Let's turn now to Psalm 15. Psalm
15. I want to talk to you tonight
about he who takes no usury. Verse 1 begins, a Psalm of David. Lord, who shall abide in thy
tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? Now, by now you know what this
means. We've looked at this psalm several times. This means, who
shall abide in thy holy presence? Who will holy God accept? The
true and living God is holy and he's righteous. And he can only
and will only accept those who are holy and righteous. And of
us, of Him and of us, this is what the Scripture says. Job
15.15 says, Behold, he putteth no trust in his saints. Yea,
the heavens are not clean in his sight. How much more abominable
and filthy is man that drinketh iniquity like water. In Habakkuk
1.13 it says, Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil and
canst not look on iniquity. So God's not going to receive
anybody into his presence who has any spot of iniquity. Only those who are absolutely,
thoroughly perfect. Perfect. So by now you know my
proposition in all of these things we've looked at. The only one
who's holy and righteous, whom God will receive perfect, is
the Lord Jesus Christ. And the only way He will receive
one of us is if we come to Him through faith. in the Lord Jesus
Christ. Trust in Christ to be all our
righteousness, all our sanctification, all our redemption, all our wisdom,
all our acceptance with God. The only way. Now we've looked
at each, in detail, each part of God's answer here and these
are all points of law, is what they are. Tonight we come to
the next point in verse 5. He that putteth not out his money
to usury. That's who got a receipt. He
that putteth not out his money to usury. So now you probably
know what our divisions are gonna be too. First of all, we're gonna
see how that not one of us has ever fulfilled this law. And
then secondly, we're going to see how Christ Jesus has fulfilled
it and how he's redeemed us from it. And then thirdly, we're going
to hear the instruction to believers concerning this law. What is
his instruction to us concerning this law? First of all, we see
no child of Adam, not me, not you. has ever kept this law in
perfection. And that's the only way God regards
it as being kept, is if it's kept perfectly. So no sinner
has kept this. Now in order to see that, that
we've not done this, we're going to have to understand what this
law means. What does it mean? He that putteth not out his money
to usury. What does that mean? Well usury
means to lend expecting to draw an interest on the return. Usury means interest. It means
to lend out expecting some interest on the return, especially an
overly high interest rate on the return. God doesn't forbid
his people drawing interest on their money. He doesn't forbid
that. But he, remember our Lord said in that parable of the steward,
he said, thou oughtest therefore to have put my money to the exchangers
and then at my coming I should have received mine own with usury. The Lord used that as an illustration
of a spiritual meaning, a deeper meaning, but he said that. So
he wasn't against that or he wouldn't have used that as an
illustration. But what God forbids is usury, taking interest of
those who are poor. Our poor brethren, that's what
he forbids. Oppression and extortion, taking
advantage of the poor. Exodus 22, 25 says, if thou lend
money to any of my people that is poor by thee, thou shalt not
be to him as a usurer, neither shalt thou lay upon him usury.
Leviticus 25, 35 says, and if thy brother be waxen poor and
fallen in decay with thee, then thou shalt relieve him." Now
get that, if he's fallen into decay with you, that means you're
both in decay. You're both fallen. You both
have nothing. You shall relieve him. You relieve
him. Yea, though he be a stranger
or a sojourner, he may be somebody that you don't necessarily have
the highest regard for. And he says, that ye do it anyway,
that he may live with thee. Take no usury of him, or increase,
but fear thy God, that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt
not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy vittles, your
food, for increase. Now some have invented other
ways of taking usury, and by that they think that because
they're not using money to do it, they think that they're not
putting their money out to usury. Instead of money, some will take
the use of others' land or their cattle or something like that,
and sometimes make more money off of that than they would have
if they had drawn interest on the money. Others will take household
items. They'll take You know, something
you have that's expensive around the house and plates and bedding
and household stuff that you have. Amos 2.8 says, they lie
down upon the clothes which are laid to pledge. God took knowledge
of that as being usable. He said they're using these clothes
that they took as pledge. And others take pawn for money. You can pawn something, a guitar
for instance. upon it, and if you don't make
the payment back in time, they keep the guitar, and then they'll
sell it to somebody else to make money off of. But God says, take
no usury of the poor in any regard whatsoever. Don't take advantage
of them whatsoever. Deuteronomy 23, 15 says, thou
shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother, usury of money,
usury of vittles, which is food or any kind of corn or something
they have to eat, usury of anything that is lent upon usury, nothing. Paul put it this way in 1 Thessalonians
4, 6, and this is the spiritual nature of the law, that no man
go beyond and defraud his brother in any matter. That's what the
Lord said. Don't defraud our brethren in
anything, in anything, because that the Lord is the avenger
of all such. The Lord is the one who's going
to take vengeance on those who take advantage, oppress, and
extort his people. The Lord will do that. So why
does God forbid taking usury? Why? Why does he forbid that?
Because God regards taking usury, taking interest from somebody
who's poor as it ceasing to be charity, it ceases to be love. Love, the scripture says, love
seeketh not her own. Love doesn't seek and increase. Love doesn't seek an advantage.
And so the moment that we give to relieve one of our poor brethren
expecting something in return, whether it be from God or whether
it be from them, anything we do expecting a return and doing
it because we want a return, it ceases to be love And it's
an investment. That's what it is. It's a mercantile
investment. We're wanting to make merchandise
of them. Turn over to Deuteronomy 15, 7. Now God calls all this
greed. He calls it extortion. He calls it forgetting the Lord
God in the heart. That's what He calls it. Look
at Deuteronomy 15, 7. You may be thinking, you may
say, well, I've never loaned, I've never given any money or
anything to my brethren expecting interest on it. And we've got
to think long and hard about that. Have we not? In our hearts,
thinking in our thought, did it ever cross your thought and
you think, well, God's going to bless me if I do this. Or
my brother will do this for me maybe one day. That's expecting
some interest. That's expecting a return when
we do that. And we've broken the law in our
heart when we've done that. We've not kept this law, neither. None of the laws have we kept.
And we haven't kept this one. But now I'll show you something
here. This law has a positive side to it, too, that deals with
the thoughts and intents of the heart. And in case we're thinking
up to this point we've kept this law, when we see this, we'll
surely see we have not kept this law. He says here in verse 7,
He says, If there be among you a poor man of one of thy brethren
within any of thy gates in thy land which the Lord thy God giveth
thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart nor shut thine hand from
thy poor brother. Now if he's a poor man of one
of thy brethren, any one of them, within the land that God's given
to you, Don't harden your heart against him, he said. There can
be no hardness of heart. No shutting our hand from that
poor brother. Ever. At any point. Ever. He says in verse 8, But
thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him, and shalt surely lend
him some sufficient for his need in that which he wanteth or lacketh.
To each poor brother were to open our hand wide unto him. That means to provide for him
in abundance, in abundance. And thou shalt surely lend him
sufficient for his need. That means whatever he's lacking,
we're not only to give to him, we're to provide, bring him back
up to a level where he's got everything he's lacking. He lacks
nothing. He lacks nothing. Drop down to
verse 10. Thou shalt surely give him, and
thine heart shall not be grieved when thou givest unto him. Because
that for this thing the Lord thy God shall bless thee in all
thy works and in all that thou puttest thy hand unto. There
can be no grief in our heart, only cheerfulness and joy to
do it. To take what we have and give
of our substance to our needy brother and bring him up to a
level where he's got everything he needs and do it just perfectly
happy and cheerfully. with no ill thought about it
whatsoever. No doubting, never come into
our mind, ever, about it. And it must be done in faith.
We must do it trusting, as God has said here, that He will provide.
God says, for this thing, the Lord thy God shall bless thee
in all thy works and in all that thou puttest thine hand unto.
He says, if you believe me in perfect faith and you do this,
I will provide for you. That's what He said. And this
is not to be done only once. Not only once, not once or twice,
you know. Well, I did it once this year
already. This other brother, let another
brother take care of this other poor brother. I already did it
once this year. No, it's to be done continually, always. Here's
why. Look at the next verse, verse
11. For the poor shall never cease out of the land. They're
there for a reason. God's left them there. They'll
never cease out of the land. Therefore I command thee, saying,
thou shalt open thine hand wide unto thy brother, to thy poor,
and to thy needy in thy land. Now you see, we begin to see
that we haven't kept this law. We've never kept this law in
perfection without sin. We've never done it in true faith.
We've never done it faithfully. We ought to. I wish we could. And we ought to see from it that
God wants desires for the poor of His people to be provided
for. He really does. Turn now to Nehemiah chapter
5. Nehemiah 5. And let me give you some background
as we're looking there, as you turn there. In Nehemiah's day,
like us who've been redeemed by the Lord Jesus, been born
of the Spirit of God, they had been redeemed out of Babylonian
captivity. That's what's happened to us.
We've been redeemed by the Lord out of captivity, been born of
the Spirit of God and brought out. And they had, they had been
brought out and they'd been given a common inheritance by the Lord,
which we have. All believers, all who's elect,
we've been given a common inheritance. It all belongs to us. We saw
that the other day in one of the messages. So, instead of
each man looking upon his own needs and his own good, they
all started out looking upon the necessities of the other,
what the other needed. And they started building again
the house of the Lord, building again the city of the Lord. But
then the Lord sent a trial. He sent it in the form of a famine.
Now, you remember when he brought them out of Babylon, there were
some who in Babylon They were faring pretty well in Babylon.
And so when Cyrus came and redeemed them out of captivity, they decided,
we'll just stay here under this enemy king of Persia and live
here. We like it here. We're not going
back. The Lord didn't send them a famine.
They had it made in the shade. They were fat and plump and living
high on the hog. But He sent this to His children. God tries His children. and for
our good, to show us that our sufficiency is of God and not
of us. He left those others to themselves,
but he did this for his people. But instead of sharing this common
love for one another, and instead of helping their poor brethren,
instead of doing that, they took advantage of it. And when they
took advantage of it, they all came in to bondage, all of them
together. They were free, out of Babylonian
captivity, but then they came into bondage where they were,
outside of Babylonian captivity. Now, as we look at this, y'all
pay close attention of how much what Nehemiah says here resembles
what the Apostle Paul said. It resembles exactly what was
going on in the Galatian church, and it resembles exactly what
the Apostle Paul said to the Galatians. If we have time, I'll
show you that. But tonight, if you don't, start
in Galatians 5 and read out to the end of the chapter, and you'll
see what I'm talking about. Here in Nehemiah 5.1 it says, And
there was a great cry of the people and of their wives. These
are the poor of the people. Against their brethren, the Jews. This is the richer of the people.
You got the poor crying out against the rich, but they're all brethren.
They're crying out against their brethren. Verse 2 says, For there
were that said, We, our sons and our daughters, are many.
Therefore we take up corn for them that we may eat and live. Some also there were that said,
We've mortgaged our lands, vineyards, and houses that we might buy
corn because of the dearth. Now, where were they getting
this corn from? They were getting it from their
fellow brethren. And those that had plenty, what they were doing
was, as the old saying goes, they had them over a barrel.
Because their poor brethren had nothing. And so they were charging
as high prices as they wanted to for this corn. And so their
brethren was having to mortgage their land to eat and feed their
families because they had all these children. They were taking
their lands, taking their vineyards. Their vineyards were their businesses.
That's why they made money. And they were taking their houses.
Verse 4, there were also that said, we've borrowed money for
the king's tribute and that upon our lands and our vineyards.
They were delivered out of Babylonian captivity, but they still had
to pay tribute to the king of Persia. Just like us, spiritually,
by God's grace, we've been delivered out of all bondage as believers,
out of all bondage. But we still live in this land,
and we've still got to pay taxes to this land's king. Well, they
did too. But they didn't have money to
pay it. And so they had to borrow money to pay for that. And when
they borrowed money to pay for it, the richer loaned them the
money against their land and their vineyards. And they said,
now if you don't pay it, we're taking your vineyards and taking
your land. These are their brethren. Can you imagine if us sitting
right here, who are brethren, if we started doing this to one
another and treating each other this way? So verse 5 says, Yet
now, and this is what they said, Yet now our flesh is as the flesh
of our brethren, our children as their children. And lo, we
bring into bondage our sons and our daughters to be servants,
and some of our daughters are brought unto bondage already,
neither is it in our power to redeem them, for other men have
our lands and our vineyards. These were their own brethren.
These were their sons and their daughters. They were of the same
nature. We're of the same nature, brethren.
We've been made partakers of the divine nature. These were
of the same nation. We're of God's holy nation who've
been called by His grace. They were of the same stock.
We are of the stock of Jesus Christ, born of his incorruptible
seed. They were of the same religion.
We're the people of grace who trust in the sovereign grace
of the sovereign God of glory. And yet they brought their own
brethren into bondage. They brought them into captivity
by this, trying to get rich off of their brethren. But because
the poor brethren had mortgaged their lands and their businesses,
their vineyards, they didn't have to pay, pay them back. So
they were going to lose everything they had. They just, they couldn't
pay them. And they, you know, and when it says here, and it
wasn't only their lands, they were given their sons and daughters.
to serve, to pay off these debts. So here you've got rich brethren,
and they've got a servant here who is their own kinsman, according
to the flesh, who's having to work off a debt they owe. And
all of this. Now this is not only an example
of how the world works, this is exactly how the world operates.
But this is an example of what happened to us in the garden.
In the garden, Adam sinned, and when he sinned, a famine of bread
came. And we didn't have any life. No life. We sold ourselves. Adam sold us and he sold all
his children. And we became servants. And we
became servants of sin. We became servants of Satan.
And we became in bondage under the law. Under the condemnation
and curse of the law. And none of us had anything to
redeem with. That's what they said there.
We don't have anything to redeem with. Everything belongs to somebody
else. And we didn't have a thing to redeem ourselves out of that
bondage whatsoever. And this is an example, too,
of what happens to you and I as believers quite often because
of this pharisaical self-righteous man of our flesh. We'll want
to bring our brethren back under the bondage of the law. And I'll
show you that in just a moment. So let's, we see here now, by
the way, we haven't done this. We haven't kept this law. We
haven't fulfilled it. So let's see who did. Let's see
who has redeemed us. Now stay there in Nehemiah 5.
Christ has kept the law. He has kept it. Jesus Christ
is our Redeemer. The Redeemer of God's elect.
And our Redeemer has laden us down with the riches of His glory. And He has not demanded usury.
He has not demanded we pay Him back and pay Him back with interest.
Now, let's see how He's done it. In Nehemiah, He's a picture
of God our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we see in
Nehemiah. And now, just like Nehemiah came and when he heard
this cry of his brethren, he came to where they were and he
stood in their midst. And this is what he did. This
is how he stopped them and turned them from what they were doing
to Him and saved them out of this bondage. That's what Christ
did for us. He came to where we are and He
stood in our midst and He did something great for His people.
Look at verse 6. I was very angry when I heard
their cry in these words. This is Nehemiah speaking. Nehemiah
was a governor. That's what he was, the governor
of Judah. Christ is our head. He's our governor. Isaiah said,
unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government
should be upon his shoulder. And of the increase of his government
there should be no end. He says, upon the throne of David
and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment
and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the
Lord of hosts will perform this. God's angry at the oppression
of the poor. It doesn't please Him. We read
in that law what pleases God. That is what pleases God, to
relieve the poor, to be merciful to the poor and relieve their
oppression. So when Christ came, He was angry. Remember, He was
angry at the Pharisees for the hardness of their heart. When
He would heal somebody, they got angry about it because all
they saw in this was the letter of the law. They saw what the
letter says. And they said, well, I believe
it says what the letter says. Well, it does. But there's a
whole lot more meaning to it than just the letter. It's got
a spiritual meaning that goes a whole lot deeper. It speaks
all the way to the heart. What's in our heart tells us
what's in our heart. And it also speaks spiritually,
telling us what Christ has done and what we're to do spiritually
for one another because of what He's done for us. But He didn't
like that extortion, the way they were extorting the poor.
Our great triune God, when He determined to save His people
from our sins, He didn't consult with me and you or anybody else
to do this, just like we see here in Nehemiah. Look at verse
7. Then I consulted with myself. Do you see that? Christ consulted
with no one else but God the Father and God the Son. He consulted
with Himself. The triune God did. And He brought
us out of bondage Himself, by Himself. And He continues to
do so through God the Holy Spirit, by Himself, without the help
of anybody. When we were in our sin, we were
the oppressor. We were the vain self-righteous
one. We were the one doing this to our brethren. And he convinced
us, the first thing he did was to convince us that we were breaking
his law. Look at verse 7. And I rebuked
the nobles and the rulers and said unto them, You exact usury
every one of his brother. He said to them, you're breaking
God's law. You've broken the law of God.
Now that's what's got to happen, first of all, if we're going
to be able to see Christ and see our need of Christ, we got
to see we're bankrupt. We got to see that we don't have
anything to pay the ransom price with. We cannot, by our obedience
to the law, pay the debt we owe to divine justice. We cannot
do it. The wages of sin is death. We
owe God death. We owe justice death. That's
what we owe. We can't pay that and still live
and live forever with God. And free will works religion,
religion that says Christ died for everybody on the face of
the planet, is saying that because they're putting the work into
your hand, into man's hand. And they're saying you can make
the payment. You can take the blood that Christ has done, that
He's shed, and you can take it to God and make the payment yourself.
That's what they're essentially saying. By your will, and by
you making His blood effectual, but we don't make His blood effectual.
Christ did that Himself. Christ, everything God does is
effectual. They used the riches of God's
gospel, just like these men were taking the riches that God had
given to them. Men will take the riches, this
book right here that God has given to us, and they'll take
this book. And just like those men were
giving their money that God had provided to their brethren, they'll
give these riches to men. Not in truth, not in making it
sound like it's true. Some make it sound very true,
what they're saying. But they'll give it to them demanding
interest from them, exacting a payment from them that a bankrupt
sinner can't pay. You can't pay to God faith. You can't even give him that.
He's got to give that to us. We can't give God repentance.
He's got to give that to us. We can't obey the law and give
God a payment of the law, not before we're converted, not after
we're converted. We can't do that. If we could,
he wouldn't have sent his son. But that's the interest that
men are exacting. And not only that, but enough
money to set them up fat in a big old house or whatever, too. We cannot pay what vain religion
demands, the interest that they demand. And God hates it. He hates that oppression. Absolutely
hates it. Our Savior brought us out of
bondage by telling us that we had broken the law. And then
He brought us out by making us to see. He set a great assembly
against us. Look at verse 7. He says, and
I set a great assembly against them. This great assembly I set
against them. He said, I'm going to not only
tell you myself, I'm going to set a great assembly of witnesses
before you to show you what you've done is against God and against
His brethren. He made us to see the triune
God. was against our oppressive ways. He made us to see the multitude
of scriptures are against our oppressive ways. He made us see
the multitude of His witnesses, of believers, past, present,
all in the Word and those around us were against us because they
were saying, the way you're trying to come to God is not the way.
And they kept telling us that. And He said, I've set this great
assembly against you. And then Christ revealed that
our redemption had been accomplished by the Lord Jesus Himself. Look
at verse 8. And I said unto them, We... Nehemiah
is saying this, but he says We. Notice that. Now, Christ says,
We have, after our ability, have redeemed our brethren the Jews
which were sold unto the heathen. Historically, the Jews had been
given some ability by God. They had been given some money,
some corn, something of value so that they could go and pay
redemption money and redeem some of their brethren that were in
Babylon that were in death. Now let me explain to you spiritually
what this means. King Cyrus redeemed them. You
know, we saw that in Isaiah. He's the one that brought them
out. King Cyrus is. And Cyrus, their redeemer, was
a picture of Christ. He came from a north land. Christ
came from above. He came from another country.
Christ came from another country. God called him, Christ was called
of God, sent of God, just as God sent Cyrus. He came and they
didn't pay this redemption money to Cyrus. We don't pay anything
to God, we don't pay anything to Christ to be redeemed. The
Lord said of Cyrus, this is a picture of Christ, this is what he says
of Christ, I've raised him up in righteousness, I'll direct
all his ways, he shall build my city, he shall let go my captives,
not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of Hosts. And then,
so we see there that God made Christ our kinsman-redeemer.
This is why election is so important. If it wasn't for divine election,
we would not have been the brethren of our Lord Jesus Christ. And
Christ therefore would not have been our kinsman-redeemer. The
kinsman-redeemer had to be a near kinsman. He had to be able to
come and be able to have the ability to, but he had to be
related to that one who fell into debt and was bankrupt. And
so Christ is our kinsman redeemer. And Christ paid all the debt
we owe, all the debt His people owe. He paid it. Now you know
if this was our true finances we were talking about, we would
understand what it means for the debt to be paid in full.
Have you ever made a payment past when the debt was paid in
full? You keep on paying Visa? You're
going to keep paying MasterCard or any of these companies after
the debt's paid off? Well, Christ paid it. He paid
it all. That means for all those He died
for, the debt is paid in full. The scripture, the song that
we sing says, Jesus paid it all, all the debt I owe. Sin had left
a crimson stain and He washed it white as snow. And He did
so expecting nothing from us in return. That's just like,
that's what he said of Cyrus, and that's what Christ did of
us. Nothing, expecting nothing of us in return. Even our fruits
of righteousness, which the scriptures say we bring forth, which we
sometimes question, do we even really bring forth any fruits
of righteousness? To look at our sin and when we're being
made honest with ourselves, but even those fruits of righteousness
are by Jesus Christ. He brings them forth. And nor
did they pay redemption to the king of Persia. That's not what
it means either. They didn't pay redemption to
the king of Persia. For the scripture, we're going
to see this next time in Isaiah 52, 3. It says, For thus saith
the Lord, You've sold yourselves for nothing, and you shall be
redeemed without money. This payment was not paid to
the Persian king. He might have held them captive
and held them for ransom and gave out his ransom price, but
he wasn't getting a cent from anybody. Because Satan, who held
us captive, the devil, it has nothing paid to him. When Christ
died, he didn't pay the devil anything. He didn't pay a thing
to him. The ransom price, the ransom was demanded of God's
holy and just law. That's who we owe. And Christ's
own blood and death was the payment. That was the ransom. And he paid
that payment to the law. And he paid it in full. Christ
hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse
for us, for it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangeth on a
tree. But what Nehemiah is speaking about when he says that we and
our brethren redeemed our brethren in Babylon is this. Even after
they were as a whole taken captive into Babylon, Well then once
they got into Babylon, then they fell into debt individually with
certain creditors who were Babylonians. And he's saying, Not only did
Silas come and redeem us all together out of it, but we, having
what we had, we had redeemed, we paid these Babylonian creditors
that they owed and redeemed our brethren out and brought them
out. So Nehemiah said, we and our brethren, we redeemed these
people. But isn't that a beautiful picture when you think about
it? Christ saying to you and I, if we come into this bondage
where we want to exact interest of our brethren. And Christ comes
to us and he says, we and my brethren have redeemed this people
out of bondage. What's that? It's a picture of
the fact that those that came before me and you, those believers
that came before us, Christ called them out. He gave them grace.
He loaded them down with the riches of this gospel. And He
used them to give the riches of the gospel to us. And by that,
He redeemed us out. So that He used them, and Christ
could say, we have redeemed you. We've redeemed these brethren
out. We've called them out. And so Christ comes to us and
He says that to us. When we turn again to the law,
and we will start want to yoking, and we start want to binding,
and we start want to draw interest of our brethren and oppress somebody,
He says now, me and these brethren that went before you, we redeemed
these brethren here that you're doing this to." And those brethren
were precious to him. They were precious to them. And
so he said, I don't want you oppressing them. I don't want
you putting this extreme burden on them. Sins shall not have
dominion over you. That's what the scripture says.
For you're not under the law, but under grace. It says, wherefore,
my brethren, you become dead to the law by the body of Christ,
that you might be married to another, even to him who's raised
from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. And
so God won't have us bringing again His children into bondage.
He's brought them out. And He says, now I'll have you
not bring them back in. That's what Christ did for us.
Christ redeemed us. He's the one who fulfilled this
law. And He did it never demanding usury of it. Now, thirdly, It's
through faith in Christ that God will receive us as having
done this. Christ did it perfectly and he
put away our sin for not doing it. And so now we're dead to
the law. We're freed from this law. And
he will receive us by what he's done for us by us simply trusting
him and coming through him. Now let's hear what he says to
us who he has called and who he has redeemed and who he has
showed us this. Now what does he say to you and
me? Well, when we find ourselves turning again to the law, Christ
does for us what Nehemiah did here for them. The first thing
he does is he reminds us that our redemption was paid in full
by Christ shedding his blood for us. You know you were not
redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold from your
vain conversation received from your fathers, but with the precious
blood of Christ." Precious blood, as if a lamb without spot, without
blemish. That's the first thing he reminds us of. And he reminds
us of our brethren who he gave those riches to, who he used
to preach that gospel to us to bring us out. We were talking
on the way over here, Betsy and I, and I was trying to explain
this to her, and I was saying, some of the older brethren in
the congregation down in Arkansas that the Lord used to support
that work so that the gospel could be preached to me and her. And the Lord used them to redeem
us, to bring us out of our bondage and captivity so we could hear
the gospel and understand and believe the gospel. He did all
the work, but He used them. You see what I'm saying? Now
it would be like us now, coming along and seeing them not walking
as they ought to walk, not doing as they ought to do, or what
have you. And then us, rather than just giving them the gospel,
and reminded them of Christ's full redemption and how we're
freed from the law by what he's accomplished, doing that and
then turn around and then demanding usury of them, demanding interest
from them, demanding them obey, demanding them bow down, demanding
of them. obedience that they can't render
until God works it in their heart. And so he says, remember now
these brethren, what they were used for you, they were used
for you. And then he turns us by reminding
us of how precious they are. He says, now verse eight there,
he says, he says, and will you sell, even
sell your brethren? These brethren who were used
to redeem you, are you now going to turn around and sell them?
Are you going to bring them back into this bondage? And then he
reminds us that Christ himself demands no usury of us. Verse
8, Nehemiah says, or shall they be sold unto us? He's talking
about himself and his guard and his staff as a governor. He's
saying, do you think I'm going to take them and have them be
sold into bondage to me? And Christ reminds us of that.
He reminds us that He's redeemed us from the bondage of the law
and He's taking no payment from us. He's drawing no interest
from us. You've not received the spirit of bondage again to
fear. You've received the spirit of adoption whereby we cry out
of a father. He hasn't brought us out of bondage
to turn around and bring us back into bondage. And then He reminds
us that those on the outside are watching. Look at verse 9.
Also I said it's not good that you do, ought you not to walk
in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the heathen,
our enemies? They're all standing around watching.
He said, not only is it the grace of God that's been worked towards
you, not only are these brethren ought to be more precious to
you, but the other thing is, you ought to walk in the fear
of God because you've got all these heathen enemies of our
gospel watching to see what you're going to do. We need to be reminded
of that, don't we? God strikes at the heart, He
gives to the heart of the matter and says, now this is the heart
of it. You're going to make all of us and our Redeemer to be
a reproach to the heathen? That's what He's saying to them.
A pastor was asked once, or he asked somebody in his congregation
one time, he said, if you do such and such, what will our
enemies say? And the man replied, do you care
what the people say? And the pastor said, I care as
little as any man what the people say. But I care a great deal
what the people have a right to say. There's a difference. Human opinion doesn't matter
one iota to me when it comes to worshiping my God and serving
my God. But when it comes to us giving
our enemies cause to reproach us because we're not serving
our Lord as we ought, then it should matter to us very much
what people say. The ungodly will judge our profession. They'll judge it and will be
influenced either toward us or away from us, chiefly by the
manner in which we either adorn the gospel or disgrace our master. One of the two. Those are some
strong arguments Nehemiah's given. But that's what Christ does for
us. This is how he turns us back to him from this bondage that
we come into. And Christ, he reminds us of
this too, that Christ could exact of us, but he doesn't. Look at
verse 10. He said, I likewise and my brethren and my servants
might exact of them money and corn. I pray you let us leave
off this usury. Nehemiah's governor could have
done this and his brethren and his servants, they could have
done this. You know, what if Christ came to us and He said,
you know, I could exact interest from you, and these brethren
that have provided the gospel for you and have made it so you
can have the gospel all these years, they could exact some
interest from you. They deserve it after all that
they've done and given out to provide for you." And he said,
but we don't. But we don't. It's free. This
gospel's free. They're free. And our God's not
going to put out His money to usury. He's not going to put
out any spiritual riches to usury. This is what it says, He that
spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall
He not with Him freely give us all things? And Him doing this
and turning us back to Him when we come into this bondage is
Him still giving us freely and not charging us and not bringing
us back into bondage, but doing. So we learn from this how He's
restored us and we learn how to restore our brethren, don't
we? Nehemiah didn't stand on a pedestal and look down at them
with scorn and contempt. And Christ doesn't do us that
way. He doesn't upbraid. He doesn't do that. Instead,
He does spiritually to us what these men ought to have been
doing financially for their brethren. He bears our burdens and provides
everything we need. And that's what they should have
been doing, bearing with their burdens and providing them all
the sufficiency they need. That's what Christ has done for
us. And He keeps doing it for us. Then He says this in verse
11. Now He's brought us to the point where we see now I haven't
done any of this. I've broken God's law and this
is awful. I'm doing this against God's
grace. I'm doing it against the one who redeemed me. I'm doing
it against the brethren who were used to redeem me. And then this
is what he says to us, verse 11. Restore, I pray you, to them
even this day. Don't waste any time. Restore,
I pray you. He doesn't command them. Grace,
law commands. Grace beseeches. He says, I pray
you, restore unto them even this day their lands, their vineyards,
their olive yards, and their houses. Also, the hundredth part
of the money and of the corn, the wine, and the oil that you
exacted them. He said, not only give them back
those lands and those houses and those businesses that you
took from them, but give them back also the interest you collected
from them. The hundredth part, that's what
he's saying. You know what spiritually the good news is? Christ has
not only given us back what we lost in Adam, He's restored,
made restitution to us abundantly above and beyond what we lost
in Adam. That's why He can truthfully
say to me and you, when you provide for one another, when we provide
for, when He says, now when you provide for brethren, give to
them expecting nothing in return, shaken down and running over,
spilling over in abundance because this is what I've done for you.
That's what I've done for you. So he beseeched him not only
to do, to restore, but to do it immediately, make restitution
immediately. Somebody wrote this, I wish I
had come up with this, but I didn't. Somebody said this, as humility
is the repentance of pride, as alms is the repentance of covetousness,
as forgiveness is the repentance of malice, so restitution is
the repentance of usury. You see that? They're all the
opposite of one another. The believer walks in humility,
he gives alms, he forgives, and he restores, because that's what
God's done for us. Remember Zechariah as soon as
the Lord saved him? He said, the half of my goods
I give to the poor, and if I've taken anything from any man by
false accusation, I restore him fourfold. I give him back more
than I took from him. And then, Verse 12, Then said
they, We will restore them, and We will require nothing of them,
so will We do as thou sayest. God always makes His Word effectual
in the hearts of His people. That's the picture we get here.
And then Nehemiah said, Bring the priests here. And he used
the priests then and he said, Now swear these men in. He said,
Take an oath of them that they should do according to this promise.
Also, I shook my lap and said, so God shake out every man from
his house and from his labor that performeth not this promise,
even thus be he shaken out and emptied. Now, when God works
this work in our heart, we don't have to be held to an oath. We
don't have to be brought to an oath. Our high priest himself,
Christ, comes to us and ministers this work to us, and he brings
us to say, Lord, keep me. If you keep me, I will. I'll
follow you. And he doesn't threaten us either.
He brings us to do what all the congregation did. All the congregation
said amen and praised the Lord. and the people did according
to the promise. This is where it brings us. So
look over Galatians real quick. I'll try to show you something.
I wanted to show you this example to show you that the law of usury
deals so much more with just our giving of our temporal riches,
although it does involve that. You see, they were brought into
Galatians 5. They were brought into great
bondage because they didn't provide for their brethren. They all
ended up in bondage together. But I wanted to show you, this
law goes so much deeper, it's so much more spiritual than that
because it has to do with us giving one another the gospel.
This is the most important thing. When they came out and started
working on the city and on the Lord's house, the builders who
were building the Lord's house, they were to have everything
provided for them by their brethren so they could keep on building
that house and never stop working on the house. The priests and
the singers and the porters and everybody that had anything to
do with that house were to be all provided for and none of
them had to pay tribute to the king because they were to be
always engaged in the Lord's work. You know what happened
when they started taking usury of their brethren and they all
came into this bondage? All of it stopped. It all stopped
because the builders had to go to work. They couldn't pay, they
couldn't build. So the Lord's house stopped.
The priests had to find some way to eat. Everybody had to
stop. All the work of the Lord's house
had to stop. And so the Lord's showing us by this, brethren,
that it's more than just a temporal thing. It has a spiritual application
to it. We're to provide for one another
spiritually, give the gospel, and wait on the Lord to do the
work in the hearts of His people, trusting Him to do it. We can't
demand it. We can't exact it from our brethren.
Look here at, oh, I want to tell you this. Psalm 14.4 says, the
Lord says, Have all the workers of iniquity no knowledge who
eat up My people and call not upon the Lord? They eat up My
people, He said. The word iniquity, I mean the
word usury, the root word of the word means to bite and to
devour. That's what it means, to bite
and devour. And so Paul applies it here as them giving the gospel
and then biting and devouring one another, demanding obedience
to it. Look here, Galatians 5 verse
1. Stand fast therefore in the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free. We saw in Nehemiah they'd
all been brought out of bondage. But then they got entangled again.
But be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Look at
verse 5. For we through the Spirit wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. We turn to the law
of Christ to profit us nothing. That's what Paul says there.
For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision,
but faith which worketh by love. Look at verse 14. For all the
law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself. That's what our scripture is
telling us in Psalm 15. Who's going to go into the Lord's
house? He that's got the love of God in his heart. It's Christ
perfectly, but He does give us love for our brethren. But, he
says, verse 15, if you bite and devour one another, if you exact
usury of one another, if you demand and take and bite, take
heed that you be not consumed of one another. Then down at
the next chapter, verse 1. If a man be overtaken in a fault,
ye which are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness. Make restitution. You see how
He told them to do it? Not just a little, but a lot.
Over and above. Considering thyself, lest thou
also be tempted. Bury ye one another's burdens,
and so fulfill the law of Christ. The law of love. That's how it's
done. So this thing of usury, You see,
rather than give and expect a repayment, we have to do what Christ did
for us. You've been freely forgiven, freely forgive. You've been freely
given, freely give. And we give in abundance, and
we provide for one another, and the work of the Lord's house
will continue, and He'll continue gathering His people and building
His holy city. You see it? I hope you see that.
I think you do. Alright, amen.