Nehemiah - Chapter 5: Nehemiah Helps the Poor
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
We are continuing in our Nehemiah series, and I hope you guys have enjoyed this. I know it's been something that us as a teaching team has really enjoyed, really digging into scripture and a lot of the historical background and a lot of the context of what's happening in Jerusalem and in Israel and Judea and kind of the surrounding nations of what's happening during this time in history. And what I love is that we can look back on these situations and these stories, and we can see that God moved. That it didn't matter what was happening in the world, didn't matter what society and culture was saying, whether they were obedient or wanting to worship God or not, God still moved. God still blessed, God still provided victory, God still moved in the hearts of his people. And so if there's anything I think for us to take away from Nehemiah as a whole is that God is still moving. God is still up to something. God is working sometimes in the shadows and out of our, maybe our peripheral, and we think, "God, I don't see you moving. "Are you really doing anything?" And I wanna encourage you today, he is. He's moving, he's doing something, he's up, always going and making things happen. And so if I can encourage you in that today, please, please be encouraged.
So Nehemiah chapter five, Nehemiah has come back to Jerusalem. They're rebuilding the wall. He's moved by God when he hears about the state of the ruins that is the beloved city. And so he asks of his boss, the cupbearer that he is, to the king, "Can I go back?" And by God's grace, he grants him that wish to be able to go back to Jerusalem. So Nehemiah goes back and finds that the city is probably worse off than he ever thought it was, or the stories that he had heard. But that doesn't stop him. He's encouraged still to begin to rebuild the wall and he actually becomes governor of Judea, the surrounding region, and by the grace of the king to be in charge. And so he begins the rebuilding process. He calls people to say, "Hey, stop what you're doing. Stop with your businesses. Stop with the things that you're working on in your own personal time, but come take on a section of the wall with us." And we together as a group, we'll take on all parts of the cities, all the gates, everything. And we're gonna re-secure Jerusalem. The temple has been rebuilt after it was destroyed. And that is great, but the city of Jerusalem itself is still at exposure for attack. And so Nehemiah with his crew, they start rebuilding the walls. And what happens when we say that I'm gonna answer the call to God in our lives? What happens? The enemy rolls in, right? The enemy shows up 'cause he goes, "I don't like what you're doing. I'm gonna start messing with you." And so last week, chapter four, Pastor Lauren talked about this opposition that has come out of the woodwork to show up, to tell Nehemiah and his team of builders, "You ain't gonna do this. There is no chance that you, a bunch of jabronis, are even gonna be able to think about rebuilding this wall. You don't have the talent. You don't have the resources. You don't have enough people. You don't have what it takes to rebuild this." And so Nehemiah pushes back against this opposition to the point where attacks start coming. His people start being attacked as they're trying to rebuild. Nehemiah goes, "All right, that's what's up." He's like, "All right, team. Tomorrow, when you wake up, you're gonna go to work with a hammer and with a sword. You're gonna use the hammer in one hand to rebuild the wall, and you use that sword to push back anybody who tries to come and attack you." Nehemiah ain't messing around. Nehemiah has showed up, and he is like, "There ain't nothing that can stop us from doing the calling and the will of God for our lives and what we have been for this moment and this time." I love Nehemiah's just grit to just not give up.
And so we're gonna jump in chapter five, and everything is perfect now. That's a joke. That's a joke. Not everything is perfect. It's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better. So Nehemiah chapter five, we're gonna start in verse one. It says this, "Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews." Uh-oh. "Some were saying, 'We and our sons and daughters are numerous. In order for us to eat and to stay alive, we must get grain. There ain't no food.' Others were saying, 'We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our homes to get grain during the famine.' Still others were saying, 'We have to borrow money to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards. Although we are the same flesh and blood of our fellow Jews, and although our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.’"
A little context of what's happening here in this moment in Jerusalem. There's a couple of things that are going on. We open up in this scene of chapter five, and it talks about the poverty in the province of Jerusalem and Judea and the surrounding countries. And the problem is there's two causes. The first of which is that during this time, commercial and opportunity for commerce is actually cut off with their neighbors because of the conflict that they have. So this normal trading and selling and bartering and flow of money that usually happens within a large metropolis or city center isn't happening because they don't have anybody to trade with. And then on top of that, they have been asked by Nehemiah to stop what they're doing in their craft, their business, their trade, to come help rebuild the wall. And so what happens with that? Well, if they aren't doing their job, they're not attending to their fields, they're not running their business, they're not at their shop, they're not working their trade, they don't have any income for their family. And as we read here, they're in a time of where food is scarce. And so what do they do? Well, they go to their fellow brothers and sisters, those Jews, and basically they mortgage up their possessions for food, knowing that the rebuilding wall isn't gonna last forever, and that for the short term, they can borrow money to buy food to feed their families, and they'll get by, and then on the back end, when they start their businesses back up, they'll get the money to repay back those who have been generous with them. So their houses, their land, their orchard, and even their family are being put on sale to be able to just pay taxes to the Persian empire and to buy food.
This was not a good situation. By this point, when we hear this, that people are coming to Nehemiah, it's gotten real, real bad. So Nehemiah realizes he's gotta do something about this. So he continues on, verse six. "When I heard their outcry and these charges, "I was very angry. "I pondered them on my mind "and then accused the nobles and officials. "I told them, you are charging your own people interests." See, what happened in this time is that the more wealthy, the more well-off people in this situation were basically giving out loans to those who couldn't pay or have money for food and their taxes. And this was a good thing. These people are taking up of their own life and putting on paws and rebuilding the wall. And so this charity that's happening is great. This is what God wants. When we're in situations where we face hard times with one another in our family, God calls of us to help each other out. Sometimes that means throwing some Benjamins out there and saying, "Hey, I got you on this one. "Don't worry about it. "It's gonna be okay." But the problem is, is they're charging interest on these loans. You may think, well, what's wrong with that? Like that's life. That's part of how business and commerce works. Well, actually, charging interest on loans against a fellow brother and sister, a Jew, was actually against the Jewish law. It says in Deuteronomy 23:19, "Do not charge a fellow Israelite interest, "whether on money or food or anything else "that may earn interest." Nehemiah didn't have a problem with people helping each other out and saying, "Hey, here you go. "I got you. "We're gonna rebuild this wall. "We're gonna get it taken care of "and we're gonna get our city back up and running." The problem was where they were charging interest to their fellow brother or sister, that they own family. They were burdening them on top of the burden that they were already facing.
And Nehemiah is outraged. He's furious. And he goes, "This is just another example "of how far Israel was lost coming back after the exile." But there's this greed in here, this greed for these wealthy Jews that were leveraging the less financially stable brothers and sisters for their own personal gain. Which if you really think about it, these people are just trying to rebuild the wall for the city that everybody lives in, where everybody has their business, where everybody has their families. And these people are charging exuberant interest to the point of basically going, "Okay, if I take my oldest, Adeline, "and I go, 'Okay, Addi, "'Dad and the family needs food for dinner. "'You're gonna go work for Mr. Smith today "'and do whatever and clean his house "'and do his dry cleaning and run errands "'and do his grocery shopping and go pick up Uber "'and get in his food and bring into his lunch.'" Like basically going, "Mr. Smith, I need 20 bucks. "Here's my daughter. "And I hope in the end I can take my money "that I've earned on the backside "and buy my daughter back." Like this is what's happening. And Nehemiah is just so frustrated. He's like, "Are you kidding me? "Why are you letting this happen?”
Verse seven, "So he called together a large meeting to deal with them. And he said, 'As far as possible, we have brought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles, original captivity. Now you are selling your own people only for them to be sold back to us.' They kept quiet because they could find nothing to say. So I continued, 'What you're doing is not right. Shouldn't you walk in fear of our God and avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies? I and my brothers and my men were also leading the people money and grain. But let us stop charging interests. Give back to them immediately their fields, vineyards, olive groves, houses, and also the interest that you are charging, one percent of the money, grain, and new wine and olive oil.' They say, 'We will give it back,' they said. ‘And we will not demand anything more from them. "We will do as you say.’”
So Nehemiah gathers them all up and is like, "All right, we're gonna have a little "come to Jesus moment here right now." And he calls them on the carpet. He's like, "What are you guys doing? "Are you for real right now?" That's my loose translation. Knock it off! What are you doing? He's like, "We've gone through this time "where we ourselves were in captivity, "and we've done everything we can to bring back "as many as we know about to come back to Jerusalem. "And then just to turn around "and you do the exact same thing that you hated before "that the Babylonians and the Persians did to you, "you're now doing it not to just other people, "but your own family. "Stop it! "Why? "Why do you even think this is okay?" And he's like, "I get that people would do that around us, "like our enemies, the other pagan gods "and cultures around us, they don't know any better. "They just do that because they think that's what life is. "You guys know better! "You guys know that you shouldn't be acting like this. "You are the people of God for criminy's sake, come on!" I think Nehemiah used some choice words here that probably aren't appropriate for livestream. And what happens? They ain't got nothing to say, why? 'Cause they know. You ready to call somebody out for something? And they just sit there in silence? They know! They know exactly what they've done, they know exactly how they've treated their brothers and sisters, their fellow Jew. This isn't any surprise to them. And so thankfully they admit what they've done and they're like, "We're gonna do everything we can "to make it right. "We're gonna give it back, we're gonna bring back the, "like give 'em back the interest, "and we're gonna give 'em 1% on top of all that "for all the trouble."
Nehemiah continues on, verse 12. "Then I summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised.” Nehemiah ain't messing around. He's not like, "Oh, well yeah, we'll do it." And he's like, "Okay, cool, have a good day." He's like, "No, no, no, no, no. "We're gonna bring in the officials here. "We're gonna make this real." He said, "I also shook out the folds of my robe "and said, 'In the same way, God, shake out of their house "'and possessions anyone who does not keep this promise.'" Woo! "So may such a person be shaken out and emptied. "At this, the whole assembly said, 'Amen!' "And praised the Lord. "And the people did what they had promised.”
I think it's really important to look at this chapter and this first section and to really see how you and I, as people of God and followers of Jesus Christ, are called to address and confront injustice when we see it. Unfortunately, we live in a world where this is sometimes polarizing in the church. And that really breaks my heart because this shouldn't be something that's polarizing in the church, right? This should be something that we see in the light in which God sees it himself. God is a just God. And I'm not going down the path here of politics or critical race theory. I'm not going down that road. What I am going down is a biblical road. When we look at scripture, we see how God sees injustice in our world. And we live in a world where there is injustice. There's injustice against the unborn. There's immigration injustice. There's injustice against women. There's racial injustice. And we live in a broken world. Probably didn't think I was going somewhere like this this morning, but here we are. And when we look at this word, just, it actually has its roots in the word critique. And really what here we're focusing on is that the word of God should adjust our lives correctly, rightly in the way that God desires for all humans to live and to act and to care for one another. To be this idea of shalom or peace in a chaotic, broken, selfish world. To be as Christ followers, we are called to reflect the imago Dei or the image of God in which we are created to the world around us, to reflect Christ to those around us. And if so, if God is a just God, then our actions, our behaviors, and how we treat one another should be just as well. Justice really means using the word of God, his word for us, to make right decisions, to make righteous decisions, to make truthful decisions, to be God honoring, to be reflecting of who God is and what he desires for us. So when Nehemiah hears of what is happening with his people, he cannot even believe it. He can't even realize what's going on and he gets so angry. And I think sometimes we have this thought process in our mind that when we hear of injustice, if we just get angry about it, then we've checked the box. Or maybe we make a social media post and say, "This is not right." And we go, "Okay, did my injustice work for the day, God? "Thank you." But I think there's more to it. And I'm not saying that doing that stuff is bad. I think that's a good, maybe a starting place or what God is asking or calling of you to do.
But I think there's so much more here that we see from Nehemiah that applies to our lives. The problem is that this isn't just limited to us today. When we read the Bible, even from the first book in Genesis, we see of injustice happening immediately after the fall. Why? Because we're selfish people. We're sinful people. We like to be God ourselves. We wanna be in charge, we wanna be in control. We want what we want. And so in that naturally happens the putting down of others because we think higher of ourselves. And honestly, when people are selfish and there's an opportunity for money, this gets cranked up to the max. It's the downfall of society since the beginning. And this is just the natural bent when we have someone who lives their life apart from Jesus, apart from the Holy Spirit. It's just the natural flow in which we go. But God expects us to live different, right? God expects us to treat one another in a different way because of who he is. And this isn't a political thing. This isn't because we find ourselves in this season right now, but the reality of when Nehemiah hears injustice, he knows that he has to move. Nehemiah hears the cry of the people and is moved. He can't sit back. He can't just let this go on. He can't just turn a blind eye. He realizes he has to act. And he moves in boldness. He doesn't just go, "Oh, you know, I'll give another week." It'll probably clear itself up in six months or so. If I just ignore it, it'll just correct its own path. Like, right? It'll be all right. Nehemiah, no. He realizes he has to do, so what does he do? He calls everybody together. He groups them up, says, "Stop it. "This is not how we care for one another. "This is not how we share the love "that God has shared with us, with each other. "How could we be doing this?"
And you think, "Well, you know what? "Nehemiah's in charge. "He's the boss. "It's not that hard." Have you read chapter four? Nehemiah has outside people coming at him, and now he's got inside people coming back at each other. Nehemiah can't walk through the city without somebody probably giving him an ugly glare. He's probably not the most popular person in town right now. Nehemiah is having it come at him from all sides, and yet what? He still moves in boldness. He says, "I don't care what other people think of me. "I don't care what others may do to me. "I don't care what the repercussions of this "is going to be when there is injustice. "I have to move." Nehemiah realizes that he is going to have to lead by example. He can't just sit and watch and let this happen. He has to act.
Verse 14, "Moreover, in the 20th year of King Arxerxes, when I was appointed to be the governor of the land of Judah until his 32nd year, 12 years in total, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. But the earlier governors who preceded me placed a heavy burden on the people and took 40 shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people, but out of reverence for God, I did not act like that. Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled here for the work. We did not acquire any land. Furthermore, 150 Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from surrounding nations. Each day, guys, catch this, "Each day, an ox, six choice sheep, and some poultry "were prepared for me, and every 10 days, an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all of this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor because the demands were already heavy on these people.”
Nehemiah leads by example. This wasn't a singular moment in the history of Nehemiah and his leadership reign that he just moved. It was a situation where it started way back when he became first governor, 12 years earlier. He made a choice to honor God above honoring himself. And I think for us, this is the example for our lives, that consistent behavior outshines a single moment or decision. For Nehemiah, it meant the past 12 years, he led different than the previous governors. He did not take and act in the same way that he had done by adding extra taxes, taking food allotments from the people, land seizure, or anything in the like. But not only that, even the nobles and political officials underneath him didn't do that as well, which was the usual day of culture. Nobody would have judged Nehemiah if he had acted in that way. Previous governors had done it, previous governors before them had done it, the officials underneath them had done it, everybody had taken their extra piece along the way and padded their pockets. But when Nehemiah showed up to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall, he knew his behavior needed to be different. He knew his behavior needed to lead in a way that was not like usual, in a way that was honoring God, not necessarily for the sake of the people, but out of reverence to his heavenly father. Nehemiah wasn't out here thinking, okay, well, I gotta build a wall and I need a lot of people, so if I just don't take from them, maybe they're gonna be more inclined to pick up a hammer and help out. No, Nehemiah made this choice himself to say, I'm going to honor God above anything else. And even though he could take and have personal gain and to have wealth and to build up what he wanted, he said, no, I'm not gonna do that and everybody underneath me will neither do that. We're gonna lead with integrity, we're gonna lead with honor and we're gonna lead with respect as a witness to God. I hear this sometimes and it kind of makes me chuckle because of it being overused in the church sometime, but Nehemiah had an audience of one and that was God. Nehemiah didn't care about anybody else, their approval, their popularity, their money, their wealth, whatever. Nehemiah cared about honoring God.
And not only that, every day Nehemiah opened up his home. Now I don't know how big this dude's house was, but if you're hosting 150 people every single day, you probably have a pretty good getup. But every day he fed 150 people, whether it was those working on the walls, it was the people in town, it was people that were using Jerusalem as a travel waypoint to get to the Persian capital city and the empire, whatever it was, every single day he fed 150 people with an ox, it's a big old cow, that's a lot of meat, six sheep, and not just the leftover sheep, the choice sheep, the best of the best, and birds. I don't know how many birds, but I think you probably need a few birds plus the ox, plus the sheep to feed all of those people. And even with all of that, providing that every single day, Nehemiah never took a dime extra for anybody in the city. It's quite an example. If you ask me, that's quite a witness of consistent behavior outshining a single moment or the decision. You might've heard that people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. The relational equity that Nehemiah had built up after 12 years of daily inviting people in, of showing up at the wall, of putting himself on the line, he wasn't a supervisor. Nehemiah didn't wander the walls with a clipboard and an orange helmet. He was there working with a hammer and a sword right beside his brothers and sisters, rebuilding that wall. And yet he continued to serve them, to love them, to care for them. So when he hears of injustice, he realizes he has to move.
And what's his motive? It says in verse 19, "Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people." Nehemiah's boldness to step up, to take everything head on, and to address this economical injustice is a powerful example for us. It's a powerful example for you and for me and how God has called us to live our lives today. For how we see injustice in so many forms in our life today, and we too are called to respond. We are called to act just like Nehemiah did. And for Nehemiah, it was a daily consistent act of generosity in the way that he treated his fellow Israelites and anybody who traveled through the city. It was in small ways that he shared with them. It was in not taking extra that was even allotted to him, but in turn to give witness to God. It was through his living in lockstep with scripture that showed the people around him who was God.
So what about us? This past Wednesday, we started a study on generosity. I didn't mean for these to line up here, but here they are lined up. And we learned in our study that 25% of the teaching that Jesus gave here on earth was about money and possessions. That would mean if we followed in lockstep, every fourth sermon, you'd hear me talking about money. I don't know how many of you would last. You'd be like, I'm going to the church down the street. See ya. But this is pretty powerful if you think about this for a moment. That Jesus saw and thought of it to be that important that 25% of the time, he's talking about money and possessions. Why? Because he says this in Matthew 6, 22 and 23, which I think puts us all in perspective. Jesus says, "The eye is the lamp of the body. "If your eyes are unhealthy, "your whole body will be full of light. "But if your eyes are unhealthy, "your whole body will be full of darkness. "If then the light within you is darkness, "how great is that darkness." What does Jesus mean by this? Well, he means this. There was a Jewish understanding that the eye of the body was your perspective. And if you had an healthy eye, you had a healthy, good, right perspective on life. And if you were to say, "Oh, that guy has an unhealthy eye." That would mean that that person does not have a biblical, sound, healthy, righteous view on life. And so Nehemiah was a man who had a healthy eye. He had a healthy perspective and an understanding on what it meant to live life to honor God, to address injustice when he saw it and act boldly in the leading of God. But it started with him. I think sometimes we see justice in this world and we just think those people need to change. We see something and go, "Well, they're the one with the problem.”
But it starts with you and me. It starts with us. The people of Jerusalem were acting different than the surrounding nations in no way. Nehemiah says, "You're nothing different "than the people that we call our enemies "treat each other around us." How are we to live like this? The calling of generosity that God set in Jerusalem was for them to loan money, which was good without interest or extra stipulations to solely lend a helping hand to those who were working towards the rebuilding process in their efforts. Where they went wrong was when they were treating those with which they had loaned that money to, to power over them, to lord over them, to control them, to take extra from them. Sometimes I think the biggest obstacles to community is ourselves. The biggest thing that gets in the way from God moving in a group of people is themselves. And our willingness to own up our mistakes and to repent, to ask for forgiveness and take the necessary actions to correct it. When confronted by Nehemiah, the nobles and officials admit to their wrongdoings and agreed to restore what had been taken. I think this illustration shows, improves the importance of restitution and restorate, restorating, restoring, sorry, broken relationships to foster unity. Unfortunately, recent studies have shown that the church isn't a very loving and trusting place anymore. Now I think you might go, well, they didn't interview our church.
But I think the reality is that the world looks at the church and goes, you're no different than us. Just like the surrounding nations looked at Pete, the Israelites in Jerusalem and said, you're no different than us. But God says we're called to live in a different way. They're called to be witnesses. And you and I are called to be witnesses. Not only in this, our family inside these four walls, but outside these as well. Where people drive by every day at this stop sign and look at that church, what do they say? Do they say they got a jokester who puts jokes on the corner? Do they say that that's a caring, loving place? Do they say those people are a bunch of greedy haters? Would they think of coming through those doors when life hits them hard? To think that they would find something different than the world had promised them where they find emptiness. Would they find hope, encouragement, joy in this place? I hope so. That's my heart, that's my prayer. Pastor Andre talked about this all the time going, how can we become the greatest example and witness of Jesus at the corner of Sunset and Fairway? How can we do that? We too are called to live and act in this same way because our credibility comes in the consistency of the small things. To be a witness in our generosity, the way that we treat our fellow brothers and sisters both inside and outside of the church, to give to the poor, to the needy, to the hurting, to the lost, it starts with us. It starts with you and me having a consistent daily heart of generosity, living out and looking for ways in which we can care for others even when they don't deserve it. 'Cause what happened? Jesus came and gave of himself to death on the cross when we weren't deserving. That's the ultimate example of grace and mercy and love. And we want no love without Jesus on the cross. It says in Micah that we are called to act justly, love mercy, and to walk humbly before God just like Nehemiah did. So a couple questions as we close this morning. How is God calling you to a more consistently generous life? I think it starts opening our hands and living our life with what God has given us. And to say, Jesus is yours. You've blessed me with it. How do you want me to use it? And then the other question, where do you need to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God this week? I mean, we all can get better at this. I'll be the first to raise my hand and say I need to be better at this. I got this on the schedule in this chapter. I was reading through it. I'm like, okay, cool, Nehemiah. And I started digging in deep and I'm like, oh, I don't wanna teach this guy. I don't wanna be the bearer of bad news. I wanna be the funny guy. But I think for us, it's to act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly before God every single day. To walk in lockstep with the Holy Spirit guiding our lives. And he will let us know how to move in boldness. I don't have time to get into the weeds of how we address injustice in our world, in our life today.
But when I look at Nehemiah's example of how he lived it out every single day for 12 years, I think that's where you start. And then when God says you need to move, you need to act, you need to step up, you've already practiced it for years on the daily. That'll be a natural movement. It's not gonna be awkward. It's not gonna be strange. It's not gonna be scary. You're gonna be, I'm just moving the way that God is asking me to move. How will we be generous today, tomorrow, and every day until we see Jesus?
Let's pray. Jesus, thank you so much for your word. God, thank you for your servant, Nehemiah. Jesus, that he moved in boldness. He stepped up and addressed the injustice. But it didn't happen in just a moment. It was a lifelong habit, a lifelong rhythm that he had built in for 12 years to act differently, to not take what he could have taken, to not lord over the people of Israel, but to walk humbly with you, God, his audience of one. So God, I pray for us today that we would trust you. We would listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives to move. We would listen for the prompting of the Holy Spirit in our lives to move how you want us to move, to act how you want us to act, and to be generous, God, with everything that we have been given. Jesus, give us a healthy eye of the world around us and how we are to treat one another who are all created in the image of you, God. We love you, Jesus. Amen.