Oftentimes, to win us to our harm,

The instruments of darkness tell us truths;

Win us with honest trifles,

To betray us in deepest consequence.

—Shakespeare: Macbeth

Review previous strategies:

1. Threats of the Wicked – ch. 4

2. Tiredness of the Workers – ch. 4

3. Testimony of the Worldly – ch. 4

4. Temptations of Wealth – ch. 5

Satan Doesn’t Give Up

Treachery of the Well-wishers – ch. 6

Compromise - v.1-4

When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it — though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates — Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.” But they were scheming to harm me; so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

Prior to this, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem had been hostile – they had hurled threats and derision at Nehemiah and the workers. But now they appear to be conciliatory – they want to talk. They’re making nice! They want to have a meeting with Nehemiah…

• but they want the meeting to be on plain of Ono (show map)

• 45 km NW of Jerusalem on the coastal plain

• to get there, you have to go:

  • down from the hill country where Jerusalem is located

  • through two towns, Upper and Lower Beth Horon

• Sanballat introduced in chapter 2 as “Sanballat the Horonite”

• i.e. – this meeting was to take place on Sanballat’s home turf, far from Jerusalem.

• this was an attempt to lure Nehemiah away from the work that God had called him to do, and onto enemy territory

• BUT it is done in a friendly, reasonable manner: “Let’s have a meeting. Let’s put aside our differences. Let’s sit down and talk and see if we can come to some sort of understanding.”

• Sanballat is asking Nehemiah to compromise his mission – to leave the project in order to enter into a dialog with these characters

Look at how Nehemiah responds (v. 3): He says “Oh no!”

““I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?”

Nehemiah knew

1. that this was an insincere invitation

   1. he knew the character of these people

   2. he knew what they stood for

   3. he knew their motives – that they were scheming to harm him

2. that for him to go to this meeting would be to enter into fellowship with the enemy

   1. 2 Cor.6:14-15 - Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

3. that for him to go to this meeting would be to compromise and jeopardize the work God had called him to.

   1. to go down to the plain of Ono would mean going down in more ways than one – it would mean going down spiritually as well as physically.

Satan will try to distract us from doing the work God has called us to do. His appeal may sound reasonable and friendly – may even sound like a logical thing to do. But he wants to pull us away from God’s priorities.

And he can be quite persistent – Sanballat and Geshem sent this invitation four times. And on the fifth time, they tried a new tactic. Let’s look at v. 5-9…

Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written: “It is reported among the nations — and Geshem says it is true — that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us confer together.”

Sanballat falsely accuses Nehemiah of conspiring to rebel against the Persian Emperor and to set himself up as a king over the Jews.

Adolf Hitler wrote in his political testament Mein Kampf these words: “The broad mass of a nation will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” In other words, the bigger the lie, the more people are likely to believe it. And Hitler told some very big lies.

And that same philosophy is at work in our world today. The bigger the lie, the more people are likely to believe it. For example, in Pakistan and other Muslim countries today, 9 out of 10 people believe that the destruction of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 was a Jewish plot carried out by Israeli operatives. The story is circulating that the 4,000 Jews who supposedly work in the Trade Center, all stayed away from work on Sept. 11 because they had been warned to do so by Israeli intelligence. The bigger the lie, the more people are likely to believe it.

Sanballat told a big lie here in this letter. The truth of the matter was that Nehemiah was in Jerusalem on the king’s business. King Artaxerxes had authorized him to do what he was doing in rebuilding the walls. And Nehemiah was a trusted servant of the king – he had no ambitions whatsoever to be king over the Jews. This was a lie. A big lie. It had no basis in fact.

Look at what Sanballat says: “It is reported among the nations… People are saying…There’s a story circulating…The word on the street is…” The only actual source he quotes is Geshem, and we already know where Geshem stands! This is how all rumors start. They start with people spreading a story based on unsubstantiated sources.

Normally, in ancient times, a letter like this would have been written on papyrus or leather, rolled up, tied with string and sealed with wax into which would be pressed an impression of the sender’s official seal. But Sanballat didn’t go to all that trouble – he sent this letter unsealed. Why?

To give as many people as possible the opportunity to read the letter along the way. He wanted this false rumor to be sown and to spread far and wide. Isn’t it amazing how rumors spread – how false stories take on a life of their own?

And, having started this false rumor, Sanballat tries to leave Nehemiah with the impression that he wants to protect him from the possible consequences of it. He closes his letter by saying “Come, let us confer together. Nehemiah, we need to talk. I can help you here.”

How did Nehemiah respond to this latest treachery? Look at verses 8-9…

I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.” They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.” [But I prayed,] “Now strengthen my hands.”

That’s pretty good! In Hebrew, that answer took just 12 words. Nehemiah didn’t waste time in explanation, he didn’t write a letter of protest, he didn’t try to justify himself. He knew that God had called him to what he was doing; that the king had authorized him to do what he was doing; and that he was doing it with his whole heart and a clear conscience. That was all he needed.

He knew that a man is at his worst when he is defending himself. He knew enough to let God defend him.

He was like Paul, who said in 1Cor. 4:3-4

I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

Nehemiah knew he was on solid ground, but he prayed that he and the workers would not be demoralized and weakened by the enemy’s treacherous plots. He prayed “God, strengthen my hands to do your work.”

So far, the enemy’s treachery has been coming from “outside” sources. But now let’s look at how that changes in verse 10…

One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you — by night they are coming to kill you.”

“In order to betray, you must first belong.” The man who said that was Kim Philby, an Englishman who worked for MI6 – British Secret Intelligence Service – during the Cold War. Kim Philby knew what he was talking about, because he turned out to be a Russian spy – a double agent for the Soviet Union.

In order to betray, you must first belong. Shemaiah “belonged” – he was a Jew. He lived inside the city of Jerusalem. He must have been a well-placed Jew, because he obviously had access to the Temple. That probably means that he was, in fact, a priest. And there is every indication from later in the passage that he also functioned as a prophet.

Shemaiah must have had the confidence and trust of Nehemiah, because Nehemiah took the time to go and visit him at his home. From what we know of Nehemiah, he wasn’t one to lightly take time off work to socialize, so he must have felt that is was worth going to see Shemaiah.

But that’s where the plot thickens. We are told here that Shemaiah was “shut in” at his home. The word means to be “detained, constrained, held back”. We’re not sure why, but it is possible that Shemaiah was doing something that prophets did in those days: they “acted out” their prophecy. They tried to symbolize in their own actions the message that God was trying to communicate to his people.

Perhaps what Shemaiah was doing here was to impress on Nehemiah that Nehemiah’s life was urgently in danger – the Lord had revealed to him that there were people coming to kill him – and that he must flee to the Temple for refuge and shut himself up inside the Temple, even as Shemaiah had shut himself up inside his home.

Well, that was a pretty powerful message! And that message would have really gotten Nehemiah’s attention, coming as it did from someone Nehemiah respected.

But there was a problem with the message…

1. It was a message of contradiction: it wasn’t according to God’s revealed Word. The Law of Moses stated clearly that a man like Nehemiah, who wasn’t a Levite, wasn’t allowed in the Temple. Nehemiah was not a priest, and only priests were allowed inside the Temple.

   1. Under the law of refuge, a man whose life was in danger could flee to the altar and take hold of the horns of the altar for safety, but the altar was not actually IN the Temple; it was in the courtyard in front of the Temple. Shemaiah was urging Nehemiah to go into the Temple and shut the doors behind him.

   2. Num. 3:10 Appoint Aaron and his sons to serve as priests; anyone else who approaches the sanctuary must be put to death.

2. It was a message of cowardice; a message of fear. Would this be the kind of message that God would send?

   1. The God who said to Joshua: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

3. It was a message designed to discredit Nehemiah’s character and influence as a man of God.

   1. If Nehemiah had heeded this advice, he would have irreparably damaged his testimony

   2. He would have defiled the Temple

   3. He would have lost his moral authority as the leader of the people

All this caused Nehemiah to realize what was going on here with Shemaiah. Look at v. 11…

But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

Sometimes we can be deflected from God’s will by the advice of the very people we think should be trustworthy. Satan often masquerades as an angel of light. It is possible that a Bible teacher, or an author, a speaker, a counselor, even a pastor, will give you advice or counsel that is totally wrong. (They may not do it intentionally, or because they are on Satan’s payroll as Shemaiah was here!)

But we have to measure the advice we receive against the Word of God and the character of God. God will never give you counsel that contradicts his Word. And he will never give you counsel that turns you into a coward, who runs away and hides from opposition. And he will never give you counsel that will damage your testimony and your integrity as a child of God.

And that leads us to the next tactic of the enemy, which is conjugality – the marriage of believers and unbelievers. Let’s skip down to v. 17…

Also, in those days the nobles of Judah were sending many letters to Tobiah, and replies from Tobiah kept coming to them. For many in Judah were under oath to him, since he was son-in-law to Shecaniah son of Arah, and his son Jehohanan had married the daughter of Meshullam son of Berekiah. Moreover, they kept reporting to me his good deeds and then telling him what I said. And Tobiah sent letters to intimidate me.

One of the great problems that affected the Jewish people after they came back from exile in Babylon was the problem of intermarriage. We see it mentioned over and over again in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. This is the first hint of it here in Nehemiah, but it will come up prominently in the later chapters.

Here is the situation: Tobiah was one of Nehemiah’s three great enemies: Sanballat, Geshem, and Tobiah. But he was the only one with a Biblical name – his name means “God is good”. And he was the only one with family connections inside the city of Jerusalem:

• He was married to the daughter of Shecaniah

• His son Jehohanan was married to the daughter of Meshullam

  • Meshullam was a prominent leader in Jerusalem; he’s mentioned as a leader in Ezra 8:16, and he had a major role in the rebuilding project in Nehemiah.

• We’re told in chapter 13 that Tobiah was closely associated with Eliashib the priest.

So here we have an avowed enemy of God’s work who is related by marriage to the people who are doing God’s work. And that leads to all sorts of complications…

1. v. 17 - The Jewish leaders were engaged in a lively correspondence with Tobiah, no doubt giving him valuable inside information about the status of the rebuilding project and the general “goings-on” in the city.

2. v. 18 – Many of them were actually “under oath” to Tobiah, which would have obviously led to divided loyalties among them.

3. v. 19 – These Jewish confidants of Tobiah served as a sort of “public relations firm” for him inside Jerusalem, singing his praises to Nehemiah, then revealing Nehemiah’s response to him.

4. ch. 13:7 – If that weren’t bad enough, we learn later that Eliashib the priest actually gave Tobiah a large room to use as an apartment in the courts of the Temple itself. (This happened while Nehemiah was away, and when he came back, he threw Tobiah’s belongings out!)

The nobles and officials of Jerusalem were engaging in treasonous behavior because they had gotten themselves interrelated with the enemies of God.

1. • commitments that pulled them away from God’s commitments

   • loyalties that pulled them away from loyalty to God

We need to beware of getting into relationships which will make it difficult for us to be totally available to God.

In spite of all that, look at v. 15-16

So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.

God fixed in just 52 days what had been ruined for 141 years (since 586 BC). And the result was that, instead of God’s people being discouraged and afraid, the enemy lost their self-confidence because they realized that God was real.

Look at what God did:

• November – Nehemiah gets the news of Jerusalem’s disgrace – starts to pray

• March/April – The king asks Nehemiah what he wants

• May/June – Nehemiah travels to Jerusalem

• July – Work begins

• September – Project completed

This was something that only God could do. And because it was something that only God could do, it left a tremendous impression on all the nations surrounding Judah. They knew that there was a God in Israel.

What about us – Is there anything in our lives that we can point to and say “Only God could do that?”

Is there anything in our church that we can point to and say “Only God could do that?”

Is there anything that our non-Christian friends, neighbors, co-workers, family members can point to and say “Only God could do that. God is real.”