God’s enemies work overtime to stop his Kingdom through ridicule, fear, and threat. Nehemiah’s answer is simple and steady: pray, post a guard, and keep building. In other words, God’s work requires both a trowel and a sword, constructive obedience in one hand and watchful resistance in the other. The danger for us is drifting into one ditch or the other: building without vigilance or fighting without building. Today we’re talking about what it means to remember the Lord, protect what matters, and keep putting stone on stone until the wall goes up.

Now, let’s turn our attention to Pastor Brian for this week’s sermon from Nehemiah, chapter 4, titled, “Sword and Trowel.”