According to His good pleasure
and will, and all things done to the praise of His glory, to
the praise of the glory of His grace, And so here we are in
Nehemiah chapter 5, and we find our friend Nehemiah, that man
who has that beautiful description applied to him, which is so applicable
of our Lord Jesus. a man had come to seek the well-being
of the children of Israel. And Nehemiah in so many ways
typifies our Lord Jesus, doesn't he? He's a man who came as the servant, as it were, of
a king. He came to a far country. He came having redeemed people,
he comes to a redeemed community. And here he is in this land with
all of the authority of the King of Babylon. All of the authority
of this King. And yet he comes to do the work
of God, to build the walls of Jerusalem, He comes to seek the
welfare of the children of Israel. And yet, as you read Nehemiah,
as soon as he arrives, and at every step of the way, he meets
obstacle after obstacle after obstacle. And as you read the
books of Nehemiah and Israel, you will find that these obstacles
don't finish. They just keep on going. And
such is the path of us in this world. Here's Nehemiah in chapter
4. He's gathered the people and
they're operating as soldiers, as it were, in a war. One hand on their spears and
their swords strapped to their sides, not even stopping to wash. And yet, in the midst of all
of this, with discouragements from the enemies on the outside
and discouragements from the people who say there is much
rubbish and the enemies are coming to attack us and they'll catch
us out no matter where we are. In chapter 5 we have one of the
things that confronts Nehemiah and confronts us, friendly fire. more opposition. Let's just read
about it. It's extraordinary. In the first
five verses we have the problem that's laid out before Nehemiah.
This is a group of people, of course, who are all, have all
come back just in recent years from Babylonian captivity. And here they are back in the
land, in a sense redeemed by God out of Babylon, and listen
to the way they behave. And there was a great outcry
from the people and their wives against their Jewish brethren.
For there were those who said, We our sons and our daughters
are many, Therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live."
There were also some who said, we have mortgaged our lands and
vineyards and houses that we might buy grain because of the
famine. There were also those who said,
we have borrowed money for the king's tax on our lands and vineyards,
yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren. Our children
as their children, indeed we are forcing our sons and our
daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been brought
into slavery. It is not in our power to redeem
them, for other men have our lands and our vineyards." So
here we are with this extraordinary situation that confronts Nehemiah. There amongst the Jews who had
come back, some had become wealthy, and in their wealth they had
oppressed the poor. God had blessed them, verse 2,
with sons and daughters, many sons and daughters. But here they are, as the blessed
and rescued remnant of God's people. But there they are, we've
mortgaged our lands for us three, our vineyards and houses, that
we might buy grain because of the famine." So they not only
had to buy grain because of the famine, they also had to borrow
money to pay the king's tax. The marks of captivity, the marks
that are in our flesh of our captivity in Babylon are still
on the people. And yet here they are as a group
of people who have in Chapter 3 been standing shoulder to shoulder
next to one another, next to another, next to another. Here
they are with some of them now having to sell their children. We are forcing our sons and daughters
to be slaves and some of our daughters have been brought into
slavery. Why had they been through what
they had been through, these people? They had the Word of God, and
they had disobeyed God. And God had honoured His faithful
covenant to them. And listen again and again in
Leviticus and Exodus and Deuteronomy, over and over again, God talks
about how his people are to treat each other. If one of your brethren
becomes poor and falls into poverty among you, then you shall say
to him, you shall help him, like a stranger or a sojourner, that
he may live with you. This is Leviticus 25, 36. Take
no usury or interest from him, but fear your God, that your
brother may live with you. You shall not lend him your money
for usury, which is interest, nor lend him your food at a profit."
And it seems as if in these times of difficulty, the rich were
not only buying the children into slavery, but they were actually
charging exorbitant prices for the grain. And the reason is
And the reason for so many of the difficulties out there is
that we so quickly forget who God is and what He has done. I am the Lord your God. who brought you out of the land
of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. And if one of your brethren who
dwells by you becomes poor and sells himself to you, you shall
not compel him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant and a sojourner
he shall be with you. and shall serve you until the
year of Jubilee. And then he shall depart from
you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his
own family. He shall return to the possession
of his fathers. For, says God, they are my servants. whom I brought out of the land
of Egypt, they shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule
over him with rigor, but you shall fear the Lord your God." And here we have a people who
had just, in the memory of some of them, certainly etched in
stark remembrance of all of them, what had happened to them. God
in Deuteronomy 28 and 29, you can read the list of curses that
came upon these people, and they're written These words of God were
written that you may fear this glorious and awesome name of
the Lord your God. They had gone through what they'd
gone through because God in covenant faithfulness to them had caused
them to be sold as a nation. They'd been going through the
shocking things of Deuteronomy 28 and 29, where people had eaten
their children, and such was their greed, and such was their
desperation that they would eat their children and not share
them with their other family members. Shocking. the worst that came upon humanity
on this earth. And yet, just 70, 80 years later,
these people are in exactly the same situation. They're forcing
these poor people around them to sell their children as slaves. And then at the end of verse
5, if you look at it with me, there's a great description of
all of us, isn't it? It is not in our power to redeem
them. It's not in our power. Thank
God there is someone with the power to redeem, that near kinsman,
that saviour. It's not in our power to redeem
them, for other men have our lands and our vineyards." So
they'd taken from these people the very means that they had
for paying the king's tax, the tax from Babylon. They'd taken
from these people the very means to feed their children. And here they were witnessing. Ezra coming back and the rebuilding
of the temple. They had witnessed now Nehemiah
coming back and rebuilding that wall in remarkable
fashion. There was the most powerful man
among them, Nehemiah, the wealthiest man among them, working side
by side with the others, not even washing. building the wall,
honouring God, and these people on the outside are doing this
to their brothers and sisters. They are of the same flesh, and
yet they treat them with contempt. Here we have Nehemiah. Nehemiah
shows himself to be a man of uprightness, doesn't he? A man
of courage, a man of unselfishness, a man of holy jealousy, a man
who's thorough in his job. And I became very angry when
I heard their outcry. and these words. You see, there
is an anger. There is an anger that God says
is right. People get upset when the people
of God get angry about the way the Lord Jesus is treated in
this world. People get upset when people
get angry about false teaching. God says, be angry and do not
sin. You can read it with me in Psalm
4. Hear me when I call, O God of
my righteousness. You have relieved me in my distress. Have mercy on me and hear my
prayer. How long are you sons of men? will you turn my glory to shame? How long will you love worthlessness
and seek falsehood, but know that the Lord has set apart for
himself him who is godly? The Lord will hear you when I
call to him. Be angry and do not sin. Meditate within your heart on
your bed and be still. There is a place in God's economy
for righteous anger. You can read about it again in
Ephesians chapter 4. There is a reason for God's people
to respond with zeal and passion. And what is it in the psalm?
Turn my glory to shame. You see, when God's people, those
who profess to name Him, act in these ways, they bring the
name of the Lord into disrepute. We'll see it down a little bit
further in verse 9. Nehemiah was a man of thought,
wasn't he? When Ezra was confronted with
similar sort of wickedness, idolatry again, Nehemiah tears his robe,
plucks the hair out of his head, tears the hair from his beard,
and he weeps and he cries and is in great anguish. Nehemiah
is a different man. Just because God's people operate
in different ways doesn't mean that it's wrong. After serious
thought, I consulted with myself. I rebuked the nobles and the
rulers and said to them, each of you is exacting usury, interest,
from his brother. The interest is down in verse
11. It's a hundredth of the money
and the grain. They are charging interest on
the money and interest on the grain. Interest on the wine,
interest on the oil. The interest rate is a hundredth. That's one hundredth part per
month. Twelve percent a year or even
more. It's not for nothing that the
Jews developed the reputation that they've sadly had for all
of those years when it comes to extracting every last penny. But they're extracting it, aren't
they? They're exacting it from their brothers. So I called a
great assembly against him and I said to them, according to
our ability, We have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were
sold to the nations. What had happened in Babylon
was that some of the Jews had sold themselves to the Babylonian
people and they required redemption money. Nehemiah says, according
to our ability, he's used the money that his great position
in Babylon had given him. He used
that money for the glory of God and for his people. According
to our ability, we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were
sold to the nations. Now indeed, Will you even sell
your brethren? Or would you even want to try
and sell them to me? Nehemiah had bought them and
bought their freedom. The Lord Jesus bought the freedom
of his people. And now others who had been redeemed
and released from Babylonian captivity are offering them,
these people, their brothers, for sale. Nehemiah deals with public sin
in the church in a public way, doesn't he? He called, verse
7, a great assembly against them. He called them all together.
so that all the nations could hear. And he just lays out the
truth. He lays out the truth of what
he had done. They are Jewish brethren. And
he lays out the truth of what they are doing. They are extracting
usury from their brothers and now they are even willing to
enslave them and to sell them. It's remarkable in verse 8, isn't
it? When the truth is laid out before these people, they were
silenced and found nothing to say. It's a very, very good thing,
isn't it, when the Lord rebukes us. And He might rebuke us through
other people, and He may very well rebuke us as we read His
Word. It's a good thing, isn't it?
It's a gracious thing when God silences our mouths and we have
nothing to say. Who are you, O man, says Romans
9, to talk back to God? They said nothing to say. He
says, verse 9, what you are doing is not good. In fact, it's a
strong word. What you are doing is very bad. Then he brings them to see the
biggest issue here, isn't it? The biggest issue isn't the greed
and the covetousness of men. The biggest issue always is what
is God doing? And what does this say about
God? Should you not walk in the fear
of God? And then there's a reason for
it, isn't it? Because of the reproach of the nations, our
enemies. This is another verse, isn't
it, that I keep reminding you, Romans 2, 24 is another one,
and there are many throughout the scriptures. When we live
in this land, where the gospel And the name of the Lord Jesus
is treated the way it is. We don't look to the pagans. We don't look to the world to
find the reason for it. The reason the name of the Lord
Jesus is treated with contempt in this land is because of the
way those who profess to proclaim Him do so, and the way they live. We shouldn't ever call the Roman
Catholic institution, organism, whatever you want to call it.
We shouldn't call it a church. But think of what damage has
been done to those who want to witness to the Lord Jesus in
this world by the way the Catholic priests have behaved. not just
for this last 20 years when they've been exposed, but for the last
1700 years, ever since they came into existence. And again and
again it's multiplied, isn't it? Anyone who denies the gospel
of God's free and sovereign grace, denies the deity of the Lord
Jesus, All of it, no matter what it looks like, no matter what
its colors, all of it is idolatry. And all of it brings reproach
to the name of our God. And at the end of it, it's a
tragedy, isn't it? The tragedy is for those people. See, fearing God, Both means
a reverential awe of God and it means also real fear. God is awesome and God is holy
and God will not be tampered with. Isaiah says that the fear
of the Lord is our treasure. and the longer someone walks
closely with the Lord, and they see His acts of grace, and they
see Him withholding grace, they see Him bringing judicial blindness,
they become more and more aware of the fact that our God is awesome,
and our God is holy, and is not to be tampered with. Nehemiah calls on these people
to stop. He and his brethren and his servants
are lending money and grain. They're trying to help these
poor people. Let us stop this usury. You see, Nehemiah wasn't guilty
of it, but Nehemiah owns sin that he sees around him as his. You can read about it in his
prayer in chapter 1. He acknowledges that the sin
he sees out there, and the sin that is grievous, is sin that's
in his flesh as well. We are all, as children of Adam,
bearing some responsibility for all the sin we see around us.
Who makes you to differ? What do you have that you haven't
received? So why boast? Restore now to
them even this day their lands, their vineyards, their olive
groves and their houses, and also the money you've charged,
the extra hundredth of the money and the grain, the new wine and
the oil that you have charged them." And then we have this
remarkable act of God's grace in the lives of these people.
There they are with all of these possessions they've clung to
themselves. They now own people as well as
vineyards and olive groves and houses. And so they said, we
will restore it. We will require nothing from
them. We will do as you say. Isn't it wonderful? When God
speaks a word, his servants are made to respond, not with arguments
and words. We will restore it. We will require
nothing from them. We will do as you say. And because
this was an activity between the people and God, he called
the priests and required an oath from them that they would do
according to this promise. Then I shook out the fold of my garment
and said, so may God shake out each man from his house and from
his property who does not perform this promise. Thus, even thus,
may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen. and praise the Lord. See, the
Lord Jesus says to us really clearly, isn't it, we just cannot
serve two masters. We think we can. Our flesh will
tell us that we can. He says in the Sermon on the
Mount in Matthew 6.24, no one can serve two masters because
either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will
be loyal to one and despise the other. You cannot, says God,
you cannot serve God and mammon. You see, there's a great spiritual
lessons for us here, aren't there? How quickly should we forgive
our brothers? How quickly should we forgive their debts? How long should we hold on to
anything that causes us to keep them in debt to us? These people, who'd acted with
public wickedness and with horrible greed and great evil just restored
it and got on with the job without a whimper. It's so easy, isn't it? It's
so easy to sort of hold on to things and to keep our brothers
and sisters in debt to us and to in some sense enslave them
in all sorts of ways. You know the ways that others
can be enslaved. God is showing us here that in
the hearts of His people, when we see those things happening,
we will restore it. We will require nothing from
them. We will do as God says. We won't hold a grudge against
our brother and sister. We'll seek ways of being giving
and forgiving rather than grasping. Now what did the Galatians false
teachers want to do? They wanted these people to come
back under the law so that they could boast about their flesh.
They wanted to take possession of them so that they earned them
as their slaves. They wanted to put them in slavery.
Everything that doesn't proclaim the free sovereign grace of God
enslaves and entraps people. There are many ways in which
we need to be reminded by God that we look on our brothers
and sisters, as Nehemiah looked on these people, and let us stop. Let us stop this usury. Nehemiah shows us the fact, as
1 Timothy says, we brought nothing into this world We'll leave this
world with exactly the same number of possessions that we brought
into this world. We came into this world naked. And we'll leave absolutely naked. come with nothing and we leave
with nothing of the things of this world. Let's hold on to
them with hands that are so open that when they slip through our
hands, nothing has been lost. Now godliness, knowing the grace
of God in the face of the Lord Jesus, godliness with contentment,
is great gain, for we brought nothing into this world, and
it is certain we can carry nothing out." having food and clothing,
with these shall we be content. For those who desire to be rich
fall into temptation and a snare, into which many in foolish, harmful
lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of
money is the root of all kinds of evil. for which some have
strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves
through with many sorrows." You see, it's not the possession
of money that is the root of all evil, it's the love of money.
It's not a matter of how much you have, it's how much a place
it takes in people's hearts. What a great and gracious God
we have, who came to this world. Though he was rich, he became
poor. Though he was a king and though
he was God, he humbled himself and became like a servant. And
Nehemiah typifies our Lord Jesus. in that he came to give and not
to take. Verse 14, Moreover, from that
time I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah,
from the twentieth year until the thirty-second year of King
Artaxerxes. Twelve years neither I nor my
brothers ate the governor's provisions. He had a right as governor to
take from the land and from the people. He had a right to take
taxes and food from them. But the former governors who
were before me laid burdens on the people and took from them
bread and wine, besides 40 shekels of silver a tax. Yes, even their
servants bore rule over the people, and they had a right to bear
rule over them. They were a people who were owned by the King of
Babylon still. But I did not do so. What was
the motivation of Nehemiah's life? Because of the fear of
God. Indeed I also continued the work
on this world and we did not buy any land like Abraham in
Hebrews 11. God's people are looking for
a kingdom and looking for a land and looking for a city that's
not made with the hands of men. And all my servants were gathered
there for the work. Nehemiah was working and his
servants were working. And at my table were a hundred
and fifty Jews and rulers, and besides those who came to us
from the nations around us. Now that which was prepared daily,
and Nehemiah providing all of this from his own resources,
not from the people, was one ox and six choice sheep, also
fowl were prepared for me, and once every ten days an abundance
of all kinds of wine. Yet in spite of this, I did not
demand the Governor's provision. Why? Because the bondage was
heavy on these people. What a bondage we have in our
flesh. What a bondage we have in our
sins that we deal with again and again. We don't need any
more bondage. Take my yoke upon me and learn
from me, says the Lord Jesus. His yoke is easy and his burden
is light. Nehemiah was a man of prayer. Remember me, my God, for good,
according to all that I have done for this people. You see, Nehemiah was a man who
lived before God. A God he knew was awesome. A God he knew who was just. A God he knew was going to reward
his people, not with the things of this world, but with the peace
that God brings that passes understanding, with the riches of the grace
of God in the Lord Jesus. For God is not unjust to forget
your work and labour of love which you have shown toward his
name. in that you ministered to the
saints. He was a man who came to seek
the welfare of the children of Israel. Jesus was a man who came
to seek the welfare of his children. He didn't come to take from us. He didn't come to lay heavy burdens
on us. He came to give us freedom. for us to enjoy our redemption. He came that we as brothers might
live together and that we might share the good things that God
has given us, that we might share the gospel with one another,
that we might share the gospel with this world, that we might
If God grants us, we might have the opportunity to see His name
praised and glorified. Let's pray.