One of the more difficult situations you may face in life is dealing with a false accusation. People will levy charges publicly about you that are untrue. And they do this in order to get you in trouble and turn people against you. This happens to many people from time to time, whether in small circles or big.
I think of my sons who often have disputes about who did what and when. One son will come with a complaint about the other. The other says that this is a false accusation (in less refined language). I might say, “Who left their trash in the living room?” And then erupts what feels like a courtroom drama, tall tales and exaggerated affects. And it can be hard to discern the truth.
This may be small, but the fury and intensity that one son feels about their false report is no less real than when you or I experience these false accusations and slanders about ourselves. Why? Because, as the Bible says, a good name is better than great riches. Our reputation matters. And those who engage in character assassination seek to destroy our reputation and standing with false accusations.
In Nehemiah 6 we see how God’s man, Nehemiah, deals with false accusation and attacks from his enemies. Up to this point in the book, the attacks have come against all God’s people and there have been internal divisions. Now the attack will center on Nehemiah. Take out the officer in the ranks to scatter the troops and leave them leaderless. Nehemiah shows us that God’s man does not cave in the face of attacks from the enemy and entrusts himself to God.
The First Attack: Distraction (6:1–4)
Three figures appear on the scene that have come up before in Nehemiah: Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem (or Gashmu). These and many more enemies have seen Nehemiah and God’s people build the wall. All the breaches have been closed up. The work is finished, if not nearly complete but for the gates. Massive task. What an accomplishment.
These enemies of Nehemiah and God’s purposes request a meeting in Ono. We do not know the nature of their request specifically. We do know that they have mocked God’s people, seeking to dissuade them and even threatened them with physical violence for the work that they are doing. So perhaps this is a type of concession meeting where they will come to terms with Nehemiah since he has finished the wall. Maybe they want to make peace. They seem to realize they have failed to stop him and want to meet for a deal.
Nehemiah is not easily dissuaded or deceived. He knows these men. He knows they intend to do him harm. He responds:
“I am doing a great work and I cannot come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?”
This is a great response. He doesn’t know exactly what they want to meet with him about, but he is certain their motives are evil. Instead of focusing on that and enflaming their rage and hatred of God’s people, he simply says, I’m busy doing important things and don’t have time to meet. This is great shrewdness on Nehemiah’s part.
Nehemiah’s instincts are solid. He knows the meeting is a trap. But how many of us fall prey to these invitations?
This is very difficult for well-meaning Christians who are often distracted by enemies who “just want to talk.” One time Pastor Matt was invited to a meeting with a reporter to discuss our church. Thinking this would be a good opportunity to tell the truth and clearly communicate, Matt took the call and answered her questions sincerely for over an hour. It seemed that the meeting went well and that the reporter had some sympathy for Matt and our church. But what was printed by her a week later was a great distortion of their conversation, twisting facts to suit a liberal agenda. And so Matt no longer talks to reporters.
Many Christians have bought into the ideal scenario of free and open debate but have failed to grapple with the reality on the ground. We think that if we could just explain ourselves then people would just get along, or if we reasoned together with those who hate God, then we could live in peace.
Now this isn’t a one-size-fits-all principle. This takes wisdom to discern when we should engage and when we shouldn’t engage in these meetings or conversations. Sometimes we have to learn the hard way. But I think it is fair to say that most Christians are too naïve and eagerly walk into traps and distractions when we should just keep working on what God has given us to do.
I think many of us want to live in a liberal world where people are able to disagree and still get along. But let me ask you directly: do you feel like you live in that world anymore? Does it feel like you are living in a world in which if we just had more reasonable debates people would be more reasonable? Of course not. That’s what Charlie Kirk did and he got killed doing it.
It is very difficult for Christians to discern these matters today. We have been taught over and over again that we must be willing to meet with anyone for any reason. That we should go out of our way to welcome all in every case. And many times Bible verses are used to justify this disposition. Good verses like always be ready to give a defense for the hope that is in you. But we have failed to comprehend the wisdom of saying “no.”
Back when our church started, we had one small group who was dealing with such an issue. A person who did not know the Lord and had a long history of mental illness began attending their group. This individual kept demanding more: meals, shelter, rides, etc. And being good Christians who want to follow Jesus, they just kept doing what she wanted. After all, Jesus teaches us that we should go the extra mile in loving others. But this woman was a distraction. She was not a Christian. She was taking advantage of them. Eventually she had to become institutionalized because of the dark thoughts that she had. These Christians needed to learn to say “no.”
You must learn to say no to enemies and those who are distracting you from what God has laid before you. This is very difficult for pastors especially, who often burn out, because they don’t tell people no. Pastors are called by God to shepherd the flock, and good pastors love shepherding the flock. But pastors cannot be everywhere at once, and there are times when pastors have to say, “No, I cannot do that.”
This is not just true for pastors but for all of us. There are many distractions which come up seeking to derail us from what God wants us to do. Nehemiah knew this. Charles Spurgeon knew this. He said:
“Distractions are the devil’s favorite weapon against the servants of the Lord.”
Nehemiah knew that if he took this meeting in Ono, he would likely be killed. There would be news reports that sounded like:
“Nehemiah was on his way to meet with Sanballat in Ono today and his chariot crashed into a ravine. All efforts were made to revive him. He was transported to Ono Jewish Health where he was pronounced dead. The controversial leader will be remembered for his conspiracy theories about rebuilding Jerusalem and stopping the displacement of the Jewish people.”
The problem many Christians face today is that they have failed to know the times in which we live. Or maybe they do, but they are unwilling to meet the moment with the necessary courage and fortitude. Because if you answer like Nehemiah today you will be accused of being mean-spirited, intolerant, or even bigoted. Derek Thomas, one scholar talking about this passage, said this:
“Nehemiah’s stance represents a worldview in which commitment to truth and principle, in both doctrine and ethics, makes him appear mean-spirited, intolerant, and even bigoted in the eyes of his enemies. That they, too, are equally defiant of him and his views is a point that those reporting such things often downplay or ignore altogether. In our time—and we think of issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, and education—commitment to principle and a refusal to compromise also appear as the inflexibility of intolerance and are summarily castigated and ostracized.”
Nehemiah is not afraid of these men and he doesn’t fall for their trickery. He is a man who fears the Lord and is devoted to the Lord’s purposes.
They try this four times. On the fifth time things change…
The Second Attack: Intimidation (6:5–9)
Now they up the ante. The attack vector changes. This is a classic move. They say that if you do not meet with us, then we will spread these accusations about you. That these accusations may even reach King Artaxerxes. You can hear their fake concern in the text. They are saying, “Other people are saying this about you and you really ought to clear your name because if you don’t, the king will hear these things and he might kill you for what you’re doing.” This is pure manipulation and it is a false accusation. In verse 9 it clearly says this was said in order to frighten Nehemiah and drop their hands from the work.
Nehemiah’s response is pitch perfect:
“No such things as you say have been done, for you are inventing them out of your mind.”
He is saying, You’re making things up, maybe because you’re crazy. He knows their slander and accusation is false.
But again, many Christians are susceptible to this kind of manipulation. Christians today might have said to Nehemiah, “Hey man, these are pretty serious charges. They are charging you with treason and that could get you and us killed. Maybe you should just go to this meeting.”
And again, this is a common tactic of the enemy: take the good that you are doing and then twist it to mean something completely different. Let’s say you are raising a healthy family in a loving home, you are raising your children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord—Dad is leading, kids are flourishing, wife is happy—this is what God designed, the pattern for happy homes.
Someone from the outside looks at that and says, “That woman is oppressed,” or “That husband is controlling.” In short, they take the design of God and reframe it as abuse or domination.
Why does this work? Because it appeals to real things that people care about. No one wants a woman to be mistreated. So the accusation borrows moral language and authority from a legitimate concern and twists it and weaponizes it against something good.
That is exactly what Sanballat did. Nehemiah was rebuilding Jerusalem, doing the work of the Lord. Sanballat reframed it as something bad—rebellion against the king. He took a legitimate political concern (treason) and weaponized it against Nehemiah. And once you see how this works, you can see it everywhere. This same mechanism operates on almost every level today—sexuality, education, public faith, ethnicity, nationality.
If you try to advance the Lordship of Christ, they will take that good and twist it to stoke fear and say you are a “Christofascist.” You speak clearly on God’s Word regarding men and women and they will say, “So what you’re saying is that you hate women,” or, “You’re a transphobe.”
This was and remains a popular tactic against all reasonable people and Christians today. Consider the phrase “silence is violence,” which many have heard. What is the intended effect? That if you do not say the thing they want you to say then you are committing violence. This is what Nehemiah was facing: If you don’t agree to meet with us we will lie about you publicly and ruin your reputation—even to the point of it costing your life. They are using the threat of exposure of this fake scandal to try and get him distracted and so that ultimately they can stop the work.
Nehemiah, knowing these threats, goes to God in prayer. He prays specifically for God to strengthen his hands because it is their hands that the enemies wanted to stop from working. He names specifically their intention and asks for the opposite outcome of what his enemies desire. When the enemy breathes threats against the church, we should go to the Lord asking for Him to grow His church.
The first two attacks on Nehemiah have failed. There is one more they will try. They will try to get a prophet from among God’s people to lead Nehemiah to ruin.
The Third Attack: Deception from Within (6:10–13)
The prophet Shemaiah is holed up in his house, which is rather suspect, but perhaps it is to set the drama of the trap he is laying for Nehemiah. Shemaiah is acting like he is afraid for his life and can’t leave his house, and he thinks Nehemiah should also be afraid. He tells Nehemiah that they should both go into the house of God to hide, for they are coming to kill him tonight.
But Nehemiah is not a priest and cannot go in there (Num. 18:7). King Uzziah violated this prohibition in 2 Chron. 26 and walked away with leprosy. Nehemiah knows this.
Nehemiah is not going to run away:
“Should such a man as I run away?”
He names the temptation: to run from trouble, to run away from the work God has called him to. Nehemiah is a man who has entrusted himself to the living God. And he knows that this prophet is false because this prophet is suggesting things that go against God’s law.
That is how you can always detect false teaching: it disagrees with God’s Word. Nehemiah fears the Lord more than he fears man. He will not disobey God for fear of men. Oh that we had many more men like Nehemiah today who knew that to disobey God for fear of man is to commit treason against the Lord. Or to put it differently, as Benjamin Franklin said:
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”
We are faced in our day with some inside the Christian camp who have a “word from the Lord,” and many times it is self-motivated rubbish, as one commentator put it. But even more than that, we have many pastors who are to prophetically herald the Word of God but instead speak in alignment with the world more than God’s Word in order to suppress, depress, and squash the righteous kingdom work of God’s people. What do I mean?
If you speak clearly today about matters pertaining to life and godliness according to God’s Word—such as on sexuality—there are many Christians, pastors, and parachurch leaders who will come to you and encourage you to watch your tone. They will say that you are damaging the church’s witness. That if we want to have success you cannot speak of such matters. And that in order to keep the church alive here, you must hide the truth in the holy place in order to preserve the church’s life.
“Don’t you know that if you speak about the evils of sexual perversion our kingdom influence here will be harmed?”
“Don’t you know that if you call out politicians and political operatives who promote sin and wickedness they will seek to harm you? Save your life and ministry by hiding these matters.”
The wish is to lock up the Word of God in the holy place, the church, and not let it out to have its intended effect. They behave like Shemaiah.
And Shemaiah was not alone. There were other false prophets. And the scheme of the enemy is to find those in the Christian community who are willing to entertain and work with him. He is looking for enemies to come and deceive so that he can sow discord. Just like Judas.
Again Nehemiah goes to the Lord in prayer.
The Response to Attack: Imprecatory Prayer (6:14)
This is a type of imprecatory petition. That is, he is asking God to deliver justice against his enemies. Whereas at the end of chapter 5 Nehemiah asks God for blessing and to remember the good he had done, here he asks God to remember the evildoers. Regarding persecuted Christians, Alex Motyer ponders:
“Their deliverance can often only come through the overthrow of their oppressors. When we pray then in our bland way ‘Lord because you love what is right, bring them out of trouble,’ we are in fact praying ‘Because you love them, destroy their persecutors.’ In the same way we would rather not pray, ‘Lord, in a flaming fire render vengeance to those who do not obey the gospel,’ but it is a part of the unspoken realism accompanying a prayer we love to pray, ‘Even so, come, Lord Jesus’ (2 Thess. 1:8).”
Nehemiah is praying for justice against his enemies. This is entirely appropriate, especially when the enemy is so clear.
We should not shy away from taking courage and comfort from the many Psalms which sing and pray in the same way. Yes, of course we want to love our enemies by praying for them. And we do pray for their conversion. But we also pray for their schemes to stop and for God to bring justice.
What did these men want? They wanted to make Nehemiah afraid. But Nehemiah did not have a spirit of fear other than a fear of the Lord. God has not given us a spirit of fear. We are called to take courage, for Christ has overcome the world. Perhaps you, Christian, have a spirit of fear. You are succumbing to the lies of the enemies. The battle rages around you. Then you must go to the Lord in prayer. Ask for justice. See what God might do.
It is normal for Christians to want the hostility against kingdom work to cease. We wish to live at peace, if at all possible, with everyone. But Satan and his minions never aim for peace or compromise. And so we must resist the evil one and all his attacks. We must be aware of his schemes. And we should not imagine that the attacks will cease.
As long as the kingdom of God is advancing through the preached Word and the building up of God’s church, the enemy will scheme and attack. Those who are not experiencing attack have often ceased to build anything meaningful for the kingdom of God. Therefore, we must do away with notions that the enemy will cease his activity. There can be no peace with darkness, no compromise with evil.
This is what Nehemiah does in response to false accusations and slanders. He goes to the Lord and continues the work. Christ himself endured false accusations and slanders all the time. He was accused of being demon-possessed (Mark 2:7), accused of blasphemy (John 10:20), accused of being a drunkard and glutton (Matthew 11:19), accused of deceiving people (John 7:12), accused of being a sinner who violates God’s law (John 9:16), accused of using Satan’s power (Matthew 9:34), falsely accused by witnesses at his trial (Matthew 26), falsely accused before Pilate (Luke 23:2), and mocked and slandered on the cross (Matthew 27:42).
Jesus was calling people to Himself and proclaiming the truth of God’s Word and redemption throughout his ministry. Naturally, in doing this, he made religious leaders upset. The dominant religious leaders of the day, the Jews with power who could crush Jesus, were those who knew God’s Word only on the surface. They did not know God.
Today, the enemies of God, those who do not know God, are not often religious. Nehemiah’s enemies were Sanballat the governor of Samaria and Tobiah an Ammonite official. These were not nobodies. They were somebodies with power and clout. They had institutional authority in their area and used political and legal mechanisms (like the threat of exposing an accusation of treason to Artaxerxes) in order to get at Nehemiah and stop the work. It was the leveraging of the state and its power against kingdom advancement.
The question for us today is not who is Sanballat but where do we see the same pattern and structure? Where do we see institutional power using false accusation and lies and legal threats to punish faithfulness to God’s Word? Because the devil often uses the same tactics.
They are those who occupy seats of social power and authority, making laws that run contrary to God’s Word with the sword of the state to back them up, and they have their minions who threaten to get you fired and cancelled for saying the “wrong” thing.
These are the Pharisees of our day, the hypocrites, the blind guides, those who claim to be loving and tolerant and inclusive but breathe out threats and violence every other sentence toward those who disagree with them, creating schemes and traps against God’s people. They are the bloodthirsty. And so it should not surprise us that when we hold to the faith and stand on God’s Word, they boldly lie and slander God’s people seeking to ruin them.
But remember what Christ said:
“If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” — John 15:18
“Remember the word that I said to you: ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” — John 15:20
“Indeed, the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God.” — John 16:2
“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.” — Matthew 5:11
“If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household.” — Matthew 10:25
Jesus knows the slanders and lies leveled against you. As one song we sing puts it:
“Have we trials and temptations? Is there trouble anywhere? We should never be discouraged: Take it to the Lord in prayer.”
What Must We Do?
We must know the schemes of the enemy and stand fast. Nehemiah models the courage and conviction of Christ, who did not just overcome the enemies surrounding Nehemiah or the enemies God’s people face today. This Christ, risen from the grave, has conquered all enemies of the Lord, vanquishing them. He has turned us from enemies into friends because of his mercy and grace.
Turn to Christ today. Delight in his friendship. Ask God to give you his wisdom to discern matters and never give the enemy an inch. Do not be foolish. The enemy roams the earth looking for souls to devour. We are under no obligation to entertain his schemes. In fact, we should never give him quarter.
This sermon was preached at The Well Church in Boulder, CO on February 15, 2026. To watch this sermon go here. To listen to this sermon go here.