Nehemiah 6: Gossip!

There is no rest from trouble! Just as soon as you think you have peace from your problems, they pop up again! 

Take Nehemiah, for example. They got the wall around Jerusalem built, but they had a famine, and people were starving. Then the rich men in Jerusalem started taking advantage of the poor and starving people. Then, when Nehemiah got them straightened out, the three enemies who had bothered them while they were building the wall, who they thought would be defeated while they were building the wall, popped up again, worse than ever!

These three men Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem, are the villains in this story. They have one purpose, and that is to keep the wall from being built. The wall around Jerusalem was for the purpose of protecting the people from these three men and their followers, just as the wall around the Church is meant to protect us from the destruction that the Devil causes in our lives. 

While the wall was down, they would ride into town like bandits in an old Western, taking whatever they wished. When the wall was rebuilt, they were powerless. So they tried to lure Nehemiah out of the protection of the wall.  Verses 1-2

 
“When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it-though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates- Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message:

‘Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.’ But they were scheming to harm me;”

 

Notice one little detail. Nehemiah did not say, “They were scheming to kill me.” But he did say they wanted to harm him. When the Devil attacks, don’t make the assumption that he wants to harm us physically, or even financially. Sometimes the biggest dangers are not to life and limb, but to our hearts and souls.

When he comes after you, he doesn’t wear horns and a tail. He wants you to think that he’s not such a bad guy. It is easier to deal with the Devil when he acts like the Devil than when he comes in the guise of your best friend. He tries to convince us that the war for our souls is over, so that we will not be on our guard.

When Satan attacks, it usually looks like a blessing. He can come in the form of an attractive, sympathetic woman or man, a sudden windfall of cash, or a pleasant day off. These joys may be real, but they are live bait. If we are foolish enough to bite, then he will have us hooked, and he can have us. 

Sanballat, Tobias, and Geshem offered peace to Nehemiah. All he had to do was meet them in an open, undefended field. They may have even promised him gifts. Nehemiah sent this message back.  Verses 3-4

 

“So I sent messengers to them with this reply: ’I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?’ Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.”

They did not just ask once, but four times. Satan never attacks once: he always comes back. We cannot prevent temptations from coming, but we can respond. With the first temptation, we need to start praying. We also need to be looking for help from others. To fight Satan we need both strength from God and strength from others.  Verses 5-7 

“Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter in which was written: ‘It is reported among the nations-and Geshem says it is true-that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: “‘there is a king in Judah!”’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us confer together."

 

When the false overtures of peace did not move Nehemiah, they tried gossip and slander. They claimed that he was planning to revolt against the Persians, who were their overlord. One of them, Geshem, was prepared to swear falsely to this. They threatened to take this to his boss, unless they could meet with him.

When we are slandered, there are two reactions we have, and those two reactions are to fight or flight. I’m sure Nehemiah wanted to fight back. But in order to do that, he would have to leave his protective wall. 

Consider how Christians react to slander.  We are being slandered in the world today, and Christians want to fight back, too. But it is God who protects us. When we leave God’s protection to seek after vengeance or retribution, then Satan has us where He wants us. 

When the Muslims drove Christians and Jews out of the Holy Land, European Christians launched a series of Crusades to take it back. Not only did they fail to take it by force of arms, but the last two Crusades wound up being fought against other Christians! One wonders if the time, effort, and lives wasted in the Crusades had been spent on loving the Muslims and sending in missionaries, if the Muslims would still be in power today. 

Satan does want to kill you, but not if he can use you. Satan often uses us against each other, especially when it comes to slander.

The second reaction we have to slander is to run away. Of all the attacks Satan uses on the church, none are more effective than gossip, except one. That is the fear of gossip. The gossip does not really have to be spread.  All we have to do is think that people will be talking about us, and we will refrain from doing good.

Social scientist Jerry Harvey cites a study done on peer pressure in his book, The Abilene Paradox. These studies have shown that peer pressure does not mainly originate in other people, but in our own minds. People do not have to gossip about us. We are so afraid of people talking that we will not do what we know to be true. People were put into a group with five other people without knowing they were part of a social experiment. The five other people were instructed to give the wrong answer to a simple question, while the other person gave the right answer. The five with the wrong answer were specifically instructed not to pressure the other one in anyway. Nevertheless more than half the time the person would change their answer to go along with the crowd, even when the crowd said nothing. They would change, for fear of standing out. 

People will always talk—so what?  It does not necessarily mean anything. Even if they are malicious, we have a God who loves us. What are wagging tongues next to a God who stands by us?  Verses 8-9

 “I sent him this reply: ‘Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.’” They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, "Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed." [But I prayed,] "Now strengthen my hands."

Notice what Nehemiah does. First, he denies the gossip. We should deny it. But he doesn’t try to stop it. He can’t stop it. The more he argues the worse he would make it. Instead, he prayed to God to make his hands strong, so that he could put up with the gossip.

Gossip was used against the early church. They were called libertines, cannibals, baby snatchers and especially intolerant. Nevertheless, it was God’s power and their resolute following of Him that eventually showed the gossipers for the liars they were. Verses 15-16

“So the wall was completed on the twenty-fifth of Elul, in fifty-two days. When all our enemies heard about this, all the surrounding nations were afraid and lost their self-confidence, because they realized that this work had been done with the help of our God.”

Have you ever been afraid of speaking out in a meeting or standing on a stage? Have you ever worried about being overdressed or underdressed for an occasion? If you have what you really fear is what others may say or think. 

Remember this, God has not given you a spirit of fear. Our fear does not come from God, but from our fear of people, often from a fear that has no basis in fact. 

When people do slander us, it is not because they hate us so much as because they fear us. If they were not afraid themselves, then they would have no reason to slander. Because they are afraid, they resort to slander.

When we do not allow other people’s opinions to dictate our behavior, then our enemies lose their weapon of last resort. They should be afraid because they are helpless. From then on, they fear us.

The early Christian church endured terrible slanders, but they were not moved. They continued to preach Christ. It shocked Roman society that the Christians did not seem to care about the slander. In time the actions of the Christians, their good deeds and good qualities, became so well known that people did not believe the slanders. Later, the Romans started to fear the Christians, because the emperors who persecuted believers usually came to bad ends. God takes care of us. We do not have to fear.  

Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people persecute you and despise you, when they say all kinds of evil against you falsely for My sake, for great is your reward in heaven.” God does not let slander go unanswered or unrewarded.

Persecution is coming in America to Christians—in fact, it is already here. It is not physical persecution or legal persecution, though it is not impossible in the future. The persecution of Christians in America today is that of slander. It is the one kind of persecution that is best dealt with by paying no attention. Stand firm, and it will go away.