Pattern For Purity

---

"Remember me for this, my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services." Nehemiah 13:14

Main Readings: Hebrews 10:19-39 & Nehemiah 13

Supporting Readings: Psalm 51 & Nehemiah 12:27-47

This morning marks the close of our series in Nehemiah. And usually, stories have neat endings. That is to say, the final act is what everything else has been leading up to. But the Nehemiah story isn’t like that. The high point in this story comes a whole chapter early.

Last week we left off just before the climatic moment so that we could enjoy that moment this week. But also, so that we can see the whole of chapter 13 in light of what happens in the second half of chapter 12 because that’s important.

The theme the book ends on is not one of final success. It’s not the golden city on a hill that Nehemiah longed for at the beginning, and that we have been anticipating through the book.

Rather, the book ends on somewhat of a crushing note, and with great concern. It’s almost like the book has cycled back around to the beginning, just when the climax had arrived.

Like that film Groundhog Day. No matter how well Phil Conners finishes the day, he wakes up the next morning only to encounter exactly the same problem all over again.

In light of ongoing sin. In light of misplaced affections. We should expect to find that we belong to a community that easily follows a pattern of spiritual highs and faithless lows.

But in light of the Holy Spirit. And in light of the ever-present work of grace in our hearts. We shouldn’t settle for that pattern.

And that’s really what this message is about. Being equipped to avoid settling for the pattern we see in Nehemiah!

Despite the pattern of ups and downs in the church’s witness we know that the overall picture will be one of faithfulness that reaches the nations with the gospel and then THE high point of the story comes: when Jesus returns and his church is glorified with him for all eternity.

But the means to that overall faithful witness is care and concern for faithfulness at the root level – in our local churches.

Nehemiah necessarily ends on the note that it does – faithlessness - to remind us that we have to continue to contend with faithfulness throughout this church age until Jesus comes back. And so, Nehemiah 13 is useful to us, as one such church.

1 Corinthians 10 says that Israel’s history has been given to us so that we - the church - might, by their example, be kept from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. The warnings of chapter 13 will only be as effective as our appreciation of the joys of chapter 12. So, let’s go there first.

At the beginning of the book, we encountered a Nehemiah grief-stricken by the state of Jerusalem’s city walls. And dismayed at the seeming indifference of the people towards that state of affairs.

Jerusalem was God’s city, but the people didn’t seem to care that it was in ruins.

And it was that which motivated Nehemiah to return to the city. To stir up the people. And to rebuild the walls. Which they did. In record time – in just 52 days! The walls got completed by chapter 7 of this book! An amazing feat.

And yet here we are now in chapter 12. And that’s because restoration of the walls was one thing, but restoration of the people is quite another. And that needed to happen also.

Chapter 8 gave us the people cut to the heart by the reading of God’s Word. Chapter 9 gave us a confession by the people of the faithfulness of God to the people throughout their history, in spite of their faithlessness. Chapter 10 then showed us how the people renewed their commitment to God in solemn promises. And in chapter 11 we saw them actually living faithfully. With faithful leadership rolling out through the generations in the first half of chapter 12.

And now, with the walls restored and the people restored, it seems like the ultimate end of all that Nehemiah visioned at the beginning, has finally come to fruition.

Because now, the wall of Jerusalem can be dedicated to God.

What a day it was! A day of joy! A day of thanksgiving. With music of all kinds of instruments.

At last, the city and the community reflect the glory of their God. At last, they are rejoicing in God’s city and in their God!

The house of God had once again become the focal point of the city and of the hearts of the people.  They offered great sacrifices at it (verse 43). Because God had given them great joy.

So great was the rejoicing, in fact, it could be heard for miles around.

Last year I was at the FIEC national conference with over a thousand other Christians. And as we sang the praises of God, the collective joy of belonging to God’s redeemed people, and singing his praises together, was very special. And the sound was loud. It felt like a small foretaste of the glory of heaven - when all God’s people will worship him in unison.

That’s not to downplay some of the challenges that come against that kind of joy as we come weekly to worship – I know those too.

But this moment in the Nehemiah story is the high point of the returned exiles.

Imagine how it must have thrilled Nehemiah’s soul! That finally the city of God had walls that were worthy of God’s name. And the city had people whose hearts were full of joy in their God.

Their past faithlessness was not the ultimate defining factor. God’s covenant faithfulness to them, was! And now by God’s grace, there was some symmetry between their own faithfulness and his constant faithfulness.

And that’s what we have to long for folks. God has redeemed all his church - that is an unchanging reality. And oh, that our faithfulness to him would bear marks of symmetry with his unwavering faithfulness to us!

Now, how is faithfulness - like that of God’s faithfulness - sustained? Because there are all kinds of opposition coming against a faithful walk with God. Opposition like temptation. Opposition like suffering. Opposition like poverty - and wealth.

How in the world is faithfulness sustained?

And the answer is by delight. The Psalmist says delight yourselves in God. Paul says to the Thessalonians ‘May the Lord direct your hearts into God’s love’. Not that God doesn’t move towards them in love. He does.

But that their experience of his love wavers.

Why does he want them to experience the love of God more consistently? Because he wants them to be faithful. He says, ‘We have confidence that you will continue to do things we command’. In other words, you’ll be faithful to God’s will.

The soul that is more deeply satisfied in God will be more faithful.

Jesus shows us this too. Doesn’t he? By his own example. Hebrews says, ‘for the joy that was set before him endured the cross’.

It was the joy of future glories that empowered Jesus to remain faithful during the time of greatest testing and greatest suffering the world has ever seen.

So, that’s the pattern that is designed to function in our lives also – the joy of the glories of being with Jesus is the fuel in the car of Christian faithfulness. Can we remember that?

The question here in Nehemiah is, with the wall dedicated, will the people remain faithful to God or not?

The reality is: Nehemiah returned to Susa to serve the king again. But in his absence, the city sadly returned to its former ways.

And I see 4 main ways that they broke faith with God. And therefore 4 warnings – I’m getting ‘warnings’ from 1 Corinthians 10 - for us so that we might be helped to avoid faithlessness.

The first is that there is no common ground upon which light and darkness can coexist.

This is what we see in verses 4-9, where we encounter this character Tobiah again (verse 4).

Tobiah came to the fore early in the book - chapter 2. He was an Ammonite. And as an Ammonite he fell into a group that, as you can see at the beginning of chapter 13, the people took steps to exclude from the community.

Why did they do that? Because the book of Moses told them that the Ammonites had failed to meet Israel with food and water in their time of need. And had, instead, hired Balaam to call down curses on them - something God turned into blessing for Israel.

On that basis, they were considered by God, enemies of his people.

And therefore, God said, they should be excluded from the community. They were darkness. And Israel, as the people of God, were to be the light of God. A light for the nations, Isaiah says.

So, when Eliashib the priest, who was in charge of the temple storerooms, gave this Tobiah a large room to use, it was a violation of God’s holiness. And it was an embracing of God’s enemies.

It was an expression of what James alludes to when he says, ‘You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with world means enmity with God?’

Now in Israel’s context that was supposed to mean wholesale separation from the people around them. They excluded from Israel all who were of foreign ancestry (verse 3).

You can just imagine how that would go down today!

But through the new covenant work of Jesus, it’s different for God’s church. We are to be in the world. We are to be lights on stands, not hidden under bowls.

Because it’s in the attitudes of our minds that we are to be separate. Not in our ethnicities. Paul says it like this, ‘do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds’.

It’s in this sense, of renewed attitudes, that we are to demonstrate mature spiritual fidelity to God and separateness from the world.

We are meant to be of such a different mindset from the world - a godly mindset - that as we are obedient to the great commission to go into all the world - we are not moulded by it, but it is influenced by us.

The world is meant to look at us and see something of God in us. And it should have to say to itself, ‘what on earth is this?’ ‘This looks so different from anything we’ve ever encountered before’. ‘These people who say they belong to God don’t speak the way we speak. They don’t think the way we think. They don’t behave the way we behave’.

And when that happens, some - not all - will say to us, ‘tell me more about this God, you say you belong to’!

Well, you’ve got to love and admire Nehemiah, haven’t you? He is so faithful and devoted to God and to God’s people.

And we know it because he gets himself right back on over to Jerusalem when he hears of what Eliashib did. And he gets right into the nitty gritty of what’s going on.

He’s a leader valiant for the cause of God and for the purity of the people.

Well, he goes right in, doesn’t he? He throws all Tobiah’s stuff out of that storeroom - a bit like Jesus cleansing the temple courts.

He wastes no time ordering the rooms to be purified. And gets those temple things, put right back where they belong!

Here’s James again, ‘come near to God and he will come near to you.[That’s the same as what Paul said about being directed into the love of God. Back with James now]. Wash your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double minded’.

You see, when there’s infidelity in the Christian community, it’s a time for purification. It’s not a time for saying ‘peace peace’. When there is no peace! It’s a time for humbling ourselves.

And you know what happens when churches and individuals humble themselves like that? James promises: ‘God will lift them up!’

Nehemiah knew it. And that’s why he got down to cleansing the people of their infidelity quickly.

The second thing, then, that acts like a warning for us is that devotion can easily get disordered.

And we see this in the way the community had begun to mistreat the house of God in verses 10-13. Nehemiah says to them, ‘why is the house of God neglected?’

Especially since they made the specific promise that they wouldn’t do that! Those were their very words. Just flip back to chapter 10, verse 39: ‘we will not neglect the house of our God’

One of the things we said last time, was that those who moved into the city depended on those who remained in the country - to provide food for them.

And we can see that functioning well in chapter 12, verse 44 – fields, contributions, portions, stores, etc. But by chapter 13, verse 10, that had all gone by the wayside.

And that forced the Levites and musicians back to the farms, when they should have been focused on the service of God’s house in Jerusalem.

Neglect of Christ’s church is a serious issue. We don’t want to lose track of the fact that the church is so precious to Jesus that he laid down his life for her. And that he’s coming back for her!

I get how tough life in the church can be. It’s a family made up of diverse people who continue to sin. That’s a recipe for trouble, right?

People in the church often sin against each other. And the Lord’s people can actually fall out of love with his church because of that kind of experience.

But you know what? Jesus knew that sin in the church was going to be real, even when he said to Peter: on this rock - of the Apostle and Prophets (sinners) – I will build my church.

So, no matter how tough it gets in this place, we’re called to invest in the household of God - which is the church of the living Christ - knowing that somehow Jesus will make it possible for us to flourish in it.

Well, how does Nehemiah deal with this issue? He chooses trustworthy men to take charge of the storerooms properly.

And its trustworthy, faithful leaders, who are going to confront unfaithfulness, and love God’s people.

I’m not talking about fault finders. I’m not talking about men who laud it over the flock. I’m talking about men who confront sin precisely from God’s word when needed, and who love the brethren - in line with the example of Jesus.

The third warning, then, comes in the form of Sabbath breaking.

Verses 14-22 record the diverse activities that the people had begun to engage in on the Sabbath day. Even though in chapter 10, they promised to keep the sabbath holy.

Now I’ve got no real issue with anyone who wants to observe a sabbath day in a particular way.

Paul seems to say in Romans 14 that each should be fully convinced in their own mind - the one who does observe and the one who doesn’t.

But he’s also keen to say that no one should judge another by their own conviction about a Sabbath day.

And it seems to me, that Hebrews 4 is clear. The Sabbath finds its fulfilment in Jesus when we rest from our own works and rely on his finished work for us.

That’s the good news of the gospel!

It’s not by our works that we are justified in God’s sight. But it’s by Jesus’ one act of righteousness - when he died on the cross – that we are justified before God.

So, with that in mind, I think it is a threat to the church when she loses sight of Jesus’ finished work and lives in a kind of anxious restlessness and semi self-reliance.

It would be easy to say at this point: ‘when the church relies on works for justification’. That is, of course, the obvious application. And it is a mighty error which the church can surely fall into.

But right now, the church doesn’t seem so much in danger of works religion, as it is in danger of passive religion.

Because passive religion is as self-reliant as works religion.

And as far as I can tell, we’re in a period in church history – at least in this country - perhaps like never before, where passive religion is the church’s greatest threat.

Where grace can be used as a license for lukewarm devotion. Where the gospel can be used as a warrant for the inexact reading of God’s word. Where faith can be used to silence the call for obedience. Where love is increasingly set as the basis for progressive ideals.

And all of this is ultimately a type of self-reliance. It flies under the radar, because it’s done in the name of the gospel.

But it’s ultimately not a faithful resting on God’s will, but on our own will.

It’s not a resting on the power of the gospel; it’s resting on the power of self-determination.

It’s not a resting on the grace flowing out of the cross, but on the idea that past grace is enough for present challenges.

It’s a current ideology that undermines faith in the name of faith. And it’s really, a subtle form of self-religion.

James says that faith by itself is dead. It must have works that flow up out of it. That’s not passive religion. It’s faith in God for the power to accomplish things in his name.

Paul says to Titus that the grace of God has appeared training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions. That’s not passive religion.

It’s the recognition that grace is working towards progressive godliness.

And the writer to the Hebrews says, ‘there remains then a Sabbath rest for the people of God…let us then strive to enter that rest’. That’s not a passive religion. It’s a denial of self-reliance to strive to enter that rest. And a dependence on God to obtain it.

In other words, we’ve got to get back to the orthodox basics of the Christian faith.

The same Jesus who died to redeem us by grace, has called us to walk in the newness of life by grace - supplied in place of grace already given.

Any reluctance to walk in the grace of today, obediently, accurately, lovingly, faithfully, is a walking in our own strength and not in the grace of Jesus and the power of his Spirit.

Think about Nehemiah for a minute. What could have induced that man to take the thousand-mile journey from Babylon to Jerusalem, not once but twice, to sort things out?

What could have convinced him to take the flak he must have taken from those whose noses he had to put out of joint?

What could have persuaded him to the kind of patience that’s needed when everything you’ve endeavoured to do seems to be getting undone by faithless people?

What was it that prompted him to give up the steady-state job he had in Babylon to lead a people into purity?

The answer is in verse 14. And then at the end of verse 22. And then in the very last word of the book. It’s the same prayer. Nehemiah says, ‘Remember me for this, my God’.

Now why does he say that? Is he trying to earn his salvation? ‘Here are my good works Lord, remember what I’ve done so that you’ll knowI’m worthy’.

No! If he meant that he wouldn’t be saved! And we wouldn’t have this book in our bibles!

What he means is: ‘what motivates me in everything I do – in the cost, in the long journeys, in the painful confrontations – what motivates me is future joy!’

‘Remember what I’ve done here Father because everything I’ve done is for the joy that is set before me in your presence’.

The final word of warning comes through the intermarriage that took place in Nehemiah’s day.

Even though, in chapter 10, they committed themselves not to take foreign daughters for their sons. Yet here in verses 23-29, that’s exactly what they did.

So much so, that half the children spoke the languages of the surrounding nations, whilst the other half spoke the language of Judah (verse 24).

Back in chapter 9 the people themselves recited their faithless history, but now Nehemiah has to remind them that even king Solomon was led astray by foreign wives.

Why? Because the sin that typically followed intermarriage was idolatry. Each intermarried household gained a foreign god. And before long hearts were divided.

That’s a valuable lesson about marriage in general. But it’s a wider-ranging lesson about divided hearts.

Jesus said, ‘you can’t love God and money’ for example. ‘You’ll love the one and despise the other’.

In other words, a divided heart eventually leads to a switched devotion. And so, we’ve got to help each other to keep our love for God pure. Not divided!

Let’s be careful what our hearts run after because the heart is ‘wicked and deceitful above all things who can know it’.

Let’s always seek to make God the first love of our hearts. Let our devotion be exclusive not inclusive. And then our hearts will not be led astray after all kinds of idolatries.

So, then, we’re meant to see how easily faithlessness seeks to overtake us again and again.

Would that the dedication of the walls was the end of the book. How beautiful that would be. But that’s not the reality of the age that we live in – where we still contend with sin; where the race is still to be run; where the prize is still to be obtained.

Until then we need to contend with ourselves, amongst other things. And if that sounds like hard work, then you’d be right. It is hardwork.

But we’re not alone in it. The Spirit of the living God, by the grace of God is with us, and in us, and working alongside us, to accomplish all of God’s good designs for us.

Nehemiah finishes up his book beautifully. See if you agree. Purification, provision and prayer. Purification for the priests. Provision for the contributions. And prayer much in the way the book started with prayer; and has exemplified prayer throughout.

Let’s follow Nehemiah’s lead. Let’s make sure we do all we can to help the church be pure. Let’s make sure we do all we can to provide the church with what she needs.

And let’s wrap up all that desire and endeavour in prayer – knowing that without God’s help, we’ll follow Israel where God doesn’t want us to go.

Nehemiah would have rejoiced to see the arrival of Jesus. To see the provision of the Holy Spirit. To see hearts made alive for God. And to see faithful churches.

Let us rejoice also and be glad in the Lord. And so be led to faithfulness in our own day.