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When your morning announcements and your morning bulletin. You’ll notice inside of the bulletin there are some notes. As a church family have been studying the Book of Nehemiah together. On Nehemiah chapter five and in the book of Nehemiah, what we’re all about is the journey of Nehemiah’s life, because we find through Scripture that the Bible is relevant, though it was written in a particular period of time to a particular group of people. It’s as relevant today as it was when it was written, because God’s truth is timeless. In Nehemiah, we’ve been studying the life of Nehemiah, because Nehemiah was called by God for a particular task, and that was to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, one brick at a time. Nehemiah sought the reconstruction of a city that was destroyed by the Babylonian Empire 140 years before Nehemiah’s time. They were carried off into captivity, and Nehemiah. 140 years later, gets the heart of God for the city of Jerusalem, wanting and desiring for that city to be rebuilt. And when Nehemiah carried that heart that Jesus carried for Jerusalem. It tells us in the book of Nehemiah that Nehemiah wept for that city, and for four months Nehemiah fasted and prayed for the city of Jerusalem and the people of Israel wanting to rebuild that great nation. We look at the story of the life of Nehemiah, and we relate it to us as people. Today. What God has called us to do is to build his church.
The Bible tells us in Matthew chapter 16 that God has called us to build his church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. And he commissioned his disciples at the end of his life after his resurrection. In Matthew chapter 28 says, go into this world and make disciples. We understand the functioning purpose of the church is to make disciples. God’s desire for all of us is that we might know him and be conformed to his image. The best that we could hope to succeed and achieve in this world is completely found in who God is. And it should be our desire to grow close with him and not with just ourselves personally, but to understand that every life is important in the eyes of God, and so it doesn’t just matter to us. Christ isn’t just significant to us. What Jesus has called us to do is that passion and desire he puts within our own lives to communicate and share that with other people. God didn’t intend just to save you for the sake of you. He wants to work in the hearts and minds of all people. If that were the case, once you came to trust in him, he would have just taken you to heaven. But God’s desire is to do a work within you. I like to refer to it as a miracle, because when I examine my own life and I see what God has done in my own heart and in my own self and demeanor, the person that I was and the person that I became in Christ is night and day difference.
God has worked a miracle in me, and it was only by the grace of God that such a task was accomplished. When we look in the life of Nehemiah and you see the calling of God and the burden that God has placed upon his heart, you say to yourself, it is only by the grace of God that Nehemiah is ever going to hope to rebuild a city that for 140 years has laid desolate, and by the grace of God, God has equipped and given Nehemiah the power and understanding and instruction and the building needs that. He had to see the city rebuilt. And he went to the area of Jerusalem, and he communicated to the people that were already there that came back through Ezra and Nehemiah. Some 50, 50,000 plus people within that city still laying there with it, desolate. Though having the temple been rebuilt, their walls were exposed. And if you know anything about ancient Israel or the time of that, that we’re talking about the time period, the the security of the city is found within the structure of its walls, the barrier that’s built to keep the outside forces from intruding and stealing and looting the people from and within that city.
And Nehemiah knew that in order for Israel to be brought back to its former glory, and for the Messiah to come, and the promises of Israel, for that nation to be fulfilled, that the walls of Jerusalem needed to be reconstructed and the people needed to feel secure, and that then they could begin to rebuild. Nehemiah goes back to the city of Jerusalem. He begins to convince the people of the need to rebuild the walls, and when he gets there, it tells us that he begins to receive opposition, not from the people of Israel, but from outside. Other people had a different agenda of what they desired for the nation of Israel. It tells us literally every group, people, group that encompassed the nation of Israel from the city of Jerusalem, from the north to the south east to the west, was opposed to Nehemiah’s plan to rebuild the city and God’s plan to see the city of Jerusalem reconstructed. In those moments, we’re reminded even as Christians, that what God has called us to do is to pick up our cross and to follow him. It’s not always easy, but God is always with us. And Nehemiah’s reminder to his people is that God is always with you. This isn’t a following of Jesus out of convenience. It is the following of Jesus that takes sacrifice. And when we talk about rebuilding a church here in Lehi, we talk about building a church in Lehi.
For that church to be successful, whatever it is, wherever it is, if it’s in Christ, for that church to be successful, what it’s going to require of its people is sacrifice. And what God has called each of us to do is to pick up our cross and follow him. To understand that a decision to follow Jesus isn’t easy. Just like Nehemiah found, people are always opposed to who Christ is and what Christ stands for and just stand for. Jesus automatically means that you stand against other people, groups with other ideas and beliefs and philosophies. But Jesus, in our own lives, we understand that. He said, I am the way, I am the truth, and I am the life. No one gets to the father but through me. Jesus’s path is singular. It only comes by him. It’s not a path that says all religions and all worlds are open to accept and receive me. Whatever path you take is fine. Jesus summed it all up in himself. Unless you believe that I am he, you’ll die in your sin. And that stand makes us different from the world, and people will oppose us. But we also find in chapter five that not only did the opposition come without and the people of Israel they picked up, we saw last week the sword and the trowel. The trowel being the the foundational work that they needed to build the wall and the sword that they needed to fight and defend for what they were living for.
And we as Christians need to do that as well. We need to understand that we live in a walk with God. It’s not an instantaneous Christianity where we say, okay, now I’m following Jesus and everything in our lives is perfect. But moment by moment, day by day, we have to choose to walk with God. And in that grow in that relationship, understanding with him and in growing with him. We grow with his church and in growing with his church, we begin to reach out to his community. We really live for what God has called us to do. We do the trowel work and then we do the sword work. We understand that opposition is going to come and many a times it’s not from without. It comes even from within. In acts chapter 20, when Paul met with the Ephesian elders, he asked the the church of Ephesus the elders to come to him because he didn’t desire to go to the city, and the Ephesian elders came down and met with him in chapter 20. What Paul told the Ephesian elders is that there is trouble coming for you, but it’s not trouble that’s going to come from outside of your church. It’s trouble that is going to come from within your group. Your church family is at various times going to internally implode.
The reason for that is sin will reign because no matter how much God desires to walk with him, no matter how much we may desire to walk with God, we mess up and we sin, and we need forgiveness. And the Ephesian elders didn’t need to walk in this world so naively that they didn’t understand or didn’t know that because they knew Jesus didn’t mean that sin wasn’t going to be apparent within that church body, and they needed to work to defend against what they believed. So even in our own church, it requires us as a family to fight with the sword, literally the Word of God. When people present to us truth that isn’t truth, we need to stand up with the Word of God and fight back. That’s the reason. As a church family, we take the time to go through verse by verse within books of the Bible. So you can see as we break down the scripture that this pastor isn’t feeding you lies that you can see as God dictates in His Word. We can grow in that understanding together of what the book of Nehemiah is all about. And in the end, when we have learned about the book of Nehemiah together, we know what it stands for as a church family, making us stronger with the Word of God with our sword. And today, what we’re going to find within this chapter five is that the pressure and the power that Nehemiah fought against as he sought to rebuild the city of Jerusalem didn’t come from without, but it came from within.
The nation of Israel began to implode towards the cause. And this morning, this is what I want to talk about as a church family. If I got a big scope of our understanding of what we want to achieve here is that the nation of Israel is involved in sin and in our own personal lives. At some particular point, we’re going to fall into sin. But in those moments, we need to understand that we need to make a change, a change towards God that allows us to work towards the cause that he has called us to. A change that says despite the opposition and sin that I’m facing, Lord, I want you to work into my heart and my life to do the miracle that you have called me, to live in me and through me. To be that miracle, to build this church. So for us to be a successful church, what it requires for us to do is to grow humbly with our God and fight against sin. Chapter five and verse one, the book of Nehemiah we’re going to learn together is how God desires for us to make a godly change, and we need to face our personal sin. Interesting that when we look at the personal sin that the nation of Israel is facing in the book of Nehemiah chapter five, as it deals with money.
And so this morning I’m going to talk about money for some of the sermon. Now, some of you who might be here for the first time know that we don’t talk about money every service. In fact, this is the first time we’ve talked about money all year long. Okay. And I feel completely comfortable as a pastor standing up here talking about money with you. I know when we watch television on some of those people that run on TV, they try to make Jesus look about like, all he’s after is your money. And I want you to know this morning, I’m not going to turn you upside down and shake your pockets and get all your money out, okay? We’ve already collected today’s offering. It’s not. The baskets aren’t coming back out. We’re not going to lock the doors and make you give everything you have to leave. All right? But the reason I want to talk about money is because money is important to God. Money is really a physical expression for us to be able to see where our hearts are directed when it comes to our relationship with God. And for Israel, that’s what it identified for them. Money became an indicator of what their heart condition was, and they didn’t even realize. I don’t think, according to this text, that they were really involved in that much sin.
Maybe they didn’t even think they were sinning at all. You ever done that in your life where you were doing something wrong, you didn’t really know what it was, and all of a sudden, maybe your spouse or a friend pointed out to you, you’re like, oh, I can’t believe that was happening. What was I thinking? That’s kind of the idea that we get with the passage of Nehemiah chapter five. But it’s dealing with money. When Israel, the nation of Israel, can see what’s happening with their money. They begin to make that godly change. Whatever sin you’re involved in with your life, in your life. We’re always at some point refusing to follow after God to some degree or another when we recognize it. It’s significant, important to our well-being in the body of Christ that we make a change. It says in verse one of chapter five, now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their Jewish brothers. It’s good for the ladies here. They recognize a problem. And so they begin to point out the need. And it says in verse seven, Nehemiah talking. After thinking it over, I spoke out against these nobles and officials, and I told them, you are hurting your own relatives by charging interest when they borrow money. Then I called a public meeting to deal with the problem. Nehemiah is recognizing before the nation that what the problem is dealing with is money.
The Bible says in First Timothy chapter six and verse ten, the love of money is the root of all sin. Israel, here in this passage was loving money instead of loving God. It’s not the possession of money that’s bad. In fact, money can be used for good causes, right? Money brings food. Food provides for family. So money can’t be bad. But it’s the love of money that’s considered bad. So we can use money for good. We talk about causes like the well out in the back where we’re raising money for orphans. Money? Money is used for good. But the love of money, it tells us, is the root of all evil. Jesus and his teaching ministry. Interesting about the life of Christ. When he came to the issue of money. Literally 25% of Jesus’s teachings in the gospel, right? About 25% dealt with the topic of money. You know, the topic of money was so significant to Christ that he literally he taught about money more than he taught about heaven and hell combined. Because he understood that the desire and love that people had for money revealed to them their heart condition. Where was your heart related to God? You can’t love money and love, God tells us. In Matthew chapter six, Jesus says, we can’t serve both God and money. And for some of us, money has become our God. In verse 21, Jesus says, where your treasure is, your heart will follow.
In Matthew chapter six, where are your treasure? Is your heart will follow. If money is an issue this morning for you, I just want you to know that wherever you place your treasure, your heart will begin to follow that. And Nehemiah was identifying this to the nation of Israel when he pointed out in verse seven, they needed to put their heart where God was again. The solution that Israel needed for their problem was God’s perspective. So most of us, when we become a believer in Christ, we don’t realize that we bring our worldly thinking towards the God that we love. Some of us view money as ownership, meaning this it’s my money and you can’t take it away from me. The way Christianity views money is stewardship. Meaning this isn’t my money. Ultimately, it’s God’s money. And God has given me this money to allocate or steward where I see appropriate. Maybe you think of it this way when you get a paycheck, it’s not just your name on the paycheck, it’s also God’s name on that paycheck. And when you go to spend money in the grocery store or wherever, you might have a need, you’re not spending your money. You’re spending God’s money. God has just blessed you with the opportunity to have the money, to be a steward of the money. And so the question that we should ask ourselves is, why does God want my money? But how much of God’s money should I be keeping? Let me tell you why it’s important for us to think as a steward rather than an owner towards our money as a church family is because God has called us to build a church.
That’s what we know as a church. I take no paycheck for anything that this church donates money towards so I can say whatever I want. And as a pastor, every month I’m faced with the same decision as you. How much stewardship am I going to give towards God’s money and allow God to have the money that he has blessed me with back for this church? But God has called us together to build a church. And the reality is, we can’t do that without money. And we began talking last week. Some of the guys at the church got together, and we’re already planning for the next building for this church, it says. And according to statistics. And you guys help us not to be the statistic that once a church reaches 80% of its capacity, it stops growing. I don’t know if you noticed the last couple of weeks, but we’ve been teetering right around there. And so we have to start making plans now of where we’re going to be in our next building for us to get this building. It required me to go back east and to share with churches, because we were so small at the time, we didn’t have the financial ability to meet our needs.
And so to share with them, listen, we’ve got a church family that loves Jesus. We’re growing here, we’re giving towards God, but we don’t have enough money to supply our needs to build a building. Will you help us? And they gave. They blessed our lives with being able to provide for this building. Some $30,000 it took to donate to build the building that we’re in right now. When I go back east this fall again, I’ll communicate to churches that we’re looking to build another building, hopefully a more permanent building for us as a family, but always wrestle with the tension as us, with us as a church. See, as a pastor, I always feel the weight and the burden to look at our church family and say, do we understand the responsibility it is to love God with money? You know, I think as a church family, we do pretty good with understanding comparatively to other churches. The New Testament standard of giving is just completely sacrificial. So we could probably never arise to God willing, we will get there. But, you know, it is a very sacrificial type giving. Most people throw a number out there of 10% was an Old Testament type of sacrifice. But sacrificially is how the New Testament believers gave. But when I go back east, I don’t want to ask people to give towards a cause.
I’m building a church. If we as a church family don’t have the desire to see God’s church built here ourselves, you understand? For the nation of Israel they faced the same thing. Nehemiah is trying to build the nation of Israel back up. He’s trying to build these walls. But the people have lost sight of what God is desiring to accomplish in them, and they’re starting to charge their own people an enormous amount of money, and these people are going into debt and they can’t focus on building the walls anymore. Ministry builds through money. It builds through people who desire to go deeper with God, and people who love to give cheerfully to a God. I don’t want to convict you or make you feel guilty for not giving to God. God wants you to give cheerfully out of love towards him. But the solution that Israel had was that they needed to understand what stewardship was rather than ownership. The result of the sin is that it began to affect everyone. It tells us in chapter two of verse five, if you look at this with me together, it says, for there were those who said, we, our sons and our daughters are many. Therefore let us go get grain that we may eat and live. There was a famine going on at the time. There were others who said, we are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our houses, that we might get grain because of of the famine.
They’re literally borrowing against the equity of their home. Also, there were those who said, we have borrowed money for the king’s taxes on our fields and our vineyards. And so while people are trying to borrow money to build or to to supply the needs for the fields to be able to have grain, they’re also having to pay these king’s taxes and they’re having to mortgage their possessions as well. It says in verse five, now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers, our children like their children. Yet, behold, we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already. And we are helpless because our fields and our vineyards belong to others in the time of need. A little different than today. Today, if we go into any sort of debt, we could just declare bankruptcy and our slate is wiped clean. We just live with the bankruptcy title for a few years and Nehemiah’s time. If you were starting to go bankrupt, you begin to sell people to pay off your debt. And what Nehemiah is saying is, listen, we’ve already borrowed the people are saying we’ve already borrowed against our houses, we’ve already borrowed against our fields, and now we’re having to sell our own kids to be able to pay off our debts.
And we can never hope to buy our kids back because we’ve already sold all our possessions. We own nothing to be able to afford to pay the debt, to get our own children back. We are in serious, dire needs and this is brought on from internally within our own nation is causing us to do this. So we’ve been asked by God to make this sacrifice, and we’ve made the sacrifice by coming here to rebuild this nation. But now our own people are causing us to go into greater debt. The problem isn’t money. The problem with the nation of Israel is the love of money. Now, I don’t want you to think this morning. Rich people are bad and poor people are good. I had a friend that would read scripture and come to that conclusion, so that his desire to that solution was one day he wanted to live in a remote village somewhere in a grass hut. I don’t think God doesn’t bless your life with particular finances in order to enjoy it. If God gives you things to enjoy with your family and enjoy with your family. But what you’ve got to be responsible for is stewardship. Rich people aren’t bad and poor people aren’t good. In fact, poor people can act unrighteous with their money. You ever study the statistics on lottery winners? People who go from rags to riches? How many years it takes before those people went from rags to riches to be back to rags again.
Usually just within a few years they’ve spent the whole allotment of money that they possessed. Just because you’re poor and you have no money doesn’t mean that you’re still responsible with your money. The problem isn’t the isn’t money. It’s the the love of money for the nation of Israel here, regardless of whatever it is in your life. The important thing is that whatever sin we face, we we face it with the Lord. We understand that we need to face our personal sins. We’re talking about our walks with God and the influence that we have in the lives of people around us. Here was Nehemiah’s response we see in point number two. It comes in verse six. Not only do we need to face our sin, but what we need to do is we need to begin to view our sin God’s way. How does God see this from his perspective? It says in verse six when I heard their complaints. Nehemiah says, I was very angry. You know, other religions in the world oppose anger. In fact, some religions in the world seek for you to be emotionless. But do you know it’s actually biblical to be angry to some degree? Now I will tell you, 99% of all times people are angry. It’s usually in the wrong. But the Bible says in Ephesians chapter four and verse 26, be angry and do not sin.
It’s possible to be angry and be angry at the things that God is angry at, and not be sinful in your anger. In fact, the Bible tells us that God became or God is angry at various sin problems. It tells us for the wrath of God is against all ungodliness and unrighteousness. In Exodus chapter four, he says to the nation of Israel, If you disobey me, I will be a very angry God. Exodus 34 tells us in verse six that God is compassionate towards us, and that he is slow to anger. So I don’t want you to. In saying that anger could be used in a godly way, that all of us leave here today and just start looking for reasons to get angry. I’m angry and turn into the Incredible Hulk. Is he the one that turns green? I’m angry at this and feel my wrath. See God when he responds in anger, doesn’t act like a high school student towards that anger. Sorry, high school students. He doesn’t act that way. Just out of control with his emotions towards anger. I shouldn’t pick on you guys. Middle school students. He shouldn’t. He shouldn’t feel out of control or God doesn’t feel out of control towards his anger. Let me give you an example of God’s anger, okay? God has a limitation to how much he will allow us to partake in in sin. And when we get to that level of irritation towards God, God reacts in his wrath or in his anger.
He doesn’t just sit in heaven and just say, okay, all of a sudden I feel like I’m getting angry. Now I’m angry. You know, that’s not how God responds. God knows everything that we’re going to do before we do it. And God is just to act angry towards his sin. You might just say, well, that was Old Testament God. God was seen as an angry God in the Old Testament. But New Testament is all about love. As you read the Gospels, you see, as Jesus conducted his ministry, there were particular times within that ministry that Jesus became angry. When Jesus went to the temple and he saw the money changers using the using the temple as a place to to win or gather money rather than a place of worship, Jesus became angry. When Jesus was before the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and he healed a man on the Sabbath, and the Pharisees and Sadducees came to him and started accusing him of doing a nice work on the Sabbath. Jesus became angry. How can Jesus do that and still be God or godly man. Uses anger tends to use anger sinfully. We get angry for the wrong reasons. We get angry over the wrong things. We allow anger to lead us. The result of using anger in the wrong way is that we destroy the people around us.
What God desires. If we look within the Bible, it says, love the Lord your God and love others. But anger, if we allow it to creep in in an ungodly way, begins to destroy relationships with those around us. James 119 says this to us as a church. It says, my dear brothers, take note, note, note of this. Excuse me. Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. So your goal isn’t to go out into this world and get angry. Be quick to listen to the causes. Be quick to listen to the needs. You don’t allow anger to control you, but you allow yourself to control the anger, and in controlling that anger, we can begin to use it in a godly way. We learn to carry. If we use anger in a godly way, we learn to carry the heart of God towards injustice and sin. See, when I hear of a murder taking place, kids being taken advantage of, children going to bed at night, hungry. Rape when I hear of even loved ones dying. I think those are good causes. To be angry. Angry at injustice. Angry at sin. Angry at the things that tear us apart. Israel, the nation of Israel, was beginning to implode because of the sin. The sin that crept in was money. And so what? Nehemiah’s reaction is to get angry. Nehemiah gets angry at the thing that’s dividing his people, because there’s nothing more precious than God, than his people walking hand in hand in unity and love towards one another to the cause that he has called them to.
And so, church, when we talk about picking up the sword and fighting for God, what God has allowed you to do is get angry at the sin that divides you apart. Amen. The Bible calls husband and wife one flesh. Husband. Wives love one another. One flesh. When there’s something that enters into your relationship, that sin that divides you, that separates you, that pulls you apart, get angry over that sin and seek to reconcile and love one another. See, the purpose of this anger isn’t to destroy one another. The purpose of this anger isn’t to divide one another apart. The purpose of this anger is to attack the thing that is defeating what God wants to accomplish within our lives. And to say, get out from here. We can carry the heart of God towards injustice and sin. And carrying the heart of God and anger towards sin, we don’t become callous towards that sin. So the nation of Israel began to charge interest on his people. It literally says, if you study the fifth century manuscripts during the time of Nehemiah, it says they were charging somewhere as high as upwards of 60% interest upon the people here. How in the world can someone pay 60% interest? I know right now the mortgage rates are at its lowest, around three something percent, and I could find a reason to complain about that 60 some percent interest upon the people.
And they became very callous towards the sin and weren’t recognizing the the frustration and the burden that they were putting upon this nation as they’re trying to rebuild these walls, and these people are having to sell their own kids as slaves and stopping them from from carrying out the mission that God has called them to do. They became callous towards that sin and anger calls us, causes us to respond towards that sin. Remember in Romans chapter two and verse four, it tells us that it wasn’t God’s anger that brought us to repentance. It’s God’s kindness that brings us to repentance. God demonstrates his love towards us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So here’s what Jesus did. Jesus became angry at sin. He didn’t hate you. He became angry at sin. And so in his love for you, he came to this world and died for that sin so that you can be reunited with him. You become angry at sin and him being angry at that sin. You come into the lives of other people and you unite yourselves by dying for whatever cause you need to. That way the love of God can reign, and it’s the kindness of God that brings repentance.
So if you leave here today and you begin to get angry at other people because of particular sins that maybe they’re involved with, remember it’s the kindness of God that brings repentance. Nehemiah’s anger action is seen in verse seven. He says this after getting angry in verse six after thinking it over. That’s always a good thing to do. Thinking it over, I spoke out against these nobles and the officials, and I told them, you are hurting your own relatives by charging interest when they borrow money. Then I called a public meeting to deal. Excuse me? To deal with the problem. Nehemiah became angry and he chilled out. Tells us in verse seven he stopped to ask the question, is my anger really a godly anger? He wanted to know if his anger was righteous. He wanted to know if he had God’s view of of of the situation. And he brought charges against the people. Nehemiah came out with a plan of what he needed to do to see the sin eradicated in the nation of Israel united with one another again. And the moments that you’re angry. Here’s what I want you to know about anger. Anger is a secondary emotion, meaning this anger is brought on by another purpose or excuse me or cause. And so what we need to ask ourselves in moments that we become angry. What’s the issue that has caused me to be angry? And is my anger or feelings towards this the feelings that God would have towards this? And what’s most important in this situation is that myself and my brother or my sister in Christ can walk hand in hand.
So what is it I need to do to bring that unity back? What sin do we need to confront? What plan do we need to have, and how do we need to work this out together? And Nehemiah began to question this in himself. And he comes up with his plan, and he brings the charge against the leaders. It tells us. And so point number three is that Nehemiah begins to make the change. And the change that Nehemiah sought was one of repentance and accountability. When we think about our sin in our lives, what we need to view is we need to we need to face that sin, and we need to begin to view that sin as God sees that sin. And once we come up with a plan that God desires for us to have, as we view that as we need to make a change. And this usually involves both repentance and and accountability. It tells us in verse eight what the noble’s response was to Nehemiah. He says, I said to them, we, according to our ability, have redeemed our Jewish brothers who were sold to the nations. Now would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us? Then they were silent and could not find a word to say.
That’s Nehemiah is using rationale here. He’s saying, think about this. We’ve just bought these people from slavery and now we’re making them slaves again. I mean, why in the world are we doing this? And they say in verse, verse eight that they were silent and they could find nothing to say. Literally, they understood that they were right where Nehemiah was right and they were in the wrong. And in verse eight and nine, Nehemiah recognizes three areas that has affected the nation of Israel. It happens to be the philosophy that we carry as a church. He says in verse eight. It’s affecting your brothers and sisters. It’s affecting the people that you love. It’s affecting your church. When we sin, it affects those around us. In verse nine it says, and again I said, the thing which you are doing is not good. Should you not talk in the fear of our God, because the reproach of the nations, our enemies? Nehemiah points out two other things in verse nine that their sin is affecting. He says it’s affecting our relationship towards God, because God see this, sees this. And he’s saying to them at the end of verse nine that it’s affecting our relationship to the world. I mean, how bad is it for us as a church to say to this world that we have the answers that you need? And when we come in, they’re worse off than when they started? So the nation of Israel bought their friends from slavery, and they come back to the nation of Israel to rebuild, to make sacrifices, to see this wall reconstructed, and only to find out that now they’re slaves again.
How horrible it would be for us as a church in our sin, to say that we offer to this world what they are looking for in Christ. And then when they come into the church, they’re no better off, because in some way or some form in our sin, we find a way to take advantage of them. Nehemiah says, we’ve we’ve hurt the relationship of our church. We’ve hurt our relationship with God, and we’re hurting our ministry towards this world. And I love this about Nehemiah in verse ten. Um, Nehemiah, he’s a very humble leader. He’s not self-righteous because he says in verse ten, and likewise, I, my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Please let us leave off this usury or interest. Nehemiah points to himself as part of that problem. See, self-righteousness and self-righteousness would say this to the people. I’ll look at you. Look at the mistake that you made. Good thing I’m here to help you out. But Nehemiah opens himself up to all sorts of criticism as a leader. And he and he humbles himself, and he the anger that he carried toward sin was an anger that he even carried towards his own sin, because he recognized he needed to fix problems within his own life.
And he’s saying, it’s me that’s doing this, too. I’m not just hurting, or they’re not just hurting the church. It’s it’s me that’s hurting the church more than anything. What God desires is for our unity, for his glory to be magnified among his people. And so when we talk about being serious about ministering to a church, what it requires for us as a church family to do is to not be callous with our own sin. We think in our lives the places that we’re falling short. We don’t just say, oh, well, everyone’s got their shortcomings. We understand that God’s working in our lives and in our hearts, and God desires to continue to mold us into his image, and that we carry God’s heart towards all sin, even our own, and that we’re about conforming ourselves into the image of Christ, to seeing His Church established, to seeing his work conducted in me. And Nehemiah carries that responsibility even upon his own self. Nehemiah shares with the people of his lack. In verse seven, I love what he did in verse seven. We saw it together in the previous verse. Let me go back for just a minute. He says after thinking it over, I spoke out against these nobles and officials. I told them, you are hurting your own relatives by charging them their money.
It says in the very last line. Then I called a public meeting. This is a wonderful thing. You think about when you sin publicly, you confess publicly. It’s a good thing you find a lot of healing in that. But what Nehemiah is doing for the leadership of Israel is he’s holding them accountable. So there are things in my own Christian life that, you know, when I thought about a particular sin that I was involved in, I realized I’m not going to be able to do this on my own. I need some accountability. And we’re talking about the whole nation of Israel involved in the sin and what Nehemiah knew. In order for it to a change to happen, he needs to call a public meeting, to call everyone out on the carpet before all the other people around. That way, when someone chooses to charge an exorbitant amount of interest upon the nation of Israel, they can say, hold on a second. We’re holding each other accountable here. Nehemiah said not to do that. Seeking accountability in a friend is a great thing to have. And in my own life, since I’ve been a Christian, something I’ve learned is to never, never, never go in my life without having someone holding me accountable for the way that I’m walking in my relationship towards God. Let me tell you, knowing that someone’s going to be behind you, asking you the questions about your walk towards him greatly enhances your ability and striving towards being closer to him.
None of us know what each other does when the door is closed and we’re by ourselves, or our heart tends to go. Jesus said, from the heart comes the thoughts of or from your mouth comes the thoughts of your heart. And sometimes, as people, we often will say the wrong thing and really regret it. The truth is, we’re not really repentant of it. What we are is we’re sad that someone else hurt us and we eventually we allowed our anger to control us. And we said something that we didn’t want someone else to hear, but it really did express what the desires of our heart were. Out of the mouth comes the desires of your heart and the privacy of your own room. What person do you become? Nehemiah knew without accountability what the probability was as a national sin, that not all people would adhere to what Nehemiah was saying to the nation of Israel. So he sought accountability. For him, it’s about facing sin. It’s about seeing the sin as God sees it. It’s about repentance. Repentance isn’t an act of feeling bad. If you’re convinced that repentance is just feeling bad. Repentance isn’t feeling bad. Repentance is seeing and agreeing with God as God sees it, and making a change to live for God as the way God would live for it.
It’s a 180 degree turn. It’s saying, this is what I live for, and this was contrary to God. But what I want to do is turn my back to it and just walk straight to Jesus. Sometimes repentance, when we realize the sin that we’ve been involved with does make us feel bad. Repentance is about the change. It’s instantaneous. It’s not a process. It happens in the moment. You change the the desire of your will from what is opposed to God, to what God is. Repentance. What Nehemiah called the people to repent towards this cause. Find accountability. And then finally what Nehemiah sought. Let’s make the change. Mending the broken bridge. Excuse me. He was making a change to mend the broken bridge. What he sought was restitution. So when the nation of Israel began to agree, and the leadership began to agree with the sin that they were involved in. Nehemiah called them on the carpet. And they they began to repent of the sin that they they were living in. The people began to be restored, the integrity of those who were causing their brothers and sisters to go into slavery was restored. So the leadership, what they ended up with were some very hard thoughts from Nehemiah and what we are getting this morning from Nehemiah and realizing that as a church, even even as a church, that we don’t always walk with God, we get some very hard thoughts when we talk about that.
But what we end up with is we listen to that is some very soft, hard hearts. We go from hard thoughts to soft hearts as God begins to work on our lives, and as they had their integrity restored as as a leadership group within the nation of Israel. Nehemiah demonstrates the beauty of humility before his people. I don’t think people are always looking for a perfect leader. What they’re looking for is a consistent leader who, when he makes mistakes, admits it and humbly asks for his the people’s apology. Nehemiah taught as a humble leader. I think in many ways that’s the personality of Jesus. Jesus didn’t make mistakes, but what Jesus did was he led very humbly without ever leading an army, without ever. Um, taking really a whole lot of money without creating his own organization. Of political power. Jesus led humbly, and he changed the entire world. Third, I think in many of these broken bridges, the people are happy to have their families and their possessions back. You think, what a glorious day it was. Okay, Israel, we have this sin in our lives and it’s causing such division in our church. And your kids are slaves of other people now. But but your leadership has just said, let them all free. And so, again, all these families are able to gather together. And when they go back to the temple to worship the next day, they can do so as a family.
And how beautiful that was as the nation of Israel, as they begin to to mend these broken bridges and Israel was unified. And what really happens in the nation of Israel is, is that as they begin to repent, what was a very sad situation, as we saw in verse one, as the women were crying out, became a worship service because they understood, even in sin, that God can still work through their needs and they can gather together as they they remove the sin from their lives and continue to worship God as a community, seeking after what God desires for them. It says in verse 11, give back to them immediately their fields, their vineyards, their olive groves, their houses, and also usury. You’re charging them, which is the interest, the 100th part of the money, the grain, the new wine and the oil. We will give it back. They said, and we will not demand anything more for them. We’ll do as you say. And then it says, Nehemiah summoned the priests and made the nobles and officials take an oath to do what they had promised. He begins to make it a worship service. I also shook out the folds of my robe and said, in this way, My God, shake out his house and possessions. Every man who does not keep this promise.
So may such a man be shaken out and be emptied. At this the whole assembly said, Amen, and praise the Lord. And the people did as they had promised. Think about your promises to God this morning. God doesn’t want you just to attend a church. He wants you to be a part of his community, of his family, his bride. God doesn’t want you to be content where you are in him. He always wants you to grow closer in your relationship with him. And the process to make that happen is very simple. You’ve got to stop where you are and examine yourself and ask God to give you his eyes towards this life and this world, towards yourself and your walk with him. If there’s anything that hinders your walk with God that may be affecting your relationship towards the church, you begin to repent of that. Maybe even seek accountability and mend those bridges. Get angry at sin because sin is what kills us. Let me ask you, just this morning, I’m going to just go through a series of questions. There was a minister who ended his section on Nehemiah chapter five. I was listening to it this week just by asking his church some questions, some very hard questions for the purpose of softening our hearts and our walks with God. Based on Nehemiah chapter five. Maybe we could ask ourselves this morning, who are we taking advantage of? Who or what are we taking advantage of in our lives? And second, what’s it costing them? Cost Israel the price of their children as they sold them in slavery.
But what price are they paying for your sin? The third is how will you mend those bridges? How can you repay them for what you’ve done? How do you carry that heart of Jesus into that situation? Fourth, who’s taking advantage of you? Fifth, just like the ladies in verse one. Have you spoken up about it? So we’re not about being callous towards sin. We’re about walking with Jesus. Six. Do you worship Jesus or money? Um, ladies who are looking to be married one day, let me just say, if you go to dinner with a guy and he doesn’t pick up the tab, that’s a good indicator. So don’t marry him. All right. Seven. Are you a steward of what God has put you in care of? Do you love money and use people? Or do you love people and use money? Do you worship your money or do you worship with your money? Um. Regardless of whatever sin that we face, we know that God is long suffering towards us. God may be angry at sin, but he loves us. What God desires more than anything is for your relationship with him to be perfect. We know one day we’re not going to experience that until we see Jesus face to face.
But don’t get comfortable where you are in your walk with God. Desire to grow with him and so God will build his church. Let’s close in a word of prayer. Lord, I just stop in these moments and thank you for loving us. Thank you for teaching us how to respond towards sin. God, how we don’t hate the sinner, but God. We just hate the sin. And what you desire in our lives is a close relationship and that your church would be closed and that nothing would hinder us from growing together, worshiping together, seeing your church built. God, I pray that all of us can feel a part of your church family to serve it, to love, to grow with it. And we think about the future of this church, God, that we can just continue together as a family building what you’ve called us to build spiritually in our lives. And as we spiritually grow physically, we know this building is going to get bigger. And God, we just look for you to meet our needs, to meet the needs as you’ve met the needs of the people in the time of Nehemiah to know God, that you are faithful towards your children, God that you’re faithful to them, and seeing that your cause met, that you’ve called them to build and God you will be there for us. So Lord, I just pray that we just run after you. May you be our first priority. May we love you with our hearts and our lives, with all our strength and with all our minds. And it’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen.