The passage and the subject we're looking at this morning is not a very popular one. If you have a Bible which has topic headings in the various sections, yours may say at the beginning of chapter 13 something like, principles of separation. And that's what I've got on the Bible in front of me. And that's what this This chapter is really all about separation from the world. Holiness to God and a purity of life which doesn't follow the way of the world in opposition to God, but wants to keep true to God no matter what others around are thinking or saying or doing. But as I say, this is an unpopular topic, perhaps particularly today, for at least two reasons. One reason is because there are lots of things we enjoy in this world. We have the temptation to love this world and the things of it. Sometimes God and his things can seem very unappealing, unattractive. And things of this world can seem very appealing. And we just have to honestly admit that we have a love for this world. We love the approval of others. We don't like swimming against the current. We don't like being different to those around us. And that's one reason why this topic is unpopular. There's another reason as well. The other reason is because this subject can leave a bad taste in our mouth. Because we've all seen people who pride themselves on their holiness. Who aren't just holy but they are holier than thou. Perhaps most famously in the Bible are the Pharisees. Now the word Pharisee means separated one. holy one. And the Pharisees prided themselves on their righteousness and their holiness and how they were different from other people. And as I say, it became a source of pride for them and Christ actually had his harshest words for them. And sometimes when we think of this topic of separation, we can think of the Pharisees. And we think, I don't want to be like that. I don't like people who are like that, who kind of are aloof and make lots of rules for themselves and others and take pride in it. That's another reason why this subject is unpopular, because we don't want to be like that sort of problem, like those sorts of people. But neither of those reasons are good reasons for not listening to what God, what the Bible has to say about the importance of separation because we don't have to be like the Pharisees in order to walk differently. from the world. We don't have to be like the Pharisees as we seek to follow Christ and follow what he has to say to us. And this passage gives us illustrations and examples of how separation worked out in the life of Israel. As I'm sure you're very aware, if you were listening to the reading, this passage raises quite a lot of different complications. Because in one sense, nothing that is addressed in this chapter applies to us today in exactly the same way. Nehemiah in this chapter hears of three different ways, possibly more, but three main ways that the children of Israel have ceased to follow God wholeheartedly and they have let other ideas and other things creep in. And Nehemiah, violently, corrects these three ways that the people have compromised God's Word. The first way is that they have desecrated the temple. They are no longer using the temple in the way God designed it. The second way is that they have defiled the Sabbath. And the third way, just to keep the Ds, they have destroyed what marriage was intended for. So we see the temple is desecrated, the Sabbath is defiled, and marriage is destroyed. But the ways in which those three things happen don't actually apply to us today in quite the same way. The temple which they desecrated no longer exists. There is no temple to desecrate anymore. They didn't keep the Sabbath as they should, but the Sabbath for the Jews was Saturday. We, or very few of us, keep Sabbath on a Saturday. And lastly, the Nehemiah criticized and rebuked the Jews because they made marriages with foreign women. It seemed it was men predominantly who were doing this, and they had married foreign women. But today, the church is predominantly foreigners. We're predominantly Gentile. There might be some Jews here, very welcome. But most of the church across the world is Gentile. So that certainly, surely, cannot apply in the same way for us today. So to solve these difficulties, and by the way, these sort of difficulties come all the time, particularly when we read the Old Testament. There are ways in which People followed God then, which don't quite apply in the same way to us today. But fortunately, we have the New Testament, which sheds light on the Old Testament so that we can apply this passage rightly. So that's what I'd like to do for the rest of our time this morning, is just see what the New Testament has to say, if you like, about Nehemiah chapter 13 so that we can know, so that we can understand better how we practice separation today in the church, how we can honour God and not walk in the way of the world. So let's look first at the desecration of the temple. From verses 4 up until verse 13, Nehemiah realizes that the temple is no longer being used the way it was supposed to be used. The temple was designed for the worship of God and his service. And the Levites were the ones who predominantly served in the temple. And that was what the temple was for. But the high priest has basically rented out a room in the temple for Tobiah. Now if you remember Tobiah, Tobiah was one of the enemies of Israel. He'd been oppressing them earlier in the book. And Eliashib, the high priest, presumably because of some family relation, he'd given Tobiah a room in the temple. But that wasn't what the temple was for. It wasn't to provide space for God's enemies. Besides that, they had removed some of the stores which were supposed to be kept in the temple, which were to help the Levites. The Levites didn't have land of their own, so tithes were given from the other tribes to the tribe of Levi, and those things were kept in the temple, and that's what the Levites would, to a large extent, live off. But those things had been removed presumably to make way for Tobiah amongst other things. And so the Levites had to leave and work the fields so they could provide for themselves. And Nehemiah is furious that the temple is not being used the way it should be. It's been desecrated in this way. And we're told, and it's almost a comical image, but it says in verse eight, Nehemiah says, it grieved me bitterly, therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room. Nehemiah comes and he just throws out Tobiah's stuff. His boxes and his, I don't know what possessions Tobiah had, but they all get thrown out of the room. Such was Nehemiah's zeal. You might think, well, what does this mean for us today? How does this apply to us today? Does it apply to us today? Well, as I said, the temple doesn't exist now, but many Christians would assume that our churches, are the equivalent of the temple then. We worship in these churches, our church buildings, and maybe the application is that we shouldn't bring other things into a church building which aren't to do with the service of God. But that's not actually what the New Testament teaches. Our church buildings are not the equivalent of the temple. In the New Testament, church buildings didn't actually exist. The Christians initially met on one of the porches of the temple, not the temple itself, but on one of the porches called Solomon's Porch. Other Christians met in houses, in homes. Some may have met in synagogues if there were enough Christians amongst the Jews there. But churches didn't exist. Churches were not built till much later when Christians became more numerous. Now, in the New Testament, churches are buildings. Churches are people who meet in buildings. And in the Bible, we are the temple of God. And to go a little bit deeper, Christ is the temple of God and we are his body. In the Old Testament, the temple was a picture of Christ who'd come later. The temple was the place where people met with God, but now Jesus is the place we meet with God. He is the place we go if we want to have fellowship with him. The temple was simply a picture, but now that the reality has come in Christ, the picture has been done away. and we worship in Christ. But as I said, in Corinthians, we're told that we are the body of Christ. We are the hands and the feet of Christ in this world. He is at the right hand of the Father, but we now do worship in Christ. by the power of his Holy Spirit, what Christ did while he was on earth. Not his death on the cross, that happened once for all, but in his service of God and as he reached out with the good news to others, so we do that as his body. It might be a little bit... of a preacher who was preaching once and he was praying for some need and he prayed to God and he said, please stretch out your hand and help such and such. And then he paused and someone asked him, what's the matter, why have you paused? And he said, a little voice inside just told me, you are the hand. Now you could take that too far, but you can see the point. The point is we don't simply pray to God to do things in this world. We pray to God to help us. to do his will in this world because we are the body of Christ. So now we can start to see how this passage applies to us in terms of the desecration of the temple. But just to clinch it, let me just read a few verses from 1 Corinthians and Paul makes it explicit. Paul says the body is not for sexual immorality but for the Lord and the Lord for the body. And God hath both raised up the Lord and will also raise us up by his power. Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a harlot? Certainly not. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a harlot is one body with her? For the two, he says, shall become one flesh. And he who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with him. Flee sexual immorality. Every sin that a man does is outside the body. But he who commits sexual immorality sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were brought at a price. Therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God's." Particularly using the example of sexual sin, Paul says the way we keep God's temple holy today is by abstaining from sin. Sexual sin as he says here, but all sorts of sin. We cannot coddle sin in our life. That is to allow to buy it in. That is to make a room for the enemies of God. And Paul says, we are the temple of God. We cannot allow such things. That works individually. Individually in our own lives, we should throw out those things which are competing with God and with his laws and what he says to us. but it also works corporately as well. The Bible speaks of church discipline for those who are not walking, who are publicly not walking in the way they should be. This is why, by the way, we have church membership. We have a church members meeting coming up in June, and you might wonder sometimes, well, why do we have this thing, church membership? Well, one of the main reasons is because if we have an official church membership, it becomes much easier to practice what the Bible preaches. If we have a commitment to one another, an official commitment of membership, then when people aren't walking in the way they should be walking, we can deal with it according to how the Bible says. We can warn them, we can rebuke them, and if necessary, we can exclude them from membership so that they might repent, so that they might turn. Now obviously our church services are open to anyone. We don't exclude anyone. I'm not sure how we could do that if we wanted to, which we don't. But our church services are open to anyone to come in and hear God's word. But church membership is for those who want to commit to the local church, who want to follow and to submit to the discipline that a church can give. And as I say, the purpose behind that is to keep ourselves accountable, not because we want a special class of people, but because we want to help one another walk with God. We want to help one another as much as we can. We can do that to some extent without membership, but it becomes much easier if we have that. So that's why our church has it. But the principle remains the same regardless. It's important how we behave. Our behavior matters to God because we are his temple. And God wants a pure temple, not one desecrated. So that's the first lesson for us. Don't let Tobiah in. Purge those sins which so easily ensnare us. Don't allow a foothold for the devil in your life. But that leads us to the second way Nehemiah seeks to purge Israel and separate them. We've seen that they were desecrating the temple, but they were also breaking the Sabbath. You can see this from verse 15 onwards. The people were working on the Sabbath day. They were treading the wine presses, they were bringing in the sheaves, they were loading donkeys with wines, grapes, figs. You can read that all in verse 15. And they were trading and they were doing all this business on the Sabbath day. And God had commanded them in Exodus chapter 20, keep the Sabbath day holy, do not do work on that day. and they were breaking that command. So Nehemiah, in his own style, rebukes them. He contends with the nobles of Judah, verse 17, and he commands that the gates be shut on the Sabbath day so that no traders can come in. In fact, traders come and they camp outside the gates because they want to trade and they're upset that their trade has been hindered. And they're there for two days, two days or two nights, one or the other. And Nehemiah goes out and he says, what are you doing here? If you stay here, I'm going to lay hands on you. And that's not in a prayer sense, that's in a physical sense. He says, I'm going to cast you out. And they're obviously afraid of Nehemiah and they leave. And all of this is to keep the Sabbath pure. Now, as I said, today, very few Christians, if any, keep the Sabbath day in terms of Saturday. Saturday was the Jewish Sabbath. Even today, some Christians don't keep any Sabbath at all. Those who do tend to keep it on a Sunday. We keep it on a Sunday. And so you might think, well, how does this passage apply to us today? What's changed? Why do Christians keep Sunday rather than Saturday? There's no verse in the Bible which states that. The New Testament does call Sunday the Lord's day, because it was the day Jesus rose from the dead, but there's no verse saying the Sabbath day is now Sunday. So what changed? What happened? Well, what changed was Jesus. Jesus is what changed. He didn't change, but he changed everything else. In the book of Colossians, the apostle Paul wrote this. He said, let no one judge you in food, or in drink, or regarding a festival or a new moon or Sabbath, which are a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." In the Old Testament, there were many Sabbath days. There was the Saturday Sabbath, but there were other Sabbaths as well, before particular feasts and during particular feasts. And they were kept by the Jewish people. In Colossians, Paul says, let no one judge you in food or drink. There were all sorts of food laws in the Jewish covenant. Or regarding a festival, there were all sorts of festivals in the Jewish covenant. Or a new moon, or a Sabbath, which are shadows of things to come. These things were pictures of what, a bit like the temple. The temple was a picture of Christ who was to come. And so these festivals and Sabbaths were a picture. of what Christ would bring in later. Christ is the fulfillment. So the Sabbath law, keep Saturday holy, does not apply to us in the same way that it applied to the Jews in the Old Testament. However, there is a principle which has been set up from creation. Do you remember in the first creation week we're told that God worked for six days and then he rested on the seventh day? And there's a principle there that it's good to work six days and rest for one. And that seems to be why Sunday was kept instead of Saturday. The Christians wanted to distinguish themselves from the old Jewish laws, which had been fulfilled by Christ, but at the same time they wanted to keep the principle that had been set up at creation. And that's how I understand it today and many others as well. We keep Sunday. Not because there's a law about it, but because we want to keep the spirit of the law. Do you remember what Jesus said about the Sabbath? Jesus said, the Sabbath is not, was not made, man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man. In other words, God didn't just impose an arbitrary law on us saying, on this day, you must not do this, this, this, this, this, and you must do that, that, that, that. Instead he said, I'm giving you the Sabbath as a gift. It's for your benefit. One day in the week, you don't have to work. You can rest from all your labours. It's a gift, not an obligation. And that's what that day shift illustrates. We're not under law and under obligation. we get to enjoy a wonderful gift that God has given to us. So should we work on Sunday? Well, that's a bit like asking, should I work on holiday? Well, no, you shouldn't. Not because there's a law against it, not because it's illegal, but because that's not what holiday is for. That's unhealthy. Work and holiday is a gift, and so it is with God. That's where the word holiday comes from, by the way. It's holy day. It's the same sort of word. And Sunday should be for us a holy day, a holiday, a day when we can leave the drudgery of work and all the things we've been doing during the week, and we can focus on our families, on rest, and most importantly, on God himself. We can meet together with God's people, and we can learn more about him. Now, obviously, we all know there are works of necessity. carers, nurses. There's various ways we have to work that there's no way around it. But the principle stays true. As much as we can, let's give at least one day a week to God to rest and to worship and honour him and thank him for what he has given to us. That's the principle that is being put forward here and the Israelites here had ignored it. They ignored that principle. They thought the Sabbath was a hindrance. They thought it was an obstacle for them getting more money or getting more goods. They had forgotten. They had not realised that it was a gift which they were spurning. We need rest. We need to put aside time, at least once a week, to focus our attention on him. God knew that, that's how he created us. And we ignore that at our peril. That's the lesson from the second way Nehemiah imposed separation. But this comes to the third and last way. We see the people of Israel were not separating themselves from the people around. We've seen they were desecrating the temple, they were defying the Sabbath but thirdly and lastly we see that they were unequally yoked. They were not marrying as they should and once again in the Old Testament Jews were forbidden from intermarrying with people of other nations. Particularly here it says the Ammonites and the Moabites. The Ammonites and Moabites were kind of distant-ish cousins of the Jews and they were forbidden from intermarrying with them. But as I said, today, the church is made up of mainly foreign people from the perspective of a Jew. I'd say pretty most of us here, perhaps not all of us, but most of us are Gentile, we're British or whatever we might be. So how does this apply to us today? Well, the command to not intermarry with foreign people does not apply to us today. That was a command given to the Jews for a particular reason at a particular time. It does not apply the same way to us today. But what does apply is that we shouldn't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. That's taught very clearly in the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 6 14-18 Paul says, As God has said, I will dwell in them and walk among them. I will be their God and they shall be my people. Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Paul says believers cannot marry unbelievers because unbelievers will drag a believer away. That tends to be the way it happens. Believers don't tend to drag others with them. It's those who don't believe who drag us away from the Lord. And Paul urgently warns and he says, don't join yourself with someone who has a completely different set of values to you, has a completely different set of beliefs to you. They don't believe in the same God, they don't believe Christ was the same person as you believe he was. You cannot walk, he says, unequally yoked, and that comes from the language of putting two oxes together for ploughing. And what they would do is they would pick two oxen of similar strength and size. Because if one was stronger than the other, obviously the plough would bend as they tried to plough a furrow. They couldn't put a donkey and ox together because they're just completely mismatched. And they would not plough in a straight line. And that's the warning being given here. If you join yourself in marriage, or in any deep commitment, to someone who has different values, you will not walk in the same direction. You'll be dragged in a different direction. In fact, that was even the principle in the Old Testament. Do you remember what Nehemiah said about Solomon as he was warning them about what they did? It says in verse 25, Again, Nehemiah in his own style, it says, Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, pagan women caused even him to sin. The reason God said, do not get many wives, do not have foreign wives, is because their beliefs will pull you away from God. It wasn't about their race. It wasn't about their skin colour. It wasn't about their ancestry. Those weren't the important things. What was important was their beliefs, which would drag them away from God. And that same principle applies to us today. It's foolish. to join yourself to someone who has different value system, a different belief structure to you. That will only end in misery. That will only end ultimately in destruction to one or the other. That's why the New Testament is very clear, do not be unequally yoked with another person. Instead, marry in the Lord. Marry someone who has your beliefs. Marry someone who loves Christ as you love Christ. And you'll see that is so much more fruitful, so much more productive, and you can encourage one another as you seek to live for God, and you can grow in holiness together. That's the application of this third way Nehemiah brings separation to Israel. Just to flesh that out very quickly a little bit more, you might think, what does this actually mean in practice? Well, to make it absolutely clear again, interracial marriages are not morally problematic. Obviously, you need to understand someone's culture if you want to marry them. You need to be careful that you have similar ideas and there isn't too much difference in terms of the way you think about life. But the Bible has no problem. with people of different races, different cultures, different nationalities marrying. That is not an issue. But believers are strongly warned, do not marry an unbeliever. You will save yourself a world of misery if you do, and possibly save your soul. But if you are a believer and you are married to an unbeliever, it might be possible someone's here or someone listening online, the Bible also says don't seek a divorce. Don't seek to separate yourself from that unbeliever who you are married to. Perhaps you became a believer later on and you find you're married to an unbeliever or perhaps you made a mistake and you ignored God's word and you find yourself now married to an unbeliever. Paul gives instruction there, and he says, don't seek a divorce. If they're happy to live with you still, and they're happy to be with you as you seek to follow God, then don't seek a divorce. But if they can't live with that, if they can't live with your commitment to Christ, then let them go. That's the language which Paul uses. But the principle is still the same. The principle is we should put God first and seek to follow him, not put someone else above him. Seek to follow God. So those are the three ways Nehemiah speaks of separation, and I hope, I appreciate it's quite a lot of information in one message, but I hope you can see how these things still apply to us in the New Testament. But there's just one final way I want to close with, one final thing which you may be wondering about. Nehemiah's behavior. The way Nehemiah goes about this is unusual. if we could say that. Verse 25, I contended with them, and I cursed them, struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God. Later on he says, one of the sons, Joiada, the son of Elisha, the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sambalic the Horonite. Therefore I drove him from me. With Tobiah, he threw all his goods out of the temple. What are we made to make of this? Is this how we're to behave as well? Well, there's three things to close with. The first thing, remember, Nehemiah was the ruler at this time. He was one of the rulers of Israel. He describes himself as the governor at different points. And rulers do have authority to do things that those who are not rulers do not. The New Testament says the government does not bear the sword in vain. We can't do things by force which the government can, whether we like it or not. If the government really wants to, they can by force stop us from doing certain things legally. And the same was true of Nehemiah. He was the recognized ruler, the recognized governor. And so he could bear the sword. And so his very physical way of imposing these things in that sense makes a little more sense. The second thing to remember is, can you think of someone else? who was not unlike Nehemiah in this passage, Jesus himself. Jesus drove out the money changers in the temple. Once again, Jesus was the highest ruler of them all, and he had the authority to purge God's temple. Essentially, none of the apostles, we're told, did that afterwards. None of the apostles acted in this way, but Jesus, with all his authority, purged the temple. Such was his zeal for God. And that's the third and last takeaway. What should shock us in this passage is not the zeal and the behaviour of Nehemiah. What should shock us is the lack of zeal and the behaviour of those he was correcting. I think it says something, doesn't it? That we can read this passage and we can be more shocked at how Nehemiah acts than we're shocked at how the people were acting. But Nehemiah was possessed, if you like, with a zeal for God. Jesus, we're told, zeal for God's house had eaten him up. And perhaps it's because our zeal for God is so small that we're more shocked by Nehemiah than we're shocked by the people. The way Nehemiah responded reflected something of the heart of God. when we turn away from him, when we allow sin to gain a foothold in our life. Nehemiah's reaction is a faint picture of God's reaction when we allow sin to creep into our lives and into our churches. So let's take instruction from that. Let's be as Christ taught us to, if our foot offends thee, cut it off. If our eye offends thee, pluck it out. Not literally, but let's have that same zeal to purge sin from our lives because it matters. That's what Nehemiah chapter 13 teaches us. I realize there's been a lot of information this morning and I trust not too much, but let's close by singing our last hymn, number 700 in our hymn book. Number 700 in the hymn book. Oh Jesus, I have promised to serve thee to the end. Be thou forever near me, my master and my friend. I shall not fear the battle if thou art by my side, nor wander from the pathway if thou will be my guide. So let's close by singing number 700 and let's stand if we can. We have forever feared thy monster-laden face. ♪ I shall not fear the battle ♪ ♪ If Thou art by my side ♪ ♪ No wonder from the Father ♪ ♪ If Thou wilt be my guide ♪ ♪ O let me hear Thee cry ♪ I see the skies cracked and torn, the tempting sounds I hear. My bones are ever kneeling, oh, happily and freely. ♪ But Jesus, Lord, have mercy ♪ ♪ And shield my soul from sin ♪ ♪ Above the souls of passion ♪ ♪ The nervous hearts have willed ♪ ♪ Those weak to reassure ♪ ♪ To hasten or control ♪ ♪ Those weak and weak we listen ♪ ♪ The louder noise ♪ Jesus, thou hast promised to all who follow thee, that where thou art ignoring, there shall thy servant be. ♪ As I have promised to send thee to the end ♪ ♪ O give me grace to follow my Master and my Friend ♪ ♪ O let me see thy good thoughts ♪ I hope to follow duly, this in my strength alone. O kindly calling, draw me, uphold me to the end. And then in them receive me, my Savior and my Friend.