Nehemiah’s Ongoing Reformation

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All right, well, we’re going to be in Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter 10 tonight. Actually, I say Nehemiah chapter 10. It’s Nehemiah chapters 10 through 13.

So we’re going to, y’all are going to have to listen quickly. I know we might, we might get through all this. Told you, told you Sunday, bring a snack.

All right. I’m ready to move on to something. Not that Nehemiah is not great and interesting, but we’ve been doing this for a long time.

So I’m ready to move on to something else. So we’re going to hit the highlights of these last few chapters tonight. I encourage you, as always, when we skip over something, go back and read it for yourself.

It’s all important for some purpose. God included all of it for a reason. But for our purposes tonight, it may not all be applicable in this situation.

So we’re going to skip around, but I encourage you to go back and read it for yourself. We’re going to start in Nehemiah chapter 10. Does anybody else in here like to garden or have you?

Anybody else? Just me? Okay, I see a couple hands.

Those of you who do like it or even if you don’t like it, if you’ve had to do it, you’ll probably would have gotten a bigger show of hands on that one. How many of you had to garden but didn’t enjoy it? Okay, there’s more hands.

Well, I have had to do it and didn’t enjoy it at the time, but now that I’m an adult and can choose for myself, I actually kind of like it. But you’ll sympathize with what I’m about to say. One of the things that frustrates me about gardening, as much as I love it, is that I will spend weeks in the spring, and even before the spring starts, I’ll start in the winter, and spend weeks getting the whole plot cleared, and it’ll be immaculate.

No grass in it, no weeds, nothing. I’ll get out all the roots, and it just stays that way all year, right? No.

And that’s what frustrates me. You spend all that time working on it, and it’s almost got to be an every day or every other day thing, because it seems like you let it go more than that, and the grass takes over, the weeds take over, everything takes over, and everything grows except what you want to grow there. And so you’ve got to stay on top of it every day.

You’ve got to be out there pulling weeds and pulling grass every day. And as I was reading through these last few chapters of Nehemiah this week, it sort of reminded me of that, because that’s kind of a picture to us of how our spiritual life is when we’re not intentional in the things of God. If we decide, I’m just going to coast for a little bit.

You know, I may have had the garden plot of my spiritual life all cleaned up, or better said, God had the garden plot of my spiritual life all cleaned up. Now I’m just going to sit back and do nothing and enjoy. Well, if we’re not intentional about being connected to the things of God, weeds pop up and we don’t pull them and they grow and they spread.

And it just gets to be a mess. Things can very quickly go awry in our spiritual life if we’re not intentional about things just as they can in a garden. And that’s the picture we see throughout these last few chapters.

Chapter 10 starts with a list of people who sealed a covenant with God. They came back and renewed a covenant. If you remember back to previous chapters we’ve looked at, they had a time of national confession and repentance and renewal with God.

And now they’ve come back. They’ve experienced this national revival already. And in chapter 10, it’s got this list of people who sealed a covenant.

And then starting in verse 28, it talks about the covenant actually being sealed. And we’re going to spend most of our time tonight in chapter 13. But just to kind of hit the highlights of this, in verses 28 through 39, they seal the covenant.

And it talks about, they made an agreement with God. They made some promises to God according to what he asked of them. And some of the things that they were going to do, they promised to obey the law of the Lord.

They promised not to send their sons and daughters to intermarry with the pagan tribes around them. they said they weren’t going to buy and sell on the Sabbath day. In other words, they were going to respect the Sabbath.

They were going to rest like they were supposed to. They were going to support the work of the temple. They were going to do all these things.

They were going to bring their tithes and offerings. And this isn’t a message about tithes and offerings. It’s just saying they made these promises to God that these are the things you expect Israel to do, and we’re going to do them.

So they’ve made this covenant with God. They’ve made this promise on purpose, too. That needs to be clear, because sometimes we will get into a moment of.

. . We’ll get in a moment of a dire situation.

And without really thinking about it, we’ll make a deal with God, like God operates that way. But we’ll say, God, if you do X, Y, and Z, I promise this. That’s not what they were doing, okay?

They were not in one of those moments of panic. They were at the end of this revival, very thoughtfully, very sober-mindedly making promises to God about where they wanted to be going forward. They’d sealed this covenant with God.

They dedicated their wall to God in chapter 12. There’s a lot of, we’re really not even dealing with chapter 11 at all tonight because it’s a list mainly of people who dwelt in Jerusalem. Again, that’s important for historical purposes, but there’s not a lot of spiritual applications drawn of it tonight.

In chapter 12, though, we see they dedicated their wall to God, starting in verse 27. Nehemiah dedicates the wall. They have prayer over it.

They’ve dedicated it to the service of God. And I know it’s just a wall, but it’s a protection that God has called Nehemiah to build. It’s a protection that God has laid it in the king of the heart of Persia to make provision for and to send Nehemiah back to build.

It’s a protection that God enabled them to raise up in 52 days when they couldn’t have done it on their own. God did this, and so they’re dedicating it back to God, basically, to serve as the protection around his holy city and around his temple and around his people. So they’ve taken the time to dedicate the wall to God.

Right after that, in chapter 12, verses 44 through 47, they dedicate people, they dedicate temple workers to serve God in the temple. And they set these people aside to do the Lord’s work. And they say, we’re going to support them so they can do the Lord’s work.

We’re going to give them the tools that they need in order to do this. So you see throughout these chapters that they are getting their garden cleaned up. not just in the time of confession that they’ve had previously of dealing with their own sins, but now they’re saying we’re going to do something different going forward, and we’re going to be more serious about the things of God.

And then comes chapter 13. They had done all this, and then they backslid, oh, so very quickly. Things quickly got out of hand.

Let’s read chapter 13. And it says, On that day they read from the book of Moses in the hearing of the people, And it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the assembly of God because they had not met the children of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. However, our God turned the curse into a blessing.

So it was when they heard the law that they separated all the mixed multitude from Israel. Now, as I understand it chronologically, meaning in time order, these first three verses of chapter 13 are kind of the very end of the story. And then you come to chapter 4 and you see what happened in between all this covenant making and the end of the story when they finally get themselves in order and say we’re going to quit mixing with the pagan tribes around us.

Verse 4 says, Now before this, Eliashib the priest, having authority over the storerooms of the house of our God, was allied with Tobiah. Remember, he was one of the ones who was opposing the building of the wall. And he had prepared for him a large room where previously they had stored the grain offerings, the frankincense, the articles, the tithes of grain, the new wine and oil, which were commanded to be given to the Levites and singers and gatekeepers and the offerings for the priests.

So they’ve taken part of the room in the temple that was supposed to be set apart to be used to store the things that were needed in worship. And they’ve kind of chucked those things all out in the street and made living quarters for Tobiah, which I don’t understand how they could get away with that. Verse 6 says, but during all this, I was not in Jerusalem.

He says, Nehemiah said, I wasn’t there. You can’t blame me like the kids. How did the playroom get so messy?

I don’t know. I wasn’t even in there. Nehemiah is real quick to say, don’t lump me into this.

I was not in Jerusalem for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon. I had returned to the king. Then after certain days, I obtained leave from the king.

And I came to Jerusalem and discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly. Therefore, I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room.

Then I commanded them to cleanse the rooms. And I brought back into them the articles of the house of God with the grain offering and the frankincense. He doesn’t just say this is a bad idea. He says, you’ve done evil here.

And he takes all of Tobiah’s belongings. I love this. And he has them all thrown out in the street.

And then says, and now this room needs to be cleansed again. We’re going to make this holy to God again because you’ve messed it up. You know, you’ve made it unclean just by living here.

Verse 10, I also realized that the portions for the Levites had not been given to them. For each of the Levites and the singers who did the work had gone back to his field. So I contended with the rulers and said, Why is the house of God forsaken?

And I gathered them together and set them in their place. Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain and the new wine and the oil into the storehouse. And I appointed as treasurers over the storehouse Shalamiah the priest and Zadok the scribe, and of the Levites, Padaiah.

And next to them was Hanan, the son of Zechariah, the son of Madaniah. For they were considered faithful, and their task was to distribute to the brethren. Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for its service.

Okay? So the temple, let’s summarize what we’ve seen so far. The temple was supposed to be set apart for God and for worship of God.

And Eliashib, the priest, had taken it on himself to empty out rooms that were supposed to be used for that purpose to make space for Tobiah, which would have been bad enough to do that in the temple, but especially to do it for somebody who had been so vocal in opposing the will of God earlier. Doesn’t make a lot of sense. And then while the rituals of worship and service were supposed to continue in the temple, the people had said, we’ll support them, we’ll give them the tools that they need to be in there doing the rituals and making the offerings.

The rulers had stopped providing for this. so much so that the Levites who were supposed to be in there making the offerings and preparing the incense and all that they were supposed to do had had to go back out into their own fields and start farming again just so they could eat and so nobody’s attending to worship in the temple nobody’s taking care of the sacrifices and all the things that Israel was expected to do then we get to verse 15 it says in those days I saw the people I saw people in Judah treading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in sheaves and loading donkeys with wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them about the day on which they were selling provisions.

So he sees them doing all this work and doing all this selling, and he gives them the benefit of the doubt. And he says, hey, you are aware it’s the Sabbath, right? He doesn’t immediately come at them and chastise them.

He just said, hey, you do realize what day it is, don’t you? Men of Tyre dwelt there also, who brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the children of Judah and in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, what evil thing is this that you do by which you profane the Sabbath day?

Did not your fathers do this? And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? yet you bring added wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath.

So it was at the gates of Jerusalem, as it began to be dark before the Sabbath, that I commanded the gates to be shut and charged that they must not be opened until after the Sabbath. Then I posted some of my servants at the gates so that no burdens would be brought in on the Sabbath day. Now the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.

Then I warned them and said to them, why do you spend the night around the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time on, they came no more on the Sabbath.

And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves and that they should go and guard the gates to sanctify the Sabbath day. Remember me, oh my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of your mercy. So even in talking to God, Nehemiah is saying, I wasn’t there.

I’m not part of this. Please don’t hold it against me. Israel was given the Sabbath.

The Sabbath is not the same as Sunday. All right. The New Testament describes Sunday as the Lord’s day.

They’re not the same thing. They were commanded to do no work at all. It was for a few reasons.

They were given the Sabbath. One is that it points to our rest in Jesus Christ. But also it was a mark of how they were supposed to be different. Because everybody else is out there working and hustling seven days a week, trying to accumulate all they can.

And God said, Israel, you rest one day out of the week and trust in me to take care of you. And the rest of the world probably thought that was weird, like the rest of the business world. Again, I know it’s not the same thing, but the rest of the business world thinks it’s crazy that Chick-fil-A would be closed on Sunday.

But Dan Cathy said, or Truett Cathy, one of them, said, you know, we’re going to trust that God takes care of that. We don’t have to be open that day to make everything, to make the money to stay in business. So he said, you’re supposed to be respecting the Sabbath, and they weren’t.

That was one of the things that God had given them. It was in the Ten Commandments that they were supposed to follow as Israel to mark out how they were different and they were set apart to God, and they weren’t doing it. And so when he put a stop to that, people decided, well, if we can’t go into Jerusalem and sell on the Sabbath.

We’ll just get there early and we’ll camp out outside the wall so that as soon as the Sabbath is over, we can go on in and we can get down to business. Now, technically, they’re not selling on the Sabbath, but what are they doing? What’s that?

Oh, they’re preparing. Their minds are not on the Sabbath, are they? They are focused still on their business.

They may not actually be doing business, but where their hearts and their minds are supposed to be focused on God, They’re focused on preparing for the next day. And he tells them, it happened once, it happened twice, and now I’m letting you know, because he was governor of the city, I believe, in some form or fashion. He wasn’t just a vigilante.

He had some authority. He came out and he said, if it happens again, I’m going to lay hands on you. And I don’t want to know what that means.

I just know it’s probably not something pleasant. But there’s going to be a consequence. And he said they didn’t do it anymore.

But the people of Jerusalem had said, we’re going to obey the Sabbath as part of this covenant. We’re going to do the right thing there. And pretty soon they’re not doing it.

They were supposed to keep themselves separate from idol-worshiping pagan neighbors, but they had intermarried with them. We see in verse 23, in those days I also saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And they weren’t even supposed to let some of these tribes, because of the way they had treated Israel, were not even supposed to be allowed into the city, and yet they had intermarried with them.

And I want to make it clear, too, every time I talk about this, God’s reason for telling the people of Israel not to intermarry with the pagan tribes around them had nothing to do with racism. God’s not telling them, you know, they’re inferior to you. God explained to them that his reason for not wanting them to intermarry with the tribes around them was because of their pagan religious practices.

It’s the same thing as what we’re told in the New Testament about not being unequally yoked with non-believers. You know, he says, you know, you can be a faithful person and you marry somebody who’s not. You marry somebody who worships other gods and it’s going to lead you astray.

And everybody thinks, oh, not me, not me. But he gives an example of anybody that can be led astray. He said half their children spoke the language.

We’ll get to that example here as we go through. Half their children spoke the language of Ashdod and could not speak the language of Judah. He says, you think you can’t be changed?

Your children don’t even know the language of God’s word. They speak the language of these pagan tribes, but spoke according to the language of one or the other people. So I contended with them and cursed them.

That doesn’t mean naughty words. OK, he’s he’s proclaiming God’s judgment on them is what he’s doing. Struck some of them and pulled out their hair and made them swear by.

And by the way, I don’t recommend this as your practice for dealing with people who go astray. Nehemiah was a specific person in the Bible given specific authority. So if you do something you’re not supposed to, don’t worry that I’m going to pull you by your hair and strike some of you.

Made them swear by God. He says, made them swear by God, you shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or for yourself. And here’s where he gets to the example for those who say, Solomon was the wisest king.

He was the wealthiest. He had been blessed by God. In some ways, he had been blessed by God over and above his father David. because while God wouldn’t allow David to be the one to build the temple, he chose Solomon for that purpose.

And so God had honored Solomon in this way, and yet Solomon in all his wisdom and all his blessing ignored what God told him to do in one area. God said kings weren’t supposed to collect wives. And he said Israel wasn’t supposed to intermarry with the pagan tribes.

So what did Solomon do? he ignored everything God said about marriage he said not only am I going to collect wives and I can’t remember offhand the number of wives and concubines which is basically a second class wife I can’t remember the number of women he had he was collecting them but he said I’m going to collect them from every pagan tribe and it doesn’t matter and before long they were setting up pagan altars all around Israel and they were even setting up pagan altars in the palace. It had come into his home and his children were being taught that.

And it all started with that one act of disobedience. And so he’s saying to them, nevertheless, pagan women caused even him to sin. In other words, if Solomon with all of his wisdom and all of his blessing could be turned, what makes you think you can stand up to this temptation?

That’s why God said, don’t intermarry with them.

should we then hear of your doing all this great evil transgressing against our God by marrying pagan women so he goes through all this and if you read back over the previous chapters that we’ve kind of glanced over starting in chapter 10 all the things that he lays out in chapter 13 that they are doing wrong are things that in chapters 10 and 12 they have said we’re not going to do how short is our memory but see Nehemiah had left I’m not sure that Nehemiah is to blame for that he was going where he was assigned but he had been the one that said God sent me to get all these things in order and so he came in and he cleaned up the garden he got all the weeds out as God empowered him to do that as God led him and guided his steps he got things cleaned up but then he was sent elsewhere and while Nehemiah was away, the people were not intentional about their walk with God.

Because again, don’t forget in verse 6, he tells us pretty quickly into this. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even in Jerusalem when all this happened.

As soon as Nehemiah was gone, they were not being intentional. I don’t put the blame on Nehemiah. I put the blame on the people of Israel. So did Nehemiah, by the way.

As soon as he was gone, they said, you know what? We’re in good shape. They just kind of coasted.

And eventually it became very easy to go back into their old way of doing things. And it really shouldn’t surprise us. I think anybody that’s ever driven, ever driven a car, knows if we stay in neutral, we shouldn’t be surprised when we roll downhill.

I was somewhere here in town. I forget where. My truck is 20 years old, and so it does funny things that it’s not supposed to, but I’ve learned how to finesse it.

And when it’s cold, it will sometimes die when I’m at a stop sign. And it did that one day this week. And so, okay, good.

Got to put it in park or put it in neutral, one of the two, so I can restart it. Okay, finally got it started. And I’m there at a stoplight waiting to go.

And then it turns green. I take my foot off the brake and I start rolling backwards. I thought, what is going on?

I’m in neutral. I forgot to put it in dry. You sit there in neutral, you’re going to end up going downhill. And yet that’s what they did in their spirit, right?

It’s not rocket science. It was for me because it took me a few seconds to figure out what was happening, but I’m maybe not the sharpest knife in the drawer. But that happened to them in their spiritual life.

They were sort of parked in neutral. we’re just going to let things ride as they are they rolled back downhill because they weren’t being intentional they weren’t approaching their spiritual walk with God with the intentionality that Nehemiah did and it’s true it was true of them, it’s true of us just because our fellowship has been right with God doesn’t mean it will stay that way automatically now I’m not talking about a loss of salvation I I believe that once someone is truly born again they cannot lose that salvation I don’t just believe that I I I am convinced that’s what the bible teaches okay what I’m talking about here is our fellowship as christians and now to say that our fellowship with him won’t stay right automatically almost feels wrong because well you know God is powerful enough to uphold us absolutely he is but we also have this this sinful nature I’m reminded of that song come now found of every blessing it says prone to wander Lord I feel it you know if we’re not intentional about following him if we’re not intentional about staying in fellowship with him we know from experience how easy it is and I’m not going to ask you to tell me your stories, but I bet we all have a story about that.

If we’re not being intentional about our walk with God, how easy it is just by default to slide backwards, to go the wrong direction. I’ve been reading through a book on evolution, and one of my issues with the idea that everything came to this kind of order and complexity through undirected natural process rather than God directing everything, is that when you look at anything we can see in nature today, things don’t by accident get more complex and more orderly, do they? I was talking to some of the ladies who were clearing out a storeroom this week and said it’s amazing how much quicker it is to disorganize things, right, than to organize them.

If you’re not intentional, things are going to get disordered automatically. You’re going to throw stuff in there. our garage, we just stack something here, stack something there.

It happens automatically. When things happen randomly without some kind of intentionality there, we see that chaos is what ensues. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about genetic changes.

It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about the organization of a storeroom. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about cleaning a garden. It’s just one of those things that to me is so self-evident all around us that if we’re not intentional, it leads to chaos.

And it’s no different in our spiritual walk. It does not lead to things improving or getting better or moving uphill automatically. If we’re not intentional in our walk with God, that sin nature leads us to wander farther from him by default if we’re not growing in him on purpose.

So that’s my main takeaway from Nehemiah chapter 13, is that if we stay in neutral, we shouldn’t be surprised when we roll downhill. That’s exactly what they do. And so the lesson to us is that we have to be intentional about our walk with God.

It’s not something we can take time off from and expect that when we come back, it’s just going to be at the fellowship’s just going to be as good as it was when we walked away, or if not better, we’ve got to be intentional about it. We’ve got to guard ourselves continually instead of trying to coast. And this is taught in scripture, second Corinthians 13, Paul told the church at Corinth, examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves.

Do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in you unless indeed you are disqualified? And he was telling them, look at your life. Take stock of your walk with God.

Make sure. Make sure of where you stand with him. And he talks about disqualification here, but the main thing I want us to look at is that idea of examining ourselves.

You know, we can’t just ignore our spiritual walk. We can’t just ignore our fellowship with God and expect that continue the way it’s supposed to be. We’ve got to be intentional about it.

We’ve got to look and see where we are. We’ve got to stay close to him on purpose. My pastor growing up used to say, we’ve got to keep a short list of accounts with God.

I’m not sure if you know what I mean by repeating that, but you don’t just let things go. Another example of chaos. I tell people this and they laugh at me, but I balance my checkbook almost every day.

Some people are like, I only do a week. I don’t know how you do that. If I put ours down for two weeks and don’t look at it, it’s chaos when I come back.

And I have to just put balance adjustments in there because I’ll never figure it out again. A short list of accounts says I’m going to do this every day. And I’m going to make sure that I’m not letting things build up and not be dealt with.

And we do that spiritually. That we stay in close communication with God every day. That when we let him down, when we start to wander, we deal with it then.

We don’t wait two weeks and deal with it. We don’t wait a month and deal with it. We deal with God then.

And so I think looking at what Nehemiah teaches and looking at what it says there in 2 Corinthians, we need to examine ourselves routinely. Not saying, oh, am I still saved? But say, am I still where I’m supposed to be?

And if not, what’s the quickest route? What’s the shortest route to get back to where he wants me to be? And the good news in all of this is that unlike with Nehemiah, we don’t have to succumb to the threat that he’s going to yank us by the hair.

and we don’t have to go make offerings in the temple. We have a perfect sacrifice that’s been made for us. And we have a high priest that constantly offers intercession for us.

And from that sacrifice and that high priest, we have the promise of 1 John 1, 9, that if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That was written to believers. I know we’ll use that verse a lot in evangelism, and that’s not wrong.

But that verse was written to believers. When we sin, when we sin, we’re able to go to him and we’re able to confess it. And we’re able to be cleansed.

And that fellowship is able to be restored because of Jesus Christ. So tonight, as I close this out, let me just remind you again, if we stay in neutral, don’t be surprised if you start rolling downhill. Be intentional about your walk with God, especially as we go into a new year. I know it’s arbitrary that this point in our journey around the sun takes on such meaning, but there’s something in our minds that this is a time for new starts, especially as we go into a new year.

Think about that. Be intentional about your walk with God instead of just coasting. Examine yourself.

And if you’re not where you’re supposed to be, ask Him to show you how to get back there.