The book of Nehemiah has been about a great work of God to renew his people and rebuild Jerusalem. There has been so much in it that has inspired us to serve God with courage and with zeal. There has been so much to admire in the example of Nehemiah and also the people as a whole. Though far away from them in time, their lives and experience of God speak with power to us down the centuries.
All of which makes this concluding chapter something of a damp squib, so to speak. What we have here is the record of failure. Wouldn't it have been better to finish at verse 3? At least then we'd have ended on a high. Conventional wisdom tells us it's best to quit while you're ahead.
But God knows best. His wisdom has dictated that we get the full story and that we get it for a reason. We'll explore that as we look at the details of this last chapter.
1. Compromise
The events of this chapter take place some 12 years after Nehemiah's original return to Jerusalem. He had been back in the service of the King of Babylon and asked for permission to go back and see how things were.
What he found was a real shock. Far from keeping going as they had been in their devotion to God, the people had slipped back into the old ways of compromise. There are 3 specifics things mentioned here:
i) Eliashib the priest had allowed the temple to be defiled by Tobiah taking up residence there. To do that, important articles had been removed, articles that had been given back by Cyrus to the people on their original return, articles that spoke of God's blessing on his people.
These had been pushed aside to make room for an enemy of God and his people. That speaks volumes.
And it didn't end there. In v.10 we see that a knock-on effect had been that the portions assigned to the Levites were not given to them. Allow the enemy to take up a place at the heart of God's temple and things will go from bad to worse.
It may have seemed a small thing to Eliashib but "what was probably passed-off as a friendly gesture to a 'neighbour' was in fact the death-knell of the worship of God".
ii) The second area of compromise was in the area of sabbath observance. The people had allowed foreign traders to do business on the sabbath in Jerusalem and had become caught up in it themselves.
Why was this significant? To keep the sabbath as God had required them expressed their faith in him (they didn't need to work on the sabbath to ensure their survival) and kept their focus (what matters most in life is a relationship with God). In compromising with foreign traders, they showed a weakened faith and a blurred focus.
iii) The third area of compromise was over the issue of taking foreign wives for themselves. This was something forbidden by God and for good reason. Intermarriage was so serious because it would eventually lead to what their enemies had aimed at yet had failed to achieve: the disappearance of the Jewish nation. They would be assimilated into the other nations and God's purposes through them would be lost.
Having seen something of what they did, we need to stand back and see how it challenges us. Notice that all 3 areas of compromise involved a foreign element. In the NT the word used for that is 'the world'. To compromise with the world, to be friends with it, is to become an enemy of God.
Of course that is not saying we don't befriend people who are not Christians; we must do so. But what we must be careful to do is not to imbibe the ways and standards of the world. Once we walked in the ways of the world but no more.
It's clear from what we've seen (and we know this in our own experience too) that compromise can appear so attractive, so reasonable. That's when it's most dangerous. What begins as a small concession leads all too quickly into defection from the Lord.
I think we can begin to see now why God in his wisdom has given us the full story. We're seeing that life in this world is a battle and it is dangerous. It may be depressing to see their decline but we need the warning. God may favour us with times of great rejoicing as he had done for them. But we cannot stay at such a peak of experience. Battles will have to be fought and we need to be strong to do so.
This tension is something that will always be a feature of the Christian life until Jesus comes again. It would be foolish to expect it to be otherwise and dangerous to ignore the warning.
2. Nehemiah's Response
The people had clearly declined in their walk with God. How did Nehemiah respond to that? In characteristic fashion! There are 3 things to notice about his response:
i) Clear - Nehemiah is clear is facing them up with what they've done. He calls a spade a spade. There is no pussyfooting around here. Sin is exposed for what it is: treachery against the Lord (see vv.11,18,27).
We live in an age when sin is denied and excused. And we're pretty good ourselves at doing so. We need to be clear about our failure to live as God intends.
It does no one any good to deny the reality of our rebellion against God. Nehemiah courageously faces the people with what they've done.
ii) Correction - But he's not only brave in saying what's wrong but he's also brave in his handling of them (literally!), forcing them to get on and put things right. It isn't enough for sin to be exposed for what it is, it needs to be remedied. What is wrong must be stopped and what is right must be started.
When we know we have sinned, this is the challenge for us too. To put away the evil and to live out the good. We may not have someone to pull our hair out but we have something far more effective: the living and active word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, able to judge and to convict us. When God speaks to us through his word, putting his finger on an area that needs attention, it can be very painful indeed. We need to listen.
iii) Cleansing - But notice that Nehemiah was not only clear in his denunciation of sin and quick to correct it, he was also concerned for there to be cleansing of what had been polluted.
When we fail the Lord and sin, we need to be cleansed, we need our work and service for him to be restored. How we can thank him that in our Lord Jesus he has provided for all our sin and failure! His word wounds us in order that we might be healed by the cleansing and restoring grace of God.
If you know that you need that this morning, take heart from the meal we have shared in, for it speaks to us of wonderful grace for guilty sinners, of a way back to God from the dark paths of compromise. May it please him to forgive us our sins and to restore us in his service, that we might honour him and go forward in the battle, with courage and in his strength.
