Nehemiah chapter 13, beginning in verse 15. Hear the word of God. In those days, I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the Sabbath, bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. I warned them on the day when they sold food, Tyrians also who lived in the city brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah and Jerusalem itself. And I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, what is this evil thing that you're doing profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this way and did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. I stationed some of my servants at the gates that no load might be brought in on the Sabbath day. And the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice, But I warned them and said to them, why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favor, oh my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love. In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashtod, Ammon, and Moab. And half their children spoke the language of Ashtod. They could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. I made them take an oath in the name of God saying, you shall not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women? Among the many nations, there was no king like him and he was beloved by his God and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women? One of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was the son-in-law of Sanballat, the Horonite. Therefore I chased him from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in his work, and I provided for the wood offering at appointed times and for the firstfruits. Remember me, O my God, for good. The grass withers and the flower falls, and the word of our God abides forever. Amen. Please be seated. Let's pray. Lord our God, we ask that you would bless us as we turn to your word, that you would teach us that you would help us to take heed, to take warning as we look to your word. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. It was a bit over a year ago that we spent some time looking at the Sabbath, the teaching on the Sabbath as we were going through the book of Isaiah. At that time, we talked about our beliefs. We are a church that adheres to the Westminster standards. And so as has been a tradition for Presbyterians, going all the way back to our beginnings, we believe that the Sabbath is an ongoing requirement. God began Sabbath at the beginning. It was at creation, and of course we believe that the beginning of the week is the Christian Sabbath. We're not going to discuss that aspect this evening, but we understand that we're still to keep one day in seven, holy to the Lord. Here in Nehemiah's day, they were, struggling with that, shall we say, to put it lightly. In fact, they were completely ignoring the Sabbath day. And of course, for the Jews, this was something very, very important. God had commanded it, and it was even something that their civil government was to be enforcing, that the whole people would be keeping the Sabbath day. They were to keep the Lord's day holy. And as we began to look at Nehemiah 13, we saw that they had, there were people who had been, who had been exiled, who had come back, who had, God had blessed them with success in the previous generation, building the temple, and then Nehemiah's day, building the walls, building up Jerusalem, and then Nehemiah goes away for some time, and he returns and the people are acting like heathens. He comes back and he begins with the temple. And of course, the temple is the beating heart of Israelite worship. That is the place where God says, I'm going to put my name there. I'm going to grace it with my special presence. That's the place of worship. That's the place where the high priest brings the acceptable offering and brings those offerings to God. That is the place, not on the high places, an altar wherever you want, no, but at the temple. And we saw last week that Nehemiah begins this discouraging report at the temple. He goes in there, and they're no longer bringing in the tithes, they're no longer supporting the priesthood. The Levitical choirs are silent now. They've all gone to go farm because they weren't being provided for in their work in the temple. Instead, the rooms there that were to be used in support of the priesthood, in support of the Levites, it was being used as apartments for one of their greatest enemies, someone who wanted to see the destruction of Jerusalem. And so we begin there and we see that something is dreadfully wrong in Jerusalem. And we're now working out from the, temple into the city and Nehemiah paints a picture for us. He could have said the people were breaking the Sabbath. But instead he paints a picture for us. He takes us through his description, he takes us sort of around the city. He says, look, over here, there's a fellow, this is the Sabbath day. We're to be dedicating this whole day to the Lord. We're to be keeping the Sabbath holy. And over here, there's a fellow, he's loading up the donkey with grain and heaps of grain. And over here, you have another man who's working with another and they're lifting up these heavy jars of wine and they're loading up and they're bringing in these, donkeys loaded down and it's like the ancient version of a truck. They're hauling freight, they're bringing things in, they're bringing their truck loads, so to speak. All sorts of things, he says, all kinds of loads. There are wine, there's somebody over here with grapes, there's somebody over there with figs, and it's just this, all of these things. So you start getting the picture that this isn't just an isolated incident. It's not just one fellow breaking the Sabbath. This one godless man who's just breaking the Sabbath and the rest of them are keeping it. But you see this is widespread. And then you look outside the city, you're standing on the city wall, you look outside and out there you see there are people bringing in baskets full of grapes and they're dumping them over into these big stone wine vats that they had and so they'd pile in the grapes and they would have some a couple of people in there inside the stone wine vat, trampling on the grapes to squeeze out the juice so that they could make wine. And so this is, it's a work day. It's a market day. That's what they're doing. Not only them, not only the people in Jerusalem, but there are people, there's Syrians coming in. There are people from out of town bringing in their loads to sell in Jerusalem. They're in verse 16. Fish and all kinds of goods. They're bringing it in. There's a good market on the Sabbath. And so here they are profaning the Sabbath. Then I confronted the nobles of Judah, verse 17. What is this evil thing that you're doing, profaning the Sabbath? The prophet Isaiah had warned about profaning the Sabbath day. And he says, did not your fathers act in this way? Did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on the city? Now you're bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. How can you do this? Didn't we just finish rebuilding the wall? Didn't we just finish rebuilding the temple? Reinstating worship? Many of the stones that they used in building probably still bore the scars of the fires. It's still fresh in their memories or should have been. the judgment of God upon a rebellious people, a church that had disregarded him. And not only are they themselves profaning the Sabbath, but they're leading in sin. Deuteronomy chapter five is second giving of the law. That's what the name Deuteronomy means, second law. Chapter five, six days you shall labor and do all your work. Commandment four, the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter or your male servant or your female servant or your ox or your donkey or any of your livestock or the sojourner is within your gates, that your male servant, your female servant may rest as well as you. You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm Therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day. There he ties in Exodus, he ties it to creation, the Sabbath keeping to creation. Here it's being tied to salvation, but they're to be stewards of the Lord's day. They're to make sure that not only are they keeping the Sabbath holy, but they're to lead their entire household. They're the people who are working for them. They're not to let other people work so that they can have the Sabbath to themselves, just taking a break. But they're to make sure that others, those within their reach, so to speak, those who are under their authority, even the livestock, are to have a rest. Of course, they're breaking that here very specifically. by using the livestock, the donkeys, hauling their market supplies. As they disregard God's commands, they're becoming more like Egypt. They're taskmasters concerned with their own wealth. And God, as we said before, God created the Sabbath at the beginning. Sabbath is something that God made for man. And as we talked about creation this morning, talking about marriage, God created marriage at the beginning. He also gave the Sabbath to men at the beginning. And it's a fascinating thing where God is, he's sort of writes his upon time, his lordship. It's that one time in the year, in our calendar, we have the month, and the month is roughly based on the lunar cycle. And of course the year, we have all the seasons, and that's based again on how the turning of the Earth. So it's based more on creation, that's how we tell the time. days, day and night, that's also created order, but the week, seven-day week, is something that's a bit more arbitrary. It's not something that we're basing on the turning of the Earth or something like that, on lunar cycles. And so when God gives the seven-day week, He's imprinting His Lordship on time itself. A.W. Pink writes, by instituting the Sabbath rest, the architect of the universe wrote his signature upon time itself in a manner that will never be erased. So it is sacred time, it's set-apart time for the Lord. It's not a cessation of activity, but a cessation of normal work. Sabbath, as Jesus said, was made for man. It is for our good. God calls his people to rest from their labors and to have fellowship with him. It's to be taken up with holy things. We, as creatures, as I said in the prayer, we're creatures of dust. We get our eyes fixed on the ground. We start, we think about work. We think about the troubles of day to day, of getting paychecks, of making sure that our employments are secure, of making sure that the family's fed and cared for, making sure the house is repaired and the car is repaired. And we get, we have all of these things that vie for our attention. And we get distracted and we get stressed. And then we would keep doing that seven days a week, every day of the year. But God calls us to rest, rest. And we come before the Lord, we come to worship. And he calls his people to that. He called the Israelites to that. This neglect of the Sabbath that you see here is normal. Sabbath neglect is a symptom of godlessness, a lack of the fear of the Lord, a lack of love to God. It's a symptom of godlessness. The fear of the Lord is a necessary trait in all believers, not something we talk about that much today. The necessity of the fear of the Lord. Proverbs tells us and the Psalm tells us. It's the beginning. It's the foundation of wisdom. It's the foundation of knowledge. That's where we start from. But this fear, this respect, a holy respect of God. It's governs in our hearts. If we truly have the fear of the Lord, we have too much respect for God, too much fear of His judgments to wantonly disobey. And Jesus continued to instruct us in the fear of the Lord. He reminded us, don't fear those who can kill the body. So don't even fear when people are threatening you, but fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell. So Jesus continues to teach us, we need to have the fear of the Lord. And part of that is the fear of punishment. The child who has respect for his father, he loves his father, but there's also that knowledge that if I do what dad told me not to, I'm gonna be disciplined. That's not going to throw me out of the house and hate me forever or something like that. But there's discipline that comes with it. And so it is with the fear of the Lord. The church ought to fear the Lord. And here, do the people fear the Lord? in their Sabbath neglect? Obviously not. And so Nehemiah brings to them, he says to them, how can you do this? Didn't our fathers act in this way? You've seen with your own eyes the results. You might not have been there when the corpses were piling up, when those People were being dragged off. You may not have seen when Nebuchadnezzar had his soldiers line up all the people and choose who to slaughter, who to take into captivity, into exile. You might not have seen that, but you saw the walls that were torn down. You're close to it. You're standing on blood-stained ground. from the last time that the church lost the fear of God and went in disobedience and rebellion against Him. He's horrified. They've forgotten already. How can you be doing this thing that brought wrath on the church, on the whole people, on the whole nation? How can you be already falling back into these things? What about love for God? The first and great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart. From that, under that, all other commandments. So part of loving the Lord your God is keeping the Lord's day holy, keeping the Sabbath holy. Not one day in seven. Our love is expressed through obedience. It's easy to say, I love God. It's easy to mouth the words, I love Jesus. It's a much more difficult thing to show with your life that that's a true confession. Here, the people are demonstrating with their lives, with their actions, with their disregard for the Sabbath, with their disregard for the temple. They're demonstrating to one another and to the world, we have no love for God. We really don't care about communion with him. We don't care about his worship. We don't care about his day. What is more important for us is that we do our business. We do our commerce. There's a lack of faith in God here as well demonstrated. There's no trust in God as provider. I was born in Illinois and lived most of my life on or around farms. My family had a small, what you'd classify as a hobby farm, just small farming, small time, we weren't dependent on it. But my grandfather was a dairy farmer, that was his profession. His father before him, his father before him, they're all farmers. And of course, there's a dependence upon the weather. when you're farming. If there's not enough rain, crops don't grow. If there's too much rain, then they rot and you can't get the crops. And if you don't have crops to sell, there's not going to be anything to run the farm with. If the hay doesn't grow or if it's too wet, then you don't have anything to feed your cows. And so there's this great dependence upon good weather. Now think of the farmer. Let's take the example of the farmer to illustrate this faith that is necessary. You think of the farmer, he sees that the forecast is for rain for the next several weeks. It's just going to be rain. And he sees that Sunday, there's a sunny day. That's a day he could bale hay. If he goes to church, then he's not gonna be able to bale hay that day and the hay is going to rot in the field. He's not going to be able to bale it and his cows aren't gonna have anything to eat. And so then he has to make that choice. Is he going to trust himself and the weatherman and what things seem like they will probably be? Or is he going to trust in the Lord? Is he going to honor God with that day? Is he going to worship the Lord? That's just where faith becomes very practical. Whose weather is that? Who governs the seasons? Who provides? That's really what it comes down to, who provides? Is what we have from the Lord, or is it from my own work? And now, I would go on to say, If that farmer honors the Lord and it still rains on Monday and he still doesn't get the hay in, that's not then a time to say, well, I honored you and you didn't hold up your end of the bargain. Still, faith trains to say, this is God's will. We serve a sovereign God, he will provide. So we don't use our honoring of God as a bargaining chip, all right, I'll give you this little bit of honor and then you've got to provide for me in this way. No, we honor God in every way. As God our provider, as Lord of all. But you see here, the people in Nehemiah's day, they're going about their businesses. They're making money, they're buying and selling, they're doing all of these things as though there aren't six other days. They need the seventh day to do their business. to do their commerce. There's a lack of faith. So it's a symptom of godlessness, and its Sabbath neglect is something that perpetuates godlessness. If you're using that day for work, for yourself, whatever it is, if you're not honoring God, You're growing farther away from Him. It's not something where you're going to say, okay, we're going to do this Sabbath breaking for a couple of years. And once we're on our feet, then we'll get back to it. And no, it's just going to grow and grow farther away, farther away from the Lord. They're training the next generation as well. They themselves, they don't have the fear of the Lord. They're not loving the Lord. They don't have faith in the Lord. And they're training their children to act in the same way. You just got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. You do what you need to do. Sort of the Benjamin Franklin, God helps those who help themselves. So don't worry about God. You get with it. Even if they weren't saying, training their children not to fear the Lord, by their example it trained the next generation in that way. Honor the Sabbath day, keep it holy. Don't work, you or your son, your daughter, manservant, maidservant, ox, donkey, none of you. You train your children to honor God. And here they are, not honoring the Lord. And it shows in the next episode, the next thing that he looks at, he says in verse 24, half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And we say, well, Is that really that bad? It's multicultural. It's a little bit of a diversity in the city. Is that really that bad? What he's saying is they can't understand the scripture. When Ezra reads from the scriptures, it's in Hebrew. In other words, these parents are not teaching their children about God. They're not teaching them to follow Yahweh their God. Instead, they're just going in the way of their mothers, in the way of the pagans. There is no care for God, not in the parents, not in the children. It perpetuates godlessness. What about witness to the world? What does it say to those Syrians who were there doing trading, who are bringing in their loads of fish and all of that. What does it say to them? These are pagans, they don't worship the Lord God. They don't care about this, but is it being a light to the world in any way? What does it say to them? Oh yeah, we don't need to keep this Sabbath commandment. Normally that was something that our fathers did, but they were kind of fundamentalists. So we don't need to do that. We're still Israelites. We still belong to the Lord. We're the covenant people, but we're not going to do this. You just come and sell and do your commerce with us. And of course it tells the world, we don't really believe that there is a God. We don't really believe in his commandments. We have no fear of God. We have no love of God. Why would the world? Why would the world see and fear the Lord when they looked at Israel? When they're doing business with them? When the church itself has no respect for God, why would the world? They were sinning against these Syrians. Even if they were to be visiting there, they were supposed to be, the Israelites were supposed to be leading. In Exodus 23, it says, six days you shall do your work, but on the seventh day, you shall rest that your ox and your donkey may have rest and the son of your servant woman and the alien may be refreshed. They were to be a blessing to the nations through their obedience to God. Instead, they were just like the world. They were just another nation, and their god is being treated like just another tribal god. So Nehemiah goes about reinstating Sabbath observance. He uses, shall we say, external aids. He closes the gates. the night before. He has them manned so that if someone needs to get in or out, they can, but they're not going to be carrying any loads. And then he has some of his own trustworthy people. And then later he designates some of the Levites to do that work of guarding the gates, closing them the night before, keeping them shut. And of course he uses his power as a civil ruler, as a governor, as a law enforcement agent, to tell those from outside the city, for those foreigners who are coming in, do not come and sit outside the walls. I will send you away by force if you try to sit here and be a temptation to the people of Jerusalem. Now, this is a stopgap measure. This is just something, this is a temporary measure. Because what's needed is a heart change. Jerusalem needs to honor God, to fear the Lord, to love the Lord their God, not just to have the gates closed. But here you see Nehemiah leading. Yes, he has to take a little bit of a severe approach, and it gets more severe, doesn't it? He has to take a severe approach, but Nehemiah is zealous for righteousness. He cares about God's law and he cares that the church would love God and that the church would follow their God. You see that in his prayer. He's not doing this because this is just a personal passion. He has a pet peeve about doing these things or something. No, instead it's because of God and he prays there at the end and we saw before that this chapter is divided and those three prayers to God as he casts up these prayers, these short little prayers to heaven. Remember this also in my favor, oh my God, in verse 22, and spare me, pity me. according to the greatness of your steadfast love. Have pity on me, O God." It's as was said of Athanasius, Athanasius Contramundum. This is Nehemiah Contramundum. He's against everyone. It's as though he's the last Sabbath keeper in the world. He's even having to go against Jerusalem in keeping God's day holy. He reinstates it. Now, we have to be careful with these external helps. They can be useful in their place, but we need to have hearts that love and fear God. Take, for example, the extraordinarily common, the depressingly common problem of pornography, the use of pornography. there are external helps that can be used for that. You can not have internet at your house, you can not have a cell phone, you just get the flip phone, and you can put covenant eyes on your computer, and you can do all of these different external aids, but what you really need is a heart of love towards God that says, no, I won't do this thing like Joseph said. How can I do this thing and sin against my God? And so there's a need. Yes, you can use those as a sort of a temporary help, but you need to love the Lord your God so that you desire what is good and hate what is evil. That's the goal. That's Nehemiah's goal. He's not looking indefinitely to force them to keep the Sabbath. But just for now, a measure needed to be taken to help the people remember to keep the Sabbath holy. And he looks to his God. See my works. See all that I'm doing. Nehemiah against Jerusalem. Lord, have no pity on me. Bless me for these things. I saw one commentator said that no Christian would pray a prayer like Nehemiah did here, because he's pleading his own righteousness. And no, he's not saying, God, grant me salvation because of the good works that I've done. That's not what he's saying. He's a believer. He's been a believer. He's part of the covenant people. He's bringing these works before God. these works done in righteousness as one who God has saved and asking for God's remembrance. I'm doing this for you, Lord. Pity me, have mercy on me. And we do, we believe as Christians that yes, Christ's salvation, that our salvation is entirely of Christ, it's entirely a work of God, but at the same time we believe that God is a rewarder of those who obey his commandments. We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each one may receive what is due for what he's done in the body, whether good or evil. In Revelation we hear, I heard a voice from heaven saying, write this, blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on. This is Revelation. 14 verse 13, blessed indeed says the spirit, that they may rest from their labors for their deeds follow them. And so we obey God, not out of a desire for salvation, but out of love to God. And we do, we look, even though, as Jesus said, if we obeyed everything, If we did everything, every one of God's commandments perfectly, we would still be unworthy servants who have just done our duty. But God has chosen in His kindness to reward. To reward His people for their keeping, for their honoring of His commandments. And so we ought to honor our God. This is one of the ways that we honor our God, that we show our love to God is in keeping the Lord's Day. It's fascinating in Jewish history as Jerusalem went on into after this time into the what we call the intertestamental period. And you see in Jesus's day, Jerusalem is a city, the walls are still up. It's full of people, it's well inhabited. And we're in Jerusalem, they're struggling to get people in there. There are no Gentiles, there's no Tobiah living in the temple in Jesus's day. In fact, they kind of swung the other direction. But the market is still there. It's not a Sabbath day market, but it's a temple market. So they still have struggling with the market thing. Jesus said, you've made my father's house a den of thieves because of their corrupt market practices, probably in the court of Gentiles. Now, instead of having a Tobiah and Ammonite in the temple, then they cast out the Gentiles from the temple almost entirely. They had signs. and posted around the courtyard of the temple, any Gentile who enters here will be put to death immediately. And you see that with Paul, when the apostle Paul was there and they thought he had brought in a Gentile, they were gonna kill Paul for that on the spot. They became violently opposed to Gentiles, even in the courtyard of the temple. But it was still without love to God. When Jesus came, he didn't abrogate the Sabbath, he didn't do away with it, but he taught proper use of it. He would show mercy, he would heal on the Sabbath. By the power of God, he would heal, he would do kindness to these people who were suffering. And what did the rulers in Jerusalem do? You got violently angry with him. You've done some work. Even though we haven't seen you physically laboring, this is something that could have been done. God really wants you to be completely inactive. That's what God desires. Of course they were using it in a way to rule over the people in a tyrannical manner. They didn't actually love God. When they saw God's works, when they saw God's Messiah, they didn't rejoice. Instead, they became angry. And so there is still a lack of fear of the Lord. There is a lack of love to God that they maintained. And to this day, the Jewish people, they keep the Sabbath. One of the marks of the Orthodox Jews They keep it meticulously. They won't flip a light switch, because the light switch is using electricity, and that's like starting a fire, and we're not supposed to build a fire on the Sabbath, so we're not going to flip the light switch. Of course, they don't mind having a Gentile do it, because they still don't care about leading others into sin. They don't care about the souls of others. They don't care about loving God. If they did, they would not reject the Messiah that he sent. And so there are ways of still, of doing this, of not having the marketplace on the Sabbath and still neglecting true Sabbath observance. It is to honor God. It's a day for fellowship with God. It's a day to honor God. And so we must. There's a way of externally going through the motions of hypocritically obeying without a heart that loves God. We ought to be those who keep the Lord's day holy, who desire to honor God in the way that we use the day. We ought to seek, how can I serve my God? How can I show my love to my God? Now, what's the least I can do and get away with it? We ought to desire to maximally honor God, to have maximal fellowship with Him. And through our love to God, through a life that demonstrates that love, then we shine that light in the world. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill can't be hidden. You are the light of the world. Are you shining in that way? Are you showing your children, your grandchildren, your love for the Lord, your joy in the Lord, your fear of the Lord through your works? Or is it something that they see and they realize that it's a chore? Something that you grudgingly drag yourself to. You can't wait until the Sabbath is over so that we can once again go to our work. That's what really matters. Honor God. Honor God and take warning from the people in Nehemiah's day that If your love to God, or your obedience to God rather, is dependent on others leading you, it's not coming from yourself, you will quickly drift away. They were dependent on Nehemiah. Nehemiah was the one who loved God. Nehemiah was the one who would receive God's mercy, who would receive the reward at the end. Take warning of how quickly a people, even with severe consequences, severe physical consequences that they knew came from God because of their sins or their father's sins. It's easy to turn away from God, even when you know the consequences. Dear people, love God from your own heart. You lead the way by your godly example. You love the Lord. Honor God and be a witness to the world around you in the way that you use the Lord's day. Let's pray. Lord our God, we thank you for faithful men like Nehemiah, who in his own day was active and zealous for obedience to your word. He was willing to face down the entire city, all of those people who stood to lose money because of his actions. Lord, we thank you for men like him who led in godliness. Lord, we thank you that you've given us this example. Lord, help us to love Christ, to delight in fellowship with Him, that we would consider the Sabbath a delight in the day of the Lord Honorable. That we wouldn't be as those who say, when will the Sabbath end? Lord, help us, we pray, to delight in fellowship with You, rather than delighting in all of the troublesome things of this world. Help us, we pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.