THINGS ARE ONLY IMPOSSIBLE UNTIL THEY’RE NOT


Nehemiah 4

17 November 2019

Impossibilities?

The title of this exhortation is: “Things are Only Impossible Until
They’re Not”. Now to all people today, there is a sense that nothing is
impossible, but that there is a lot of opposition to overcome, whether
that’s opposing political forces or ideas, or just opposing the laws of
_nature_, getting them under control, or our _own_ nature, which is what
_we_ believe. The fight is on between a secular world view of success
through technology and political progress, and the religious vision of
success through moral and spiritual submission and self-effacement and
success through Christ. And our talk then, looks at overcoming
opposition.

Human Acheivements

Now I admit that the title of my talk “things are only impossible until
they’re not” comes from a Sci-Fi programme, but I believe it’s a
biblical principle:

  and the Lord said, ‘if, as one people all sharing a common language,
  they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be
  beyond them’.

That’s of course, the Tower of Babel. But we _do_ see a common language
today, don’t we, we we have a near universal English language throughout
the world, and in the world of IT all computers share not just one, but
multiple common languages, and they all communicate and all devices
communicate across the Internet using a common protocol, which is a
language that the computers understand. And so I would submit that this
is why we’ve suddenly seen the world changing under our feet in
real-time as it were. Whereas in centuries long ago, nothing much
changed from generation to generation, now parents have to struggle to
understand what their children think and do and believe on a daily
basis, and it seems to change on a yearly basis: what is and is not
allowed to be believed.

Keeping up with this advance - one could characterise it as an advance
in the area of science I suppose - is quite a job. In just one area of
material science - battery technology - we now have all kinds of
prototypes for interesting batteries that store more energy in less
space, there are some even powered by that most hated of all molecules
these days, Carbon dioxide, and that’s just one tiny part of one branch
of physics. It is impossible to keep up with it unless you’re in that
field. We could talk about quantum computers or teleportation or
telepathy, force fields, these are all things which are being worked and
there’s success in the laboratory, all things which we would have
previously thought of as the realm of science fiction. It hardly seems
worth mentioning things like magnetic levitation of trains, because
that’s so yesterday. The list of seemingly outlandish accomplishments
goes on and on, and as I say this is just within Physics. We haven’t
mentioned Neuroscience or Mathematics or Synthetic Biology, all of which
have their own hugely growing areas of advancement, and that’s just
still within the realm of science.

Well, this is a sort of arrogant belief. I would submit, in the
advancement of humans through their own genius, through their own sense
of togetherness through technology. And this vision of progress -
technological progress - wasn’t always shared. There was a time, not so
long ago where metal ships were thought impossible, _impossible_, not
unlikely; travelling over 20mph in a car was thought dangerous to your
heart. I have two quotes here from some famous scientists to show what
kind of things were thought at one time to be _impossible_ in 1895 Lord
Kelvin said that “heavier than air flying machines are impossible” only
to be proved wrong eight years later by the Wright brothers. And in 1939
Einstein said, ”there’s not the slightest indication that nuclear energy
will ever be obtainable. That would mean the atom would be shattered at
will”, only to be proved wrong eight years later, and three years after
that, the world was shocked by the annihilation of the civilians of
Hiroshima. And now, with enough cash, we can not only travel between
towns, we can circumnavigate the globe in a couple of days, down from 88
days a century and a half ago. We can destroy the entire world many
times over or replicate conditions that are present inside of the sun.
It’s just a matter of what we _plan_ or decide to do, ‘nothing they plan
will be beyond them’.

We’re living in a world swirling in its own sense of obtaining the
future of their own making, and this frenetic achievement has come at
the expense of purpose and human meaning. As the writer Chesterton said,
‘the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It’s been
found difficult and left untried.’ The Christian ideal has not been
tried and found wanting, it’s been found difficult and left untried. In
other words, with all the effort that the world makes into these
incredible achievements and advances, _Christianity_ is too hard,
somehow a life in Christ _too_ hard to believe, too many unanswered
questions. So instead of a superficial exploration of the world around
us, which is an end in itself, er, these people abandoned Christianity
and focus merely on that, that’s what I’m trying to say. We’re no longer
looking at nature in order to find the glory of the Mind behind it, but
instead we just seek to understand nature in order to create for
ourselves and surround ourselves with buttons and levers and switches
and screens so that we can manipulate nature. We seek to empower
ourselves, to turbo-charge our own abilities instead of reflecting on
the Majesty and Power of God. We wonder even about ways to become
trans-human - part-man, part-machine - implanting chips into our brains,
creating intelligent machines and intelligent software that mimics our
own intelligence. This is, to my mind, an incredible arrogance, to steal
from God himself, to empower ourselves to be better animals, to create
the technological world in our _own_ image and to invest it with our own
concepts of what a perfect world would be, it’s a dystopic vision. So
we’ve set out a godless vision here for a few minutes, what _we_ will
decide to do, what _we_ plan as humans.

Humans Working with God

But this is where Nehemiah four comes in, against this backdrop of the
world in which we live. Nehemiah would have, I suppose, he would have
_loved_ some of those lessons: recent successes in science, the
predictions that were impossible, because his story shows that whenever
you try to do something significant for God, you will face significant
opposition. In other words, if you try to live a life of obedience to
Jesus and to God, _radically_, you will stand out and face opposition
both from outside and inside yourself. And the lesson that comes from
this chapter of Nehemiah is that, in opposition, we ought to respond
with _prayer_, we ought to decide to _work_, to be _vigilant_, to
_focus_ on the Lord, to _pay attention_ to the Lord.

Although it’s in God’s will that we should succeed, just as it was in
Nehemiah’s case in building the wall, God did not remove the opposition
from him. In our case, opposition drives us to greater dependence on the
Lord and to greater determination to do what he has called us to do. If
we back down in the face of opposition, we’ll run a slower race, in
discouragement, or settle for a mediocre Christian existence.

Opposition

We’re going to look at six forms of opposition from Nehemiah four. These
are the types of things that set us back in our walk to the kingdom.

* Anger

The first is anger, the anger of others against ourselves. And these are
by no means the only oppositions that we face. In verses one and seven.
Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, became furious and very angry,
‘burning mad’ is the Hebrew translation. A secure and independent
Jerusalem threatened his hold on the area and undermined his trade
route. So for the time being, he dropped all of his differences with the
surrounding tribes and people groups and formed a sort of alliance of
enemies against this particular threat. He dropped his differences with
the ammonites with the Arabs and the Philistines in other words. In
anger over what Nehemiah was doing they all joined together, threatening
to stop the work by violence if necessary. This new work of God
threatened the lifestyles of those nations and they became angry, and we
find the anger of others to try and kill our vibe of newfound joy and
zeal in the case of a newly baptised member, or to try and raise
questions like the serpent did in the Garden of Eden: did God really say
that? Can you really be sure of X, Y and Z in the Bible? It’s a constant
attack really, on our faith. In the case of a teenager who grows up in a
religious home, one can’t imagine too much anger towards that teenager
in becoming a Christian, unless it’s the _wrong type_ of Christian. In
the case of a teenager growing up in a secular home, we might expect the
parents to be happy that the teenager had become a Christian and had
this newly found zeal to live a life of love for others, but not so,
their parents are often angry despite their newly found joy: What do you
mean you’ve become a Christian? We didn’t raise you to be irrational and
fall for all that! What’s all this nonsense about being born again? And
we find that people are angry, and we face opposition because of anger,
because we threaten their worldview by holding on to our own. We see
that all around us. The mere mention that you hold Christian values
these days evokes hostile criticism because we are somehow going to pull
society back into the ‘Dark Ages’. Our sister in Morocco, if you know
her story, her father chased her out of the house and threw her down the
stairs when she became a Christian, that was that, the door was shut
behind her, that’s it. And we often see the same thing when a husband
and wife don’t share the truth together, when one accepts the truth, the
other responds in anger. It’s a threat to their world view.

* Sarcasm and Scoffing

The second type of opposition that we face, and it’s quite severe
sometimes, is sarcasm, the kind of cynical scoffing and mockery that we
face. We may not personally face it, but we certainly face it by proxy.
We see how other Christians, if they stand up, how they are treated, and
it has a chilling effect on our willingness to speak out. In verse two
Sanballat gathers with like minded people within hearing distance of the
wall to sarcastically ask all those questions we read earlier: What are
those feeble Jews doing? Are they going to restore it for themselves?
Can they offer sacrifices? He’s asking whether they can really complete
this project. Can they really finish in a day? Can they revive the
stones from that lot of rubble? After each rhetorical question, we
imagine scornful laughter coming from that group, and then finally,
Tobiah throws in his measure of sarcasm: ‘even if a fox jumps on it, it
would break down’. We too, frequently, are ridiculed for standing up for
our faith. If you become a Christian and let it be known, at work
especially, your fellow workers may mock you. It seems that in a
ostensibly Christian, at least an historically Christian society,
Christianity is the only religion which you can mock with impunity.
People don’t really know what Christianity stands for, or what it’s here
for, so it’s easy for them… again, I think Chesterton said: If you come
up against a wall or a fence in a wood, it’s easy to not know why it’s
there and just tear it down if it’s in your way. It takes a certain
person to look back in history and see the benefits of Christianity, but
history’s not taught in that way at school any more. People will wait
for you to make a mistake, and then they’ll exclaim: ‘well, you’re no
different to any of the others, you’re just a hypocrite like all the
other Christians.’ Again, your commitment to the values enshrined in
Christianity threaten their godless lifestyle.

* Intimidation and Threats

The third threat, the third opposition, is that of threats and
intimidation, and this is one which is heating up to a great degree, and
the younger ones find this particularly difficult. But it was always the
same, even in Nehemiah’s day. Nehemiah’s enemies had to be careful in
opposing him because he was working under Artaxerxes’ permission, they
couldn’t just gather together and swarm over there and march on
Jerusalem, that would be a rebellion against the king’s edict. But they
could, and they did, use minor threats of violence, not any less serious
for it, in verses eight and eleven they threatened the Jews, they
circulated threats among those Jews, they picked off a few of the people
working on the wall in those places where there wasn’t much back up and
they gathered together in order to go after the the less powerful ones,
the Jews which were less powerful. Bullies in other words, but with a
serious purpose. So these renegade bands, these bands could be
characterised as renegades couldn’t they, oh well it wasn’t us… it was
just… we don’t have any control over them, maybe they’d had a fight, or
had an argument or something, ‘meh, it happens’. And today the terrorist
activity that the Jews are under (only this week) puts them under
immense psychological pressure as they try to build up their country.

But there can be subtle or overt threats to us as Christians, we can
face intimidation as Christians. If you don’t keep quiet about the way
such and such a deal was done, you know what will happen. You can’t
adopt children, you’re too fundamental (I’ve heard of someone that’s
happened to). Raising your child as Christian is seen as child abuse and
people openly say it. You know, we’re reminded of Jesus prayer when he
was crucified:

  ‘Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do’.

And we see people today, completely ignorant of the principles of
Christianity, exclaiming their hatred against it for the very opposite
of what it represents. At university, if you write a paper defending the
Christian perspective, you will fail, you will be failed. If you don’t
sign a diversity and inclusion declaration before you even have an
interview, you may not get that interview for work, and of course, that
will enshrine the latest iteration of the faux values of society, the
newest type of “advance” in political philosophy, social philosophy. We
do suffer, and more and more as Christ approaches, very severe um, even
financial burdens as Christians. Unless you work for yourself, you’re
very likely to come across this in every major corporation.

* Tiredness and Lack of Enthusiasm

In verse ten we read about discouragement and tiredness, exhaustion,
lack of enthusiasm. This is our fourth problem that we have to overcome,

  ‘the strength of the burden bearers is failing, all this rubbish, and
  we ourselves are unable to rebuild the wall’

When a new project begins there’s plenty of enthusiasm, _“Let’s do
this”_, and if you get over half way and the end is in sight, there is
enthusiasm there, _“We’re almost there”_, but right in the middle is
where exhaustion and discouragement set in. Well, for us, although we
can read the signs of the times, Christ seems to tarry, he seems ever
present, but somehow not quite here, and we too can allow the initial
zeal we had for the Truth to subside, and our enthusiasm leaves us.
There was once a time, I’m sure you can remember, where every single
Bible leaflet and study and book was happily devoured, and now they
remain on our shelves and although we can’t quite remember what was said
in them, we don’t feel the need, that passion isn’t there to the same
extent, (speaking personally, it’s an issue I want to put right). We
begin to grow weary, and we wonder if all of our efforts are making any
difference for the cause of Christ and this leads to discouragement. You
notice the things which are not done in your life, the issues which you
never were able to overcome, the problems in the church, the problems
and sins of yourself and of others, and this newness and enthusiasm
begins to wear off.

* Negativity

And this leads us to our fifth problem of opposition, and that’s
negativity. The criticism, the scoffing, the mockery, the sarcasm came
from outside, but negativity comes from inside, or can do. The people
that were not involved in the work of rebuilding the wall, those were
the people that lived near the enemy and were most negative. They wern’t
as I say, personally involved. They were just hearing negative reports
and threats and they didn’t really know what was going on Jerusalem and
they came ten times (_over and over_ in Hebrew) to Nehemiah and those
working on the wall. “They’ll come up against us from every place.”
‘There’s a lion in the way’, you know, there’s no escape from it. And
invariably, negativity in the church comes from us feeling all of the
above pressures, but not necessarily being involved in the solution. And
‘there are giants in the land and we’re just like grasshoppers’, there’s
no way we can go there. Nehemiah didn’t ignore the very real danger that
existed, but if he had listened to these prophets of doom, he would
never have finished. It’s crucial that we try to establish our own place
in our community and find a way for others to contribute as well. I’ve
got here a note, perhaps slightly cynical note, that retirement is
something that’s out in the world but perhaps not necessarily of benefit
to us. It’s where the wisdom lies, and the young of our culture and our
community can really do with it.

* Fear

So lastly, then we have number six. Fear, and that’s the cumulative
effect of all of the other factors we’ve listed above. Verse fourteen:
the people had seen the enemy’s anger, they’d heard their mockery and
threats, they were worn down through tiredness, and they repeatedly
heard gloom and doom from everyone around them. Nehemiah saw their fear
and told them,

  ‘Do not be afraid’

Fear is demoralising and it stops God’s people from attempting anything
significant for God. Maybe it’s fear of failure, fear of not being able
to influence people around us to listen. I know that we have that
disappointment and this feeling of despondency when we when we preach
and don’t receive as many people as we’d like, and so we’re scared to
try it again. Perhaps if we’re not terribly scared, er, we will go _too_
far and others around us will see us as kind of, I don’t know, dogmatic
or fanatical and unrealistic and stand off from us. There’s all kinds of
fears that exist within us, fear of conflict, erm, but if we do what God
wants us to do, we will no doubt catch a lot of that flak. We’ll catch
gossip, will be the object of some of those fears, but we will know that
we will have done the right thing. So these are just some of the ways
that we’re opposed, and we oppose ourselves, when we work for God in our
projects. How should we, as I say, respond to such opposition? With
_prayer_, with _work_, with _attention focused vigilance_. We have
several options whenever we experience opposition: you can run, you
could go around it or you can compromise or meet it straight on and
that’s the way Nehemiah approached things. They lifted their voices in
_prayer_, and they put their hearts into the _work_, they kept their
eyes on the enemy in _vigilance_, and they kept their minds _focused_ on
the task in hand. This is the way we work, these are our plans: to work
with God hand in hand.

So, as we mentioned earlier, this dystopia, this godless vision that the
world is in love with that’s achieving more and more at a faster rate,
is blind to the risks of empowering some parts of the society at the
expense of leaving vast other parts of society powerless, leaving _them_
behind. So in the minds of just a few very vocal people, God has been
assigned to the dustbin. But all of this achievement that I say is at
the expense of meaning and purpose that leaves this large group of
people behind, the young ones too without a chance of owning a home and
less direction towards marriage, that saddles them with debt at a young
age, with less community and less trust in politics and science, this
small vocal group that leaves the majority behind in this Babel-like
world, means that it’s actually a rather _great_ time for us to be
preaching. We have a lot to offer them.

God’s Answers to Our Problems

Although there’s prosperity as a whole, the inequality is growing, and
there’s a great yearning for spiritual meaning and purpose in many in
our society as never before. And although church attendance is dropping,
those who remain are more fervent, there is more, there’s a sort of iron
sharpens iron effect, we have the possibility to preach and be I think,
be part of a revival in a way that perhaps we couldn’t before as people
were just _generally happy_. We should therefore I think, be positive
and involved and aware of the fact that _we_ should be getting ready to
help others regain the true meaning of what it means to be here after
they’ve been left behind by their _own_ secular vision. To redirect them
and steer that growing group towards of disenfranchised - the ‘poor and
the despised’ of Jesus’ time - towards God. In Jesus’ time they were
‘poor and despised’, but today they’re called ‘racists’ or ‘populists’
or ‘nationalists’ and ‘Brexiteers’, there’s a whole host of names which
people assign to these ‘deplorable’ people as they’re called by
politicians, ‘deplorable’ people! - the ordinary men and women who just
don’t want to go along with this extreme agenda who don’t feel the
benefit - they’re usually farmers, they’re usually factory workers, the
small people, the little people and the young, these people who live a
life that seeks to be very stable but are not involved with the elite’s
‘progression of society’, all those people who can’t get on the ladder.
These people actually are yearning for something better and don’t
really… Why am I here? they’re asking more and more, and we have that
incredible opportunity to teach them about Christianity, to at least
_offer_ them hope and a vision. To really see the power of our
transformative message, if we’re able to let go and push away those six
forces that would prevent us and oppose us from doing God’s work.

Have Confidence

So let’s reflect on a group, rather similar to those of this world, um,
they were a biblical group" - they had a lot of power over nature, -
they too had lost their sense of purpose, - they too could look back on
their achievements but not forward to a confident future and - their
leaders too hated and despised them and - wouldn’t listen to them.

And of course, we’re talking about Jesus’ disciples after he was
crucified. They were… imagine, they were locked in that room exhausted,
terrified, devastated, they had no idea what to do, they we’re talking
to each other, and remembering all the things they had done, “we had
baptised thousands, we’d fed thousands, we had the power to heal, and
Peter, you walked on the water! what do we do now? start a church?
what’s our role now?” What a decision faced them, they had nothing to do
and nowhere to go, no one to protect them and give them a sense of
purpose and lead them, and no one to answer the hard questions from
those ever present naysaying Pharisees and ‘learned leaders’. They were
lost in those six opposing forces that opposed Nehemiah and that oppose
us, and that will always oppose God. But it was _then_ that Jesus
appeared and gave them back what they had thought had been taken from
them. Peace be to you, he said

  peace be with you

Don’t worry! And that’s our message for us as well. They were saying “if
only Jesus were here things would be better.” How do we here today
overcome all the forces of opposition and do something meaningful for
God given what we have been doing, given what we know, and this brothers
and sisters is _our_ question for today in our own lives. Our question,
our exortation therefore, is not to conquer _nature_ as is going on all
over the world, as if that is an aim in itself, blowing our _own_
trumpet with the successes of science as it were, but to conquer _our
nature_ and blow _the_ trumpet, the trumpet that followed Nehemiah, in a
call to togetherness. Despite our fear of spiritual opposition and our
doubts and our setbacks, we know it will be worth it.

  After this, Jesus showed them his hands and side, and the disciples
  were overjoyed when they saw the Lord again, he said ‘Peace be with
  you, as the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’ And with that, he
  breathed on them and said ‘receive the Holy Spirit, if you forgive
  anyone sins, their sins are forgiven. If you do not forgive them, they
  are not forgiven.’

When Jesus comes, we, too will be overjoyed and overawed at his justice,
at his mercy and judgement, the kingdom brothers and sisters! Will we be
bothered by anger then? Or sarcasm or threats or exhaustion or
discouragement or fear? No. Instead, we will finally be at peace, full
of the Holy Spirit and full of calm contentment, and then we will help
to create a world without misery and inhumanity and cruelty. A world
glittering with a renewed purpose in a renewed earth.

The Prince of Peace has died _and_ has risen. He has set us free from
all concerns of opposition. Let’s remember what he’s done, not only now
then, but as we open the door to the world outside after the meeting,
let’s blow the trumpet to call to our side our fellow workers who are
scattered along that wall in a variety of places around the world, to
focus on certain projects that we have, or that we would like to have,
to encourage each other to witness together for what he’s done, to work
to build up the church and to encourage each other to pray and support
all those who would love him (as our brother did asked us to do for Nick
and Val earlier). All cultures after all, are strong if they unite in a
common purpose.

So Jesus says:

  ‘I’ve told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In the
  world you will have trouble and suffering. But take courage, I have
  conquered the world.’

  We can do all things through Christ that strengthens us.

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_Matt Farey_