NO GUARANTEES Nehemiah 13:4-31 September 4, 2011/Pastor Joyce Reed/Crossroads, La Paz, Mexico

Transcription

1 1 NO GUARANTEES Nehemiah 13:4-31 September 4, 2011/Pastor Joyce Reed/Crossroads, La Paz, Mexico I. Recap the book of Nehemiah a. Walls in ruin for 141 years (chap. 1) b. Nehemiah leads a group to rebuild them in 52 days (chap. 2-8) c. 50,000 people celebrate & renew spiritual lives (chap. 9) d. After hearing God s Word, renew their covenant with God (chap. 10) e. Leaders settle in the city (chap. 11) f. Walls dedicated in a glorious worship service (chap. 12) g. Nehemiah serves as Governor for 12 years h. Life is Good! When he left, 12:43 says that the sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away. II. Nehemiah retires back to the capital. Several years later goes back to visit. And finds a complete disaster! He discovers that sin not only crept in, but now is running rampant through the city. Good beginnings do not guarantee happy endings. Evangelist Tony Campolo tells of his experience in a church of the more Pentecostal bent. He tells of a man who, in the throes of spiritual involvement, began to call out in a loud voice, Fill me, Lord! Fill me, Lord! Fill me, Lord! To which finally an older woman in the congregation who could control herself no longer replied, in loud voice, Don t do it, Lord; he leaks! But that is true for all of us: we leak. Sometimes we are ablaze with spiritual commitment, but over time the fire burns down to embers or even goes cold. Author Raymond Brown said: All too easily, an ugly thing becomes tolerated, even viewed as the possibly useful thing, then the permissible thing, and finally the attractive thing. It does not happen in a moment. Standards are lowered gradually and imperceptibly. Sin becomes known by another name. We accommodate at one stage of life things which earlier would have been totally unacceptable. This is what happened to the Israelites: they fell into a comfortable compromise with the world. III. Four Promises made in Chapter 10 are broken. The promises were: a. Submit to God s Word b. Separate from the world c. Keep the Sabbath Holy d. Tithe Money to support God s Work in the Community

2 2 Let s read Nehemiah 13:4-31 and see how Nehemiah reacted to these broken promises. IV. Nehemiah walks in and find the following situations: a. Tobiah has moved into a room of the temple. Why is this a problem? 1. He was an Ammonite, a sworn enemy of the Israelites. 2. He was one of the guys who opposed the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. 3. He had accused Nehemiah of rebelling against the Persians (Neh. 2:19) 4. He had ridiculed the work of the wall: 5. He had conspired to attack the city (Neh. 4:7-8) 6. He had been part of the conspiracy to get Nehemiah out of the city so they could kill him (Neh. 6:1-2) 7. He had hired false prophets to prophecy against Nehemiah and scare him (Neh. 6:12) 8. He was connected to some of the Jewish leaders through marriage (Neh. 6:17-19) 9. And now, he s got this connection with the high priest and even moved into the Temple. Tobaih is wheeling and dealing with Eliashib and Nehemiah is outraged. 10. In a fit of righteous anger, Nehemiah throws Tobiah and all his belongings out in the street in order to cleanse the Temple. b. The people stopped tithing so the Levites left the Temple. The work of God had stopped. Worship is almost at a stand still. Nehemiah resolves this by setting up a system so that they could once again put God first with their finances. Nehemiah not only rebuked them, he showed them what to do to make some changes. Nehemiah set up some administrative system to insure that the tithes would once more start rolling into the temple. In verse 12 we read that the people started bringing their tithes of grain, new wine and oil into the storerooms. They renewed their commitment to put God first in their finances and brought to God what was rightfully His. Nehemiah then appointed four men in verse 13 to supervise the treasury and distribute the tithes and offerings. Interestingly, these men represented the priests, Levites, scribes, and laymen. They were all different but they had one thing in common: they were considered trustworthy. Sometimes we have to make tough choices. Nehemiah had to get rid of old leaders and install new ones to implement change. c. Merchants were selling goods on the Sabbath (Exodus 31:12-17) Moses told the Israelites that the LORD had said: The Sabbath belongs to me. Now I command you and your descendants to always obey the laws of the Sabbath. By doing this, you will know that I have chosen you as my own Keep the Sabbath holy. You have six days to do your work, but the Sabbath is mine, and it must remain a day of rest. If you work on the Sabbath, you will no

3 3 longer be part of my people, and you will be put to death. 16 Every generation of Israelites must respect the Sabbath. 17 This day will always serve as a reminder, both to me and to the Israelites, that I made the heavens and the earth in six days, then on the seventh day I rested and relaxed. Nehemiah rectified the situation by closing down trade on the Sabbath, locking the city gates on the Sabbath, and even running merchants off as he needed. d. People were letting their sons and daughters inter-marry with Moabites, Ammonites and Ashdodians. What s so wrong with the Ammonites? They worshipped a god they called Molech, and their worship involved sacrificing their young children in the fire to this so-called god. Archaeological work has produced evidence of thousands of children being burned on altars to Molech in Carthage. The Moabites worshipped Chemosh the same way. Interestingly, just a few years earlier, Ammonites and Ashdodites were lined up outside the walls of Jerusalem as enemies to oppose the wall s rebuilding. Now, yesterday s enemies were today s marriage partners. Nehemiah was not upset about inter-racial marriages, he was upset that these foreign spouses were leading Jewish men & women away from the worship of the one true God. V. How do these broken promises relate to you and me today? a. The New Testament tells us that our bodies are now the temple of the Holy Spirit. God dwells in us. Therefore, what Tobiah has crept into our life and taken up residence? What have we agreed to harbor in our heart, say Oh, it s not such big deal! and let sin begin to get a stranglehold on our lives. Does your temple need clearing out, cleansing, and then being filled with the things of God? b. Tithing means giving a percentage of what we earn back to God as a thank you for God s abundance and blessing in our lives. It is an act of generosity and service. Too often we balk and ask, How much do I have to give? Did you know that the average church goer gives less than 3% of his/her income to God? The question we should be asking is Do I give generously and with a cheerful spirit? What are my motivations for giving? Our giving is one of the most accurate indicators of spiritual commitment. When God s people start to go flat spiritually, one of the first places it shows up is in their giving. Jesus said, Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matthew 6:21) If someone asked you for a list of all the places your money went last month, would they be able to determine that God was important in your life? After your rent, food, and utilities got paid, what does the destination of the rest of your income reveal about where your heart is? I am not attempting to be critical or judgmental; I am simply reminding all of us that money can be a

4 4 powerful god in our lives. Are we giving some of it back to the one true God in a way that honors and please his name? Dr. Hugh McKean of Chiengmai, Thailand, tells of a church of four hundred members where every member tithes. They receive a weekly wage of forty stangs (less than twenty cents] and their rice. Of this meager existence, each gives a tenth every week. Because of this, they have done more for Christ in Thailand than any other church. They pay their own preacher and have sent two missionary families to spread the gospel in a community cut off from the outside world. They have not only accepted Christ, but, having found Him good, they are making Him known to others. Oh, by the way, this church of all tithers is also a church of all lepers--every person has leprosy. c. Keeping the Sabbath Holy. Now, we live in a world where people work on Sundays, stores are open on Sundays, we can get almost every convenience known to humanity on a Sunday. In the past, like the Jewish nation, we used to have a day set aside that was exclusively God s. Now we don t. Simply a fact. Which means that we have to work even harder to set apart time to worship and honor God. The Sabbath was about rest. Rest from Labor. And the Sabbath was about worshiping God, giving thanks to the one who gave us life and breath. Do you set aside time to rest each week? To worship each week? More than 2 hours on Sunday morning? Because the original plan was an entire day! Also, if can t stop working for just one day it implies this: I don t trust God to take care of me. If I take even one day off, everything will fall apart. d. Relationships. Nehemiah s outrage over the intermarriages was due to the fact that people were led away from God to worship false gods. Do you have those kinds of relationships in your life? Do you spend time with people who bring you closer to God, who foster that connection? Or are you spending time with people who constantly reinforce your wrong choices and keep leading you astray? (Think 10 years back... ) VI. What does Nehemiah 13 teach us? A. Don t play around with sin. Nehemiah dealt with sin decisively and abruptly. Most of us underestimate our sinfulness and overestimate our goodness. Don t flirt with sin. Don t get cozy with compromise. Be vigilant. As Romans 12:9 says, Hate what is evil. Cling to what is good. B. There s a place for righteous anger. Righteous anger is for the right reasons and responds the right way. Unrighteous anger is for the wrong reasons and you respond

5 5 in the wrong way. Some things are worth being angry about. Some things are worth fighting for. Some things are just wrong. Pastor Mark Driscoll shares this example of righteous anger: I was in my teens, fifteen or sixteen. I was present where a grown man, older than me, was beating his wife. This is the kind of violence I ve seen. I can give you story after story in my life. He hit her, and she fell down, and he started kicking her. His wife. She started screaming, and so he smacked her in the face. And I m there watching this all happen right in front of me, teenage boy. And I looked at the man. I don t remember exactly what I said, and I said, You can t do that. That s got to stop. I mean, I told him to stop. He looked at me with a smirk, and here s what he said: Make me. All right, what are you gonna do at that point? Are you gonna blog about it? Are you gonna call talk radio? No. As a man, an image bearer of God, I m not looking for a fight, I m not picking a fight, I don t want to be in a fight, but I can t sit there and watch a woman take a beating, getting kicked in the ribs by her own husband. So what do you do? You have God s heart, anger, you respond in God s way. You get involved. Yeah. I mean, I jumped the guy, you know. And I stopped him from beating his wife. Some situations call for righteous anger. Where do you need to stand up for Jesus? C. Allow God to use you. Nehemiah was all about being available to God. Listening for God s Heart. Praying for God to let you know how to be involved. Nehemiah was led to rebuild a wall. Hadn t planned on it. Hadn t look for it. And rebuilding the wall led him to dedicate 12 years of his life to an entire city. And then, when he thought he was going to retire, God brought him back to clean up some messes and restore the people to spiritual order. God takes great pleasure in using people who are available to Him. You don t have to be a super saint or a spiritual giant. God delights in using ordinary people like us so that His extraordinary power can be unleashed in our lives. VII. Conclusion: We can t take our relationship with God for granted. We have to work at it, nurture it, prune it, shake it up, examine it, grow it. Nehemiah shows us that human nature is to go back to our old ways, to worship our old idols, to go soft on our convictions. Where do you need to re-dedicate yourself to God this morning? What idols do you need to throw out of your spiritual house? How do you need to re-prioritize your money? Are you making time for adequate rest and renewal during your week? Do your relationships draw you closer to God? May Jesus strengthen us in all these endeavors. Amen.

6 SOURCES: 1. Sermon by Byron Harvey, Inching Away read at asp 2. Nehemiah Bible Study by Rich Cathers, Calvary Chapel, Fullerton, CA read at 3. EZRA-NEHEMIAH, part 20, Is Reformation an Event or a Process? Or, The Ongoing Perils of the Church (Nehemiah 13:4-31) by Dr. Ralph Davis (IIIM Magazine Online, Volume 3, Number 33, August 13 to August 19, 2001) 4. Sermon by Brian Bill, Standing by our Promises read at 5. Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Ezra & Nehemiah by Derek Kidner, Intervarsity Press 6