Tobiah

A couple weeks ago I was having a conversation with my friend Jay who remembered one of the best sermons he remembers me preaching. The sad part was I didn't remember it, but as he recounted it I definitely thought it was something I might have preached.

I had been preaching out of Nehemiah, one of my favorite books of the Bible, and had shared out of Nehemiah 6 the story of Sanballat and Tobiah's invitation for Nehemiah to leave his work and visit them. Sanballat and Tobiah were governors of the neighboring provinces around Judah. Sanballat, the governor of Samaria, seems really to have been the head bully; the bane of Nehemiah's existence. Tobiah on the other hand seems to just be a weasel. He was the kid that stood slightly behind the bully on the playground and parroted, "yeah, blah blah blah" Whatever the bully would say the weasel would just repeat. We even have a humorous recording of Sanballat challenging the effectiveness of the people's work on the wall of Jerusalem, and Tobiah adds, "Yeah, even if a fox jumped on your wall it would collapse." What a weak line.

Friends, beware of the bully, but beware of weasels too. Nehemiah wasn't distracted from his work, he didn't give them the time of day, and he certainly never caved to the bully or the weasel. In fact, after the work was done he returned to the service of the King Artexerxes, and after a time returned to Jerusalem only to find the weasel, Tobiah, had been given a room to live in inside the Temple of God. When Nehemiah found out he evicted Tobiah and threw all his belongings in the street. Tobiah said, "Oh yeah? Well..." but alas without the bully to follow, he just turned tail and ran away. And to take one step further Nehemiah prayed, "God, remember the weasels for the weasels that they are." (Neh. 13:29 That's the BRV)

--Ben