This week I came across these words that were written by Chris Tomlin in his preface to Francis Chan’s book titled “Crazy Love”:
“Isn't it interesting that in Acts 11, at the end of verse 26, it says, "The disciples were called Christians first at Antioch." What I find interesting is the simple thought that the Christians didn't name themselves. But rather, they were called (or named) "Christians" by those watching their lives. I wonder if it would be the same today. Could someone look at your life or look at my life and name me a Christian? A humbling thought for sure.”
Those words certainly got me to thinking about my own life, but after reading Nehemiah chapter 5 this week and discussing with the men in the Bible study on Monday morning, it got me thinking even more about the church as a whole. When people outside the body of Christ look at us and how we treat each other, would they still name us Christians? And based on what they observe, is the idea of being part of a body that consists of those who claim to be followers of Jesus something that is attractive to them?
Nehemiah chapter 5 is one of the many passages we find in the Bible that has a wide variety of possible applications in our lives. And there is no doubt that we could legitimately pursue any number of them this morning. For instance, there are certainly some principles that apply to our finances, and especially about the potential dangers of debt, here. Nehemiah exhibits some great leadership principles in this chapter, especially the importance of leading by example. There is much to learn here about how to deal with conflict and we’ll touch on that a bit.
But I really want us to focus this morning on how our relationships with each other impact our ability to reach others for Jesus. That idea is expressed by Nehemiah right in the middle of the chapter in verse 9. Will you read that verse out loud with me?
So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?
(Nehemiah 5:9 ESV)
Here Nehemiah is clearly worried that the way his fellow Jews are treating each other is causing the nations around them to taunt them and in the process to belittle the God whom they are supposed to be serving. So exactly what is causing that to happen? In order to answer that question, we’ll go back to the beginning of Nehemiah 5. Once again this morning, you’ll need your Bibles so you can follow along as we go through this chapter together.
Before we begin, let me just give you a heads up on the message this morning. There is no “fill-in-the-blanks” outline this morning. There won’t be a lot of PowerPoint slides for you to look at. I have given you plenty of space in the sermon insert to make any notes that might be helpful to you as we go through the passage. But more than anything this morning, I think this is the kind of message that ought to cause us to think about how we live together as followers of Jesus, and which may not necessarily leave us with any pat answers on exactly how to address some of the questions that might come up.
I know that for some of you who are like me, this is a bit uncomfortable. I’m one of those people who hate movies that leave everything up in the air at the end because I like closure. And I like sermons that do that as well. So for me, this message is going to cause me to step a bit outside my comfort zone, too. But I think it’s good for all of us to do that sometimes. So with that in mind follow along as I begin reading in Nehemiah chapter 5, verse 1:
Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”
(Nehemiah 5:1-5 ESV)
Up until now the work on rebuilding the walls has been progressing nicely, even when the people were faced with outside opposition. But now, there is an even bigger obstacle that the people are facing – the possibility of collapse from within due to some festering grievances.
In many ways the situation in Jerusalem in 444 BC has a lot of parallels with our culture today. Although small numbers of people had been gradually returning to Jerusalem for some time, they hadn’t come close to fully recovering from the economic devastation that began about 150 years earlier when Babylon came in and began the campaign that would eventually result in the conquest of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple and the exile of many of the residents of the city.
Apparently there was already a famine in the land and to make matters even worse, many of the people in Jerusalem were working on rebuilding the walls which took away from the time they needed to cultivate and harvest their crops. And there were two other issues that were exacerbating the problem even further:
• King Artaxerxes was exacting heavy taxes on the people and many of them were having to borrow and mortgage their property just to pay those taxes. And when they couldn’t pay back those loans, they were losing their property and even having to give their children into slavery.
• But even worse, as we’ll see more fully in a moment, some of their more well-to-do Jewish brothers were loaning them money at usurious interest rates, which was laying an even heavier burden on their fellow Jews.
When Nehemiah becomes aware of what was going on, he had to put down his hard hat and turn his attention from the wall building project to deal with the conflict between the workers:
I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.” And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” They were silent and could not find a word to say.
(Nehemiah 5:6-8 ESV)
At first glance, Nehemiah’s response might shock us a bit. He becomes very angry about the situation. I think sometimes we tend to think that it is always wrong to get angry, but that is certainly not the case according to the Bible. There is no doubt that Jesus was angry when He overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple. And these familiar words from Paul make it clear that it is possible to be angry in a manner that is not sinful:
Be angry and do not sin…
(Ephesians 4:26 ESV)
As we’ve already seen in verse 9, Nehemiah’s anger is driven by the fact that God’s people and therefore God Himself is being mocked because of the conflict between these Jewish brothers. I think I can make a good case from the Scriptures that we not only have a right to be angry when God’s character and reputation is being attacked, but we actually we have a responsibility to react with the kind of righteous indignation that characterized Nehemiah’s response here.
But Nehemiah handles that anger in a very wise manner. The wording in verse 7 seems a bit strange to us, but essentially what Nehemiah is saying is that before he acted on his anger, he took a deep breath and considered carefully how he was going to respond. And although we’re not told specifically that he did, I think that based on Nehemiah’s track record, the act of “taking counsel with himself” also included seeking God’s direction through prayer.
When he does respond, Nehemiah doesn’t beat around the bush. He directly confronts the wrongs being perpetrated on the Jews by their nobles and officials. And Nehemiah judges them, not based on his own feelings or some arbitrary standards, but based on the Word of God. That is an important example for us to keep in mind.
While God did not prohibit loaning money or charging interest on a loan, He did place some restrictions on charging interest when loaning to fellow Israelites:
“You shall not charge interest on loans to your brother, interest on money, interest on food, interest on anything that is lent for interest. You may charge a foreigner interest, but you may not charge your brother interest, that the LORD your God may bless you in all that you undertake in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.
(Deuteronomy 23:19-20 ESV)
Here Nehemiah confirms the need for us to confront our fellow believers when we see them violate the Word of God. Unfortunately, in our culture that is not a real popular thing to do. Sometimes it seems like the only Scripture some people know is Matthew 7:1:
“Judge not, that you be not judged.
(Matthew 7:1 ESV)
And how many times is that verse taken out of context to try and convince others that they have no right to confront us about sin in our lives? But if we read that verse in context and consider it in the context of Scripture as a whole, we find that not only does the Bible not prohibit us from confronting ongoing, unrepentant sin, it actually requires that we do that for those who are part of the body of Christ. But, like Nehemiah, we must make sure that when we do that we always use the Word of God, and not our own feelings or opinions, as the standard.
And as soon as Nehemiah confronts these community leaders who had been exploiting their own people, it is quite apparent that they recognize their sin. So they have nothing to say in their own defense.
That brings us back to the verse we began with earlier – the verse that is the key verse in this entire chapter – verse 9:
So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?
(Nehemiah 5:9 ESV)
Nehemiah goes beyond just the surface symptoms here and gets right to the heart of the issue. The reason these well-to-do Jews were taking advantage of their own brothers and sisters was that they did not have an appropriate fear of the Lord. They were so self-centered and self-focused that they failed to see how their actions were not only hurting their fellow citizens, but also damaging God’s reputation among the surrounding nations.
Unfortunately, we are not immune to doing the very same thing today. It’s so easy to get so focused on self that we end up treating our brothers and sisters in Christ in a way that not only harms them, but also makes the body of Christ less attractive to those who have not yet committed their lives to Jesus.
But Nehemiah does more than just pointing out the problem. He also proposes a practical solution to the problem:
Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.”
(Nehemiah 5:10-11 ESV)
As we’ll see in greater detail at the end of the chapter, Nehemiah had been very generous with his own resources in helping out the people who were struggling financially. He had been lending to his fellow Jews, but had been following God’s commands when doing that. When he says, “Let us abandon this exacting of interest”, he is not implying that he has been doing that but merely calling on his fellow Jews to join him in being obedient to God’s commands in this area.
You’ll notice an important principle of conflict resolution here. Not only did repairing these relationships require that the rich quit exploiting the poor, they also needed to make proper restitution in order to restore what rightly belonged to these people.
The people whom had been confronted about their sin immediately agreed to do what they needed to do in order to restore these relationships:
Then they said, “We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say.” And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said “Amen” and praised the LORD. And the people did as they had promised.
(Nehemiah 5:12-13 ESV)
Since this issue was one that had affected the community as a whole, it demanded public rebuke and repentance. So Nehemiah called all the people together and had these nobles and officials make a public vow. Not only did this serve an important purpose in restoring the relationships within the entire community, it also provided a means of accountability. And the end result was that all the people joined together with a loud amen and departed as a united body.
Before we make some concluding observations, let’s briefly look at the end of the chapter:
Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I did not do so, because of the fear of God. I also persevered in the work on this wall, and we acquired no land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work. Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations that were around us. Now what was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox and six choice sheep and birds, and every ten days all kinds of wine in abundance. Yet for all this I did not demand the food allowance of the governor, because the service was too heavy on this people. Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people.
(Nehemiah 5:14-19 ESV)
This confirms what we concluded earlier about how Nehemiah had treated his fellow Jews. As the governor, he had the right to do what previous governors had done and demand that the people support a lavish lifestyle for him. But instead of doing that Nehemiah used his own resources to regularly feed a group of his fellow Jews as well as officials from the surrounding nations. And at the end of verse 15 we see what motivated Nehemiah to act in this manner – his fear of God. This was in stark contrast to what we saw in the first part of the chapter where those who did not fear the Lord mistreated their fellow Jews.
I can’t help but think that Nehemiah’s actions here served as a great testimony to the people of the surrounding nations. When others saw the way he served his fellow Jews in the name of his God, that would have brought glory to God.
Some concluding thoughts and observations
As I mentioned at the beginning of the message, I don’t have a list of principles that I’m going to leave you with this morning. In fact, I may very well leave you with more questions than answers this morning, because that’s kind of where I’m at after studying this passage this week.
My prayer is that some of you can help answer some of those questions for me personally and for us as a body. So as you consider this passage prayerfully, will you share with me and with others the ideas that God brings to mind?
Perhaps the most important idea that comes from this passage is that our effectiveness in carrying out our mission to develop mature disciples of Jesus is directly correlated to the way we treat each other in the body of Christ. When there is unresolved conflict in the church, it not only impacts our relationships with each other, but it harms our testimony to our community outside the church. So before we can ever hope to reach our world for Jesus, we must first care for one another. That’s the point Jesus was making when He spoke these familiar words:
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
(John 13:34-35 ESV)
The primary way people are going to be drawn to Jesus is not by our words, but by the way we love one another within the body of Christ.
So one of my first reactions to this passage was “Thank you Lord that we don’t have these kinds of problems in our church.” But the more I thought about that, I’m not totally sure that is an entirely good thing. I’m wondering if one of the reasons we don’t have this kind of conflict at TFC is because we just don’t live together in community in the same manner that these people did.
The sad truth is that many of you won’t have any contact with any other member of this church, other than perhaps your own family members, until you come back here again next Sunday. I understand that our culture is certainly a lot different that it was in Nehemiah’s day so I know there are a lot of reasons for that.
For the most part, the people who were rebuilding the wall lived within a few miles of each other and many of them were working side-by-side every day with their neighbors. Today, we’re all scattered over a much wider geographic area so we don’t live in the same neighborhoods or work together for the most part.
Our lives are so busy today. Think of all the things that take up our time that didn’t even exist in Nehemiah’s day. Back then people didn’t have television, movies, the internet and smartphones. Their kids weren’t in Little League or gymnastics or Boys Scouts or taking dance lessons or participating in all the other activities that keep our families so busy today. The home was the primary place of instruction. So instead of shipping their kids off to day care or school for the day, the parents lived life with their kids and actually spent time working alongside them, teaching them a trade or working beside them in the fields, often with others in the community. So people actually spent time with each other and talked to each other – and not by text or email.
And as we’ve talked about recently, innovation and technology has made it much easier for us to isolate ourselves from each other and our community. I’m still convinced that one of the worst inventions ever in terms of encouraging isolation is the garage door opener that makes it possible for us to come and go from our homes without ever having to interact with our neighbors. And those who claim to be Christians are increasingly leaving the church and relying on television and the internet for their spiritual nourishment instead of spending time with their fellow believers.
So I get it – living together in community today is so much harder than it was 2,500 years ago. But since it is clear from God’s Word that living together in community is necessary for us to grow personally and for us to minister effectively to others in the name of Jesus, then it must be possible for us to do that. So it’s really frustrating to me to see just how little of that is going on, not only here at TFC, but in the church in America in general. And frankly, I have no idea how to change that.
I do know this, it’s not a matter of adding new programs or ministries. Over the time I’ve been here at TFC we’ve provided all kinds of opportunities for people to connect with each other, but other than the hour or so we meet on Sunday mornings, there has been very littler participation.
What we do need, it seems, is a change in our mindset in which we make our participation in this community of believes a priority in our lives. And frankly, I don’t know how to accomplish that other than to pray that God would do that. So I want to ask for your help here. First, will you join me in praying for God to transform our minds and hearts so that we’ll make living together in community a priority? And then as you pray if God puts some thoughts on how to accomplish that in your heart, would you share that with me or with our elders?
The problems between the Jewish brothers and sisters there in Jerusalem had been ongoing for quite some time. It wasn’t until the people were willing to bring the conflicts out into the open and that a skillful leader like Nehemiah was able to lead the people to repent and reconcile that the people could get back to the work God had given them and live together in a way that didn’t reflect poorly on their God. I’m hopeful that one reason that we don’t have a lot of open conflict here at TFC is that we’ve done a good job of dealing with conflict when it occurs and not letting it fester under the surface where it can rear its ugly head and do major damage.
Unfortunately that hasn’t always been the case and there have been times in the past when there was conflict that was left unresolved that led to division and a lack of unity right here at TFC. And when that occurred, not only did it have an impact on some of us as individuals and all of us as a body, I know that it also impacted our witness to unbelievers.
So will you join me in committing to handle conflict like Nehemiah led the people to do here in Nehemiah 5? When there is some kind of conflict, will you address it quickly and directly? Will you develop plans that are part of the solution rather than part of the problem? When it is required in order to bring reconciliation will you repent and make appropriate restitution? Will you demonstrate your fear of the Lord by keeping your focus on what is best for His kingdom and for His glory?
If we’ll do that consistently, then I’m confident that others will look at our lives, both individually and as a body and see something that is worth becoming a part of.
