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But when Sanballat\xa0the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem\xa0the Arab heard about it, they mocked and ridiculed us.\xa0\u201cWhat is this you are doing?\u201d they asked. \u201cAre you rebelling against the king?\u201d I answered them by saying, \u201cThe God of heaven will give us success. We his servants will start rebuilding,\xa0but as for you, you have no share\xa0in Jerusalem or any claim or historic right to it.\u201d (Nehemiah 2:19-20)

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Indeed, opposition came as the Jews began to rebuild the defences of Jerusalem.\xa0

We\u2019ve mentioned the traditional enemies that the Christian tradition has long recognized as those lined up against the journey of faith in Christ: the world, the flesh, and the devil.\xa0 The opposition that inevitably comes.

It\u2019s not always so easy to pull them apart to understand where attacks are coming from in the moment.\xa0 Certainly all three could have been in play as the taunts came to Nehemiah from Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem.\xa0 These were representatives of \u201cthe world\u201d around God\u2019s people.\xa0 \u201cThe world\u201d mocked and ridiculed the Jews for rebuilding the wall, beginning to put social pressure on them to stop the work.

\u201cThe flesh\u201d of our internal desires and motivations can indeed become weak and lose resolve in the face of such pressures and taunts from our external \u201cworld.\u201d\xa0 And our final enemy, \u201cthe devil\u201d seeks to enhance and exploit both these forces to just that end.\xa0 His work is all about helping the \u201cworld\u2019s\u201d external taunts and pressures to find just the right internal insecurities, doubts, and weaknesses within our \u201cflesh\u201d so as to knock us out of faith and trust in God.\xa0

No doubt the enemies of \u201cthe world\u201d and \u201cthe devil\u201d were at work against the Jews in Nehemiah\u2019s day.\xa0 But God had strengthened the hands of His people: had strengthened their flesh, their trust, their commitment and surrender to Him, such that Nehemiah could reply without flinching: \u201cThe God of heaven will give us success.\u201d

And so lest we think that all of these enemies are always bad, we need to remember that this is very much God\u2019s work: redeeming through Christ and sanctifying through the Spirit our \u201cflesh\u201d so that our desires become more readily fixed on Him and less swayed by the pressures of \u201cthe world\u201d and the prowling opportunism of \u201cthe devil.\u201d\xa0 God is continually at work restoring our \u201cflesh\u201d to the image it was meant to carry: His.

So yes, that means that eventually, our \u201cflesh\u201d will cease to be an enemy as the likeness of Christ is restored in us.\xa0 Eventually, even \u201cthe world\u201d will cease to be an enemy as it is set free from its current bondage in the renewal of creation.\xa0 Eventually, \u201cthe devil\u201d will be cast down in defeat.\xa0 This is the promise whose fulfillment we await with longing in the second coming of Jesus Christ, our Lord.\xa0

We will not see it this side of eternity, at least not completely.\xa0 But every now and then, we catch a glimpse.\xa0

A glimpse, like this one in Nehemiah, of God\u2019s people standing firm with flesh and hands strengthened in their God: full of trust and full of hope.\xa0

There are other glimpses too.\xa0 A glimpse of beauty in the world around us where creation sings or people live together in reconciled harmony.\xa0 A glimpse of a person at peace with their God, with themselves, and with the others around them.\xa0

Most of us probably aren\u2019t there today.\xa0 And that\u2019s ok.\xa0 The glimpses we catch around us can be enough to remind us that God is trustworthy indeed, bringing about his redemption of this world and our flesh, even now.\xa0

Be encouraged.\xa0 The God of heaven, in the end, will indeed give his people success, for the battle with our enemies will end in redemption, restoration, and victory.\xa0 Indeed, God is at this work even now.

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