Well, in Chapter 12 of Nehemiah,
we have one of the great celebrations in the Old Testament. There aren't
a lot of them when you think about it. There's a great one
when David brings the Ark of the Covenant into Jerusalem and
he dances before it. There are great ones when the
temple is built and you have that remarkable celebration. when the temple
is dedicated by Solomon, his great prayer, and the Lord comes.
But in Nehemiah chapter 12, when the temple is rebuilt and there
are walls around it, there is this great celebration and we
looked at it several weeks ago. They offered great sacrifices,
verse 43 of chapter 12, and rejoiced. And then we have this great statement,
for God had made them rejoice with great joy. The wise also
and the children rejoiced, so that the joy of Jerusalem was
heard even afar off. There were songs of praise, verse
46, and thanksgiving unto God. And then there was a distribution
and an organisation of things such that this would continue.
In verse 47, and all Israel in the days of Zerubbabel, in the
days of Nehemiah, gave the portions of the singers and the porters
every day his portion. They sanctified the holy things
under the Levites. and the Levites sanctified them
under the children of Aaron. Things were set aside and things
were very much put in place. There was a temple, there was
a worship, there was a wall of protection. And then in Chapter
13, it's hard to know with precision all of the chronology of this.
What we know is that Nehemiah had been and gone back and then
come back as governor and then had gone away, possibly according
to Gill and the people he gets his understanding from who wrote
hundreds of years after the event, but nevertheless a number of
them say that Nehemiah was away for 12 months. Let's read what
happened. on that day. They read in the
book of Moses in the audience of the people, and therein was
found written that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come
into the congregation of God forever, because they met not
the children of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against
them, that he should curse them. How bid our God turn the curse
into a blessing. Now it came to pass when they
heard the law that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitudes,
and before this Eliashib the priest, having the oversight
of the chamber of the house of our God, was allied unto Tobiah. And he had prepared for him a
great chamber, where aforetime they laid the meat offerings,
the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithes of the corn, the
new wine, and the oil, which was commanded to be given to
the Levites, and the singers, and the porters, and the offerings
of the priests. But in all this time was not
I at Jerusalem, for in the and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes,
king of Babylon, came I unto the king, and after a certain
days I obtained leave of the king. And I came to Jerusalem,
understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah in preparing him
a chamber in the courts, of the house of God, and it grieved
me sore. Therefore I cast forth all the
household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber. Then I commanded
that they cleanse the chambers, and thither brought I again the
vessels of the house of God with the meat offerings and the frankincense."
So here we have another graphic and important reminder that no
matter where we think we're at, no matter where we think the
church is at, we are always in desperate need of the grace of
God. I love in Exodus when they are
given the Ten Commandments. They are told that they are not
to build an altar where they go up on steps. And over of earth shall you make
unto me, and shall sacrifice thereon thy burnt offerings and
peace offerings, thy sheep, thy iron places, where I record my
name. I will come unto thee, and I
will bless thee. And if thou wilt make then over
a stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for thou, if
thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. Neither
shalt thou go up by steps. unto mine altar, that thy nakedness
be not discovered thereon." We have, don't we, in this religious
world that all of us have imbibed, we have this notion that we actually
sort of come up and we reach some sort of level of holiness
and then we go along and then if you're really, really, really
good and really, really holy then you actually reach another
plateau and we actually think We are inclined to think that
we go up to God by steps. The first thing that we need
to note of this fall is that no, these people had been caused
to celebrate and had been caused to see God's faithfulness in
the most remarkable way. And all it took was for Nehemiah
to turn his back for just 12 months. A man who sought the
welfare of the children of Israel had departed. and all of a sudden
they were back into the most appalling apostasy. So there is no ladder of holiness
that we climb on. We are either perfectly, perfectly
holy before God or we are perfectly, perfectly unholy. There are no plateaus of holiness
that we attain in our worship of God. We are 100% dependent
upon Him 100% of the time and woe to us if we think that we
are not. I love what Colossians 2 says,
doesn't it? As you have therefore received
Christ Jesus the Lord. How did you receive Christ Jesus
the Lord? You received Him as a sinner. Nothing in My hands I bring.
Simply to Thy cross I cling. Naked come to Thee for dress. Wash me, Saviour, or I die. That's how we come to the Lord
Jesus, don't we? That's how we receive Him. We
receive Him with nothing in our hands. We receive Him having
been broken by Him to see what we really are, having been blessed
by Him to see who He is. As you have therefore received
Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him. You don't get any
better. You receive Him as a sinner,
you stay as a sinner. I love what 2nd Corinthians 9.8
says, God is able to make all grace abound towards you, that
you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound in
every good work. God is able, not me, not you. Therefore, let him that thinketh
he standeth, take heed lest he falls, says the Holy Spirit in
2 Corinthians 12.10. When we think we're strong, when
we think that we've reached some stage or some place, when we
think that we've got beyond the need of faith and the need of
the Word of God. We haven't grown at all. We've just fallen into a place
of great danger. In Romans 11.20, Paul speaks
of the Israelites. They were broken off because
of their unbelief. But you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud. but fear. Do not become proud,
but fear." And the second Peter, as he's about to die, Peter says,
take care that you are not carried away with the error of lawless
people and lose your stability. So the people of God in this
place, in this world, are to be a separated people. They are
to be separate. They're called upon by God to
be separate. The people shall dwell alone. God's people shall not be reckoned
among the nations. And again in this first verse
we realise But this separation, like this wall that was built,
is God's ordained separation. It is God's appointed wall. It
is God's wall that protects, God's wall that sanctifies within,
God's wall that says that what is outside is unholy. This passage reminds us of is
that the public reading of the Word of God and the private reading
of the Word of God, any reading of the Word of God, but especially
in public assemblies, is an incredibly important thing, which is why
in our services here we try, I try, if the Lord allows, for
us to have more of His Word, You're not much interested in
my opinions, I hope. I'm not much interested in my
opinions, but I'm very interested in God's opinions, and I pray
that that would happen in your case. But they read on that day,
they read of the Book of Moses in the audience of the people,
and therein was found. So the Word of God was read and
the Word of God was revealed to them. And it was revealed
and it was written by God and revealed to their hearts on that
day that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into
the congregation of God forever. It's a wonderful picture of the
forevers of God, isn't it? At the end of the day, there
never will be an Ammonite or a Moabite in the congregation
of God. Only the children of Israel forever. And the reason is in verse 2,
isn't it? Because they met not the children of Israel with bread
and water. If you remember the story, they were travelling through
that wilderness land on their way to Canaan and they came to
the edges of these lands of the Nabites and the Canaanites and
they just said, can we just travel through on the King's Highway,
we'll pay for anything we take, we just want to travel through. And they turned against them. And what was the enmity about?
The enmity is always the same enmity. It's when the Church
is revealed, when the Lord Jesus is revealed, that's when the
enmity is stirred up. They are stirred up against God. They can't get to Him, but they
can get to His people. So it was an active enmity against
God. And then they hired Balaam against
them. And it's wonderful if you read
in Numbers 22 and 24, they hired Balaam to curse the people of
God. And Balaam, not only did he not
curse them, he wasn't allowed by God to curse them. He was only allowed by God to
bless them. In fact, in Numbers 24.10, Balak
says to Balaam, he says, you have blessed them all together. And what he's saying in the Hebrew
is that you've blessed them so much there's no other blessing
available for anyone else. All the blessings of God are
just for the people of God. But Balaam's solution, Despite
all the things that the Lord had warned him, Balaam's solution
was to cause the people of Israel to compromise. It caused them,
in verse 16 of chapter 31 of Numbers, Behold, these caused
the children of Israel, I kept the women alive, And these women
that they kept alive caused the children of Israel through the
Council of Balaam to commit trespass against the Lord in the matter
of Peel. And there was a great plague
upon the congregation and you might remember that Penehas took
up his spear and he slew an Israelite and a Ganabite woman with the
one bolt of the spear. And the plague was stopped 24,000
times. But you see, the era of Balaam,
and Balaam is held up before us in the scriptures as one of
the most evil and wicked people that the children of God ever
had to deal with. And Balaam in his speeches in
Numbers 22 to 24 never said one single word that was untrue about
God and his people. And yet he's held up before us.
as someone who is appallingly wicked. So the issue again, the
issue is always that of compromise, isn't it? A toleration of something
that shouldn't be tolerated. God's people are to be a separate
people. They shall not be reckoned among
the nations. And it's not just an Old Testament
separation, it's a New Testament separation in 2 Corinthians 6
that says, come out from among them and be ye separate. Touch not the unclean thing. And in the context of 2 Corinthians the issue isn't a marriage between
a believer and unbeliever, it's not about work. It's not wise for us to enter
into commercial long-term agreements with the people who are opposed
to God and these people in this world. But that's not the separation
that's talked about here. It says, do not be unequally
yoked together with unbelievers for what fellowship has righteousness
with unrighteousness and what Communion has light with darkness. This is 2 Corinthians 6 verse
15. And what accord has Christ with
Belial? And what part has he that believeth
with an infidel? And what agreement has the temple
of God with idols? For you are the temple of the
living God. As God has said, I will dwell
in them, and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they
shall be my people. Therefore, come out from among
them and be you separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean
thing, and I will receive you, and I will be a father unto you,
and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
God's people are to be a separated people. And the remarkable thing
is, of course, that in verse 3, chapter 13, it came to pass,
when they heard the law, they separated from Israel all the
mixed multitude. And so there was a hearing of
the Word of God, there was a response as it was revealed, and there
was an obedience to the Word of God, as painful as that might
have been. But we need, and the next verse
shows us, we need to go back to why did this wickedness happen
amongst the people. And let's read verse 4. And before
this, this is where it started. This is the root cause of it.
The liar shed the priest, having oversight of the chamber of the
house of God. And so the temple was built with
chambers on the sides of it. And the chambers on the sides
of it were places where you kept the meat offerings, the frankincense,
and the vessels, and the tithes of the corn, and the new wine,
and the oil, which was commanded to be given to the Levites, and
the singers, and the porters, and the offerings of the priests.
You see, all of what was there was a representation of the Lord
Jesus and His sacrifice. And who did Elijah have in there? It is just remarkable. It's almost
mind-boggling that here the high priest, verse 28, you'll see
that he was the high priest. The high priest of Israel had
this man, Tobiah. And we can chart Tobiah's history
just briefly to cause us to be horrified at the compromise,
how deep the compromise is. In verse 10 of chapter 2, Sambalat
and Tobiah, the Ammonite, heard of it. They heard that there
was a man come to seek the welfare of the children of Israel, and
it grieved them exceedingly." So there they were before Nehemiah
got to Jerusalem. They'd heard about him coming
and he presented his letters to the governors around and they
were grieved exceedingly. Down in verse 19, follow his
history along, when Sambalat and Tobiah, they heard about this work of rebuilding the wall,
they laughed us to scorn and despised us. So their grieving
led to a laughing and a despising of the people of God. Over in
chapter 4 verse 3, when they see the wall being built, they
say, it's such a pathetic thing, this wall, that even a fox Even
a little light fox could damage the wall, could break it down. In 4 verse 7 we find that Tobiah
was very wroth, was very angry. In chapter 6 we find that they
conspire to do mischief. So now the wall had been built
but there were no doors left in it, no gates and doors. They come to do deceitful things,
don't they? They say, come, let us meet together. Come down to us, Niyamaya. And then they pretend to be helpers
of Niyamaya. They say in verse 7, there is
a king in Judah. This is what's being reported.
Now it shall be reported to the king according to these words. They were saying that Nehemiah
was actually setting up his own little kingdom. Come now for
and let us take counsel together. They pretended to be helpers.
In verse 12, they hire false prophets. that they might have
a matter for an evil report, that they might reproach him.
They sought a way to get him into the temple. And remarkably
through all of this, by reporting what a nice guy Tobiah is in
verse 19, they also reported his good deeds before me. and Tobiah sent letters to put
me in fear." It's a remarkable picture. This
high priest takes the things that represent the Lord Jesus
and his worship out of the temple and clear it out And they made
for him, in verse 5, a great chamber, a great chamber. They made a residence for Tobiah
in the temple of God. You see, the physical temple is a representation
of many things, isn't it? It's a representation of the
Lord Jesus. It's a representation of the Church. And in 1 Corinthians
6.19 it says, Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple was full and it was
purpose built. And there was only a dwelling
in there for the priest. In Chapter 6 they try and get
Nehemiah to go down into the temple and to make himself safe
by getting in there and locking the doors. Nehemiah wasn't allowed
into the temple. The thing is that the temple
is full and the temple is fitted for God's work and you cannot
bring anything into the temple extra things into the temple
until you have first removed something. Any man, any man-made activity
that adds to the worship of God necessarily means that something
is taken out, someone is taken out. All compromise, all issues
of compromise, issues of compromise with regard to doctrine and practice
are all issues to do with the person and the work and the glory
of the Lord Jesus, bar none. You take every issue of doctrine
that we've had to deal with, every issue of practice that
we've looked at, and every single one of them, every single one
of them has its focus on the person and the work of the Lord
Jesus. Now liarship can only make room
for Tobiah by removing the things that typify the Lord Jesus. And no wonder, no wonder the
name of our God is treated with such contempt in this world,
when what is pretended to be with sincerity, with zeal, with
kindness, with love. Eliashib and Tobiah had a friendship. All of it is dangerous and damaging. The other picture, of course,
is that in the scriptures and in Christian life and in the
church, Satan and Satan's enemies have one place. There's only
one place they wish to have, and that is the very place of
the throne of God. They wish to take up residence
where God should be. In Isaiah 14 we have this remarkable
testimony from God the Holy Spirit about Satan, and a remarkable
testimony about the disease that courses through our veins. Why
did this happen so easily? After all of those celebrations,
after all of the evidence, after all the witness of God, why did
it happen so easily? It happened so easily because
of what Eliashib and all of us together with him and with our
father Adam did in the garden. How art thou fallen from heaven,
O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the
ground, which didst weaken the nations! how weak we are. For thou hast said, Isaiah 14
verse 13, for you have said in your heart, this is what Satan
says in his heart, this is what every child of Adam says in his
heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above
the stars of God, I will sit also on the mount of the congregation
in the sides of the north. I will ascend above the heights
of the cloud. I will be like the Most High. That is what so offends people,
isn't it? Why are they so offended at God
being God? Because they say in their heart,
I will be like the Most High. I have the right to rule over
my life as I see fit. I will be like the Most High.
And verse 15 is a promise from God, thankfully. Yet thou shalt
be brought down to hell to the sides of the pit. He made the world a wilderness
and destroyed the cities thereof. Isn't it a remarkable thing that
our great God and Saviour defeated Him on the cross? And now when
He takes up residence, the one who is in you is greater than
the one who is in the world. The compromise always is incredibly
dangerous. This is just a remarkable testimony
to how quickly the people of God can compromise and fall. And you would think that the
evidence would be enough. You would think that what they
had seen, you would think that the destruction of their families,
the 70 years of exile, the 100 odd years they'd been back there
in Jerusalem, surrounded by these enemies, without a wall, without
protection, without serious worship of God, you would think that
all of that culminating in that remarkable ceremony were those
two great companies march on top of these walls that Tobias
said a fox could knock down. Orchestras marched on top of
that wall and then they meet in Chapter 12 in front of that
temple. You would think that all of that
would say to the people, we have now reached a place. and it wasn't
to be, and it isn't to be even in our time. By grace we stand. You see in verse 6, for this
time I was not at Jerusalem, For in the thirty-second year
of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I came unto the king, and after
certain days I obtained leave of the king. And I came to Jerusalem,
and I understood of the evil Elijah did for Tobiah in preparing
him a chamber in the courts of the house of God. So Nehemiah
is a man that came to seek the welfare of the children of Israel. And it's remarkable, isn't it?
We think that we are small, we think that we are few. When you
go out and do battle in this world with compromise and with
sin and with those who are enemies of God, you think you're just
one person. Nehemiah was just one man. Nehemiah did a job that no one
else on all the planet could ever do. Just like you and just
like me, God will use just the ones, just the individuals, and
just the trials that they go through. Nehemiah came and he
saw. And Nehemiah, who had been a
man of prayer and a man of consideration, he doesn't need to pray. He's judging. He's actually saying
evil is evil. The evil that Elisha did for
Tobiah. We do get criticized, don't we?
I've heard it so often that we are making judgments. Well, let
me tell you, brothers and sisters, the people of God are called
upon to make judgments with God's Word before them and God's Spirit
in them. 2 Corinthians 2.15 says, He that
is spiritual judges all things, and to be spiritual in 2 Corinthians
is to be one who has the Holy Spirit. And the test of that
is that they stand side by side with the apostles in the doctrine
and in the Gospel they proclaim about the Lord Jesus. He that
is spiritual, judge, judges all things, yet he himself is judged
of no man." God calls upon His people to make judgments about
what is evil and what is compromise and what is damaging to the temple
of God and to the house of God. I don't know how it's going to
work out, but in 1 Corinthians 6 the Lord tells us that we're
actually going to judge angels. The liarship is done as so many
compromises do. Instead of feeding the flock,
instead of the glory of God being the centre of his work and his
worth and his honour and glory, he fleeces the flock. He makes
an alliance with this rich man. In fact, he ends up being aligned
to him by marriage. And Nehemiah is a man who is
honoured of God, isn't he? And he stands before us in the
Scriptures as a man who was raised up by God. In the beginning of
this book he hears that the walls are broken down, he hears that
Jerusalem, the place where God is to place his name. The place
where he's to be honoured is broken down and it's a ruin and
it has no walls. And it grieved him deeply and
he wept and he grieved and he lamented and he fasted. And here
he comes back and it says that he grieved, he grieved me sore. I think one of the things that
troubles me as much as anything is that there are so many things
that should grieve me sore and they don't grieve me enough. They don't grieve me enough. Go down to verse 25 and you'll
see how he responded to some of these people with a mixed
marriage. And you would say, why? In this day and age, he
could never get away with that. We'd find a place to lock him
up. We'd find a mental home or a jail for him. He contended
with them. He cursed them. He smoked certain
of them and plucked off their hair and made them swear by God. In Ezra, you will see in chapter
9 of Ezra that we have a very similar response from Ezra. These
were men who grieved that the glory of God was trodden down
in the streets. These were men who grieved that
the name of the Lord Jesus, which is what that temple represented
on this earth, the meeting place of God and man, the man Christ
Jesus, was trodden down and treated as a common thing so that Ammonites
and Malabites could join in together, that people like Tobiah could
come and live there in peace and safety. And he was grieved
sore. and he is a man of action. He
doesn't ask anyone's permission. In verse 8, he cast forth all
the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber. He cast it
all out and then I commanded that they cleanse the chambers
and he brought again the vessels of the house of God with the
meat offerings and the frankincense. It says of the Lord Jesus when
He came to that temple, what had the people in His day turned
the temple into? It was a marketplace and a den
of thieves, a place for the world and a place for the world's commerce. And yet at the very same time,
those very same people were very, very public in their legalism
and their self-righteousness. And what did it say of the Lord?
What does it say of him? He says, zeal for thine house
has eaten me up. Zeal for the house of God consumed
the Lord Jesus. He says, it's my father's house.
He was claiming it was his own. It's a house of prayer. It's
a house of prayer for all nations. And he cleansed it. You see,
same today, isn't it? We look down through the rest
of this chapter, we'll see that the Levites, from verse 10 down
to 14, the Levites were stripped of all their provisions, and
what did they do? They went back to farming. In verse 15 down to 22, the Sabbath
was broken and you've got people trading in Jerusalem on the Sabbath,
doing things that don't have to be done on the Sabbath. People
from afar coming and trading on the Sabbath. The Levites speak
of the Lord Jesus in his priestly office. The Sabbath is about
the Lord Jesus. And in those last verses from
23 down to 31, we have this mixed marriage, this compromise. And
so one compromise festers and grows. I've often been delighted
by Cole's story about the yeast. When he put too much in in that
big batch of dough and he came back the next day and it had
gone over the bowl and it had gone over the bench and it had
gone over the floor. What is the promise of God? A
little bit of Yeast disappears. A little bit of yeast works through
the whole batch of dough. I suppose the lesson is really
simple for us, isn't it? That God would make us serious.
Cause us to be serious. Cause us to be serious about
sin. cause us to be serious about
the glory of His dear Son, cause us to know that where we compromise
in one thing, we compromise in absolutely everything. Let's
pray.