Tobiah

Now these mixed marriages are also mentioned by Ezra and Nehemiah.

In fact, Nehemiah, interesting story, he found that Tobiah, an Ammonite, an enemy of God, since his daughter had married the son of a high priest, he was living in an apartment, a father-in-law apartment in the temple.

And he threw him out, furniture and all, and ran him out of town.

That's what Nehemiah did.

And if you look at Nehemiah, he was afraid only of the Lord and of the king.

He didn't care about Sanballat or Tobiah.

He basically, he was able to say, I don't care because I'm obedient to you and to the king.

And he was, once again, I talked about order.

He said, until we're in the city of God, we have an obligation to the city of man.

So I want to challenge everybody watching, follow Christ even at the risk of being misunderstood.

And just like, remember, Nehemiah was rebuilding the walls and Sanballat and Tobiah.

They said, oh, even if a fox walks on this wall, you're not fixing this.

The city walls are a mess.

The people are being oppressed by Tobiah, Samballot, and the Arabians.

And they won't leave them alone.

And as long as they don't have defense, and as long as they don't have gates and walls, they're not going to be able to really be protected.

We will see that in chapter 4 and 5 of the book of Nehemiah.

Tobiah, Samballot, and the Arabians coming against The men of God.

Nehemiah.

Hey Nehemiah.

And here we see, though they had begun rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem for worship, like I told you in the book of Haggai, the walls were still broken down.

And if you don't have walls and you don't have doors, what happens? It's an open door for the enemy.

Tobiah, Samballot, and the Arabians were coming and they were mad because they began to do what? To worship their God.

And then they'll get mad when Amai gets there because they're starting to rebuild the walls so nobody can come through the walls or the doors.

But we read that the work is not easy.

He faces opposition from Sanballat and Tobiah.

They threaten him and they try to stop this work from going forward.

And the only opposition that came wasn't from these two, but in fact, within the community, he faced opposition as well.

It wouldn't surprise me.

But there was people like Tobiah and Sambalat to try to hinder and do everything they could to prevent the temple and the wall around Jerusalem from being built.

And then we saw the same thing, Herod, who was an Edomite from Edomia.

Herod, the king during the birth, the infancy of Yeshua, tried to kill all the babies.

When it's time to move, get your butt in order and move.

It says, but when Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official, and Geshem the Arab heard of it, what did they do? They laughed at us.

They despised us and says, what is this thing that you're doing? Will you rebel against God? What did I say? Every time you set your mind to do what the Lord has asked you to do, you're going to find opposition.

Do it anyways.