Sunday, 25 August 2013

Unwavering on Priorities for Life (Nehemiah 13.1-31)

Introduction

And so, as we approach the completion of the renovation work on the roof, we reach the end of the book of Nehemiah. After all the opposition Nehemiah faced, the wall was built and the people recommitted themselves to the Lord.

All that remains now in the final chapter is to hear about how they all lived happily ever after. But that’s not what we find when we read it. We find compromise. We find disobedience. We find backsliding.

When I was putting this teaching series together, I was tempted at first to stop at chapter 12. I wanted to end on a high. But I felt the Lord rebuke me. Chapter 13 is there for a reason and it contains a serious warning we need to hear.

Raymond Brown puts it well in his commentary when he writes this; “Nehemiah’s closing chapter shows how easily the most spiritual community can find its standards subtly eroded as it gradually accommodates to the pressures of contemporary worldliness.”

Yes, the roof is as good as done, the money has come in and we’re going to recommit ourselves to the Lord and celebrate a month from now. There’s a feel good factor to that – but we are still in a spiritual battle and the fight will go on until the Lord returns.

Did you know that flat tyres on your car are rarely due to a sudden puncture? Most tyres lose one or two pounds of air a month in cold weather, and slightly more in warmer weather, due to a process called permeation, which is when air escapes through tiny openings in the valves and by the wheel rim. So you’ve got to keep inflating your tyres.



Similarly, spiritual decline is rarely due to some big crisis. It’s what happens when the Church gradually becomes complacent.

In chapter 10, you’ll remember, the people had made four promises. They pledged to submit to God’s Word, they vowed to shun spiritual compromise, they agreed to support God’s work and they promised to keep the Sabbath special.

And after that, Nehemiah returned to his home in Persia. We don’t know how long it was before he came back to Jerusalem again but sadly, by the time he did in chapter 13, each one of those four promises had been broken and things were in disarray.

Now, as it happens, each one of these four areas threatens to shift us too into spiritual decline like a slowly deflating tyre. These are warnings for us. So let’s look at them in turn.

1) Obeying God’s Word (v1-3 and v23-28)

The first concern is obedience to God’s word and it comes up at the beginning of the chapter and at the end of it.

The specific issue here was that members of God’s people were intermarrying with foreigners.

Let me say right away that this has nothing to do with ethnic prejudice. In Deuteronomy 10.18 it says “God defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing.” 

God loves the foreigner.

The first three verses of Nehemiah 13 are a reference to Deuteronomy 23.3-5. It is not a blanket ban on marrying foreigners but refers only to the Moabites and Ammonites; two nations who were bitter enemies of Israel. It’s a specific warning to stay away from particular people who are bent on evil.

It isn’t even a blanket ban on intermarrying with them. You’ll remember that Ruth was from Moab and she did marry into the people of God and even became an ancestor of the Lord Jesus. But, crucially, she had said to Naomi, her mother-in-law “Your God shall be my God.” She ditched her Moabite idols and became a member, by faith, of God’s covenant community.

The problem in Nehemiah is that the opposite was happening. God’s people were inviting cultures that are adamantly opposed to the things of God into their community. The children born to these mixed marriages were growing up more at home with pagan ideas than with the ways of God’s chosen people.

Do we want our children to be more at home with the values of the world than with those of the kingdom, having never tasted the goodness of the Lord? Those of you who are parents; your children will never have a heart for God if they don’t see that you have.

But the community in Nehemiah 13 started to say “We don’t need to obey the word of God. It's too strict. It's harsh. Let’s supplement it with our good ideas and human wisdom.” And so they went into spiritual decline.

Whenever I see Christians indulge in doctrinal compromise, as sure as eggs is eggs, it’s only a matter of time that they’ll slide into moral indifference and end up spiritually lukewarm.

Whenever churches downgrade the Bible they head towards decay and irrelevance.

All the great revivals - from the mighty 16th Century Reformation to the Great Awakening in New England, to the Methodism that changed the face of 18th Century Britain, to the 1905 Welsh revival and Azusa Street Pentecostal outpouring to the East African revival of the 1920s and 30’s - all of them held to the inspiration and authority of Scripture.

You see, Hosea 14.9 says “the ways of the Lord are right.” They’re right. So the Holy Spirit always blesses obedience to the right Word he inspired and he is always grieved when it is resisted.

Incidentally, if anyone asks you the difference between Ezra and Nehemiah, it’s that Ezra pulled out his own hair when his people intermarried with pagan nations (Ezra 9.3) and Nehemiah pulled out other people’s (Nehemiah 13.25). The Bible tells you the truth - some leaders pull their own hair out and some leaders, sadly, pull out other people’s. I think you can tell what kind of leader I am just by looking at me!

2) Refusing Compromise in the Church (v4-9)

If the first issue was disobedience to God’s word in the home, the second is spiritual compromise in the church.

Nehemiah returns from Persia to find that a large temple storeroom has been emptied of its supplies and one of the enemies who had given God’s people so much grief in chapters 2-6 has moved in. This man Tobiah, let me remind you, had been a constant thorn in Nehemiah’s side and now he is lounging around in the temple making himself at home.

Now obviously, we’re not going to shift the communion table and Bibles and band instruments into the garage to make space for the nearest pagan druid to move in. But don’t be deceived. There are clear parallels for us.

This is like what happens when the church begins to gradually accommodate things it would have once found totally unacceptable. Before you know it, the standards of the world get a stronghold on our thinking and decision making.

This is like what happens when legalism begins to take the place of grace in the life of the church. All these regulations and procedures, making religious accessories central instead of decorative, wearing the right clothes and observing certain rules to try an appease God instead of coming to Christ and living in him. God forbid that we should ever prefer the religion of the Pharisees to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.

This is like when we allow impurity and worldliness to stifle the joy and the freedom of the Holy Spirit out of our lives.

What did Nehemiah do? He did what Jesus did to the money changers in the temple courts. He started throwing furniture around. In v8-9 Nehemiah showed Tobiah the door, threw his sofa, his pots and pans and his TV set into the street. He had the room disinfected so that no one could even smell his after-shave after he left. Then he had everything put back in its proper place.

We’ve got to make sure that the enemy of the gospel is just as unwelcome here. Everything that is not life-giving and that undermines the work of the Holy Spirit has got to be shown the door. And everything that properly belongs to God’s house has to be restored to its rightful place. This is a house of prayer, a place of healing not a centre for accusation and condemnation.

3) Giving for God’s Work (v10-14)

The third issue Nehemiah had to sort out was giving.

With £60,000 of our total for the roof project coming from the pockets of this congregation – on top of regular giving to finance the work of this church (not to mention support for the mission trips to Chester and Tijuana Mexico last year) I hardly need labour the theme of generosity. When we give to God, we are just taking our hands off what already belongs to Him. Most people here understand that.

But in my pastoral work, including here, I’ve often heard tales of woe from people who are struggling with debt and financial strain. In not one case, not one, has someone told me it’s because they overextended themselves in charitable giving.

Over and over again, and I’ve found this in my own life, and I have no idea how it works, but the more people give gladly to the Lord’s work, the more they find themselves blessed and the less they find themselves wondering how they’re going to get to the end of the month.

We need to give to God what's right - not what's left. This generation in Nehemiah 13 were giving God what was left, if anything was left.

And here's what was happening: the Levites were temple servants and they had no source of income except the tithes from the eleven other tribes. But things had drifted. Verses 10-14 show us that when Nehemiah got back he found half the Levites, away from the temple, out on the farm, making ends meet. The Lord’s work wasn’t getting done because the people were neglecting to support the Levites with their tithes.

In Christ we are under grace, not law. Giving is not a heavy obligation, it’s a holy opportunity. We are free to give more. The New Testament teaching is that those who serve in the church deserve a respectable wage and it ought to be enough to supply their needs. They shouldn’t have to struggle or consider leaving just because fellow believers who benefit from their ministry don’t adequately assess and meet their needs.

Now I know we live in the real world and since the banking crisis the world’s economy has stagnated - but our paid staff here have had one, modest, under-inflation pay rise in four years (and I am not talking about myself as my remuneration is handled nationally).

With the roof project now almost behind us, I think we should look at this area as a church in the light of what God says to us in this chapter.

Our financial giving often reflects our wholeheartedness – or our half-heartedness. Or even our hard-heartedness. Our giving authenticates our devotion to Christ – or it contradicts it. Let me encourage you to look realistically and radically at your giving again as I promise you I will.

As the New Testament says, “Just as you excel in everything, see that you excel in this grace of giving.”

4) Honouring the Sabbath (v15-22)

The last issue Nehemiah had to deal with was the violation of the Sabbath. Instead of setting aside Saturday as a day for rest and worship, as God had commanded, people were living as on any other day, producing, manufacturing, travelling, buying and selling.

Now, again, we are not under the Law of Moses. Christ has fulfilled that for us. He castigated the Pharisees for their burdensome, nit-picking attitude to the Sabbath. If your donkey falls into a pit, for goodness’ sake pull it out!

It’s not a sin to nip into the shop on the way home and get a bottle of wine to go with lunch. If the Lord has called you to work in the emergency services or caring professions it’s not wrong to take your turn and work your share of Sunday shifts.

But on this day I believe every Christian should want to gather together with other believers and worship Christ and make every reasonable effort to do so. And not out of grim obligation but because you love Jesus and want to honour him above everything and everyone else that competes for your affections.

If you are spiritually healthy, gathering with other believers for worship will be a no-brainer top priority for you. If you’re really converted to Christ and serious about making him Lord of your life, it will be the first thing in your diary. And if you have children, training them to put Christ before everything else will be great investment in their future.

Sunday is the weekly anniversary of Christ rising from the dead: the New Testament says “set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on the earth.”

Ending (v29-31)

And so we reach the last verses of Nehemiah. And what a strange way to end!

“I also made provision for contributions of wood at designated times, and for the first fruits. Remember me with favour, my God” (v31).

And that’s it. It’s abrupt. It doesn’t even say they all lived happily ever after. It’s hardly what you’d call ending with a flourish is it?

So let me finish by saying this; we are moving towards a moment when history will suddenly end. The New Testament tells us that we shall be working, like Nehemiah was making provision for contributions of wood, and suddenly the Lord Jesus will be here. Finished!

Jesus said it will be like in the days of Noah; people will be marrying, buying, selling, working and then suddenly that will be it! It will all be over. You might say “Well, can’t I just finish the extension on the house? Don't we get to see who wins the FA Cup or Strictly Come Dancing?" No we don't. "Or does that mean my holiday is cancelled next week?” Yes it does.

It won’t be at the climax of some vast international conference. His return won't be announced by a vast choir who will have been rehearsing for weeks.

No! There will be no more time to change your mind. Jesus will be back.

“Look, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give to each person according to what they have done… Yes, I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Revelation 22.12 and 20).

Let’s pray…



Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 25th August 2013

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