MELVIN NEWLAND, MINISTER RIDGE CHAPEL, KANSAS, OK
(This is the eleventh of a Leadership series featuring Nehemiah. Some ideas & illustrations in these messages were based on or benefited greatly from, to varying extents, the book “Hand Me Another Brick” by Charles Swindoll.)
ILL. Ludwig Von Beethoven had a life marked with both triumph & tragedy. By age 5 he was playing the violin. By age 13 he was a concert organist. He became a prolific composer, composing 9 magnificent symphonies, 5 concertos, countless pieces of chamber music, & music for the piano & the violin.
But his life was marked with tragedy. By age 20 he was starting to lose his hearing. By 40, his hearing was almost gone. By 50, he was stone deaf. One day in his study he was heard pounding the piano & saying over & again, "I will take life by the throat & I’ll never let go!"
Those who knew him said that he was the most persistent man they had ever met & that he accomplished far beyond normal human ability because he faced up to his difficulty & was determined to do something about it.
PROP. This is a quality that is greatly needed today. Too often, when problems come our way, many of us try to ignore them & hope they will go away. There are only a few who are willing to take problems by the throat & do something about them. Nehemiah had that quality. When something was wrong Nehemiah would do something about it.
That is exactly what we find in the 13th chapter of Nehemiah. During the past few weeks we have seen the completion of the wall around the city of Jerusalem. We have seen Ezra & Nehemiah lead out in a revival among the people. We have also seen the people start moving back inside the walls to repopulate the city.
Evidently, around that time, Nehemiah left Jerusalem & went back to Babylon for a rather long stay. Vs. 6 says, "But during all this time I was not in Jerusalem, for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes, King of Babylon, I had returned to the king.” Nehemiah had promised the King that he would return, & he kept his promise.
But Nehemiah is still the governor of Judah, so as vs. 6 continues we learn, “Some time later I asked his permission & came back to Jerusalem. Here I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done…”
When he returned to Jerusalem he found that some things had gone wrong. Even then I guess that it was true that "When the cat is away, the mice will play."
And as a result they were now facing 4 major problems, & Nehemiah had to deal with them, & deal with them decisively before they destroyed everything that God was seeking to do through His people.
I. COMPROMISING COMPANIONSHIP
The first problem is seen in vs’s 4 9. I call it "Compromising Companionship."
Listen to vs’s 4 5, “Before this, Eliashib the priest had been put in charge of the storerooms of the house of our God. He was closely associated with Tobiah, & he had provided him with a large room formerly used to store the grain offerings & incense & temple articles, & also the tithes of grain, new wine & oil prescribed for the Levites, singers & gatekeepers, as well as the contributions for the priests.”
A. Basically, here is what had happened. Two men are mentioned in vs. 4. One is Eliashib, the High Priest. As the High Priest he has the responsibility of the temple & therefore is in charge of all the rooms in the Temple complex - in charge of all the grain & food stored there - & responsible also for the welfare of the people who lived in the Temple complex & participated in the services there.
The 2nd man is Tobiah. Do you remember Tobiah? He was not a Jew. He was a pagan & was one of those who strongly opposed the rebuilding of the wall. He was the one who said that the wall was so pitiful & weak that a fox jumping on it would knock it down. He, along with Sanballat & Geshum & others, made fun of the Jews & even threatened them while they were rebuilding it.
He was an enemy of God, seeking to hinder God’s people in every way he could.
But when Nehemiah returns to Jerusalem he finds that Eliashib, the High Priest, & Tobiah are “closely associated”. And while Nehemiah was gone Eliashib had prepared an apartment for Tobiah right inside the Temple complex.
He had moved out the grain & everything else from a large storeroom to make a nice suite for Tobiah. Tobiah, who had opposed everything that God commanded, had been invited to make his home right inside the Temple, in the House of God.
So, when Nehemiah comes back - in vs. 7 - he says, "I learned about the evil thing Eliashib had done ..."
What does Nehemiah do? He says in vs. 8, "I was greatly displeased & threw all Tobiah’s household goods out of the room." Not only that, but vs. 9 states, "I gave orders to purify the rooms..." The word "purify" really means "fumigate." He didn’t even want the smell of Tobiah around.
C. Throughout Scripture we are reminded again & again that you cannot mix good & evil. You can’t straddle the fence. You are either standing for God & His word or you are against them. Mixing good & evil in our lives is not what God wants.
When Nehemiah came back & found out that evil had been invited into the House of God he took that problem by the throat & evicted Tobiah & fumigated the Temple so that there wouldn’t even be the smell of evil lingering there.
APPL. Is it possible for Christians to make this same kind of mistake today? Can we be so concerned about pleasing others that we forget about pleasing God? Have we compromised our beliefs? Have we become wishy washy in our convictions?
Does the world notice any difference in the way we talk - the way we live - the kinds of entertainment we enjoy? Or are we just like them - except that we claim to be Christians? If so, the world reaches one of two conclusions: either, that we are hypocrites, or that being a Christian really doesn’t make any difference.
SUM. Nehemiah saw the situation & decided to get rid of the evil influence, cleanse the House of God, & make it what it ought to be. And that is exactly what we ought to do in our own lives, too.
II. FINANCIAL FIASCO
A. The 2nd problem Nehemiah discovered is found in vs’s 10 14. It is called the "Financial Fiasco." Nehemiah begins by saying, "I also learned . . ."
You know, one of the marks of leadership is that a leader is sensitive to potential problems & he tries to ward them off before they become big problems.
ILL. Every once in a while I talk to a parent who says, "I don’t want to invade the privacy of my child. They deserve their privacy." Yes, they do. But, as a parent, you are responsible to be alert & sensitive to potential problems that might develop in that child’s life.
I think that you ought to know what they read. I think that you ought to know what kind of music they are listening to. I think that you ought to know the things that might be negative influences in their life because you are responsible for that child.
In vs. 10 Nehemiah says, "I also learned that the portions assigned to the Levites had not been given to them, & that all the Levites & singers responsible for the service had gone back to their own fields."
B. Here is the situation: In the Temple of God the Levites & the singers were responsible for the Temple duties. They lived in the Temple complex. They took care of the things of God.
But what had happened is that many people had stopped giving their tithes & offerings. They were robbing God of that which was rightfully His & keeping it for themselves. As a result, they were unable to pay all the people who served in the Temple. So the Temple workers had to abandon their duties to go out into the fields to make a living for their families & the worship of God in the Temple suffered.
C. So what happened? Nehemiah didn’t call a meeting of the Finance Committee. He didn’t wring his hands & say, "I just don’t know what we are going to do."
Vs. 11 says, "So I rebuked the officials & asked them, ’Why is the house of God neglected?’ Then I called them together & stationed them at their posts."
He brought back the singers & the Levites, & put them at their places of duty. Then he went to the people & said, "It is time to bring the tithe of the grain & the oil into the storehouse once again."
APPL. There are times when we need to examine our financial giving, too. Because if we are robbing from God, & those are not my words, those are God’s words - if we are robbing from God - that can rob us of our soul.
If we are selfishly holding on to what belongs to God when millions have never heard about Jesus - it can rob us of our soul. If so, now is the time to deal with it & to realize, as the people of God, who we are & who really is to be first in our lives.
III. SECULARIZED SABBATH
A. Thirdly there was the problem of the "Secularized Sabbath." Vs. 15 says, "In those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath & bringing in grain & loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs, & all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath."
Remember, back in chapter 10, after the great revival came at Water Gate, the people promised that they would not desecrate the Sabbath day. They would keep it holy. They would not do any business on the Sabbath day.
B. Now they are breaking their promise. They have gone back to doing business, to buying & selling on that day. So what does Nehemiah do about it? In vs. 15 he says, "Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day.”
Not only that, but vs. 17 says, "I rebuked the nobles of Judah & said to them, ’What is this wicked thing you are doing – desecrating the Sabbath day?’"
I love vs. 20. Nehemiah actually locked the merchants out of the city. "Once or twice the merchants & sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem." They couldn’t get in. He locked the gates on them. They were forced to stay outside & sleep underneath the stars.
Vs. 21 says, "But I warned them & said, ’Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will lay hands on you.’ From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath."
C. You see what Nehemiah did? He saw a problem & did something about it, & his forceful action worked it corrected the problem.
We need people today - fathers & mothers & families - who will stand up & say, "We will not neglect the Lord’s Day." Now folks, I trust that you realize that the Lord’s Day & the Sabbath day are not the same. We are not under the old covenant – we’re under the new covenant & today is not the Sabbath it is the Lord’s Day. It is a day for God’s people to worship, but many are treating it much too casually in our time.
IV. DOMESTIC DISOBEDIENCE
One final problem - the problem of "Domestic Disobedience." Vs. 23 & all the way to the end of the chapter describes this problem.
A. Nehemiah comes back & also finds that while he was gone some of the people had intermarried with pagans. And God had told them never to do that. "You are God’s people & you are not to marry those who worship false gods or bow down to their idols." But they had disobeyed the clear command of God.
And their children were paying the price for their disobedience. Vs. 24 says, "Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, & did not know how to speak the language of Judah."
Their children weren’t being taught the commandments of God. In fact, they couldn’t even understand them because they didn’t know the language.
There is an important reason why the scriptures still teach us not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. So often when a Christian marries a non Christian it is the children who pay the price. And oftentimes the Christian pays, too.
APPL. Young people, that is one of the most important things you ought to consider before you say "I do" or "I will."
B. So what did Nehemiah do about it? In vs. 25 he says, "I rebuked them & called curses down on them." Now that doesn’t mean that he used bad language on them. It means that he brought the curse of God, the judgment of God, upon them.
He also says, "I beat some of the men & pulled out their hair." Can you imagine that? Really, the word “hair” there means he pulled out their beards.
He actually took direct action with them & made them swear by God that they would not give their daughters or their sons to pagans.
He took the problem by the throat, dealt with it directly, & he solved it. And I suggest to you that this trait in Nehemiah is a quality desperately needed in our lives today.
SUM. Now let’s go back & summarize. How did Nehemiah solve these problems?
1st of all - He recognized the problems. He didn’t bury them or hide himself from them. He was honest with the people & said, "These are problems."
2ndly - He sought permanent solutions to them. He didn’t accept excuses, & he didn’t just let them slide. He did something about them!
3rdly - He dealt with them decisively. There was nothing wishy washy about how they were handled. They were serious problems, & he dealt decisively with them.
Then - He prayed & thanked God for helping him through it all.
CONCL. There are problems in the world today. As Christians we need to face them squarely. We need to search for permanent solutions. We need to deal with them decisively. Then, finally, we need to recommit ourselves wholeheartedly to God.
INVITATION
