Putting It Together Again When It's All Fallen Apart by Tom Holladay

Author:Tom Holladay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2018-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

Nehemiah 6:5–7

We see here some of the favorite phrases of those who gossip: “it is reported,” and “this person says it’s true.” Gossip is a horrific sin that tears apart friendships, families, businesses, and churches. It seems like such an innocent sin, but there is a reason it is listed alongside greed, depravity, and murder in Romans 1:29. Nehemiah’s enemies are trying to use gossip to distract him and to destroy what he is building. Gossipers love to destroy what others are building. It gives them a twisted sense of power.

Nehemiah avoided distraction when he faced gossip by simply telling the truth and moving on. I don’t know of a better answer to a gossiper anywhere in all of literature than the answer that Nehemiah gives in 6:8: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”

You have to love this answer! It’s the most refreshing comment you could ever make about gossip. You just tell the truth and then forget the rumor. That’s how you deal with gossip. You don’t try to answer the gossiper or defend against everything they are saying. They’ll just make up more gossip. They’re just trying to distract you. Satan is trying to distract you from what God is doing.

The third way the opponents try to distract Nehemiah is through fear: “One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, ‘Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you’” (Nehemiah 6:10). It almost sounds ridiculous when we read it now, but for Nehemiah, it was designed to create fear at the moment of victory.

We often face the inner fear that we’re going to fail right before we cross the finish line. This distraction can come into your mind without anyone else having to say a word. You wonder who you think you are to be able to achieve this. You tell yourself you’ve failed before, and so you’re going to fail this time too. You think, What if something goes wrong now that we’re almost there? We can become our own worst enemy in this distraction of fear.

When you face the distraction of fear, you remember your priorities by recognizing God has priority over any fear, because he is greater than every fear. We learn from Nehemiah’s example in 6:11–13:

But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should someone like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.

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