I want to begin by inviting you into the text. Matthew chapter 16 is where we're at.

I love to see you looking at your Bibles, Matthew 16. I'll get to those verses eventually.

I want to start with a preface out of Matthew, or excuse me, Nehemiah chapter 6, verses 1 through 9 specifically,

which deals with Nehemiah appointed or assigned a task from God to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

You know the story of Jeremiah.

Now he's at the end of this project.

He is building the walls back up.

And of course, there's these spiritual antagonists that were introduced to in the story.

There always is the spirit of

Antichrist, an adversarial spirit, the spirit of the antagonist. He comes, it's Sanballat,

Tobiah, and Gresham. And they're inviting Nehemiah to come off the wall. Let's have some

conversations. Let's talk about this. They send four different messages saying the same thing.

Nehemiah says, why would I stop this great work? Why would the work cease for me to come down

off the wall, my assignment, my appointment, to talk to you? Likely, the conversation would have led to a

debate and argument, a waste of energy and time. So if the enemy cannot distract, he moves to his

second strategy to attack. And he uses lies and he uses slander. So he attacks with lies. They

set out a report to the community basically accusing Nehemiah and the other Jews of an

insurrection of rebelling against the kingdom. They're rebuilding the wall

so that they can take over. And Nehemiah, again, doesn't defend his calling, doesn't defend his

character. And I stop because I have a tendency to want to defend my calling and defend my character.

And the Lord's like, no, no, no, I gave you the calling. I gave you Christ-like character as your defense.

You don't need it to defend them.

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