Nehemiah 4-5: Half Worker, Half Warrior

Once again, as the Israelites begin working to rebuild their city, they come under attack from their enemies. Have you noticed a trend yet? It happened when they first started rebuilding the temple. It happened when they resumed rebuilding the temple. And here it happens again as they set to work rebuilding the wall. Here is a simple principle I am becoming more and more sure of: Anyone who sets out to do a good work will come under attack. There is nothing the enemy hates more than to see us doing the work we were created to do. Every attack, every temptation, is an attempt to get us to abandon the work.

For most of my life, I treated work as something to be avoided, to be done as little as possible, to be gotten through as quickly as possible. This is a terrible misunderstanding of work. We were created to work. We were created to build and to cultivate, to multiply and to subdue, to rule and to reign. We are at our happiest when are lives are full of good work.

The Israelites enemies did not want them to accomplish their work, no more than our enemy wants us to accomplish ours. So they set about plotting how they could sneak into Jerusalem with their armies and kill the workers. Nehemiah discovered their plot so he organized the defense of Jerusalem. He divided all of the people into by their families and set them to defending the wall, knowing that they would fight all the harder surrounded by the their sons and wives and daughters. When their enemies see that the Israelites will not be taken by surprise and are ready to defend the city, they decide not to attack. But Nehemiah refuses to let their vigilance slip. He knows the enemy is still nearby, watching and waiting for any opportunity to overcome them.

This is the same place we find ourselves. The enemy is watching and waiting for any sign of weakness, any avenue that he can take to prevent us from doing the work we have been given. I think we need to begin to take the same approach that the Israelites decided on:

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.

Even while we continue the work, we must keep out weapons near at hand. We must be constantly vigilant, because the one who desires to steal and to kill and to destroy does not rest.