You Can't Run a Healthy Project With Hurting
Tom Shrader examines Nehemiah 5, where the wall-building project stops not because of external enemies, but because wealthy Jews are exploiting their own people through usury and profiteering from others' hardships. He demonstrates how Nehemiah addresses this sin through gentle confrontation, personal example, and practical restitution, emphasizing that sin within the community of believers can derail God's work more effectively than opposition from outside.
“Just because you're right where God wants you to be, it does not mean you aren't going to have opposition.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Just Do It (2004)
Recorded: 2004
Duration: 45 min
Themes: leadership, confrontation, sin, exploitation, integrity, example, restitution, community, business leader, manager, pastor, elder, dealing with conflict, confronting sin, new to leadership, struggling with integrity
Scripture: Nehemiah 5:1-13, Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-40, Deuteronomy 23:19-20, Ephesians 4:1, 1 Corinthians 1
Theological Themes: ecclesiology, church discipline, sanctification, becoming holy, stewardship, biblical leadership, corporate sin, spiritual authority
Full Transcript
Look at session 5. If you have Bibles with you, I'm going to invite you to open them to the book of Nehemiah and to the 5th chapter. We're going to spend some time today in this 5th chapter.
Nehemiah is viewed as a classic study in leadership. I think even in some secular settings we'd look at Nehemiah and draw some principles from them. If you're here today and you're saying, "Well, leadership discussion, I don't know if I need to be here," well, you do. Let me define leader for you. Here's Webster's definition of a leader: "One who leads." He wasn't up all night thinking that baby through, was he? One who leads.
Everyone Is a Leader Somewhere
It doesn't talk about the follower, the caliber of the follower, the intelligence of the follower. One who leads. You may be a high-profile business tycoon and people are following you. You may be in middle management. You may be a person who's got a guy or two working on your crew for you. You may be somebody who is at home and you've got this grandkid following you around.
I don't care who the follower is. If somebody's following you, you're a leader. Are all of these principles absolutely transferable to every aspect of your life? Probably not. But a lot of them are. The challenge for you is to pick up the ones that are and implement them in your life.
Also, and these are just subtle things along the way, all of you are followers somewhere. Obviously, in most lives, you're both. You're leading in some circumstances, following in others. These principles, as we look at leadership, should help you as a follower, as you begin to try to understand what's going on around you.
Nehemiah's Leadership Context
That's what old Nehemiah is doing. Nehemiah is a leader. He, in this case, is in a leadership of a construction project. They're rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. There's been a couple of runs at this. The rubble tried it - didn't work. Ezra tried it - didn't work. Now, Nehemiah's there. We try to pin the date at about 444, 445 B.C. is the date that we're looking at.
Nehemiah has put together this project to rebuild the wall. Obviously, we're not going to summarize it all. Grab the CDs, and you'll get that on the way out.
Here's the point that we come back to again and again and again: Nehemiah is God's man doing God's job, God's way, God's timing. There's no doubt about that. Here's the application: Just because you're right where God wants you to be, it does not mean you aren't going to have opposition. That's what we saw last week. Here comes the opposition. Sanballat and Tobiah and all of the enemies gather together, and they're doing anything they can to upset this point. They don't want that wall around Jerusalem to be rebuilt. They're going to do anything they can to stop this process.
Do you see the connection again? God's guy, God's timing, God's job, God's way, got it all fixed. And yet, boom, here comes the opposition.
Internal Conflict - The Unexpected Opposition
Today, the opposition comes from something that a wily veteran would expect, but maybe the novice wouldn't. By that I mean we expect the opposition from external forces. If you're wearing blue jerseys and you're playing the red jerseys, you expect the red jerseys to attack you. What you don't expect are the blue jerseys to turn on one another. That's what happens today.
What happens today is the conflict that comes on an intramural basis. The Jews begin to attack the Jews. What we're going to see today, and I'm sure I'm going to say this to you a billion times, is that the problem that we see, although it manifests itself in a bunch of different settings, the problem is primarily sin.
That's what we're going to look at today. We're going to try to apply this to your life. We're going to ask you to do the work here and to begin to take these lessons, take these general principles, and apply them in your life.
Four Key Areas of Study
Four sections on your outline: the problems that threatened the project, the people that created the problems, the plan that resolved the problems, and the promises that ratified the plan.
First of all, let's look at section A. Some of the workers needed food for their families. That's what we see here in chapter 5, verse 1: "There was a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. 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.'"
The First Problem: Basic Survival
Here's what's happened. Primarily an agricultural economy, they're now taking time out to be engaged in this project. It's taking a little bit of time. The construction itself takes 52 days. But the process takes some time. As this is coming together, all of a sudden the work at home isn't getting done. If you don't work in that economy, you don't eat. There's no safety net.
Here's what they're saying. Some of the workers are in real trouble. There's something in here that can pretty much guarantee you that you've got some real issues coming. Look at who's involved. Now the wives are engaged. Now the wives are in this thing. They're not going to let this baby go. The guys may back down. The guys may be wimps. Girls aren't going to be. They're hanging right in there. They're saying, "We've got to have food for our babies. We've got to have food for home."
The Second Problem: Agricultural Needs
Here's the second thing. Some of the workers needed grain for their farms. Verse 3: "And there were others who said, 'We're mortgaging our fields and our vineyards and our houses that we might get grain because of the famine.'" Now they don't, in this particular instance, they're not talking necessarily about the grain that they need to eat. They're talking literally about seed money. That's pretty clever, by the way. They're talking literally about seed money. This is the grain they need to get the crops going to keep the farm moving along. They're saying, "We're out of that. We've got issues here."
Then some of the people needed money, and look why.
They needed money for their taxes. Verses 4 and 5: "Also there were those who said, We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and our vineyards. And now our flesh is like the flesh of our brothers and our children and like the flesh of their children. And lo and behold, we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters are forced into bondage already, and we are helpless because our fields and vineyards belong to others."
They're saying, "Here's what's happened here. We've had to mortgage everything." You've seen those big old RVs that you see when you're on a two-lane road going up the coast highway, and there's an RV there and you're behind it, and the bumper sticker on the back that says, "We're spending our kids' inheritance." What they're doing is spending their kids. They're selling their kids into slavery to keep the money going, to keep the farm going, to keep the vineyard going, to get the flow of the cash going.
The Tax Burden Problem
There's a little subset, and I've got two or three political points in here. We never want politics to be a dividing issue, but that's what taxes do, my friend. I watched a little discussion the other night with William F. Buckley and some lady, and she said, "Don't you believe, do you think that taxes are too high for rich people?" And he said, "No, they're too high for everybody."
What makes America great is not the people. Now, you're going to hear that between now and the election because they've got to say that they need your vote. But what makes America great is not the people. There's some contribution of the people, but not much. What makes America great is the system. It's not the people.
I can take some guy from Vietnam, who's living over there with nothing, put him in L.A., and in five years, he's got three restaurants and four apartment buildings. So, obviously, it's not him. He was over there. It's the system. And the more we mess around with the system, the more we begin to mess with what makes America the greatest country in the world. What makes this country the greatest country in the world is a value, a core, and a system.
And that's what taxes do. You're paying a boatload. You understand that, don't you? You're going to Starbucks. You see some Starbucks coffees around. You're going to Starbucks, and let's say you get your little $4 drink, and you get that five days a week. You've got $20 in it. You've got $1,000 a year. Well, I don't even know what the city of Phoenix tax rate is. I'm sure somebody in here knows .23 or something. So it's 8%. So I get $80 a year. I'm paying taxes for my Starbucks. That's nuts.
You go to get gas, and I understand we've got gas issues. You go to get gas. You've got, depends where you are, somewhere between $0.50 and $0.75 a gallon in taxes. You're paying a boatload of taxes. I hope you understand that.
The Manager's Real Job
Here's what they're doing. They're draining these people. So now they come to Nehemiah. If you're a manager, if you're an owner, it's not important just that you're a businessman. It's not just important that you're a businesswoman. It's not just important that you have an MBA. If you're in this management ownership position, you're also a psychologist and a marriage counselor. You're involved in drug and alcohol counseling. You know what you're living with, if you're a good manager.
I used to work for a guy, and his thing was, "Hey, listen, I don't care what happens outside this job. Couldn't care less. Whatever you do, it doesn't matter. Whatever happens, it doesn't matter." Well, you better care. Wall Street Journal says if you have somebody in your office that goes through a divorce, it'll be three years before they hit that same level of productivity again in their life. You better care what's going on in terms of people, how they manage money, how they handle that, how they handle their kids, because that has a direct effect on you.
Nehemiah Investigates the Problem
Here's what's happening in this world. Nehemiah's workers, these are the workers now, are saying, "We've got some real stress going here. We've got some stress," and we're going to see in a second that it's coming from a couple of sources. One, exorbitant taxes, but the real issue here is what the Jews are doing to the Jews.
And Nehemiah now does a little investigation. He stops. He takes inventory, and now he identifies the people that created the problem. There were two things for our outline. Number one, they saw an opportunity to make a profit. Verses 6 and 7. And they missed an opportunity to make a contribution. And that's verse 8.
Here's what it says in verses 6 and 7: "And then, I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. And I consulted with myself and contended with the nobles and the rulers." Remember we saw back earlier when the construction of the wall was going on, there was a group of people that weren't involved and weren't engaged. And it happens to be these nobles and these rulers. "And I said to them, you are exacting usury from each of His brothers. Therefore, I held a great assembly against them."
The Usury Violation
Here's what's happened. Nehemiah gets the Jewish leaders together, and he begins to unpack the problem. And he discovers that the problem is these Jews are lending money to other Jews and charging them an exorbitant interest rate. That's a direct violation.
Let me give you three passages of Scripture. You can look at it on your own. Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:35-40, and Deuteronomy 23:19-20. In those three passages, what God is telling the nation of Israel is that if you want to charge money, charge interest to those outside the nation, have at it. Go for it. Do it. Go after it. That's okay. But be careful when you do business within the family of God. And certainly, you shouldn't charge exorbitant interest rates to your own people.
be charging Jews interest on this. And it's important in any case that you aren't taking this exorbitant rate and putting it to them. The principle is this: if somebody is poor and hurting and needs your help, you shouldn't profit from it. That's what's going on. That's why you wonder why he says, I am very angry.
We've been around Nehemiah for four weeks. And what we've learned about Nehemiah, this is a godly guy. Not much gets him mad. That the bricks get late to the job site, that's not a huge issue to him. But when you've got the people of God who are in the midst of sin, Nehemiah is saying, that hacks me off. Especially because the sin is now affecting this project.
Nehemiah's Measured Response to Anger
There's two things that we look here at Nehemiah. Number one, here's what he says. I think it's verse 7. I consulted with myself. What he's saying there, some of your translations will say, I pondered. I stopped and I thought about this. I didn't just react.
So often, when I'm angry, if I'm angry, I react. He's paused. It counts to ten. He stops. He doesn't just rush in. That's not always the best time to be dealing with something.
There's that very important distinction, even when you're dealing with your kids. It's one thing to discipline them out of love. It's another thing to punish them in anger. You've got to be very careful here. Nehemiah, wise man. He's angry. And he knows he's angry. And he knows his own nature.
I watched a great biography on Dwight Eisenhower the other day. And they were saying that Eisenhower, and it's funny because when I watch Eisenhower, I see this very measured, very calculated, very determined, very analytical man. They said what he fought all his life was his temper.
So it started when he was ten. So he was ten years old one day. He wanted to go with his brother somewhere, and his mom said no. And instead, he went out and started punching the tree until his hands were bloody. And his mom brought him in and wrapped him up and said, you know what, Dwight? You better get control of this. And he fought that all of his life. How does this angry man become this really gentle giant? Well, he begins to control that. First of all, he understands it's there.
The Principle of Not Profiting from Adversity
Here's the second principle. And if you work for Bank of America or you work for some lending institution, I don't expect you to rush out of here today and say, we've got to redo all our interest rates. We're not going to be charging fellow Americans any interest anymore. I know that isn't going to happen.
Here's the principle, though. The principle here is this. You have to be very concerned when you're profiting from somebody else's adversity. Now, I know you're going to ask me one question. What does that mean? And my thing is, I don't know. You just have to look at it.
Years and years ago, we were out in Tolleson. And I'm sure Tolleson has changed a ton since then. I haven't done a real estate deal in a long time. We were out in Tolleson. We were trying to get a grocery store to go out there. And they ultimately wouldn't. We couldn't get any grocery store to go out there.
At that time, the population in Tolleson was predominantly Hispanic. And listen to this statistic. And 75% of the grocery dollar was being spent at Circle K. Now, imagine you're going home today and say, here's what we're going to do. We're going to spend 75% of our grocery budget at Circle K. We're going to buy our bread there, our milk there, our crackers there, our meats there, everything we can get, we can get at Circle K. Well, all of a sudden, here you see your grocery bill going up and up and up.
A Conscience in the Marketplace
Let me come back to what I said before. I'm a free market guy. I don't want the government to fix the problem. But I thought it would have been really great for your hometown grocer to go out there and say, hey, why don't we open up a store here? Probably going to have some losses here. Probably not going to be able to make near the profit we could. We may even have, and this may be true, we may even have to run buses to pick people up to be able to have them come in and shop. The answer to this is probably no.
But we've got a couple of things that we do through the church, through a food bank down there and some other things. And we have the same thing that's going on in Gilbert. People basically can only buy groceries where they can walk. I mean, they've got to walk to it and get it home. So we went down and we looked at the grocery store. You've got fruit that you wouldn't buy in a million years at a price higher than any price you're paying. That's not right. I don't want the government to fix it. I just want the power of the people somehow to fix that, the power of the individual. I just need to have a conscience in the middle of all of that.
I'll give you another thing. I'm in a restaurant and I'm there by myself, so I'm reading. I've got a waitress. She was terrific. Maybe she's a server now. I don't know. So we're talking and we're talking and she's spectacular. Not very busy. We're talking along. And I said, hey, is this a good job?
And she said, oh, I've got another job. I said, you work two jobs? She said, no, I work three jobs. I said, you work three jobs? I work three jobs. And she all of a sudden, we're talking a little later, she mentions a kid. Well, I'm kind of a hawk to see. You don't have a wedding ring. You've got a kid, so I'm guessing there's a story here. And so I know she'll give it to me if I just ask the right question.
So I say, well, gee, do you have just one child? No, I have three. You have three children. Three children, three jobs. I said, I notice there's not a wedding ring. Is that just to encourage tips or what is that? You know, I don't know what that is. And she said, ah, you know, the jerk left a long time ago with another girl. And we talked and talked and talked. And after a period of time, because I'll ask a lot of questions, but I don't get really personal. But for whatever reason,
I felt comfortable, and I said to her, just out of curiosity, between the three jobs, how much money will you make this year? And she said, well, you've got to understand, I'm having a really good year. And I said, okay. She said, if everything comes together the way I think it's going to, I'm going to be just over 15 grand this year.
Now, you say, oh, and I say, oh, and we all say, oh. I don't want the government to fix it. I'm just saying, is there a responsibility there? Because there's people, just so you know, you don't need to go to the barrio to find people like that. There's people like that around you everywhere you go. You know, you just have to have ears for it. And then when you find them, here's what you need to do. You don't need to write your congressman. I don't want the congress in it. You need to help them. And for certain, within the body of Christ and the church, there's people like that that can be helped.
So, there you go. I'm not trying to solve anything. I'm just trying to present the issue for you.
The Problem of Exploitation Among God's People
So, here they go. They're profiting from it. Verse 8 is the problem. He said this, "And I said to them, We, according to our ability, have redeemed our Jewish brothers who were sold to other nations." So, he said, here's what's happened. Over the years, the Jews were sold into slavery. And in many situations, you could go in and buy those Jews back out of slavery.
So, he says in verse 8, that's exactly what we did. "Now, would you even sell your brothers that they may be sold? Then they were silent and could not find a word to say." He said, here's what's happened. We went out as a nation, pooled our resources, buy these guys out of slavery. You come in. You charge them this interest rate, which is violation of scriptural principles, and now it's usury on top of it, and now they've got to sell people back into slavery to line your pockets.
The Silence of the Guilty
What I like is their response. They were silent. I had a daughter, still have a daughter, who that was her response. Sarah is the princess of this man. When you had Sarah, she wouldn't say a word. I'd say, Sarah, you got something you want to say about this? This is your time to speak, because I'm formulating right now. I already have a guilty verdict. I'm formulating the sentence at this moment. You have something you want to say? Nothing you want to tell me? What do you want me to do? Whatever you want to do, Dad.
And you know why she did that? Because she was guilty, and she knew it. And she knew that just coming back and starting to match wits with me, she learned that long ago. That isn't going to work. That isn't going to help. It's only going to aggravate the situation.
See how they respond? Verse 8, they were silent and couldn't find a word to say. These Jews had nothing to say about this. He caught them cold. They're guilty.
The Value of Guilt
That's a great place to be, by the way. You're in this room today, and you're feeling guilty. And a lot of people are trying to run around and get rid of their guilt. Listen, you've got to evaluate the guilt, but generally speaking, guilt is a great thing. I watched a show last night on Jeffrey Dahmers. He didn't feel any guilt. If you get to the point where you don't feel guilty, you're pathological, and there's something wrong with you. When you do something wrong, you should feel guilty.
And many people in this room today, certainly many that will be there at noon today, a whole boatload of them at noon, and many that will listen to the CDs and the tapes, many of you at this moment feel guilty, and you feel guilty by and large because you are guilty.
What to Do with Guilt
So what do you do with that guilt? What do you do with sin? Well, if you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, what you need to do is acknowledge who you are, acknowledge who He is, come to Him in repentance and faith, and in Him and Him alone you'll find forgiveness of sin. You'll find it nowhere else. No church, no activity, no religious...
I'm getting ready a week from tomorrow. We leave with 650 junior high and high schoolers and staff to go on summer camp over at Point Loma. If there was a way to earn your salvation, this would be it, okay? If there was a way to get out of this thing, this would be it. Thirteen buses, two trucks, I'll fly, but nonetheless, some people are paying a huge price to be there. I speak seven times to them. It's the toughest gig I have all year, and it's a very difficult thing. But God's not impressed with that.
If I'm not a Christian here today, I need to come in repentance and faith. If you're a Christian and you're in the midst of sin, understand this. Getting it forgiven is already accomplished. You're a Christian, it is forgiven. But what God wants you to do is to acknowledge it as sin. Confess means to agree, to agree with Him that it is indeed sin, and then, here, try this. Stop it. Knock it off. Don't do it anymore. Why? We're going to look at why in just a second.
The Plan to Resolve the Problem
Here's the plan. It's C on your outline. Here's the plan that resolves the problem. First of all, the lenders need to get right with God. That shouldn't surprise you at all. That's where Nehemiah starts all the time on this stuff. First of all, the lenders need to get right with God. Secondly, the lenders need to set the example. Everybody's going to be watching these guys. They need to set the example. And thirdly, the workers need to gain back their inheritance. Workers need to gain back their inheritance.
So let's see how this unfolds. Here's the problem, verse 9. They don't say anything, verse 8. Verse 9, Nehemiah writes, "Again I said, the thing which you are doing is not good, should you not walk in fear of our God because of reproach of the nations and our enemies."
So he said, here's the first thing. And I will tell you this, even in this, to me, Nehemiah is very generous. In some of your translations, it will be in the form of a question. Is what you're doing wrong? If it's me, I tend to come in both barrels, unload and say, listen,
What you're doing is absolutely wrong. This is an abomination of God. He's sick about it. You make Him sick. You make me sick. You make everybody sick. You need to repent. That's how I would typically approach it.
Even in the midst of his chastisement, Nehemiah is so gentle. Listen: "The thing which you're doing is not good, is it? Think about it, boys." That's what he's saying. Take a little bit of an inventory here.
Learning to Be Confrontational Without Being Combative
There is a way—I have not yet mastered this—to be confrontational without being combative. I really learned a lot with my girls over the years, and I think I have mellowed a ton over the years. But over the years, I've learned that rather than come in and just start launching accusations, some real civil discussion will typically surface the facts, and they will typically have a harsher view of how this ought to be handled than I would.
I learned that long ago with grades. When the kids would come home with grades, and I'd look at them, and we'd have this war over their grades. Here's what I started to do. At the beginning of each semester, I'd sit down with them, and I'd say, "Here's your schedule. You tell me what grade should you get in chemistry. You tell me. Let's write it down." "A." Okay. I would have put C, but you want A. I would never say that to them, but that's my mind. "English?" And then we'd simply, at the end of the semester, sit down and say, "Boy, you said it was going to be an A, and it's a C. That might be a problem. What happened there?" "Well, it was much tougher than I thought." "Oh, okay. And here you said C and got an A. Can I assume that was much easier?" "No, I just worked harder." So they always had their little angles.
But do you see that? There's a way to approach this. You don't have to just bury everybody around you, especially when we're talking about a leader. You're the leader. Nobody's disputing it. Nobody's challenging it. In some instances, you have a card that says on it: leader. Senior vice president, vice president, owner, president, CEO, founder. Mom, dad. You're the leader.
How Will You Handle Your Leadership?
Now, how are you going to handle that leadership? Because the object here is not to prove that you're right and get a pound of flesh. The object here is to grow the follower. You don't need to kill their spirit to do it.
"I am thinking what you did here," he says, "is wrong. Is it? Think about it. Should you not walk in fear of the Lord?" That word "walk" is an important word. In Scripture, it's typically used in two ways. One is as a very primitive but very effective form of transportation: walk. The way that we see it, for example, in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 1, Paul says, "Walk in a manner worthy of your calling." What Paul's talking about there is lifestyle. He's talking about the way we walk, the way we live, the way we talk, how we conduct our lives.
How we conduct our lives is so important. And what's significant to me here is that Nehemiah, very much like the Apostle Paul, says, "Hey, listen, should you not walk in fear of God because of the reproach of the nations and our enemies?" He said, "Look, we're watching each other, but there's an enemy out there. There's an antagonist out there." In our context, there are nonbelievers out there.
People Are Watching You
Do you understand? I think you do. I hope you do. Do you understand that when you walk in here with a Bible and somebody you know sees you, they immediately begin to evaluate everything you say, everything you do, all of your actions, every nuance of it, and they have a standard for you that's likely higher than the standard that you have for your life? And in all likelihood, they're hoping you fail. Do you understand that? Do you understand that people are watching you now? You say, "I go to this church."
We've been teaching through John 4, the woman at the well. This woman gets converted, and she leaves her bucket at the well, and she runs into the city. She goes to the men. She's probably been a promiscuous gal. She's been married five times. Now she's living with a guy. She's probably a promiscuous gal. All the guys in the town would know her. "Ah, ah, ah, there's the woman."
She runs into the city, and she goes right to the men and says, "I think I found the Messiah." That takes some real courage. And that just kind of made me stop and say, "Wait a minute. Is that the way we're living?"
Living Out Our Faith With Words and Actions
So we spent two or three weeks—I guess we finished it this week—three weeks, talking about this whole idea, talking about evangelism, talking about speaking the truth. No person has ever been won to Jesus Christ through a wordless sermon alone. And I'm sure one of these people would say, "Well, I'm just going to live my life in such a way that they'll see me, and that will be my testimony." Not enough. Not enough to let them see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. How are they going to glorify Him?
Where are you going to be salt and light? They're going to be thirsty. They're going to be desiring what you have. They're going to come to you and say, "What is it that's distinctive about you? What's different about you? Why does your marriage work? Why does your business work? Why, when your relationships fall apart, does your life stay together? How, in the midst of adversity, can you hang in there? What's different and distinctive about you? Tell me. Tell me."
And you don't say to them, "Oh, I had an anger management class." No. Here's what you say to them: I just saw yesterday, one of the senators—his wife, did you see that one of the senators? His wife punched some woman in line the other day at a restaurant or something. So they sentenced her, I don't know what they sentenced her to, and part of it was anger management class. Well, they need something better. That's what you do with a little kid—give them a spanking. And she needs Jesus.
How do you get control of your life? Well, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. Does that mean we'll never blow it? Obviously not.
not. Mike Barber, remember Mike Barber? He used to play tight end with the Oilers and tells a great story. He got converted. He's playing one day, comes over the middle, and one of the linebackers takes a shot at him, and he fires right back at him. The guy stopped and said, "Hey, I thought you were a Christian." He said, "I am, but I got a lot of growing to do. Will you pray for me, brother?"
So there's some of that that goes in there too. We don't always have all this stuff all figured out. That's what's going on. I'm supposed to walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
The Challenge of Christian Liberty
I guess I would ask you this. I'm not talking about legalism here. I got into a long discussion with somebody the other day about drinking and about having a cigar. It wasn't even a cigarette. Obviously, God would be against a cigarette. Have you ever smelled one of those things? But a cigar that smells so good - that's the distinction that we ought to be making here. Is that all right? Is that wrong? Can I go?
For years, you had a battle: "I will never see an R-rated movie." Well, now they've got *The Passion*, and they're going, "What do I do? What do I do?" Well, first of all, you made a bad decision because you locked yourself into something we call legalism. You got these rules and regulations, and we need some of those. But you know what? This Christianity is going to have an individual aspect. God's going to convict one of you that you should never do such and such a thing, and He's going to convict another person.
If I go to Germany to a pastor's conference, and they're sitting around at the break, it's not unusual for them to have a glass of beer. But if they saw a guy from London over there smoking, they'd be all over this guy. If you go to London to a pastor's conference, they're smoking like chimneys, but if a guy was over there with a beer, they'd be all over that guy. Now, the easiest way to handle that is to just stay away from both of them, but that needs to be a conviction of yours. You've got to be very careful here. You need to walk in a way that's distinctive and different, but their problem is they didn't fear God.
Leading by Example
They need to set the example. Look at verse 10. He says this: "And likewise, I, my brothers, and my servants are lending them money and grain. Please let us leave off this usury." He said, "Here's what we've done. We've already started to begin to fill the gap here. We've started to give them this money, lend them this money. We're filling this gap for this thing. We're setting the example."
Obviously, if you are a Christian and part of the army that Christ has assembled in this world, you need to walk in a manner worthy of your calling. But if you're a leader, especially if you're a leader, you need to walk in this manner, because if you fail, the ramifications are huge.
For 27 weeks, a few years ago, I went over and taught at a church in Southern California on a Sunday. It was this huge building - they had just finished it right before I got there. A gigantic building. The building was so large that when Susan and the girls were there sitting in the back, I could not recognize it was them. My arm is not what it used to be, but it's still decent, I think, and I could not stand at one end and get a baseball to the other. It was a big, huge building.
The Consequences of Failed Leadership
Why am I there? Well, the guy who was the senior pastor had decided along this construction way that his arrogance and his pride and his ego needed to be fed, so he started sleeping with one of his girls, one of his secretaries. They confronted him on it, and he denied it and denied it and denied it. Finally they had a meeting, and they said, "Listen, we went..." And he said, "We've been through this." They said, "Okay, so you're denying it." He said, "Absolutely." "Elder John, show the video."
My grandfather had an old phrase he used to use that is appropriate at this moment. He used to say, "Doesn't that jar your preserves?" And that's exactly what's going on right here. As they show the video of him helping her out of the car and into the hotel room and then coming out a little bit later, so they dealt with that.
Now, here's the deal. Here's the good news for you: we don't have a video of you. But is there anything like that that you wouldn't be embarrassed if we did?
God Sees Everything
A friend of mine from the West Coast runs a college department over there, and he had two of his college students come in one day, and they were all distressed. They said to him, "We don't know exactly how to say this." He said, "Well, what is it? Just say it." They said, "We've been sleeping together." He said, "Yeah, somebody saw you."
They went crazy. They said, "Who? Was it my friend? Was it the guys? Was it my roommate?" "No." He said, "No, no, no. It was God saw you." And they literally went, "Oh, whew."
See, that's how we think. That's how I think. We go, "Oh, but that's how you think too, you little liar right there. You think the same way." "Oh, man, did He catch me? No, it was God. Oh, wow, I thought I was busted. But no, it's just God." I need to begin to think like, "Oh, I'm busted every time. He sees me every time." It's to lead by example. It's to have a transformed heart.
Making Things Right
Then now the workers need to get back this inheritance. Verse 11 says this: "Please give back to them this very day their fields" - because that's what they've taken when they couldn't make their payments - "and their vineyards, and their olive groves, and their houses, and also a hundredth part of the money and the grain and of the new wine and of the oil that you've extracted from them."
In other words, you've sinned, and now it's time to make this thing right. Now it's time to fix this thing. Now, this is a crucial moment.
The Plan Must Be Implemented
This is a crucial moment, because what Nehemiah has done is diagnosed the problem, and now he has offered a resolution, a plan, but that plan is only as good as the implementation. It doesn't do you any good to buy a treadmill if you aren't going to get on it. It's a very expensive clothes hanger.
We were at California Pizza Kitchen the other day, and Susan said, "Oh, there's some cookbooks." And I said, "Well, you have that cookbook." She said, "Oh, I don't have that cookbook." And I said, "Susan, you have that cookbook. I might have bought it for you. I don't remember. I know you have that cookbook." And she said, "No, I don't think I do." And I said, "I guarantee you do. It's in a box." She said, "Well, I've never made anything from it." And I said, "Oh, that's very different than owning the cookbook."
There's one thing to go and to meet with the trainer to give you a plan. It's a whole other thing. It's the same thing here. Nehemiah has done a magnificent job of identifying the issue, of confronting the issue, not in a combative way, and of proposing a resolution. But it's only as good as the boys who have to implement it.
The Leaders Promise to Comply
Here's what happens: They ratify it. The leaders promise to comply. The leaders promise to enforce. And the people promise to produce.
Look at verse 12, first part of it. Here's what they say in response: "We will give it back, and we will require nothing of them, and we will do exactly as you say." There's the first thing that has to happen. There's the first thing toward resolution.
Again, if we want to understand this idea of guilt or sin, you understand you're guilty, you understand you're sin. What must you do? Confess it. Make it right.
Enforcement Through Sacred Vows
Here's the second thing. Now, there has to be this idea of some sort of enforcement. Nehemiah does an interesting thing here in the second part of verse 12. He said, "So I called a priest and took an oath from them that they would do according to this promise."
In other words, he brings in the priest and he says, "Here's what we're going to do now. We're going to make a vow, boys. You're these hot shot religious leaders. You're going to say honest to God. You're going to swear at your mother's grave. You're going to make a vow here."
And then, here's what happens. Now, the people begin to produce.
The Sacred Oath and Divine Consequences
Verse 13: "I also shook out the front of the garment and said, thus may God shake out every man from his house and from his possessions who does not fulfill this promise. Even thus may he be shaken out and emptied. So, this is the second part of the vow. And all the assembly said, Amen. And they praised the Lord. Then the people did according to this promise."
Look at verse 13 because there's something in there that to me is extraordinary, uncharacteristic of human beings. Here's this problem. This guy comes in, offers a solution. After he diagnoses the problem, they implement the plan. Now, they begin to execute it.
When that happens in our world, we put them as Time Magazine's person of the year. That happens in our world, that's a Nobel Peace Prize. Look at what they do. They say Amen and they praise the Lord because they understand that it's God who's doing this in their lives, in the lives of these people.
God's Unusual Strategy
I was trying to make a point and had us go back into 1 Corinthians chapter 1. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, Paul gives us the demographics of the church in Corinth. And he said there weren't many wise, there weren't many noble, there weren't many really wealthy.
Have you noticed that even in our day and age? If I came to you and said, "Here's the deal. We got this Christian thing and we want to get it around the world. What would you do?" Well, you immediately think, "Well, we've got to figure out how we're going to finance that. We'd better get the big dogs with the dough involved in this right now. We'd better line up the TV and the radio. And we'd better get the smart guys. We don't want some idiot who can't hardly speak up there. We want to get the smart guys. And we'd better get the politicians on board." That's how we do it. It just is how we do it.
God did exactly the opposite. He says, "Look around the church." And that's the church in Corinth. Look around your church.
The Absence of Worldly Power
I have no idea who the hundred wealthiest people in Phoenix are. But it would be interesting to add the list and to see how many of them are serving in a capacity of leadership in the local church. I'll bet it's not very high.
Or to get the list of the tenured professors at ASU and see how many people are major players or even attending a church. I'll bet it's not very high. Or to get the politicians. Now, having said that, we know we'll see them from Labor Day to Election Day this year. But I mean in a normal year. How many of these guys are around? Not many.
Why would that be? And I've thought about it and thought about it. You know why? So at the end of the day, we aren't saying, "Praise the guy." We're saying, "Praise the Lord." God built the church. We didn't. It's a magnificent lesson here.
When Sin Stops God's Work
Let me encourage you to stop and to take this and put it to work. Put it in your life. And look at what happens. There's not one mention of the wall in this entire thing. Because the project is stopped. God's man, God's guy, God's job, God's timing. And the project stopped.
What stopped it? The same thing that will stop God working in your life. Sin. And when it comes in there, it's going to have huge ramifications. Sin. And if you don't deal with it, it's going to drag on and drag on and drag you down. And I'm talking to those of you that are Christians. And God wants to deal with you on that.
And He's going to bust you apart on that. If you don't confess that sin, He's going to bust you apart. Not to destroy you like your critic, but to break you down, to humble you so He can put you back together again and you become the man or woman that God uses in some magnificent way.
We've still got a wall to build. We'll pick up right there next week.
Father, help us see this truth, apply it to our life. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Have a great week. We'll see you next week.