How should we respond to people who made this

spies us because of our faith, or when you're ridiculed for the work you're doing for God?

How should you respond if threats intensify, even after you've prayed?

Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg looks at how Nehemiah responded when these kinds

of challenges cause God's people to lose heart in their efforts to rebuild the walls in

Jerusalem.

I invite you to take your Bibles and we'll turn together to the book of Nehemiah once again.

To chapter 4 and to the section which begins with the 7th verse.

Last time we noted, indeed we said it was an axiom, biblical axiom, that whenever God's people

do God's work in God's way, it will not go unopposed.

Now that is something which we do not find simply in the pages of the Old Testament,

although we do, from the very beginning of God's dealings with His people, as they have been

said in the context of enemies, the work of God has always been opposed.

When you go into the New Testament, you find that this self-same is true.

If we were simply to follow, for example, the life of Christ, then it is manifestly true.

Because at every point he was opposed in his journey and in his proclamation.

When Paul wraps up his letter to the church in Ephesus, he does so with a stirring reminder

to them of this principle.

And in verse 10 of Ephesians 6, he exhorts them, finally be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power,

put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.

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.

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