One day I went to the house of Shemaiah son of Delaiah, the son of Mehetabel, who was shut in at his home. He said, “Let us meet in the house of God, inside the temple, and let us close the temple doors, because men are coming to kill you—by night they are coming to kill you.”
But I said, “Should a man like me run away? Or should one like me go into the temple to save his life? I will not go!” I realized that God had not sent him, but that he had prophesied against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. He had been hired to intimidate me so that I would commit a sin by doing this, and then they would give me a bad name to discredit me.
Remember Tobiah and Sanballat, O my God, because of what they have done; remember also the prophetess Noadiah and the rest of the prophets who have been trying to intimidate me. (Nehemiah 6:10-14)
Sanballat’s next tactic was to compromise Nehemiah’s integrity by using someone he trusted. He hired a Jew to warn Nehemiah that men were coming to kill him and that he ought to seek refuge in the temple. This proposal could have been tempting for Nehemiah for two reasons. It could have appealed to his sense of self-preservation and to his sense of pride. Surely he was important enough to protect. What would the Jews do without his leadership? But Nehemiah saw right through this ruse. He knew that only the priests were allowed in the Holy Place. (Numbers 18:7) Nehemiah refused the suggestion and once again turned his enemies over to God for justice.
Sometimes Satan will use someone close to you to lead you into sin. That’s all the more reason to be careful whom you allow in your inner circle of intimate relationships. But sometimes it’s even a well-meaning Christian brother or sister. Maybe they question the intensity of your commitment to this whole sexual purity thing. Maybe a Christian sister confesses that her feelings for you have replaced her feelings for her husband. Maybe your girlfriend makes it difficult for you to save yourself for marriage. Maybe your wife wants to spice up your sex life with a little Penthouse Letters or by sharing a racy story with you from the novel she is reading.
Not everyone is at the same level of spiritual maturity. In fact, God may not even be working on sexual purity in the lives of some of the people around you. If they seem insensitive to your struggles, it may be ignorance, or it may be bad motive. A little coaching about your boundaries will help the former. You may need to discontinue the relationship if it’s the latter. In either case, you can’t allow those around you to lead you into temptation.
Shemaiah, Sanballat’s hired messenger, can also represent our thoughts. Satan loves to dangle the most tempting option in front of us to see if we take the bait. By planting a suggestive thought, he tries to get us to give in to the sin. “It would be so much easier. Quit fighting the ‘good fight.’ Where’s it gotten you so far? The struggle never ends. It only gets harder. C’mon, think about yourself for once, will you. You deserve this…” On and on it goes. If he can tell you are listening, Satan will turn up the volume. Like Nehemiah, we’ve got to rebuke this messenger in a decisive, unequivocal way.
