God Confronts Sin Within | Nehemiah 5

Alright, let's turn with me, if you would, to Nehemiah chapter 5.

Nehemiah 5 · chapter mention

Nehemiah chapter 5 is where we're going to study today.

Nehemiah 5 · chapter mention

And we're in our series through the book of Nehemiah.

This is an important series.

We're excited about all of the implications of this in so many ways, so many applications for us.

Nehemiah is the story of a man who was led by the Spirit of God to really go back to Jerusalem and help rebuild a wall for the glory of God, to re-establish the worship of God and the protection of God's people.

And uh it began with a burden, it led to a season of preparation.

It then came together in a bunch of people gathering together to serve together alongside one another.

Uh, and then it faced opposition.

And that was last week, the opposition that came at it.

And today we're gonna look at a little bit of a different kind of opposition, uh, and probably I would argue more destructive than the opposition of chapter four.

And so we're in this series to understand these leadership principles and these practical wisdom, biblical wisdom things that we need to deal with, okay?

So uh if you are a Dallas Cowboys fan, I'm sorry, okay?

I'm sorry.

That may be more offensive to us than the announcement I just made a few minutes ago.

Um listen, the Dallas Cowboys haven't been anywhere close to a Super Bowl in more than 30 years.

Amen.

Chris didn't amen anything I said up to that point right there.

But listen, back in the day, Tom Landry, Roger Staubbach, Tony Dorset, the Cowboys became what probably they coined called America's team, right?

They came up with it, but but listen, we cannot deny the reality that in the 90s the Cowboys seemed unstoppable, right?

They just seemed unstoppable.

Jimmy Johnson was their coach, Troy Aikman was their quarterback, Emmett Smith was their running back, Michael Irvin was their wide receiver.

They won Super Bowls in '92, '93, '95.

It was it was quite the run.

It was pretty impressive.

But after that, the team basically disintegrated and has not made it to a Super Bowl since.

Did not expect this response, but you say, what happened?

Did they lose a bunch of their star players?

And no, they didn't.

In fact, there's not really even like another team just came up and was like just that much better than them.

Analysts say there really was no team, significant team changes in the 1996 season.

The main reason, as has been well documented in all kinds of documentaries and uh uh uh shows, everyone says it was that Jerry and Jimmy couldn't get along.

Jerry Jones and Jimmy Johnson couldn't get along.

Jerry Jones, the owner, Jimmy Johnson, the coach, they just they just couldn't get along.

And that marked the beginning of a disintegration from within.

And today we're still witnessing that disintegration and trying to rebuild it to that.

And and that's a a real life fun object lesson for how some of the mightiest organizations fall and disintegrate, not from external enemies, but from internal problems that ultimately lead to their downfall.

One of the classic historical examples of this is the Roman Empire.

Rome wasn't so much conquered from the outside.

Historians say that Rome disintegrated from the inside.

And it's interesting, and we could probably see this even practically, that pressure from the outside can actually pull people together.

There's something about pressure that unites a people.

The pressure's real, but because the danger is visible and the danger is shared, people know where to stand and who to stand next to.

That's what Nehemiah chapter 4 was all about.

Nehemiah 4 · chapter mention

We know who the enemy is and we're gonna fight for one another.

But the more dangerous threat is often the one that develops inside the organization or the community.

And marriage may survive financial pressure because there's a unity between a husband and a wife, but then it can be hollowed out and disintegrate through bitterness that's hidden.

Marriage, uh rather, a family may stand together through a crisis and later be divided by pride and favoritism and unresolved hurt.

A ministry, a church may endure criticism and attack from the enemy outside and then be weakened by competition and gossip or selfish ambition among the people doing the work.

This is why the most dangerous threat to a community trying to honor God is often sin that it refuses to address within.

This matters for every community represented in this room.

It matters to your personal life.

Because tolerated sin eventually interferes with what God wants to do in us.

It matters in our homes because unaddressed sin creates distance between the people we should know and love one another best.

Matters in our church because we cannot faithfully make Christ known while treating one another in ways that deny his transforming grace.

Listen, it matters on every team and in every ministry that once it's work to honor the Lord, it matters for us, every one of us.

So God is not only rebuilding a wall in Nehemiah, He is forming a people.

And in chapter 5, the work on the wall pauses long enough for God to address what is broken among the builders.

It all pauses.

I'm gonna read the first few verses of Nehemiah chapter 5 for sake of time, just to get us a context of what's taking place.

Nehemiah 5 · chapter mention

But I want you to follow along with me here.

In Nehemiah chapter 5, verses 1 through the entire 1 through 19, we're gonna address, but let me just launch us into this by reading verses 1 through 5.

Nehemiah 5:1

Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers.

That's important.

Note that.

For there were those who said, now there's gonna be three outcries, three elements to this outcry.

Verse 2 marks the first one.

There were those who said, With our sons and our daughters we are many, so let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive.

We'll talk about that.

The second one is verse three.

There were also those who said, We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.

Verse 4 marks the third one, and there were those who said, We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards.

Now our flesh or our children is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children.

Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.

And the first few verses of verse 6 were I was angry when I heard their outcry.

So what Nehemiah draws his attention to here is pretty clear.

There is something taking place inside the walls, not outside the walls, inside the walls that is causing a problem, and Nehemiah is about to address it.

He's about to fix it, he's about to deal with it because he's gonna recognize something important that damage from within is more devastating than the attacks from without.

So the big idea that's gonna sit over the top of this for the next few minutes as we unpack it together is this as God's people build together, they must address what is broken within.

We've always got to pay attention to that.

Every ministry, every home, every family, every workplace must not just protect themselves from the attacks from the enemy outside, but also from the decay and disintegration that happens on the inside.

So, how do God's people address what is broken within as we build together?

How do we do that?

And what I love about Nehemiah chapter 5 is he gives us kind of a playbook, if you will, a way for a community that that could be applied to an individual, a home, a workplace, a small group, a ministry team, or an entire church to protect it from being damaged from the inside out.

Nehemiah 5 · chapter mention

So let's do that.

Let's let's talk about what we see from Nehemiah as he leads with wisdom through this process.

And there's four steps I see that are taken here in Nehemiah to help protect the community of God's people from being damaged from the inside out, okay?

Let's protect us.

Number one, here's how we'll do it we deal with sin.

Because let's just be honest, let's call it what it is.

It's not just brokenness, it's not just mistakes, it's sin.

We deal with sin within the community by these four things.

Number one, recognizing the hurt caused by sin.

First step.

We've just got to recognize that sin hurts.

Brokenness is a result of sin.

Chapter five begins in verse one with a cry, a great outcry.

In chapter four, Nehemiah was listening for the sound of an enemy attacking Jerusalem.

But now he hears the voice of hurting people within the community.

The threat is no longer coming from the surrounding nations.

God's people are hurting one another.

You see, Sambalat and Tobiah could attack the wall, but sin could destroy the community behind the wall.

Before Nehemiah confronts the sin, he acknowledges and recognizes the suffering it has caused.

This is what where where dealing with sin must begin.

Here's how we begin with in every community, in every family, in every home, we must tell the truth about the hurt sin causes.

Sin always hurts.

Sin frequently presents itself as private, manageable, harmless.

It tells us, well, this only affects me.

No one else needs to know.

I have it under control.

It's not that big of a deal.

But sin never remains as contained as it promises it will.

Listen to the suffering described in these verses.

Some families do not have enough food.

That's verse 2.

There's a famine caused by probably the attention to the wall, not able to go out and work the fields.

Maybe there was a form of a siege taking place around Jerusalem from the enemies.

For whatever reason, there was a famine and there wasn't enough to eat.

So there was this sense of we're hungry.

And so then they were feeling that, and then others mortgaged their property.

They took out a loan on their property.

Mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses in order to get grain because of the famine.

Listen to the seriousness of that.

We're taking loans in order just to buy groceries.

And then others, verse 4, borrowed money to pay the king's taxes on their fields and their vineyards, so much so that now their own brothers were taking their children into slavery because they were unable to repay the debts borrowed to buy their groceries or pay taxes.

It was the sin of the nobles.

And it wasn't just a business decision that existed in ledgers.

It hurt real people, real families, and real children.

This is what Nehemiah recognizes sin does.

It spreads and it hurts.

James chapter 1:15 warns us of that.

Sin when it is fully grown, brings forth death.

Death is always, destruction is always.

Pain and hurt is always left in the wake of sin.

It always produces pain somewhere.

Father, your sin is not just yours.

It trickles down to your family and your children.

Husband, wife, it's not just yours.

It always affects your marriage.

Church member, your sin is not just yours.

Gossip is not just a conversation.

Another person's reputation is damaged.

People become afraid to be honest.

Leaders, you may think pride only affects your attitude, but everyone around you begins to feel unheard, unappreciated.

Listen, sin is not just a private experience.

It overflows into a community and it affects the whole community.

It is a reproach to the people.

So we often define sin only by what we intended, by saying things like, Well, I didn't mean to hurt anyone.

Listen, intent does matter, but it's not the whole story.

And Nehemiah begins by listening to the people, living with the consequences of their choices, and acknowledging the pain caused.

He just acknowledges there's a great outcry, and I wasn't happy about that great outcry because the sin of the nobles was affecting more than just themselves.

Sin is especially painful from our text, we can gather when it comes from someone who should love us.

Verse 1 says the outcry was directed against the Jewish brothers.

Did you notice that?

The pain wasn't coming from strangers, it was coming from people who worshiped the same God, belonged to the same covenant community, and had stood beside them to rebuild Jerusalem and defend it.

In chapter 4, they defended one another against outsiders, and now in chapter 5, some of those brothers had become the source of the danger.

Suffering people say in verse 5, our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, and our children are as their children.

We're the same.

Our lives matter as much as theirs.

We're Jews like they are.

We worship the same God like they do.

Our lives matter just like they do.

Why are you treating us as though we don't matter?

You see, this is a unique issue that we all have experienced because there is a unique pain that comes from being hurt by someone who should have cared for us.

It hurts when an enemy attacks you, but it feels differently when someone who promised to love you betrays your trust.

It hurts when the world speaks falsely about you, but it hurts differently when someone in the church spreads the story.

It hurts to experience hardship, but it hurts differently when people who could have helped you use your hardship for their advantage.

It hurts.

Then I could bear it.

If it was an enemy who taunts me, I could bear it.

But it is you, a man, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend.

I just want to acknowledge the reality that some of the deepest wounds people carry were inflicted by a parent or a spouse or a friend or a pastor or a leader or a fellow church member.

And the closer the relationship, the greater the ability to bring both comfort and to bring great pain.

And this should make us as a community especially careful about how we treat one another.

John tells us, Jesus tells us in John, by this all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another, our treatment of one another, either supports or contradicts what we proclaim about Jesus Christ as a community.

So the world sees what we are and how we're treating one another, and ultimately really sees our God through how we relate to one another.

And the greatest hurt we can have often is the hurt that comes from the people closest to us.

Finally, visible progress here in the first point for us can't hide serious internal problems.

You see, the wall was going up, but these people were being pushed down, these families were being pushed down.

From a distance, Jewish uh Jerusalem looked like it was being successful.

The walls were going up, the breaches were being closed, the people were organized, the project was progressing.

But behind the visible progress, families were hungry, property was being lost, children were being uh enslaved, and brothers were exploiting brothers.

A completed wall would mean very little if the people inside it destroyed one another while building it.

See, a church can grow while unresolved conflict grows with it.

A ministry can produce successful events while its leaders become proud and exhausted.

A family can maintain a full schedule while its relationship deteriorates.

A marriage can appear stable publicly while trust disappears privately.

You see, the building of the walls can be a facade hiding what really is happening on the inside.

And no matter how this church progresses, no matter how life church develops and advances and expands and grows and plants and everything, may we never be a place that raises pretty walls while decaying on the inside.

Amen.

And that's what's taking place.

So God cared about Jerusalem's walls, but he also cared about the people behind the walls.

People are not obstacles to the mission.

Caring for people is part of the mission.

People aren't the hindrance to the ministry, people are the ministry.

People are the church.

This is why Nehemiah listens to the outcry, recognizing hurt doesn't mean every accusation is accepted without examination.

That's not what's happening here.

But he considers the matter in verse 7 and he carefully examines and begins to talk seriously about it.

So here's the point I want to make first.

As a church, we must stop at the very beginning of any endeavor or all throughout every endeavor.

And just remember, sin unchecked, unrecognized, undealt with will hurt the health and growth and maturation of any community.

No matter how pretty the building is or how well executed the ministry is, the sin within the community will devastate the church more than the attacks from without.

So may we be careful.

May we be careful to ask whose pain am I minimizing?

Who may be carrying the consequences of my choices?

What has become normal in my home or in my church that should concern me?

We must not merely ask, is the wall going up and is everything look fine?

We must also ask what is happening to the people inside the walls.

That's point number one, okay?

Recognizing the hurt caused by sin.

Brothers and sisters, never downplay the negative impact that sin has on lives in communities.

That's number one.

Number two, let's talk about this now.

Step two, we deal with sin within the community by step two, confronting the sin that causes the hurt.

Confronting the sin that causes the hurt.

Notice what he says in verse 6.

I was very angry when I heard their outcry in these words.

Nehemiah does not respond to the people's suffering with a detached concern.

What he hears makes him angry, and this is righteous anger.

Listen, not all anger is righteous.

Let me just clarify that.

Sometimes anger is a result of wounded pride or frustrated preferences or just a loss of control.

But Nehemiah's anger was different.

It was righteous anger.

He was angry because people are being harmed.

God's word is being disobeyed, and the unity of God's people is being destroyed, and it ticked him off in a good way.

There's a time when anger is the appropriate response to sin.

Listen, I just want to say this.

We should be disturbed when people are mistreated.

We should be grieved when a family is being destroyed.

We should be troubled when someone uses power to exploit the weak.

We should not be more concerned about keeping everything comfortable than we are about whether something is right or wrong or holy or unholy.

One man said a person who is angry is on the right, a person who is angry on the right grounds against the right persons in the right manner at the right moment and for the right length of time deserves great praise.

The person who cannot feel anger at evil is a person who lacks enthusiasm for good.

If you cannot hate wrong, it is very questionable whether you really love righteousness.

Notice what Nehemiah does first in verse 7, though.

I love this is how I know this is controlled, wise anger, because he says, I took counsel with myself in verse 7.

I love that.

He talked to himself.

I don't feel so weird anymore, right?

I just sat and counseled myself.

What should I do here?

Nehemiah pauses, is what he's saying.

And he thought.

He considers the matter before acting.

He doesn't fly off the handle.

His anger produces deliberate action, not reckless reaction.

Some people call uncontrolled anger courage, other people call avoidance peace.

Nehemiah does neither.

He doesn't explode, he does not retreat, but he combines what we're gonna call moral clarity with self-control.

I know this is wrong.

I know that this cannot be right.

I know I must stand against this, but I'm not gonna fly off the handle and add sin to sin.

I'm gonna go and respond in self-control.

So religious confrontation begins with the right heart.

Before we confront someone else's sin, we should not uh uh first start there.

We should examine our own attitude.

Are we motivated by love?

Are we motivated by the glory of God?

Are we pursuing restoration?

Remember, Galatians 6:1.

Galatians 6:1

Jot it down if you're taking notes.

Brothers, if anyone is caught in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness.

That verse does not say, Don't get mad at sin.

Don't hate sin.

Don't be angry by sin.

He just says the pursuit is be spiritual, self-controlled, and pursue and restore a person in sin in a spirit of gentleness.

Nehemiah says to the nobles and officials, look what he says in verse 7, you are exacting interest each from his brother.

He identifies the sin, he calls it out.

He's not saying, hey, y'all just need to be nicer.

These families were suffering.

The people with resources were profiting from their desperation.

The nobles were using another person's vulnerability as an opportunity for personal.

And so what he does here is he addresses it, and sin in a community must be named before it can be addressed.

Here's what we do.

We often, and we're all this way, we often soften our language because we don't want to face the seriousness of our behavior.

So pride becomes confidence, gossip becomes concern and prayer requests.

Greed becomes ambition.

Bitterness becomes discernment.

Controlling behavior becomes leadership.

Lust becomes private struggles.

Cruelty becomes just being honest.

But when we rename sin, we protect it.

We're trying to protect it.

And Hebrews 3.13 warns us of the deceitfulness of sin.

Sin deceives us into thinking that we are controlling it when in actuality it is hardening us.

It convinces us that we are doing uh something that is understandable and just, you know, to err is human and necessary or even harmless.

Sin must not be treated like a pet that can be trained and kept under control.

It must be confronted directly.

Trying to tame your sin nature is like a zookeeper trying to tame a wild cat like a lion or a tiger.

Whenever a lion or a tiger attacks its keeper, nobody's shocked by that because the nature of the wild cat is to eat flesh.

You are flesh, I'm gonna eat you.

And the reality is that's the same thing we do when we try to tame and and and round the edges of sin rather than just calling it what it what it is.

And here in Nehemiah, verse 7 says, I called it what it was, and then he says, I brought charges against the nobles and the officials, I held a great assembly against them.

So Nehemiah is not backing off.

Nehemiah is not letting up.

He's like, hey, everybody, we gotta have a meeting.

Something's happening in the community that needs to be addressed.

Not a private misunderstanding between two individuals.

Many families had been harmed, community leaders were involved, the entire congregation and community was being affected.

A communal wrong required a communal correction.

Listen, that doesn't mean every sin must be announced publicly.

Matthew 18 teaches us to start in the private way for sure.

But here Nehemiah refuses to use the importance of the wall project as an excuse to avoid a difficult confrontation with influential people.

He was talking about the nobles.

He was talking about the guys funding this project, and they were the cause of the sin.

And he's like, hey, we're gonna gather together, and if this costs us a little bit of funding for the wall, that's okay.

We're gonna deal with the issue.

And then he says in verse 8, he exposes this.

He says, We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers.

He's like, Look, we delivered them from slavery, and now you're enslaving them.

Jewish leaders were forcing their own brothers back into servitude after having delivered them out of servitude.

They were rebuilding Jerusalem while repeating the very kind of oppression from which God had delivered them.

Do you see the problem?

Nehemiah's words leave the leaders speechless.

Look at it in verse 8.

They were silent and could not find a word to say.

Isn't that funny?

Uh, not funny in like a laughable way, funny in like a real, like, I've been there.

You're like, yeah.

Like sometimes a sermon is preached and you're just like, yeah, it's me.

Right?

Doesn't that feel good too, by the way?

Like, I stepped on my toes and I loved every second of it, right?

I feel like that's what was happening here.

There are moments when God's word exposes such a clear hypocrisy and contradiction in our lives that we have no legitimate defense.

That's what's happening.

The proper response in those moments is not to develop a better argument, it is to repent.

Then Emi gets to the heart of the matter in verse 9.

Look at what he says.

I love this.

This is what we need.

Then the thing that you are doing is what's the next two words?

Not good.

You know what that means?

Bad.

You know, you get that, right?

That's this is bad.

This is wrong.

This is sin.

This is what should not be happening amongst the people of God.

And then he says, ought you not to walk in the fear of God?

The financial practices were the visible sin, but the fear of God was the deeper issue.

The fear of God means living in reverence and awe before him, in this settled awareness that God is holy, God sees, God speaks with authority, and one day we will answer to him.

That's what it means to live in the fear of God.

And if these leaders had feared God, then they would have obeyed the commands concerning their poor brothers.

Because Exodus 22 and Leviticus 25 had instructed Israel not to profit from the desperation of the poor.

They were to open their hands and help their brothers who live among them.

A person, here's the principle: a person who fears God cannot easily reduce another person's suffering into personal opportunity.

The fear of God changes how we use money, how we use power, how we use words, how we use relationships, how we use authority.

Even when we could get away with doing otherwise, the fear of God controls us.

So Nehemiah says their conduct has not only shown that they don't fear God, the rest of that verse says that they actually brought a reproach from their enemies.

Did you get that?

The surrounding nations were watching.

They couldn't infiltrate the city, they couldn't attack them and they couldn't discourage them.

So they just sat back and watched.

And God's people, who claimed to belong to God, treated one another in a way that contradicted what they claimed about their God.

Sam Balad and Tobiah must have been laughing.

Look at this.

We pull back and they start fighting.

Let's just do nothing, let's let them destroy one another.

Here's what it is.

Our conduct within the church.

Our conduct within the church affects our witness outside the church.

Jesus said the world would recognize his disciples by their love for one another.

We just read that in John.

So when believers, let's just bring it down to home, when believers, when fellow Christians, when members of the same church exploit one another, slander one another, gossip, divide, or mistreat one another, we give the watching world a distorted picture of Christ.

And their conclusion is well, I get that at my job, and I get that at my family dinners, and I get that out in the world.

Why would I come to the church and just get more of it?

And here's what I want to say.

Thank God for people like Nehemiah who love us enough to tell us the truth.

Amen?

Who love us enough like Nathan looked at David when he said, You are the man.

Like Paul, who confronted Peter when Peter's conduct contradicted the gospel.

A faithful friend would rather risk an uncomfortable conversation than watch sin quietly destroy us.

And that's what Nehemiah does.

Nehemiah, as a wise leader, steps in and says, I just want to start with this.

There is a problem in our midst, and it is sin, and it is dishonoring to God, and it shows a lack of fear of God, and it's bringing reproach from outside, and you all need to know this is not right.

We need to get this right.

So the question I think comes from this a couple things.

Do you have anyone you allowed to tell you the truth like that?

Can your spouse raise a concern without being punished for it?

Can your children tell you when your response has hurt them?

Can a friend question your choices without losing your friendship?

Can a pastor confront sin within the community or in your life without immediately becoming your enemy?

When God exposes sin through Scripture or somebody else in your life, is your first response repentance or self-defense?

That's what's taking place here.

So we get it right?

Recognize that sin's a problem.

Sin is not something we nurture and we grow and we protect and we rename.

Sin is something we recognize the danger of, and then we live in a posture to confront it or allow and welcome confrontation of it.

When something's a blind spot, I need you to say it.

When something's not right, and I've gotten to a point where I've convinced myself it's okay, then we need to address it.

And listen, we deal with that on a constant around any church, in any community, in any small group.

There are times when there just needs to be somebody that says, hey, listen, that's not biblical thinking.

Let's rewire that thinking.

And that should be able to be said without a, well, then I'm just gonna find a new church.

That's what the community does.

Okay, that's number two.

Let's go number three, because I think there's a third step that Nehemiah shows us that I think is so practical for us, and that's this.

We deal with sin within the community by number three, repairing the wrongs caused by the sin.

Recognizing the hurt is necessary.

Confronting the sin is necessary, but neither one is complete until we are willing to repair the wrongs caused by the sin.

It is possible to recognize that someone is hurting and still do nothing to help him.

It is possible to admit that we were wrong and still leave another person carrying the consequences of what we did.

So biblical repentance doesn't stop at feeling sorry.

Biblical repentance asks, what can I do to make this right?

Notice Nehemiah's words in verse 10.

Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain.

Let us abandon this exacting of interest.

So, did you notice what happened there?

Nehemiah doesn't just confront the nobles as though he has done nothing to contribute to this culture.

He includes himself in the problem and the people serving with him in the response.

Now, listen, I don't think Nehemiah was guilty of the same oppressive practices as the nobles.

The text does not accuse him of exploiting the poor, we're gonna see in just a minute.

But he recognizes that he is involved in a culture in lending money and grain, so he is willing to participate likewise now in the solution.

This is a mark of godly leadership, by the way.

Nehemiah doesn't stand at a distance and say, you all people need to fix this.

He says, I may have contributed to this and it may have led to that, so let's all together stop doing this that leads to that.

When problems develop in a home, a church, a community, our first impulse is often to identify everyone else's responsibility, isn't it?

A husband says, Well, the marriage would be different if my wife would change.

A wife says, Well, our home would be healthier if my husband would just listen to me.

A parent says, everything would be easier if these children would just obey.

And I kind of amend that, but that's what we do.

A church member says the church would be stronger if those people would just be serious and they just get here.

It's everyone else's problem.

Everybody else is the problem.

Even when someone else has clearly sinned, a mature believer, though, is willing to ask, Lord, is there anything I need to confess?

Is there any way that I contributed to this situation?

Is there something you are calling me to do as a part of the repair?

You see, restoration usually requires people who are more interested in healing the community than proving that they were the least guilty person in it.

Let me say that again.

Restoration in a community where damage has been caused by sin requires people to be more interested in healing the community than proving that they were the least guilty person in it.

Well, there's a culture in our church that I don't like, but it's not my fault.

I didn't contribute to that.

So Nehemiah's like, no, I did.

And so then in verse 11, notice what he says 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've been exacting from them.

Nehemiah doesn't settle for a vague promise that everyone will just try to do better.

He tells them what repentance requires return the field.

Give them back the vineyard.

Return the olive orchards, return their houses, and give them back what you have taken from them and do it today, this very day.

The fields, the vineyards, the olive orchards weren't merely sentimental possessions.

They were how families fed themselves.

They produced grain and wine and oil.

So restoring the land meant restoring the family's ability to provide for themselves and move forward in a famine.

And the people didn't merely need an apology.

He's not like, hey, don't fix anything, just go say I'm sorry.

And they're like, okay, cool, I'm sorry.

And then they went back and kept their field.

That's not what he said.

They needed their property back, they needed restoration, they needed the oppressive demands removed, they needed the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

This teaches us something I think important.

Listen to this for a second for me.

There is a difference between confession, repentance, and restitution.

Confession acknowledges the wrong.

I have sinned.

Repentance turns from the wrong and says, I'm gonna stop doing this.

And restitution addresses the effects of the wrong and says, as far as I am able, I will repair what my sin has damaged.

All of them matter.

Sometimes we apologize because we want relief from our guilt.

But we have little concern for the person who must continue living with the consequences of our actions.

We feel better because we finally admitted what we did.

That feels good.

While the injured person is still carrying the damage from what we did.

Biblical repentance asks more than how can I feel forgiven.

It also asks, what does love now require me to do for the person I have wronged?

Godly sorrow, according to 2 Corinthians chapter 7, verse 11, produces earnest action.

2 Corinthians 7:11

It doesn't merely feel bad.

That's worldly sorrow.

Godly sorrow produces earnest action, and it becomes eager to address what sin has damaged.

And we see this clearly in the story of Luke chapter 19 with the guy named Zacchaeus.

Luke 19 · chapter mention

And I have a special fondness for Zacchaeus because his stature might have been more like mine.

But when Jesus came to his house, here's what he said in Luke 19, 8 Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor, and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I restore it fourfold.

Don't you love that heart?

And Zacchaeus wasn't doing that to purchase salvation.

We know that.

His willingness to make restitution was a demonstration that he had encountered Jesus and his heart had been changed.

The man who had used money to take from others now wanted to use money to restore what he had taken.

That's real repentance, and it produces visible fruits.

So if I stole something, repentance means returning it.

If I withheld money that I owed, repentance means paying it.

If I damaged someone's reputation publicly, repentance may require correcting the story with the same people who heard it.

It may be making it right.

It seeks reconciliation and restitution.

Listen, not every wrong can be completely repaired.

I understand that.

We cannot rewind time.

An apology cannot remove every painful memory and scar.

The fact that we cannot repair everything, though, must not become an excuse for not repairing anything.

And he says, return it to them this very day.

And I just want you to see their response in verse 12.

We will restore these and require nothing from them.

We will do as you say.

Don't you appreciate that?

You gotta appreciate the heart.

They don't argue about their intentions, they don't say, Well, we didn't mean to, we didn't know.

They didn't complain about Nehemiah's tone, they didn't demand sympathy for what restitution was gonna cost them.

They agreed to restore what was taken.

And Nehemiah does something interesting.

He he doesn't just want to rely on the emotions of the moment.

He calls the priests and he makes the nobles swear publicly.

Do you get that?

He's like, now publicly make a promise to everybody.

And then he gives them this illustration in verse 13.

I also shook out the fold of my garment.

So sometimes people would carry possessions in the fold of their garment in like a pocket, let's say.

And Nehemiah shakes out his garment and those things come flying out.

His wallet and his keys and his cell phone and his mints all come flying out.

Nehemiah shakes it out as a visual warning.

If they fail to keep their promises, he says, may God shake you out in the same way.

This was to remind the people how serious it is to make a vow to God and not keep it.

And the people responded.

And they all said, Amen, praise the Lord, and get this.

The people did as they had promised.

So the service ends.

The preaching happened.

Nehemiah addressed it.

Everybody's like, Amen.

Praise God.

Let's do that.

And they didn't get up and go back to their normal ways.

They went back, uh, got up and left and did as they had promised to do.

What a cool thing.

Repentance is not measured only by the sincerity of your words, it is demonstrated through the direction of your actions.

With urgency.

Jesus emphasizes this urgency.

Do you remember in Matthew chapter 5, he says that if we're bringing our gift to the altar in worship and we remember that our brother has something against us, we should leave our gift, go and pursue reconciliation.

Matthew 5 · chapter mention

What is he saying?

He's saying, don't just feel bad about your situation.

Go make it right.

Go fix it.

So recognize it hurts and hurts.

Call it out for what it is and make corrective actions and then make it right where you have the power to make it right.

Where is that?

Is there something I need to return?

Is there money I need to repay?

Is there a false statement that I need to clarify and correct?

Is there an apology that I have delayed?

Is there a forgiveness and reconciliation that I have avoided?

Is there a pattern that I need to change?

Is there trust that I need to begin rebuilding?

Listen, we may not be able to undo everything our sin has caused, but by God's grace, we can take responsibility for what within our power there is to repair.

Genuine repentance does not merely say I was wrong.

Genuine repentance says, what can I do to make this right?

Let me give you the fourth step, and I think it's important for us to get.

First, we recognize there's hurt.

Sin hurts.

Individual who's hiding sin, you need to know it's hurting you.

It's hurting your spiritual vitality, it's hurting your flourishing church family as a church community, family, home, husband, wife, parents, kids, sin unchecked, uncorrected.

It hurts.

And it doesn't just hurt you, it overflows and hurts others.

So there needs to be corrective action.

There needs to be somebody in your life, and especially allowing the Spirit of God in your life to convict you and expose it.

And then there needs to be a making of it right.

There needs to be some serious action taken to fix it because the community needs that.

And then lastly, there's a fourth step that I think is more preventative in nature, and that's this we deal with sin within the community by protecting the community from further sin.

Now, where do we see that?

Okay, so what's going on here, and I'll summarize this as concisely as possible.

The immediate wrong has been confronted.

The nobles have promised to return the property, release their claims, and stop profiting from other people's desperation.

But the repairing of yesterday's problem wasn't enough.

The community needs protection against the future.

And so Nehemiah concludes the chapter by describing a pattern in his own life.

This is why I don't think he was doing the same thing the nobles were doing.

Because notice what it says in verse 14.

Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the 20th year to the 32nd year of Artaxerxes the king, 12 years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor.

So he's looking back over 12 years of leadership.

He's not just talking about 52 days of building a wall, much longer than that.

Twelve years of his time there, he is describing a sustained pattern.

And he was now governor, and he was entitled to receive a food allowance from the people, a tax.

The allowance was not necessarily sinful.

Government officials needed provision.

But Nehemiah understood that something may be within his rights and still be unwise to demand under the circumstances.

So he says, Do I have a right to get it?

Yes, I have a right to get it, but it's not wise for me to do that under the circumstances.

Verse 15 the former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from their uh from them their daily ration, forty shekels of silver.

Even their servants lorded it over the people.

So the previous governors used their position for their own benefits.

They they fleeced the flock, they as they would say.

They they they just took what they needed and they they they embellished their lives at the expense of the people.

And Nehemiah says, I'm not going to give into that, I'm not going to participate in that.

I'm not going to, as the leader and governor of this community, I'm not going to contribute to that narrative and to that culture.

So I did not do that because I knew, I knew that was going to be a problem.

And he says there in verse number 15, but I did not do so because of the fear of God.

The fear of God, this awareness that our authority belongs to him, our conduct is seen by him, and we will answer to him.

I will not establish a standard for the nobles and then not live by that myself.

So the question for leadership is not, Am I allowed to do this, or can anyone stop me, or do I have the right to do this?

The question that protects a community from sin that divides is how does my choice affect the people around me?

So Christian maturity is not demonstrated by knowing our rights, it is also demonstrated by knowing when love calls us to surrender our rights.

Then verse 16 I also preserved the work on this wall.

We acquired no land, and all my servants gathered there for the work.

What he's describing in all of these verses is a selflessness in his leadership that.

Protects the community because it refuses to make other people carry unnecessary burdens for our benefit.

He refused to use a crisis as an opportunity for personal advancement.

And they joined the people in the work.

He's like, listen, I didn't sit in my dining room and say, give me steaks and potatoes and vegetables and cheesecake while you guys go do the work.

He's like, I didn't do that.

In fact, the weight he carried, verse 18, he talks about how all this I did in demand, uh, for yet for all this I did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on the people.

And earlier in that he mentions in verse 17, I think it is that he talks about how many people he fed.

Look at what it says in verse 17.

Moreover, there were at my table 150 men.

Listen, I have six mouths to feed, and I think that's a lot.

He had 150 mouths to feed, and apparently groceries and gas were pretty high back then too.

And now he's saying, Listen, but I did not lie, I didn't cheat, I didn't steal, I didn't take advantage of the people I led, I cared for them, I denied them, and out of my own pocket I paid for 150 people to eat at my table whenever we sat down to eat.

Why?

Because selflessness, here it is, selflessness protects a community from sin that devastates and divides it.

This wasn't symbolic generosity, this was a substantial expense.

And he says the point that I think he's making is that those with strength and resources and authority should not use them to increase the burdens of those already struggling.

But a healthy community needs more than rules against sinful behavior.

It needs a culture shaped by godly character.

So here's the point I'm trying to lean into is that Nehemiah models for us a four-step thing here.

He stops and he recognizes more devastating to our community than the attacks of Sandbalad and Tobiah, more devastating than the armies to the north, south, east, and west is the decay that will happen inside our community.

And I want to say that the enemy can throw his darts at us and attack us, and culture can call us all kinds of things.

And those things may hurt for a little bit, but more devastating to a church than any attack outside the church is division and decay and sin within the church.

And we must recognize it as such.

We must see it for what it is, and then, like Nehemiah, may we be people who are willing to call it what it is and correct it.

Call it what it is and confront the sin that causes the hurt.

And then, as we can, repair the wrong caused by the sin.

And that happens individually, that's gonna happen in a marriage, that's gonna happen in a family, that's gonna happen in a church community.

And then may we take that fourth step and protect the community from further sin by maintaining a posture of humble selflessness so that pride and division and hurt and lying and stealing does not become a part of our normal rhythm of life.

So I want us to be a church that goes forward, I want us to be a church that moves forward full of faith, to move forward for what God has ahead of us, to push back darkness in our city and around the world and bring the gospel of the kingdom to bear on our nation.

But one thing that's gonna hinder us is not just the attacks from the outside, it's division and sin from the inside.

So may we be careful to recognize sin hurts, confront the sin that causes the hurt, repair the wrongs caused by sin, and then protect the community further from the sin by living in humble selflessness.

Amen, church?

Amen.

Okay.

Big idea, summarizes it this way as God's people build together, they must address what is broken within.

And don't forget, I'm gonna close now, but don't forget, Nehemiah is not the perfect savior when it comes to dealing with sin.

There was somebody who dealt with sin in the perfect way, and that is Jesus Christ who died on the cross to take away our sin.

So to live in sin is to short circuit the power and purity that he won on the cross.

And if you're not a follower of Jesus Christ, you've never been saved, then just trying to white knuckle dealing with your sin isn't the answer.

Running to the cross is the answer.

Run to Jesus, the better Nehemiah, the more perfect Savior, the better representative.

And that is what uh I think will give you the victory over sin more than anything else.

As God's people build together, they must address what is broken within.

Let's be a church that addresses it.

Fun talks this week at small groups, I hope, over this topic.

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you for your word and the example of Nehemiah.

How he dealt with the division within the community, how he would not let their church or their city or their community be another story of inward decay that disintegrated the fabric of their city.

That they could say, we withstood the attacks of Sambalat and Tobiah, but we could not handle the decay of the sin within our community.

May that not be true of our church.

May we be people who see the devastation of sin and deal with it strongly and aggressively and proactively.

May we be a people who restore where we've wronged, and may we be a people who live in selflessness and humility, protecting our community from further division and decay.

I pray that this church would be a church united, united in holiness and humility for the purpose that you have called us to, that true community would be true present here.

That there would not be a self-promotion or a self-exaltation attitude present in this place, but you and your glory would be primary.

We would walk in the fear of God, and we would treat each other with the love that you have called us to love one another with.

And where sin uh is still being dealt with in a way that is not dependent on the Savior, I pray that you would show people here today that may not know Christ as their Savior that they can run to Him and be saved.

Help us, use us, bless us as a church family.

We love you.

We pray this all in Jesus' holy name.

Amen.