There exists a direct correlation between the effectiveness of our mission and how we treat one another as God’s people. We must be the church before we can build the church. We must care for one another before we can hope to reach our neighborhood, this city, the world.
*No one is going to believe our witness, if our witness isn’t consistent with the one we are witnessing about. The text in Nehemiah 5 is ALL about this witness. We must BE the church before we BUILD it.
The Wall Is Nearly Done
It took years to complete Jerusalem’s wall.
It began with the construction with the altar so the priests could offer sacrifices to God. Everything they did, everything they hoped to do was overshadowed by the smoke from the sacrifices that were offered daily to Yahweh, God our Father.
They did not build the wall first. They built the altar first. Then the temple. Without the massive walls needed for protection, the Jews labored on the foundation. A massive hole was dug by hand with iron age style tools and it was then filled with huge stones. The temple would need to be stable. They faced opposition all along the way from guys like Sanballat and Tobiah. They mocked what they were doing, threatened what they were doing, and finally managed to stop what they were doing by sending a message to the King of Persia.
The Jewish people’s historic habit for violent uprisings and failing to pay their taxes worked against them and the King stopped further construction. Just when the foundation was laid! After some years, the ancient edict of a previous king was found which authorized the building of the temple and construction resumed.
Then, the wall would begin. This was a mammoth project to provide for the protection of the Holy City, the temple and her people. They had nearly finished with the wall. After all the opposition, after all the politics, after all the feuding with their neighbors they were on the brink of success.
To protect themselves, and simultaneously work on the wall, the laborers on the wall would work in bricks, mortar and stone with one hand and with the other they would hold a spear. The Jews had finally defeated their enemies; the wall would be built.
But…
Internal issues surfaced
The people had worked wholeheartedly on the temple and the wall. Now that the wall was nearly done, there were many among them who could remain silent no longer.
Nehemiah 5:1-5
While the wall was being built by dedicated, faithful people who loved God and Nehemiah, the people were being swallowed up by debt. There is no evidence whatsoever that those who worked on the Jerusalem wall were being paid anything. They had evidently left farming which would provide food and financial support to their families to build the wall.
The wall was not a ‘side hustle.’ It was their life. Nehemiah had emphasized that there was nothing, nothing more important than doing this work for the Lord God of Israel. Crops didn’t get raised or they were raised by someone else. Property payments weren’t being made. The marketplace where food and goods were bought and sold were filled with people exhausted from the work on the wall and in debt up to their necks.
A People in overwhelming Debt
This at a time when debt was paid in ways foreign to our customs. For many millennia it was common to sell one’s children and one’s self to pay off a debt. The rich Jews had found a way to exploit the ones living crop to crop. They loaned money and then demanded payment in property and finally, in slavery. Selling one’s children into slavery would have been a last resort certainly. They had to mortgage their farms and vineyards to pay debts they could never pay so they lost their property, and sometimes even their children.
Nehemiah responded…
Nehemiah 5:6-8
The wealthy became wealthier and the middle-class became a destitute class and Nehemiah couldn’t take it. He called a meeting of the nobles AND the officials, meaning the political leaders of the day.
When Nehemiah confronted them with the facts, we find our one and only miracle in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah: these guys kept quiet because they couldn’t find anything to say.
Nehemiah wasn’t done.
Nehemiah 5:9-13
A couple of things really hit me hard here. Their immediate repentance. They didn’t just feel bad about what they had done, they actually took action to remedy what they had done. Like Zacchaeus, perhaps. Jesus found this really short guy up in a tree because he couldn’t see for the crowd. Probably another reason, too. They Jews hated Z because he was a tax collector.
When Jesus invited himself over for lunch he spoke of God’s love and Z agreed to make every unfair tax assessment, every extortion, every evil confiscation of personal property…RIGHT. In fact, he offered to pay back 4 times what he had cheated AND this wealthy man did this…
Luke 19:8-9
These Jews told Nehemiah something similar. We will collect no more debts.
They gave everybody back their farmland, olive orchards, vineyards, and houses AND THE INTEREST they’d been charging. (1% in those days.) :-)
They agreed to this and praised the Lord and the community council meeting was concluded.
Then Nehemiah did something extraordinary. He revealed that the empire had been paying him for his work as governor of Jerusalem but told them that he’d not accepted any compensation that he didn’t have to.
A further reminded by a good leader of what he’d been doing for his people. He’d already set the example of a generous governor. He would not burden his people any more than necessary. They had worked so hard on the wall that he didn’t want his office to be a burden in addition to the work being done.
THREE THINGS THAT WE MUST NOT MISS FROM NEHEMIAH.
Integrity
Love the word integrity because it comes from another English word ‘integer’ which means a whole number. A fraction is not an integer, right Erin McCain? An integer can be 2 or 3 or 5 or 1,400,000 because these are WHOLE NUMBERS. Integrity means that you are a WHOLE PERSON. You live by ONE SET OF principles.
He is the same person at work.
He is the same person at church.
He is the same person with friends.
We hear folks speak of others like this.
“You know ole so and so over there…she’s the same person when she’s with the rich and the poor. She is the same kind of teacher to a gifted student as to a student who is struggling.
Integrity touches EVERY PART OF YOUR LIFE.
In business--are you honest. Are you compassionate? But ‘business is business’ isn’t it? This was the problem with the rich Jews and political officials in Jerusalem. They thought it was all right to exploit people because it was legal. Business is never ‘just’ business. Business is YOU. It’s ME! We’re not excused from our responsibility to treat others like we want to be treated just because it’s business.
Nehemiah was stricken with guilt and remorse and anger for the way they had done ‘business’ in Jerusalem. On the backs of the poor to the point that nobody seemed to mind that CHILDREN WERE BEING SOLD INTO SLAVERY. PEOPLE WERE LOSING THEIR MEANS OF MAKING A LIVING! But it was legal! NO, said Nehemiah! Give back the land. Drop the interest charges. Quit taking advantage of people who don’t have it as good as you do.
When church leaders, whoever they are, Bible class teachers, elders, deacons, ministers, ministry leaders, whatever it is a person does for the family of God treat the well to do better than the poor, we are not being people of integrity.
James 2:1-4
Being people of integrity means we don’t judge people on the basis of what we see. Because we have not seen enough of people’s stories to appreciate them! James calls those who treat the well to do with honor and the poor with indifference are people who are judges with evil thoughts.
Compassion
Nehemiah cared enough to get angry about the mistreatment of the average person. When Jesus the Christ lost his cool in the temple the week of his crucifixion and overturned the money changers tables and drove out the people who were selling pigeons for sacrifices he was saying something about his concern for the poor, average person.
Do you know the kinds of things we blow our stacks about? Not about the mistreatment of the poor, I’ll speculate. We get mad when gas prices go up and WE have to pay more. Or it’s too cold in the church building. What about the poor who can barely afford a car. How is it for them? We think more about ourselves than others. How can we be a people of compassion if we are oblivious to the plight of the poor?
This cruelty to the people of God was being perpetrated by the people of God. We must constantly, vigilantly inventory the things we find ourselves upset about. Are they the things that Jesus Christ cared about?
Humility
One last thing Nehemiah modeled for the nobility and the political leaders of Jerusalem. He took personal responsibility for the plight of those who were treated unjustly.
When he heard the cries from those who were suffering, he immediately took it upon himself to alleviate it! He called all those upon whom had fallen the mantle of leadership to personally do what they needed to do to make this right, immediately!
But Paul, that’s not realistic. We live in a complicated world. We have businesses to run and work for and it’s not easy to make things as right as they should be.
You can do something.
It may not completely fix a problem in your family, at your work, in your home, with your friends, or in the church, BUT it always starts with ME, and YOU. And we must humble ourselves before God and DO something when we see someone who suffers.
Nehemiah modeled this in the way he ran Jerusalem’s government.
Nehemiah 5:17-18
Everything he did was based on two things:
Love for God.
Love for his neighbor. (in this case the people who worked for him)
He was completely committed to his commission to build the wall but he wouldn’t use the urgency of the commission to dilute his compassion for people. We would do well to remember this, all of us who are leaders in whatever the enterprise in life we have chosen to undertake.
Humility is accepting our personal responsibility for the success and failure of the Lord’s work. Humility is accepting the responsibility for our own shortcomings, confessing them to God, and receiving His forgiveness. Then changing our ways to bring about what God wants in our lives.
In his book Soul Talk, Larry Crabb writes:
"Which is worse? A church program to build community that doesn’t get off the ground or one person sitting every Sunday in the back of the church who remains unknown? A Sunday school class that once drew hundreds but has now dwindled to thirty or a Sunday school teacher whose sense of failure is never explored by a caring friend? A family torn apart by the father’s drinking, his wife’s frustration, and their third grader’s learning disabilities or a self-hating dad, a terrified mom, and a lonely little boy, three human beings whose beauty and value no one ever discovers? A national campaign that fails to gain steam for the pro-life movement or a single woman on her way home from an abortion clinic in the backseat of a taxi, a woman whose soul no one ever touches?
We may notice the unknown pew sitter, we wonder how the teacher of the now small class feels, we worry over each member of the torn-up family, and we feel for the guilt and pain of a woman who has ended her baby’s life. But we do what’s easier. We design programs, we brainstorm ways to build attendance, and in our outrage over divorce statistics and abortion numbers we fight for family values.
These are all good things, but we don’t TALK to the pew sitter; we don’t ASK the teacher how he’s feeling; we don’t INVITE the dad to play...
We try to save the world but we don’t help our neighbor. It’s time to be humble and take responsibility for what we CAN do, not fret about the big projects we cannot do. (Extend invitation.)
