up to be plundered in a land where they are captives. Do not cover their guilt, and let not their sin be blotted out from your sight, for they have provoked you to anger in the presence of the builders.
So we built the wall, and all the wall was joined together to half its height, for the people had a mind to work.
But when Sanballat and Tobiah and the Arabs and the Ammonites and the Ashdodites heard that the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem was going forward and that the breaches were beginning to be closed, they were very angry, and they all plotted together to come and fight against against Jerusalem and to cause confusion in it. And we prayed to our God and set a guard as a protection against them day and night. In Judah it was said, the strength of those who bear the burdens is failing; there is too much rubble. By ourselves we will not be able to rebuild the wall. And our enemies said, they will not know or see till we come among them and kill them and stop the work.
At that time the Jews who lived near them came from all directions and said to us 10 times, you must return to us. So in the lowest parts of the space behind the wall, in open places, I stationed the people by their clans with their swords, their spears, and their bows. And I looked and arose and said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, do not be afraid of them. Remember the Lord, who is great and awesome, and fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes.
When our enemies heard that it was known to us and that God had frustrated their plan, we all returned to the wall, each to his work. From that day on, half of my servants worked on construction and half held the spears, shields, bows, and coats of mail. And the leaders stood behind the whole house of Judah who were building on the wall. Those who carried burdens were loaded in such a way that each labored on the work with one hand and held his weapon with the other. And each of the builders had his sword strapped at his side while he built.
The man who sounded the trumpet was beside me, and I said to the nobles and to the officials and to the rest of the people, the work is great and widely spread, and we are separated on the wall far from one another. In the place where you hear the sound of the trumpet, rally to us there. Our God will fight for us. So we labored at the work, and half of them held the spears from the break of dawn until the stars came out. I also said to the people at that time, let every man and his servant pass the night within Jerusalem, that they may be a guard for us by night and may labor by day.
So neither I nor my brothers nor my servants nor the men of the guard who followed me— none of us took off our clothes. Each kept his weapon Probably all of us have gone through a season in life that was exceedingly difficult, almost like there were forces conspiring to take us down. Maybe like in the Nehemiah text we just read, the season was difficult because people were actively working to make us fail. When we were in school, we called people like that bullies, right? They would hurt us either physically or emotionally.
And I think most of us probably assumed that when we grew up, we wouldn’t have to deal with bullies anymore. But as it turns out, the bullies grew up too, didn’t they? And not all of them matured or met Jesus or were able to work through their insecurities. So some of them remained bullies after they grew up, and they can oppose us at certain times. But opposition doesn’t always come in the form of actual people.
Your opposition might feel more like a chronic illness that you can’t get past. It might be a series of unfortunate circumstances. You know, you get in a car accident, and then you get laid off, and then your dog dies, dies and you’re like, really? Did it have to be Rover too? Like, did on top of everything else, did Rover have to die as well?
Like, why is life out to get me lately? We’ve probably all been there at some point. We’ll probably be there again. And whether your opposition is from an actual person or it just seems like you can’t catch a break lately, Nehemiah shows us how to respond. Nehemiah was up against opposition that wouldn’t relent, wouldn’t go away.
Nehemiah had been granted permission by the Persian King Artaxerxes to rebuild the walls around his ancestral home so it could be a functioning, thriving city once again. But there were local authorities who did not like Nehemiah rebuilding a city in their territory. They didn’t want Nehemiah messing up the power structure in the region. So first, they ridiculed Nehemiah. They insulted him.
We see that even in the text that we just read, verses 1 through 3, But when that didn’t slow down Nehemiah, they came back with force starting in verses 7 and 8. And at that time, Nehemiah’s people started to lose heart. It looked like the opposition was going to win. Verse 10 there, Nehemiah’s people’s strength is failing. Verse 11, they’ve been listening to the threats, and it’s really rattled them.
It’s gotten to them. The tide is turning. It looks like the opposition might get a foothold here. So, Nehemiah, can’t do nothing. He must face this opposition.
He can’t ignore it. He has to deal with it somehow. So today, we will look at what Nehemiah does. How does he handle it? It turns out that Nehemiah has a triple threat defense against opposition.
That sounds pretty good. Good, right? We want to know what can we do with our opposition. What do I do with the bully? What do I do when forces are conspiring against me?
How, how do I get through that? So we’ll see Nehemiah’s triple threat defense, and then we will also see the place for vengeance. We’ll see Nehemiah’s triple threat defense against opposition, and then we will see the place for vengeance. So first, Nehemiah’s triple threat defense: pray, take action, and encourage. Pray, take action, and encourage.
Pray, take action, and encourage. We’ll discuss praying and taking action together, and then we’ll talk about encourage separately. So Nehemiah is able to maintain an important nuance which actually trips up a lot of Christians. He displays belief in both the sovereignty of God and at the same time the need for human action. He says, verse 9, we prayed and we set a guard.
Or verse 20, when you hear the trumpet, run to that spot and God will fight for us. So Nehemiah says God is going to save us and we need to take action. We need to run there but God is the one who’s going to be doing the fighting. Nehemiah holds both of these without contradiction, unlike us who sometimes can kind of fall into one extreme or the other. Is it us doing it or is it God doing it?
Some of us will say, all we need to do is pray. We’re just going to pray and trust that God will fight for us. We don’t need to send reinforcements to wherever the battle is most intense, we actually, in fact, don’t need to have soldiers at all. We can just pray and God will handle everything. It’s the classic student who says, I don’t need to study.
All I need to do before a test is pray, right? Or, I don’t need to see a doctor. God will heal me. Nehemiah isn’t that guy. He knows he needs to take action.
On the other hand, he knows God must intervene, so he prays, and he has complete confidence God is the one who will give him the victory. And when they actually get the wall finished over in chapter 6, God is the one who gets the credit. Nehemiah, in fact, even notes that the opposition of all people realized that God must have been the one doing the work for it to be completed in the way that it was completed. So, it is both God makes a way and we work as hard as we can, both, always. I don’t know which one of those come more naturally for you, pray or work, but in my experience, people can tend to lean in one direction or the other, right?
Some people tend to say, there’s no time to pray. I have got to work. And other people lean back and say, oh, the only thing that can help us is prayer. We don’t need to waste our time with all this other stuff. What we really need to do is pray.
But both of those sides fall short. If you remain true to Scripture, you cannot collapse one of those into the other. God really will provide the victory and you really need to move in order to see it. It has to be both, not one or the other. So, let’s just think about us here as a church and what we’re trying to do, our mission.
We want our community around here, Silicon Valley, we want them to encounter Christ. Right? That’s number one mission. We just had a change of leadership and we’re about to be gathering back together again in the near future. So, right now is a very, very natural time to evaluate what is the most effective way to present Christ to our community so our community can know Christ, right?
Our community doesn’t know Jesus. We want them to know Jesus. What’s the best way to do that? Fortunately, other churches have asked that same question and we can learn from them. There are, in fact, stacks and stacks of books describing how churches went from declining in influence in their communities to increasing in influence in their communities.
There are people, it’s their job to study what actually took place in the life of a church during a revitalization, they call it? And the answer is, the overwhelming statistically significant result is that churches who turned it around focused on both action and prayer. They took real actions such as training their people how to talk about Jesus with their neighbors and coworkers, like outreach training. We’re gonna do that, by the way. That’ll probably be our next 40-day focus a year from now because we’ll have to write it and film it.
But before then, we will have interactive events to gather information from you because we need to listen. Like, we, we want to hear what, what are your everyday conversations? Because if we know what actually takes place in your life, then we can best prepare you for how to interact in those specific conversations. So we’re gonna do that. In addition to training like that, churches that switched from decline to incline also paid attention to things like how they interacted with their guests, how they followed up with them, paid attention to the quality of their service, right?
Like if your sound system screeches like nails on a chalkboard, or you can’t hear the people, I mean, you can’t hear the preacher, there will be less people in your sanctuary, right? There is a correlation between the quality of your sound system and the number of people who will sit and listen to your sound system, right? That’s why I’m glad we have a really good sound system and really good people to run it. It matters what we do The physical actions we take, they matter.
Nehemiah says, let’s put people on the wall. When you hear the trumpet, everyone run to that spot and reinforce it, right? What you do matters. At the same time, praying matters. Do you know the most consistent factor across all of these church revitalization studies?
Prayer. Very consistently, churches that have experienced a revitalization are churches that placed an emphasis on prayer, and churches that stayed in decline did not have such an emphasis. Prayer matters. I know all of our life groups pray every week and you probably pray individually and we need to keep doing that, like, because prayer matters. It measurably makes a difference, right?
But in addition to our normal rhythms of prayer, I want to draw attention to a special prayer group of ours that meets on Wednesdays at noon on Zoom. You can find that information on the little button to the side of this video labeled If My People Pray, or you can find the Zoom link in our list of online groups. This is a group that has decided to gather weekly explicitly for the purpose of praying for our church, for the pandemic, for our country, and we’d love for you to be a part of that. Both prayer and action are necessary when you face opposition. Both are necessary.
Okay, don’t try to be all spiritual and downplay the importance of action, right? Your opposition, whatever you’re facing, likely will not go away unless you do something. But at the same time, you can’t rely only on your action, right? It can’t be this pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You can’t downplay the importance of prayer.
You have to be dependent on God. You got to have both, right? You have to have prayer and action. Okay, 3rd aspect of Nehemiah’s triple threat defense against the opposition. He had prayer, action, and now he has encouragement.
Encouragement. Hey, this is especially for our engineers. Everybody needs to hear this, but as a demographic, our engineers might need to hear it a little bit more. When people are facing opposition, they need more than a strategy of what to do.
You can tell them how to fight the opposition, of course, tell them that, okay, do that. But they, they also need a little pep talk. They need encouragement. They need someone to come alongside them. Them.
Nehemiah says, verse 14, don’t be afraid. All right? Take heart. God is with us. We’re all here together.
He calls people from another area to be with the people who have kind of lost hope. When you’re going through something challenging, how much of a difference does it make for someone to say, I know the world out there is raging, but you aren’t alone. This whole thing may come crashing down, I really don’t know, but if it does, it’s going to come crashing down on us together, not you by yourself.
If someone tells you that, pretty instantly you feel better, even if they haven’t told you a plan for how to fix it yet, just that someone is there and is kind of propping you up, it’s better. There was a study of people who had been directly affected by the September 11th terrorist attacks, and the researchers wanted to know, after a major trauma like that, what are the factors that enable people to rebound and return to normal life, right? Like, like, I can go to work, I’m not terrified to leave my house, I can function as a balanced person again. After a tragedy of that magnitude? What, what actually helps people move on?
Number one factor, number one factor that enabled people to resume normal life: if they felt like they had someone significant in their lives, if they had someone they could call when they were confused or angry If they didn’t feel alone. Number one factor, more than whether they saw a counselor, more than if they maintained exercise, more than their age, gender, education, income, more than any of that, most influential factor in whether they could resume normal life, did they have someone? Was there someone there they could just share their struggle with? Were they walking through this together with someone? When you face opposition, it takes more than a game plan.
It takes more than action. It takes more than prayer. You need someone walking along beside you, holding you up, saying that they’re holding you up. So 2 questions: do you have someone who supports you, and are you supporting someone else? Do you have someone who supports you, and are you supporting someone else?
Encouragement. Okay, lastly, um, let’s talk about vengeance. Uh, When we face opposition, especially if we feel like people are attacking us, maybe they’re dragging our reputation through the mud, or maybe there’s just one person at work who’s always blocking all of our ideas there, maybe there’s a bully, our tendency, let’s admit this, we want some vengeance, right? This is a safe space, we can admit it, right? We’re all terrible people, all right?
We’ll get that on the table. We want our opposition to pay, right? We want them to suffer like we have suffered, even over small things sometimes, right? Like someone is walking across the street in front of your car at a super slow pace, right? It seems like they are just intentionally blocking you as they kind of meander through the crosswalk.
Is all day long here. They even have a little smile on their face, right? They seem to enjoy preventing your car from moving forward.
You get in that situation, you might pray like Nehemiah in verses 4 and 5, right? Like, Lord, let that guy be plundered in a land where You take him captive. Do not cover over his guilt. Do not blot out his sin. Let your terrible wrath fall on him and all of his descendants forevermore.
We’re out for blood sometimes.
Nehemiah prays not only that his enemy would be wiped out, but also that they would go to hell, right? Do not remove their guilt, he prays.
Have you ever prayed like that?
Dear Father in heaven, I not only want that guy to be fired from his job, I want him to burn forever. May he rot in agony out of your sight. And in Jesus’ name, amen. Do we pray like that? There’s a number of Psalms like this.
They’re called the impecatory Psalms if you want to look them up. What do we do with those? Should we pray like that?
Should we?
This is why having a comprehensive understanding of the Bible is such a necessity, seeing the Bible as one story from beginning to end, like how does it all fit together, how does one part inform every other part. I don’t think post-Jesus, post-crucifixion resurrection, I don’t think we pray this way anymore. Or I should say more precisely, I don’t think we only pray this way anymore. We might start with Nehemiah’s prayer, but we end up somewhere else because because Scripture ends up somewhere else. Even Nehemiah gives us a hint of where Scripture is going.
If you look closely, Nehemiah ultimately leaves vengeance in God’s hands, right? He petitions for God to take action, that God wouldn’t forgive them, that God would remember their guilt. Even here, 400 or 500 years before Jesus, Nehemiah shows the place for vengeance is in God’s hands. Vengeance isn’t for us. Vengeance isn’t in our hands.
It’s in God’s hands. If someone has wronged you, opposed you, slandered you, you can begin where Nehemiah did, right? Vengeance belongs to You, Lord. Deuteronomy 32:35, vengeance is mine, says the Lord. It’s okay to tell God you’re angry.
Tell God you want your opponent banished away from all that is good for forever if that’s how you feel.
But leave the vengeance in God’s hands. That’s as far as Nehemiah went. And that’s— it’s an okay place to start. But at the same time, we live like 2,400, 2,500 years after Nehemiah. We have seen a lot more of the scriptural story play out.
So, I don’t think our prayer should end where Nehemiah’s prayer ends. Because we know what God ultimately did with the vengeance that was in his hands, don’t we? We know God didn’t pour out retribution on those who deserve it, but instead God poured out retribution on Jesus, who substituted himself for the condemned. We know Jesus who instead of calling down curses on his enemy like Nehemiah did, Jesus took the curses of his enemy on himself. Instead of asking God to hold his enemies accountable for their guilt, Jesus paid the price of his enemies’ guilt himself.
We go back and we read the impecatory Psalms, we understand, oh, That’s what Jesus was doing in my place on the cross.
And if I’ve been excused from the wrath of God, can I really ask God to pour out wrath on somebody else? Like, if vengeance is in God’s hands and God took the vengeance that was in His hands to the cross, and left it there, maybe I can leave mine there too.
If God didn’t levy the retribution on me that I deserve, then, then maybe I, maybe I can let go of my need to receive retribution.
That’s, that’s the ultimate place for vengeance— in God’s hands. On the cross.
Let yours rest there. Free yourself from it. Let Jesus carry the burden of vengeance for you, and let him put it to death on the cross. Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for giving us Jesus who carries all of our burdens, Lord, who carries the guilt that we have incurred, that bore the wrath that we deserve. Lord, I pray that as we focus on Him, that our own need for vengeance would melt away. I pray You would give us people that encourage us when we face opposition. I pray we could be an encouragement to others. Lord, I pray that we always depend on you whenever we face opposition of any kind, and that you will give us the courage and opportunity to act in the face of opposition.
We pray all those things in Jesus’ name. Amen.
I cast my mind to Calvary where Jesus bled and died for me. I see his wounds, his hands and feet. His feet, my Savior on that cursing tree.
His body bound and drenched in tears, they laid him down in Joseph’s tomb. The entrance sealed By every stone Messiah stood and overruled.
Oh, praise the name of the Lord our God. Oh, praise his name forevermore, for endless days. We will sing your praise, O Lord, O Lord our God.
And on the 3rd day at break of dawn, the Son of Heaven rose again. O tremble, death, where is your sting? The angels roar for Christ the King. O praise the name of the Lord our God. O praise the name forevermore.
Endless days we will sing your praise, O Lord, O Lord our God.
In robes of white, the blazing sun shall pierce Face the night and I will rise among the saints, my gaze transfixed on Jesus’ face.
Oh, praise the name of the Lord our God.
Oh, praise his name forevermore. For endless days we will sing your praise, O Lord, O Lord our God. Oh, praise the name of the Lord our God. Oh, praise his name forevermore. For endless days we will sing your praise, O Lord, O Lord our God.
Our God. Oh, praise the name of the Lord our God. Oh, praise his name forevermore.
For endless days we will sing your praise, oh Lord, oh Lord our God. Oh Lord, oh Well, as Nate mentioned earlier in this service, we’re going to observe communion together today as a church. Christians have been observing communion ever since the times of Jesus as a way to remember exactly what we were just talking about and what we were just singing about, Jesus’ sacrifice for us. Jesus gave us communion as a tangible representation of what he did for us at a time that we call the Last Supper. It was on the night that Jesus was betrayed.
Jesus met with his disciples a final time, and after the meal, he took the bread and he broke it, and he said, this is my body body given for you. And then he took the cup and he said, this is the cup of the, of the new covenant. This is my blood of the new covenant, which is poured out for the forgiveness of sins. As, as often as you drink of this, do it in remembrance of me. So today, in, in your own homes, we invite you to gather these elements and remember, uh, the sacrifice that Jesus made on our behalf.
Thanks everybody once again for joining us for today’s online service. We sincerely desire for each time that we record these services that it comes to you in a way that God would just move in your heart and in your life and show you more of himself, draw you closer to him. We need the Lord so much all the time, and especially in these days in which we find ourselves. If there’s a way that we can pray for you or be of encouragement encouragement, please don’t ever hesitate to reach out to us. One of the ways you can reach out to us based on what God stirred up in your heart from today’s message from Pastor Dan is you’ll see a button there on the screen that says sermon questions, and you can click on that button and it allows you to submit one or multiple questions or thoughts from today’s message.
And I know Pastor Dan will love to receive those because he can then take some of those and answer those in the coming days And it’s a way that we can interact with you and you can interact with us. So you can do that through the sermon questions button. You’ll also see a button there that allows you to give securely. And anytime we encourage people to give through their tithes and their offerings, this is not a way of you saying, yay, Bridges Community Church, or you’re trying to tip God. We do this as an act of service and an act of worship through our tithes and our offerings.
God wants us to give the first fruits of what he provides for us, and one of the ways we can do that is through our tithes and our offerings. So as the Lord stirs in your heart, we encourage you to give and to give generously as God has given generously to you. It helps further the ministry of Bridges Community Church, something to which God calls all of us to do, to give, but it’s also furthering the ministry that the Lord wants to do in the community and in the world around us. So we are so grateful for your tithes and your offerings, and we consider it a privilege to partner with you in this way. We also want to encourage you to see the button there that allows you to easily like and share today’s service.
You’ll also see a new button there that says Serve at BCC or Serve at Bridges, and you can click on that button. And if you’re interested in getting more plugged in to the life of Bridges Community Church, you’ll see a variety of options there you can click, and it allows us to again see how God is moving in your heart, where God may have gifted you, ways that God can put you and your specific experiences and calling in your life to help further the ministry here at Bridges Community Church. We’d love to partner with you in that way as well. So lots of options for you to interact with us and us with you. As always, please, please let us know how we can pray for you.
We are here for you. We want to be of support. We want to pray for the needs that you might have, or perhaps needs of a loved one. We need one another during this time, so let’s continue to stay in touch with each other. I hope that you have a great rest of your week.
Thanks again for tuning in.
