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- [Nancy Guthrie] Up to this point in the book of Nehemiah,
we've been focused on the wall surrounding the city of Jerusalem,
the rebuilding effort and the opposition to the rebuilding from Israel's enemies.
But in chapter 5, the focus shifts from the broken-down walls of the City of God
to the broken ways of the people of God. The problem Nehemiah has to deal with is
stated in verse 1 of chapter 5. He says, "Now there arose a great outcry of the
people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers." These are people who
were living under Persian rule with its heavy taxation, and on top of that,
that the region had been through a period of famine. So food supplies were
getting scarce. They've all been called to work together to do their part
in rebuilding the wall and restoring the covenant community within those walls.
But evidently, some of the privileged people in and around Jerusalem were taking
advantage of the situation, inflating the price of grain.
Loaning money for food at exorbitant rates so that some desperate to survive found it
necessary to sell family members into slavery to cover their taxation and
food debts. We might expect this kind of taking advantage out there in the wider
cutthroat do whatever you have to do to get ahead worlds, but this was happening
among brothers. And what was Nehemiah's response? Look in verse 6. He says,
"I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words." You know,
anger is not always sinful. Sometimes anger is a perfectly
appropriate response. Nehemiah was rightly angry about how his
Jewish brothers were dealing with each other. But this wasn't
an out of control anger. We see in verse 7, he says,
"I took counsel with myself and I brought charges against the nobles and
the officials." Now, when Nehemiah took counsel with himself,
perhaps he spent some time studying God's law, found in Leviticus 25, which reads,
"If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you,
you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner,
and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit,
but fear your God that your brother may live beside you." As Nehemiah
continued reading, he read exactly why God's people were to treat each other
in this way, back in Leviticus 25 where God said, "I am the Lord your God who
brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan,
and to be your God." These were people who had been shown great
kindness and generosity by their God. Therefore, they were to show that kindness
and generosity to each other. In the next verse, in Leviticus we read,
"If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you,
you shall not make him serve as a slave. He shall be with you as a hired worker,
and as a sojourner." God said to them, "For they are my servants whom I brought
out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves."
These are people God brought out of slavery in Egypt, so that they might
serve Him. For them to now enslave each other with no hope of release would be a
complete denial or repudiation of God's redemption of them from slavery.
The way God's people lived with each other was supposed to demonstrate the goodness
of God to the world around them. They're taking advantage of and
enslavement of each other did exactly the opposite. Why would anyone in the
surrounding peoples believe that Israel's God was kind, merciful,
and compassionate when they saw those who worshiped Him, those who called themselves
by His name enslaving, overcharging, taking advantage of each other?
Nehemiah told them, "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
of our enemies?" Nehemiah said to them at the end of verse 10,
"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. Then they said, "We will restore these and require nothing
from them." Isn't it really an amazing response of genuine repentance?
Certainly a costly repentance. They left Nehemiah headed for the bank,
or the land office, or the slave quarters, refunding the interest they had charged
and deeding back the land, and releasing their fellow Israelites who
had been enslaved. Now, in contrast to the greedy lifestyle of the
wealthy and privileged in and around Jerusalem, Nehemiah himself exemplified a
generous lifestyle. He states exactly why he refused to take a food allowance
from the people, but instead fed himself and all of his servants and officials
at his own expense. It's there at the end of verse 15, "Because of the fear of God."
As governor over the people who have come back to Jerusalem so that they can worship
and serve their God, Nehemiah wants to impress upon them how
the fear of God is not just going to the temple to offer sacrifices kind of thing.
To be a part of the people of God as one who fears God, meant that fear was to work
its way through their day-to-day lives, so that the kindness and generosity they
had experienced from God would overflow in their lives toward others.
If you fear God, the same will be true in your life. Your fear of God,
meaning your love and reverence toward Him, your desire to please Him and be
like Him, it will be evident not only when you show up in church on Sunday,
but throughout the week in the way you interact with the world around you.
We've seen in chapter 5, the threat from inside the covenant
community to the city being restored. They're taking advantage of each other.
And we've seen Nehemiah's example of generosity toward each other.
Now, in chapter 6, once again Nehemiah finds himself dealing with threats
against the project from outside the covenant community. That trio
of troublemakers, Sanballat, Tobiah, and Geshem are back and they're seeking
to bring the rebuilding of the wall to a halt. Their plan A was to lure Nehemiah
away from his colleagues and into enemy territory where they might kidnap him.
In chapter 6:2, Nehemiah writes about their invitation, his insight into it,
and his response to it. Look with me in verse 2.
"Sanballat and Geshem, sent to me saying, 'come and let us meet together
at Hakkephirim in the plain of Ono.' But they intended to harm me."
And I sent messages to them saying, "I am doing a great work and I cannot
come down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and come down to you?'
And they sent to me four times in this way and I answered them in the same manner."
Four times they tried. After Nehemiah refused to come down a
fourth time they changed their tactics, they made a plan B sending an open letter
everyone could read that accused Nehemiah of corrupt, even seditious motives
in rebuilding the wall. In verse 6, we read, "In it was written,
'it is reported among the nations and Geshem also says it that you and the Jews
intend to rebel and that is why you're building the wall. And according to these
reports you wish to become their king." You have to love Nehemiah's dismissive
response to their ridiculous report which we read about in verse 8, he says,
"Then I sent to him saying, 'No such things as you say have been done.
You are inventing them out of your own mind.'" Instead of stopping the work,
these efforts simply prompted Nehemiah to pray for the power to continue and
complete the work at hand. Clearly plan B was not going
to work either, but they were not deterred. Nehemiah describes their third
effort to deter him from his work on the wall writing in verse 10, "Now,
when I went into the house of Shemaiah, the son of Delaiah, son of Mehetabel,
who was confined to his home he said, 'Let us meet together in the house of God
within the temple. Let us close the doors of the temple for they are coming
to kill you, they are coming to kill you by night.'" Now, perhaps it was a kindness
to a supposedly disabled prophet that made Nehemiah go to Shemaiah's home.
And when he gets there, evidently, the Prophet is not really confined
to his home, he wants Nehemiah to go with him to the temple where he says Nehemiah
can take refuge from those who want to kill him. But Nehemiah knows that only
priests are allowed into the holy place in the temple, so he responds to Shemaiah,
"Should such a man as I run away and what man such as I could go into the temple
and live? I will not go in." Nehemiah writes that he understood and saw
that God had not sent him, but he had pronounced the prophesy
against me because Tobiah and Sanballat had hired him. "For this purpose he,
Shemaiah, was hired that I should be afraid and act in this way and sin so they
could give me a bad name in order to taunt me." Once again, efforts to stop the work
by destroying Nehemiah's credibility did not work. Instead, Nehemiah reports
in verse 15, "So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month Elul in 52 days.
And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and
fell greatly in their own esteem for they perceived that this work had been
accomplished with the help of our God." Fifty-two days, no grains,
no cement trucks, everyone made part of the work crew. It had been a really long
time since the people of God had experienced a miraculous work of God
in their midst, but now they had. God's power at work in them was clear not
only to them, but to all the surrounding peoples and nations who were watching.
God had brought his people home. Nehemiah has prayed, and planned,
and persevered in the face of opposition, and the work on the wall is complete.
Yet the opposition isn't over. At the end of chapter 6,
we discover that Tobiah is still at work using the alliances he has made
through trade agreements and marriage alliances to intimidate Nehemiah.
We will see as we continue our study of Nehemiah that the rebuilding of the wall
is not the end of Nehemiah's work. The wall is a means to a far greater end
that the people of God would worship God in the place God has re-gathered them,
and that they would be a light to the nations that through them,
specifically through one of their descendants, all of the families of the
earth will be blessed. The day will come when God will come
down in the person of the Holy Spirit so that those gathered behind these walls
of Jerusalem will become His witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea,
and all Samaria, to the ends of the earth.
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