The Voice of the Adversaries (Part 1 of 3)

And our adversaries said, They shall not know, neither see, till we come in the midst among them, and slay them, and cause the work to cease.

Nehemiah 4:11

1.  Direct and Indirect Attacks

Let’s imagine that you were working at a construction site, and a gang of men came to take away your tools or to seal off the place; they would thus have halted or permanently stopped your work.  Sometimes, that is what the enemy of our souls does to stop what we do – by directly attacking the project or the project materials.

More often, however, the clever enemy tries to erase his tracks through an indirect attack, as seen in our text.  So, let’s walk back to our construction site: if the gang of men should take you away from the site, or frame you for a crime and get you arrested, or harm you so severely that you cannot continue the work, they would have achieved the same goal, indirectly. That was the threat faced by Nehemiah’s ancient project of national restoration: stopping the work by killing the workers. In other words, while the immediate target was the workers, the ultimate target was the hated work.  So, some killings have a mission, and the killers, too.

2.  Discerning Your Battles

In our text, the “adversaries” chose the second mode of attack, the indirect option.  The work would be stopped with the workers extinguished.  So, the plot against the workers was not because they were black or blue or yellow or white; it was not because they were rich or poor, married or single; it was because of the work they had at hand.  That is to say that divine mandate or a godly assignment sometimes attracts life-threatening attacks.  I have had my share of battles, plenty of them, and friends would usually say to me, very consolingly, “It is because of the oil on your head; it is because of the ministry committed to you.”

The Tempter came with counter words to Jesus only after and because of the clear word from God that He had received.  The Father had declared, “This is my beloved Son,” then came the Tempter, challenging, “If thou be the Son of God …” (Matthew 3:17; 4:3-4).

The evil birds of the air do not go where no word of God has been sown.  They go where a divine word has been given, to steal it (Matthew 13:19; Luke 8:11-12).  In Eden, it was only because God had “said” something that the Serpent came, subtly querying, “Hath God said?” (Genesis 3:1).  If God had given no word, the enemy would not have been attracted there.  In other words, sometimes, “Hath God said?” could be the very clue that God has said, and your doubts could be the ironic evidence that God truly said.  “And God said,” the Record stated; “Hath God said?” the Serpent queried.

Every conflict has a mission: to slow you or to stop you; to pollute you, if it cannot kill you.  When the plot to stop Nehemiah by killing him did not succeed (Nehemiah 4:11-15), the reptilian enemies revised their strategy: to slow him down by weakening his working hands (Nehemiah 6:9).

If you lack discernment when those moments come, you could get rashly personal in the way you respond, which could ruin the moment.  Remember the fuming Moses at the water-rock with the steaming rod in his troubled hand (Psalm 106:33; Numbers 20:1-13; Deuteronomy 3:26-27).  His angry response to that moment stopped his path into the Promised Land.  In every fight, like a boxer brutally blinded with blood and blows, when you can’t see your target, you waste your blows; when you cannot tell who your enemy is, you could misdirect your missiles; you could even become vulnerable to the disaster of friendly fire.

When we properly discern our battles, and those of others, we save ourselves, sometimes, from becoming the adversary’s tool.  Some of us have not only wasted our blows but actively helped the cause of the adversary by joining to stone sincere workers for their unfortunate frailties in conflicts attracted to them not by their obstinate depravity but merely because of the mighty work in their feeble hands.  Did I just call your name?

3.  Holding up the Hand with the Rod

Discern not only your battles but also those of other Workers whose projects threaten the “adversaries.”  Our warfare is not only when we are personally engaged in the conflicts down in the valley.  Sometimes, the more strategic place could be the prophetic hilltop from which to view the conflicts in the valley; conflicts whose outcomes may be negatively determined by raised hands succumbing to the silent pain that tragically lowers them, or positively determined by hands held triumphantly high, despite those compelling pains.

Even anointed hands may sometimes feel the weakness of the flesh, needing to be propped up by lesser hands.  That is the beauty of spiritual ‘part-nership’ (1 Corinthians 13:9): Joshua in the valley confronting the Amalekites with his strong sword, remotely supported by Moses far away on the ‘safety’ of a hilltop observatory, with the rod of God in his upheld hands supported by the lesser but critical hands of Aaron and Hur (Exodus 17:9-13; Judges 8:4).

When the agenda of the adversaries is to stop a good work by terminating its dedicated workers, we would be partnering with the counter-agenda of God by supporting those whom the enemy thus targets to destroy.  Defending them at such times is defending their work which depends on their life.

In battle, the death of the king or commander often means the loss of that battle.  The armies of David understood this, so they begged him to stay back from battles in his old age, because his one life, they said, was worth a thousand other lives (2 Samuel 18:2-3; 21:17).

When King Ahab was wounded in battle, he had to be pulled out of the fight.  As soon as he succumbed to his injury and died in his chariot, “there went a proclamation throughout the host.”  What was the announcement?  “Every man to his city, and every man to his own country!” (1 Kings 22:34-37, NKJV, KJV).  The battle appeared lost at the king’s death. The enemies understood this, which was why, from the very start of that engagement, their focus was on the king (vv. 31-32). In that particular conflict, they were determined not to waste arrows on pointless soldiers.

Also, when King Saul died in battle, and observers from afar “saw that the men of Israel fled, and that Saul and his sons were dead,” they simply “forsook the cities, and fled; and the Philistines came and dwelt in them” (1 Samuel 31:7).  In that battle, the enemies did not need to fire an extra arrow to take those cities.  The one weapon that killed the king had also conquered his territory.  They simply moved in to take possession.

From The Preacher’s diary,

October 18, 2025.