Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem
Neh 2:17-20 Then said I unto them, Ye see the distress that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach. 18 Then I told them of the hand of my God which was good upon me; as also the king's words that he had spoken unto me. And they said, Let us rise up and build. So they strengthened their hands for this good work. 19 But when Sanballat the Horonite, and Tobiah the servant, the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arabian, heard it, they laughed us to scorn, and despised us, and said, What is this thing that ye do? will ye rebel against the king? 20 Then answered I them, and said unto them, The God of heaven, he will prosper us; therefore we his servants will arise and build: but ye have no portion, nor right, nor memorial, in Jerusalem.
Acts 2:38-43 Then Peter said unto them, Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. 39 For the promise is unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. 40 And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation. 41 Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls. 42 And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. 43 And fear came upon every soul: and many wonders and signs were done by the apostles.
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Dan 9:25 Know therefore and understand, that from the going forth of the commandment to restore and to build Jerusalem unto the Messiah the Prince shall be seven weeks, and threescore and two weeks: the street shall be built again, and the wall, even in troublous times.
Daniel lived in a time when the Jewish people had been taken captive for 70 years because of their idol worship and refusal to obey God's laws. God's law said that every 7 years the land was to be given rest and no crops were to be planted. God would cause some crop to come up wild and that would be more than they would need to eat. The Israelites had refused to do that for 490 years and so God allowed them to go into captivity for exactly the amount of time that would give the land rest as He had commanded!
But at the end of his life, God gave Daniel a vision of the end of time and of his dealings with the nation of Israel. God promised Daniel that it would not be long before the Messiah would come. But He also promised that the city of Jerusalem and it's surrounding wall, which had been annihilated by the Babylonians 70 years before, would be rebuilt! God said that the rebuilding of Jerusalem would be a sign of the beginning of the countdown to the coming of Messiah and finished the prophecy with "the streets will be rebuilt and even the wall, in troublous times."
Enter Nehemiah. Daniel had probably been dead a short time when Nehemiah begin to get a burden for rebuilding the walls. Nehemiah was a Jewish man who was cupbearer to the king and he began to hear about how that a group led by a man named Zerrubabel had already rebuilt a new temple in Jerusalem and that a second group of priests led by the Godly leader Ezra had begun to teach the people the laws of God and how to properly celebrate the Passover. When Nehemiah got word that the walls of the city were still in ruin, a burden to become active overcame him and he asked for the kings help, gathered together some Jewish men and left the palace to get his hands dirty with the work of the Lord!
Our second text in Nehemiah is the beginning of the fulfillment of the prophecies of Daniel about the wall being rebuilt in troublous times. Nehemiah gathered together those who were willing and began to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. The city of Jerusalem was about the square area of 11 acres and to build a wall around it's circumference that would be big enough and tall enough to withstand an enemy army would have been extremely difficult in times of peace with all of the time in the world, but it was an even greater task to build it at a fast pace with volunteer labor in "troublous times."
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I want you to realize that I am not giving you a history lesson for the sake of simple knowledge of the Bible! From everything that happened in Israel's history, we can learn a spiritual lesson about our walk with God. The reason that God treats Jerusalem special and that Satan has such an interest in destroying it is because I Kings 11:36 tells us that Jerusalem is the city where God along time ago chose to put his name! And it was in the city where God decided to put His name, that they built a temple, then a man of God begin to lead them in study of the Word of God and apply it to their lives, and then God moved upon Nehemiah to rebuild the walls! And the enemies of God around the area did not care that the Jewish people were coming back, but they begin to get worried when the temple began to be built. Then they began to cause trouble when Ezra, the man of God begin telling the people to get everything right in their lives and giving them instruction. But when the enemies of God saw that Nehemiah was about to rebuild the walls around the place where God had placed His name, then they began to fight to keep it from happening! Nehemiah and the enemy both realized that once the wall was completed, that it would be much easier for the Jewish people to live for God and protect their families from the enemy!
You see, when the Israelites began to go back from exile and punishment and turn their direction back toward the Promised Land, it was a sign of repentance. And that did not bother the enemy that much. But when they begin to gather in Jerusalem, the place where God had placed His name, then the enemy began to get scared! The whole story of the Jews returning to rebuild Jerusalem is all a beautiful picture of what happens when we begin to draw closer to God! We may have been living far away from the plan of God for many years, but we repented and decided to move toward God's promises. That doesn't bother the devil much because he has heard many people repent over the years and then go right back to living in Babylon! But when you heard about Jesus' name baptism, then the devil begins to get worried, because when you go down into the water, you become a place just as sacred to God as Jerusalem, because you become someone where God has decided to place His name! The scriptures tell us that when you receive the Holy Ghost, your body becomes the temple of the Holy Ghost! And so the building of the temple is a beautiful analogy of a person receiving the Holy Ghost and laying the foundations of basic truth in their life! The devil really doesn't want you to become the temple of the Holy Ghost because your relationship with God will eventually be restored if he cannot get you sidetracked!
Just as the enemies of God in Nehemiah and Ezra got more and more worried at each level, so does the enemy of your soul, the devil get more and more worried at each step. As you become the temple of the Holy Ghost and the place where God has put His name, don't expect only peace in your life, but expect hell to fight you with everything that they have! Because NOW they are really getting worried!
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What do I do after I have left Babylon in Repentance, and become a place where God has put His name in baptism, and built the temple of the Holy Spirit? The next thing that God commanded was for a wall of protection to be built! There had to be a definite line of separation put up between God's work and the world! There had to be a wall of protection and demarcation in order to keep out the enemy's advances to tear down the temple and the place where God had put His name! Because even though the temple had been rebuilt and true worship had begun, it would not last long unless there was some protection from the attacks of the enemy!
After you get the Holy Ghost, you must build up a wall of separation to the world and old habits. There has to be a definite wall of difference to come up between you and sin! And YOU must build the wall! Because if you do not build a wall, then your victory and new found joy will soon be lost again in sinfulness. That's why in Acts, it states that after three thousand people gladly received Peter's word about repentance, water baptism, and the Holy Ghost, that they had to "continue in the Apostles' doctrine and fellowship!" There had to be some walls put up between they way that they used to live and what they were doing now! There had to be some strong walls erected between them and their sinful past! If they had experienced the Holy Ghost power and yet returned to the same way that they always lived, they would not have been able to keep the joy, power, or excitement of the Holy Ghost!
And it was when the enemy saw that Nehemiah was going to build the walls that they became extremely upset and began to actually threaten and plan attacks upon the workers! The enemy knows the importance of walls! They became extremely volatile because they realized that "if those walls get built, then we will have very little chance of desecrating the temple and perverting their worship!" The enemy understood what some Christians never learn, that there is value in walls and separation from the world!
They also began to ridicule and mock those building the walls. Can I tell you that receiving the Holy Ghost and being baptized in Jesus' name is the easy part. It is the wall building that will be the true test of you love of God! When you begin to build the walls around your relationship with God and began to realize that there are just some things in the world that you do not need; that there are some things that you don't want in your life anymore, and you stop acting the way the world acts and talking the way the world talks and living the way that they do, and your priorities are different and your outlook is different and you are interested in the things of God more than the party lifestyle, you will get persecution and you will get ridiculed because you are becoming different than them! But you must understand that you MUST build some walls in your life if you are to make it to heaven! You will not survive without placing some walls of separation between you and the world!
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I think that it is significant that the scripture names the three main enemies of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall. The three main leaders of opposition were Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem. They are only mentioned in the books of Nehemiah and Ezra. But the scriptures makes it a point to identify and give us information about them because they are typical of the three types of opposition that you are going to face in building a wall of separation in your life! And the walls are built against primarily these three opponents!
1. Sanballat - "Sanballat" means "the god of sin has given life." He was the leader of the Moabites. The Moabites were cursed by God for not helping Moses and the children of Israel were forbidden to go into Moab because it represented a cheap substitute for the promised land.
The first spirit that you will have to encounter in your endeavor to live for God and build some walls of protection around your life, is the spirit that tries to say that "sin" isn't really a big deal! This spirit is one of a cheap substitute in your life and tries to convince you that since you have the Holy Ghost, "a little sin is not a big deal as long as it is not murder or something." But I'm here to tell you that you cannot play around with sin. If the scripture takes a stand against something, then you cannot justify it nor play around with it because it will end up destroying you! The scriptures say that the "wages of sin is death." That is everything that God labeled sin is not to aggravate you or inhibit you but to protect you from something that wants to destroy you!
But "Sanballat" means "the god of sin has given life." The spirit of Sanballat does not want you to build walls of protection around your life so it tries to convince you that some things are not as bad as the preacher and the Word of God says they are. After all "you need to live a little, right?" "There doesn't have to be a wall of separation in my life from everything!" "After all, I've always done that this way..." But sin is sin is sin is sin. There IS a pleasure of sin for a season, but in the end it will destroy everything that is precious to you! God will deliver you from sin initially but you must build the walls of separation! God is not going to stop you from going certain places and hanging out with certain people and doing certain things! You've got to put up that wall!
At the end of Nehemiah, after the wall was built, we find that even though Sanballat had not succeeded in stopping the wall from being built, his daughter had married one of the high priest's sons who worked in the temple.
Neh 13:28 And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.
Nehemiah chased him out of the temple! He did not reason with him, or try to talk to him! You see Nehemiah realized that the spirit of Sanballat would not stop after the walls were built but would try to get in and pervert the worship anywhere and way he could! You can't play around with justifying sin, but you must chase it out of your temple! That's why the scriptures tell us to "be zealous to repent!" You cannot reason with the spirit of Sanballat which tries to tell you that sin will bring the life that you need! You must be on guard, even after the wall around your relationship with God has been built and "chase" it from you!
The Spirit of Sanballat tried to slip in the Early Church after the Day of Pentecost by Ananias and Sapphira but God dealt with them right away! We must kill sin in our lives right away, it is way too serious to play with and justify!
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2. Tobiah - "Tobiah" means "Jehovah is good." Yet he was an Ammorite and was not interested in being committed to God or making a covenant relationship with God. In those days, people had to be physically circumcised to be saved because God wanted a "mark in the flesh" that you had taken a blood covenant with Him! We do not have to be physically circumcised today to be saved, because now we undergo a "spiritual circumcision" through water baptism in the name of Jesus (Colossians 2:11-12):
Col 2:11-12 In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ: 12 Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.
The problem with the Ammonites is that they wanted to worship and praise the true Jehovah God but did not want the circumcision and did not want the covenant! In Ezra 2:60, we find that the children of Tobiah were some of the ones who wanted to be priests in the temple but had no genealogical records! I preached this morning how the only genealogical record that matters under Grace is that you have been born again of the water and the Spirit! So the spirit of Tobiah is the one of compromise that wants the worship and the excitement of Pentecost but does not want the covenant of Jesus name baptism or the born again experience of the Holy Ghost! Yet, they want to minister and be used of God and praise Him and they will tell you how good He is His and yet they want to ignore parts of the scripture that they would rather not obey!
The second opponent that you have to fight in building up walls of protection around your relationship with God is the spirit of doctrinal compromise! There is a tremendous pressure to give in to the status quo and stop focusing and emphasizing Jesus' name baptism! There is a great pressure to stop emphasizing that people need to be born not only of the water but of the Spirit and need to receive the Holy Ghost just as they did on the Day of Pentecost when they spoke with other tongues as the Spirit gave the utterance!
But I am here to declare that we cannot change the Gospel because we are not the ones who invented it or died to bring it to a lost and dying world! Jesus taught that all needed to Repent, be Baptized, and filled with the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues! Peter proclaimed it in our text! Paul also taught it! (Acts 19:1-6) And when the next generation came along Paul warned them against preaching it any other way:
Gal 1:6-12 I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: 7 Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. 9 As we said before, so say I now again, If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. 10 For do I now persuade men, or God? or do I seek to please men? for if I yet pleased men, I should not be the servant of Christ. 11 But I certify you, brethren, that the gospel which was preached of me is not after man. 12 For I neither received it of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ.
We need to guard ourselves and our families from the false teachings of a watered-down gospel! We must preach the gospel that was given by commandment of Jesus Christ! The spirit of Tobiah wants to tell you that you can go to a church and worship God outwardly and have the "same freedom" and yet not have to worry about that "other stuff," like Jesus' name baptism, and receiving the Holy Ghost, and Jesus Christ is God! You can have a form of religion without really having to give up anything or change your way of thinking to the scriptures! That is the spirit of Tobiah! That "Jehovah is Good" and let's focus only on the love of God and not talk about sin and the dangers of the world! God is good, but we must serve Him with everything in us! And we cannot pervert His gospel!
II Th 1:7-9 And to you who are troubled rest with us, when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, 8 In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: 9 Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power;
The Gospel of Jesus Christ according to the first few verses of I Corinthians 15, is the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ! We die to our sins in Repentance (I Corinthians 15:31), are buried with Him in baptism (Colossians 2:12), and rise to a new life through receiving the Holy Ghost (Titus 3:5)! If they do not have a covenant relationship with God, then I careless about their ministry or their opinion! I must guard against the spirit of Tobiah in my life!
And the spirit of Tobiah is always trying to creep in the church even after the walls were built. At the last chapter of Nehemiah we also find Tobiah showing up again! Nehemiah had gone to give a report to the king and Tobiah slipped in and talked one of the priests into letting him live in one of the chambers of the house of God!
Neh 13:6-8 But in all this time was not I at Jerusalem: for in the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon came I unto the king, and after certain days obtained I leave of the king: 7 And I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. 8 And it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber.
When Nehemiah got back, he "cast forth" Tobiah and all of his stuff out of the chamber and had them purify the temple again! You cannot play with the spirit of doctrinal compromise! It will not be satisfied until it has firmly become a part of the temple of God and has perverted the worship! We must build a wall against it! We must not preach another gospel!
All during the time of building the walls we find that Tobiah would send messengers to tell Nehemiah about all the good that he was doing (Nehemiah 6:19)! But Nehemiah knew that it didn't matter how much good that they were doing, that they could not be a part of God's plan unless they took on the covenant of God! It doesn't matter how much good someone does if there doctrine does not line up to the Word of God!
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3. Geshem - "Geshem" means "rainstorm." He was the leader of the Arab nomads in the desert area. He represents the third obstacle of your building walls of separation from the world and that is storms that arise in your life! Can I tell you that when you begin to live for God, you are going to face some circumstances that the enemy is going to send to try your faith! The scriptures say that it rains on the just and the unjust! And that God causes the sun to rise for the ungodly as well as the godly! You are going to have some trials and some things that happen in your life where you ask "why?" Eventually there will be a rainstorm in your life of trouble.
Matt 7:24-27 Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: 25 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. 26 And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: 27 And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.
Ps 1:1-6 Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful. 2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night. 3 And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper. 4 The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away. 5 Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. 6 For the LORD knoweth the way of the righteous: but the way of the ungodly shall perish.
And we find that Sanballat worked together with Geshem to try to get Nehemiah to come outside of the walls and meet with them so that they could kill him.
Neh 6:2-5 That Sanballat and Geshem sent unto me, saying, Come, let us meet together in some one of the villages in the plain of Ono. But they thought to do me mischief. 3 And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you? 4 Yet they sent unto me four times after this sort; and I answered them after the same manner. 5 Then sent Sanballat his servant unto me in like manner the fifth time with an open letter in his hand;
One of the greatest tricks of Satan is to try to trick you to giving in to a little sin and then bring a stormy trial during your time of weakness! He tries to get you thinking that God doesn't care about you! But really, you've just walked outside the walls of protection! You need to run back into the arms of a loving God who can calm the storm and trust Him completely! But we need to learn from the actions of Nehemiah!
Neh 6:3 And I sent messengers unto them, saying, I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down: why should the work cease, whilst I leave it, and come down to you?
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Here is the best part: When the enemies of Nehemiah saw the wall completed in just 52 days by ordinary people with great faith, the scriptures say that the enemies of God were
Neh 6:16 And it came to pass, that when all our enemies heard thereof, and all the heathen that were about us saw these things, they were much cast down in their own eyes: for they perceived that this work was wrought of our God.
Neh 6:16 When our enemies and the surrounding nations heard about it, they were frightened and humiliated, and they realized that the work had been done with the help of our God. (TLB)
The next verses say that Tobiah continued to send threatening letters of intimidation, but Nehemiah did not care nor respond! He had built a wall around the place that God had placed His name, and He cared more for serving God than giving in to the appeal of sin from Sanballat, the compromising, powerless doctrines of Tobiah, or the rainstorms of Geshem trying to shake His foundation! If you will make up your mind to build some walls between you and the world around your relationship with God, then Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem cannot hurt you!