When Enemies Attack: Lessons From The Book Of Nehemiah
When God anoints a man or a woman to do a great work, there will inevitably be resistance. That resistance can take many forms, issuing in a variety of attacks. Also, the greater the work ordained, the more intense and more subtle the attacks will be. This is a spiritual truth that anyone seeking to please God and follow Christ must be ready to accept. Perpetual blessings and comfortable lives are rare commodities for those heaven-bent on imitating Christ.
In the book of Nehemiah, we are told of the last canonical phase of Israel’s history prior to the advent of the Messiah. The work that Nehemiah is tasked to do is on a grand scale: rebuild the dilapidated walls of Jerusalem, so that the exiles who have returned from Babylon can once again worship Yahweh and live in the land in relative peace and security. This is truly a task of “biblical proportions,” in both the literal and (anachronistically) figurative sense. God calls Nehemiah specifically to carry out this task– this divine mission of restoration. It is the final leg in what has up to now been a nearly 100-year-long return of God’s people to the Holy Land.
The Set-Up
Although scholars have wrestled with the difficult chronology of Ezra-Nehemiah, we can say with confidence that there were three main waves of returnees between roughly 536 and 446 BC (or,
on another theory, between 536 and 501 BC). Sheshbazzar and Zerubabbel lead the first wave of returnees into the land. Under Zerubabbel’s leadership, the foundation of the temple is laid and ultimately the temple is rebuilt. This happens roughly around the year 516 BC, 70 years after the 587 exile at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar.
After these events, Ezra, the priestly scribe, returns to restore the Law of God to the people. This is either very shortly after the temple rededication in 516-15 BC or a generation later in 458 BC. Either way, by this time the people of God have begun to repopulate the land, the temple of God is reestablished and the Law of God is once again present among God’s people, its authority reimplemented.
However, the city of Jerusalem is still in shambles. To accomplish the final stage of this fourfold restoration plan (People, Temple, Law and City), God calls Nehemiah, the cupbearer to the Persian king, to His service. Now Nehemiah will be serving the true King, not merely an earthly prince. Nehemiah returns to the land after receiving permission from Artaxerxes and focuses his entire being on repairing the walls of Jerusalem. It is in the land, in the Holy City of Zion, that he will meet the enemies of God, confronting those opposed to divine providence.
The Players
Nehemiah is our hero, the anointed servant of God. However, there are other players in the story. There is the Persian king, who, regardless of his own religious loyalties and pagan beliefs, is nevertheless an agent of divine providence. Artaxerxes (probably
Artaxerxes Longaminus , but perhaps
Darius) releases Nehemiah from his service. In allowing him to undertake his mission, Artaxerxes ensures that God’s plan will unfold and His purposes come to fruition. This is in spite of the Persian king’s own ignorance of the divine decree. God works through even the mightiest tyrants and most tyrannical despots. That may be something to keep in mind today, as many suffer under the hand of various “strong” men, both in the East and the West.
Of course there are the other players too. There are the explicit agents of God’s restoration plan we have already mentioned: Sheshbazzar, Zerubabbel, Ezra and our own Nehemiah. These follow God and faithfully execute His will in service to God’s people, those present in their own time and the ancestors who have long passed. Finally there are the enemies in the land, those who out of spite, envy and the lust for power intentionally seek to undermine God’s work in the world. In the Book of Nehemiah, these enemies are embodied in three local rulers: Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshom.
There is a fourth type of player in the story, one that does play a role in the part of the narrative I will examine. That is the prophets– the mouthpieces of God. However, here too there are those who genuinely speak the words of God (Haggai and Zechariah, for example) and those who are voices of deceit and servants of Satan (Shemaiah and Noadiah).
In sum, there are four kinds of figures we meet in this story of restoration: the pagan kings who unwittingly do God’s will, God’s faithful servants who explicitly do His will, God’s enemies who explicitly try to undermine His will and two types of prophets: those that speak truth and those that speak lies. The focus of this essay will be on the methods used by those who intentionally seek to undermine God’s will and on how the faithful servant responds to them.
One Kind of Attack: Brute Violence
From the outset, the local, Samaritan, Ammonite and Arab “authorities” in Israel: Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshom, are united against the work of God’s people. Earlier in the narrative, there is the threat of physical violence on the community at large. The rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem infuriates Sanballat, who flies into a rage at the thought of God’s plans being accomplished.
When Sanballat heard that we were rebuilding the wall, he became furious. He mocked the Jews before his colleagues and the powerful men of Samaria, and said, “What are these pathetic Jews doing? Can they restore [it] by themselves? Will they offer sacrifices? Will they ever finish it? Can they bring these burnt stones back to life from the mounds of rubble.”
Nehemiah 4:1-2
This fury transforms into violent, physical aggression:
When Sanballat, Tobiah, and the Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites heard that the repair to the walls of Jerusalem was progressing and that the gaps were being closed, they became furious. They all plotted together to come and fight against Jerusalem and throw it into confusion.
Nehemiah 4:7-8
The hatred of God and His people, and God’s plan for His people, often results in sheer physical violence. The history of the Jews, a true mystery in the course of human events, testifies to this truth. How this ancient people has survived pogrom and Holocaust with nearly every generation is a fact that causes many to contemplate transcendent, cosmic explanations. Yet, at the same time, the fact that no other ancient people group from the Bible still exists also cries out for a similar explanation.
The Culmination of Brute Violence against God and His People
Of course, we see the same primal hatred most poignantly displayed about four centuries after Nehemiah with the coming of the Christ. First we see it in Herod’s rage at the announcement of the Messiah, a rage which motivates the command to slaughter the innocents at Bethlehem. Then, we see it most poignantly at the cross of Christ when the prophetic words of Isaiah are fulfilled:
He was oppressed and afflicted,
Yet He did not open His mouth.
Like a Lamb led to the slaughter
and like a sheep silent
before her shearers,
He was taken away because of
oppression and judgment;
For He was cut off from the land
of the living;
He was struck because of
My people’s rebellion.
Isaiah 53:7-8
When Pilate saw that he was getting nowhere, but that a riot was starting instead, he took some water, washed his hands in front of the crowd and said, “I am innocent of this man’s blood. See to it yourselves!
All the people answered, “His blood be on us and on our children!”
Matthew 27:24-25
The same primal fury breaks out again at the beginning of God’s construction of the new Israel, which is the Church. After Stephen, the first martyr of the new
ekklesia or community of God, announces to the Jews the reality of the risen Messiah, he is met with the same vitriol that met Nehemiah and Jesus. Nehemiah was attempting to rebuild the stones of God’s city, Stephen was proclaiming a new city, one made of living stones (see 1 Peter 2):
When they heard these things, they were enraged in their hearts and gnashed their teeth at him [Stephen]. But Stephen, filled by the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. He saw God’s glory, with Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and he said, “Look! I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”
Then they screamed at the top of their voices, stopped their ears, and rushed against him. They threw him out of the city and began to stone him.
Acts 7:54-58
In sum, sometimes God’s enemies attacks with simple, brute violence– kinetic force as the military terms it. The Christian today
must be ready for such attacks, albeit not necessarily desirous for them. This means that, like Stephen, there must be an openness to embrace non-violence and non-resistance, if one is being attacked
specifically for one’s faith in Christ and the proclamation of the Gospel. Martyrdom is always a possibility for the Christian man or woman chosen to do God’s good work in the world.
An Historical Example of Great Report
The are many
contemporary accounts of acts of martyrdom, but I will mention just one recent one. In a letter to Reinhold Niebuhr, the American theologian who had invited the German pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer to teach theology in New York during Hitler’s rise to power, Bonhoeffer writes:
I have made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the Christian people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, 1939 Letter to Reinhold Niebuhr
Bonhoeffer realizes only a few weeks into his second visit to America that he cannot stay in safety. His call to Christ is a call back to Germany, back into the lion’s den (or,
the Eagle’s Nest in this case). While Bonhoeffer could not have predicted his death, just as Stephen could not have predicted his, Bonhoeffer did eventually die at the hands of the Nazis. He was hung on April 9th 1945, just a few weeks before the Victory in Europe. It is this type of willingness to sacrifice one’s physical life that is the ultimate test of Christian faith–then and now.
Another Kind of Attack: Striking the Shepherd
The next phase of the enemy attack is to shift from aggression against the whole community to aggression against the community’s leader. Thus, in Chapter 6, after Sanballat and Tobiah’s aggression against the returnees as a group is abandoned, their focus becomes Nehemiah himself. This is the typical
strike the shepherd to scatter the sheep tactic, an indelible feature of human conflict.
The prophet Zechariah speaks about how this is not only a particular and contingent reality, but a universal truth of human existence. It is a dynamic so central to the human story that it is through an apparent strike to God’s final Shepherd that God’s enemy Satan believes he has defeated God’s ultimate plan of restoration.
Sword, awake against My shepherd,
against the man who is
My associate–
the declaration of the LORD of Hosts,
Strike the shepherd, and the sheep
will be scattered;
Zechariah 13:7
Nehemiah, in this sense, prefigures the final and ultimate shepherd of God’s people: Jesus Christ.
Then Jesus said to them, ‘Tonight all of you will run away because of Me, for it is written:
I will strike the shepherd
and the sheep of the flock
will be scattered.
Matthew 26:31
The chief priests, the Sanhedrin and high priest at the time, Caiaphas, carry out a plot of destruction against
the Good Shepherd, in the same way Sanballat, Tobiah and Geshom carried out a plot of destruction against
a good shepherd:
One of them, Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, said to them, “You know nothing at all! You’re not considering that it is to your advantage that one man should die for the people rather than the whole nation perish.
John 11:49-50
And so the first shift in tactics we see in Nehemiah 6 is the shift from attacking the entire community to trying to take out its leader. Sanballat and his comrades believe that if they can take out Nehemiah, the Israelites will scatter and the walls will remain in ruin. But how will they go about doing this without resorting to their prior tactic of outright aggression?
Three Attacks on Nehemiah: First, Delay and Distract
The first non-violent attack on Nehemiah himself comes in the form of an attempt to delay and distract him from his task. It is subtle. But in human history, many are defeated both in the realm of physical battle and in spiritual warfare through this simple tactic.
Now when it was reported to Sanballat and Tobiah and to Geshem the Arab and to the rest of our enemies that I had built the wall and that there was no gap left in it (though up to that time I had not set up the doors in the gates), 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent to me, saying, “Come and let us meet together in one of the villages in the plain of Ono.” But they intended to do me harm. 3 So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it to come down to you?” 4 They sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner.
Nehemiah 6:1-4
While it may be the case this is a set-up to literally assassinate Nehemiah, it is not clear that physical elimination is meant here. The fact that the three foes send the same message four times in the same way, and that they imply they only want to talk, likely indicates their desire to simply detract Nehemiah from his work. Biding time is one way the enemy of God keeps us from serving the Lord. The idea being to get us off track just enough, so as to take us away from the centrality of our mission. Delays and distractions can engender apathy, one of the greatest weapons against the human will.
Delay tactics therefore are an important part of military doctrine. Army Doctrine Publication (ADP) 3-90 defines the purpose of delay operations:
54. The three forms of the retrograde are delay, withdrawal, and retirement. Joint doctrine defines a delaying operation as an operation in which a force under pressure trades space for time by slowing down the enemy’s momentum and inflicting maximum damage on the enemy without, in principle, becoming decisively engaged (JP 3-04). In delays, units yield ground to gain time while retaining flexibility and freedom of action to inflict the maximum damage on the enemy.
ADP 3-90, para 54 [emphasis added]
To win time without direct engagement is one of the Devil’s craftiest means of attack. The Devil knows that a direct attack by his demons, especially in a culture filled with skepticism, would likely have the opposite effect on the non-believer or apathetic Christian. Extraordinary manifestations of the demonic would quickly awaken us from our undogmatic slumber.
A far easier means to defeat God’s work in the world, or, at least, people participating in that work, is what C.S. Lewis labelled the “safe road.” It is along this soft, gradual path that Satan often eliminates his targets. In
The Screwtape Letters, Lewis points out how distractions are far more effective weapons than “extraordinary” attacks. First, the elder tempter, Screwtape, advises the younger tempter, Wormwood, on the practicalities of this method:
You no longer need a good book, which he really likes, to keep him from his prayers or his work or his sleep; a column of advertisements in yesterday’s paper will do. You can make him waste his time not only in conversation he enjoys with people whom he likes, but in conversations with those he cares nothing about on subjects that bore him. You can make him do nothing at all for long periods. You can keep him up late at night, not roistering, but staring at a dead fire in a cold room. All the healthy and out-going activities which we want him to avoid can be inhibited and nothing given in return.
Today we have far more opportunities for distraction than just newspaper columns and fireplaces. We have endless movies, livestream sports, television shows, newsfeeds and, yes, even Twitter to stare at for hours on end. The end effect of these “Weapons of Mass Distraction” is the gradual road to hell:
You will say that these are very small sins; and doubtless, like all young tempters, you are anxious to be able to report spectacular wickedness. But do remember, the only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing. Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts,
Perhaps murder is no better than Netflix, if Netflix can do the trick!
Of course Nehemiah’s response to his adversaries’ delay and distract tactic is straightforward. He doesn’t go and he tells them why:
So I sent messengers to them, saying, “I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it to come down to you?” 4 They sent to me four times in this way, and I answered them in the same manner. 5
In short, Nehemiah’s will to one thing (see
Kierkegaard’s Sermon here) cannot be broken and, being unbroken, his heart remains pure in its desire to serve God. The enemy plot is foiled for now, and the mission continues.
Next Attack: Slanderous Insinuation
The insinuation of a lie is worse than an outright lie. A clever enemy, therefore, knows how to mask their evil intentions by disguising them in language that seems aimed at the good, the moral or even the beautiful. This not only shifts the focus from the enemy’s own allegation to the target of the allegation, but gives the enemy of God an escape route, a way to avoid being directly implicated in his own lie.
The serpent’s words in the garden are not formal contradictions, they are slanderous insinuations. Satan does not tell Eve directly, “God didn’t say ‘don’t eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Certainly He said you may!'” Instead Satan poses the leading question “Did God really say…?,” and then goes on to falsely attribute to God, as if Satan is making an innocent mistake, a ban on the fruit of
all the trees of the garden, not just
this particular tree.
In a court of law, Satan could have been cross-examined and found innocent, since he didn’t really say anything that outright contradicted the truth. Adam and Eve did not die after they ate the fruit (not physically at least), and they did become more like God in one sense, gaining knowledge they otherwise would not have had, or, at least, not right away. Satan, like any good liar (he is the father of lies) provides for himself an air of plausible deniability. We can imagine Satan saying in a human court that he must have just misunderstood what he overheard God say, and claim he was only trying to help the poor naked woman looking for food.
Propaganda And The Mouths of The Wicked
Those who desire control will often present their opponents as threats to the public good. Being evil, this is exactly what Sanballat does in the next phase of his attack on our hero:
In the same way Sanballat for the fifth time sent his servant to me with an open letter in his hand. 6 In it was written, “It is reported among the nations—and Geshem also says it—that you and the Jews intend to rebel; that is why you are building the wall; and according to this report you wish to become their king. 7 You have also set up prophets to proclaim in Jerusalem concerning you, ‘There is a king in Judah!’ And now it will be reported to the king according to these words. So come, therefore, and let us confer together.”
8 Then I sent to him, saying, “No such things as you say have been done; you are inventing them out of your own mind” 9 —for they all wanted to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will drop from the work, and it will not be done.” But now, O God, strengthen my hands.
Nehemiah 6:5-9
Like Satan, Sanballat does not come straight out in his “open letter” and accuse Nehemiah of insurrection. Instead he writes, “It is reported among the nations…that you and the Jews intend to rebel.” “Really?,” one might ask, “reported by whom?” And, “Which nations?” This is typical of how the wicked lie, through the use of propaganda. Satan is not dumb, nor are his slaves.
But the damage is already done when such insinuations are made public. This letter, unlike the four previous attempts, is not a private communique. It is designed to stir up fear and dissent among the local population, a fear of Nehemiah that probably was not present beforehand. We can imagine the local farmer or shepherd upon hearing of the contents of Sanballat’s letter saying, “oh no, what is this Nehemiah
really up to? He seemed like such a decent Jew!”
A second feature of slanderous insinuation is the covering up of the slanderer’s own intentions by accusing his opponent of the very same thing he intends. This is a hallmark of propaganda that French sociologist and theologian Jaques Ellul points out in his seminal work on the topic:
Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions. There are two salient aspects of this fact. First of all, the propagandist must insist on the purity of their own intentions and, at the same time, hurl accusations at his enemy. But the accusation is never made haphazardly or groundlessly.
The propagandist will not accuse the enemy of just any misdeed; he will accuse him of the very intention that he himself has and of trying to commit the very crime that he himself is about to commit….The accusation aimed at the other’s intention clearly reveals the intention of the accuser. But the public cannot see this because the revelation is interwoven with facts.
Jaques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes [emphasis added]
It is not Nehemiah that desires power or to be a king, it is Sanballat and his cohorts. So, in order to take the spotlight off of their own covetousness, they try to shine it on their nemesis. After all, he is building a defensive wall. The accusations are false but not with out grounds. Thus, the public cannot see the true intentions of the slanderers, because there are some facts that support their claim. This is deceit in its most refined form. It is why men like Saul Alinsky dedicated his famous manual on dissent,
Rules for Radicals, to Lucifer who “won himself a kingdom.”
Roughly 450 years later in Jerusalem, the leaders of the city would do the same thing to Jesus, falsely accusing Him of wanting power when, in fact, it was the scribes and pharisees who feared losing their influence:
Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary and saw what He did believed in Him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.
So the chief priests and the Pharisees convened the Sanhedrin and said, “What are we going to do since this man does many signs? If we let Him continue in this way, everybody will believe in Him! Then the Romans will come and remove both our place and our nation.
John 11:45-48
The Contemporary Scene and Nehemiah’s Response
In today’s political environment in America this is a preferred tactic of those who oppose God’s truth.
Opposition research or OPPO is not novel in human history (we obviously see it here in Nehemiah). However given today’s technology and the ever-present media, we are inundated with an endless stream of slanderous insinuation. The consistent
airing of other people’s dirty laundry, or, more precisely, the insinuation of dirty laundry even when there is none, is our culture’s preferred mode of attack. The perception of evil is just as effective in changing the tide of a battle as an actual evil, especially in a culture that moves as fast as ours.
But Nehemiah does not fall for the trap set for him. Thus we have another example from the Bible to model our lives after. And so we should mirror Nehemiah’s response, telling the truth and standing fast on what we know to be the case:
Then I replied to him, “There is nothing to these rumors you are spreading; you are inventing them in your own mind.” For they were all trying to intimidate us, saying “They will become discouraged in the work, and it will never be finished.”
But now, strengthen my hands.
Nehemiah 6:8-9
As such, when Christians today here such slanderous insinuations as “It is heard among the people that you Christians
are homophobic” or “It is heard among the people that you Christians want
to control women’s bodies” or “It is heard among the people that you Christians
are anti-trans,” then we, like Nehemiah, can respond in kind: “There is nothing to these rumors you are spreading, you are inventing them in your mind.” In doing this, we can return to the business of doing God’s work on earth, for these slanderous insinuators are only trying to discourage that work.
Final Attack: Subterfuge and The Appeal to Self-Preservation
The final attack on Nehemiah is the worst kind because it comes from within. When I worked in Army Intelligence there were counter-intelligence posters everywhere reminding us that “The most dangerous enemy is the one within your own walls” or a poster with a sinister looking face saying “He/She has a desk right next to yours:
OPSEC” And of course there was truth in these advertisements. In the earliest days of the Church, the apostle John tells us that already God’s people had been infiltrated with false converts and false teachers. John calls these infiltrators “antichrists:”
18 Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us. 20
1 John 2:18-20
In Nehemiah’s case this subterfuge from within comes through the voice of a false prophet, Shemaiah.
I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, son of Mehetable, who was restricted [to his house]. He said:
Let us meet at the house of God inside the temple. Let us shut the temple doors because they are coming to kill you. They are coming to kill you tonight!
Nehemiah 6:10
Here we see the most egregious form of attack, an attack on God’s anointed servant from within God’s people by someone masquerading as another of God’s servants. Could the deception be any more subtle than this! Yet, even this kind of attack is allowed by God to test our resolve and prove our faith.
Many, many genuine believers in Christ have experienced great betrayal from within their Christian community. One could write volumes about
abuses at the hands of pastors or betrayals by spouses who claim Christ yet live only to frustrate the spiritual life of their godly husband or wife. Here the false prophet Shemaiah attempts to get Nehemiah to do one thing, something that would ruin his reputation in the eyes of those he is leading. That one thing is the temptation to self-preservation.
In the Gospels we are told that Peter does the same thing to Christ. Shortly after receiving and proclaiming the truth of the Christ, Peter tempts Jesus in the same way Shemaiah tempts Nehemiah:
From then on Jesus began to point out to His disciples that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders, chief priests, and scribes, be killed, and be raised on the third day. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, “Oh no, Lord! This will never happen to You!”
But He turned and told Peter, “Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offense to Me because you are not thinking about God’s concerns, but man’s.
Matthew 16:21-23
But neither Jesus nor Nehemiah gives in to the temptation of self-preservation. The Spirit of God works in both Nehemiah and in Jesus’ human nature to strengthen their resolve. Later, in the garden of Gethsemane we see Jesus struggle once again with the temptation to self-preservation when he prays:
Then He withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, knelt down, and began to pray, “Father, if You are willing, take this cup away from Me—nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done.”
Luke 21:41-42
In spite of the cosmic ordeal that lies before Him, Christ abdicates his freedom to the Father’s will. Nehemiah’s reaction to Shemaiah’s subterfuge is not as pure as that of the Christ, but nevertheless his response prefigures Christ’s willingness to fulfill the divine mission:
But I said, “Should a man like me run away? How can I enter the temple and live? I will not go.”
I realized that God had not sent him, because of the prophecy he spoke against me. Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He was hired, so that I would be intimidated, do as he suggested, sin, and get a bad reputation, in order that they could discredit me.
Nehemiah 6:11-13
In recognizing Shemaiah’s false words and staying true to God’s call, Nehemiah avoids losing the respect of his followers and, in doing so, overcomes the last attack of his enemies. The end result is the finished wall of Jerusalem:
The wall was completed in 52 days, on the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul. When all our enemies heard this, all the surrounding nations were intimidated and lost their confidence, for they realized that this task had been accomplished by our God.
Nehemiah 6:15-16
The completed work of God has an immediate effect on God’s enemies. Nehemiah’s faith, his focus, and his will to carry out God’s plan turns the tables on his adversaries. In the end they are the ones without confidence, intimidated by the handiwork of God worked through His loyal servant. All their machinations have come to naught as God’s plan of restoration is complete. Of course the completion of the walls of Jerusalem is only a foreshadowing of the ultimate restoration plan of God, which is proclaimed by Christ on the cross:
When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said ‘It is finished!” Then bowing His head, He gave up His Spirit
John 19:30
And just as Nehemiah in completing his task did not lose the people of God, so Jesus in completing His did not lose us.
What To Do, When Enemies Attack?
Conclusion: God’s Work Will Be Done, But Expect Enemy Attacks
In sum, one should expect the enemy to attack if one commits to the authentic service of God. In Mark’s Gospel the “crowd” is often contrasted with “disciples.” James Edwards, commenting on Mark 2:1-12, highlights the difference between those who stand by and passively watch Jesus, and those who actively seek Him:
The throng in the courtyard is blocking a needy party [the men with the paralyzed friend] from reaching Jesus. The crowed stands and observes; disciples must commit themselves to action, as illustrated by the plucky squad of four. If an opening to Jesus cannot be found, one must be made. That is a description of faith: it will remove any obstacle–even a roof, if necessary–to get to Jesus.
James Edwards, Commentary on Mark, 75
The Christian serves an active God (a God who is
actus purus, in fact). But many who sit in the crowd are inactive, apathetic to the call of Christ. This is understandable, because few of us want to face enemies. However, the reality of the Christian life was summed up by the German martyr Bonhoeffer, when he wrote these words:
When Christ calls a man, He bids him to come and die.
I end with an account of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s own death at the Flossenbürg concentration camp:
A decade later, a camp doctor who witnessed Bonhoeffer’s hanging described the scene: “The prisoners … were taken from their cells, and the verdicts of court martial read out to them. Through the half-open door in one room of the huts, I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer, before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this lovable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensued in a few seconds. In the almost 50 years that I have worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God.”
This is the Christian faith. Will you heed the call?
