We continue in our series this morning of studies in the book of Nehemiah, expository studies, and this week we come to chapter 5. Last time we were on this book, we were in the fourth chapter. And I've just concluded reading chapter 5. For those that may be listening by tape, you could read chapter 5 in your Bible and then you'll be able to enter into the points that are immediately to follow. By way of introduction to the fifth chapter of Nehemiah, I will make a few preliminary remarks on something that has happened in regard to the Journal of Christian Reconstruction, which is put out by Chalcedon. We're planning an issue, not the next one that will come out, but the one after that on Christianity and business. And we have two or three outstanding Christian businessmen who are taking responsibility to gather the material for this issue of the journal from different Christians who are involved in various types of business across the country. I understand that one or two of these men who are collecting this material have had this reaction when they asked certain men that they felt were Christian businessmen to write something on business and on the faith. At least some of the people have said, why in the world would you have something on Christianity and business? What has that to do with business? Wouldn't it be better simply to restrict the issue to something like salvation or Christian living, but why should you deal with business? And evidently, more than one man of affairs actually said that. And let me put the question to you, why would we have something to say about Christianity and economics? Well, there's a simple answer to that, very simple indeed. The Bible deals with economics. A tremendous percentage of the Bible is laying out before us the principles of godly economics, godly Christ-like business, that our Master expects us to live by and to put into practice. That is the reason we deal with something of this nature. Of course, it's perfectly clear that any orthodox approach starts with God and starts with salvation. We begin with regeneration of the individual sinner through the work of the Holy Spirit through grace, through repentance of sins and faith in Jesus. We begin with that and with the command to be filled with the Spirit, to walk in the Spirit. But you see, when we are converted, regenerated, walking in the Spirit, we don't cease walking in the Spirit when we walk into our shop on Monday morning. We don't cease walking in the Spirit when we climb into a tractor seat to drive the tractor or when we take a load of grain to a market. We're still walking in the Spirit when we walk in our shop. We're walking in the Spirit when we walk into a marketplace. We're still walking in the Spirit when we go to teach in a school. In other words, we're saved by Christ and in Christ is the Lord of all of life. And one of the ways we show that we're Christians and show who Jesus really is, is by walking in the Spirit in economics, walking in the Spirit in our teaching, walking in the Spirit in our buying and in our selling and in our planting and in our reaping. Now, by walking in the Spirit, of course, this means communication of a life from God. We live our life before God. But it also means that the same Holy Spirit who inspired the Scripture is inside of us to enable us to understand the Scripture and to give us the power to live out what He has said to do in the Scripture. That's walking in the Spirit. Walking in the Spirit is a life lived in accordance with what God has said in His Word, empowered by His own presence within the redeemed soul. And God's Word makes it clear, and nowhere more clearer than here in Nehemiah, that as we obey God in all of life, in salvation, in economics, in home, in education, in government, as we obey God in all of life, We prosper, we're blessed, there's harmony, there's unity, there's progress, there's beauty in life. If we choose to disobey God's way and only want his Lordship over part of life and ignore it over the rest, then, you see, we run into trouble and ultimately a breakdown. personally and societally. Now, in Nehemiah chapter 5, we find ourselves in the midst of what we could already call a large-scale revival. A spiritual battle has been going on. The people of God have been winning that battle. Revival is in progress. An entire culture is being transformed and is being changed. And God's Word is being applied and wonderful things are happening to the people of God in spite of all the number of enemies that are against them. Revival, progress, reconstruction has been going on in a wonderful way. But in the midst of this revival, suddenly you're in serious trouble. And the whole business threatens to grind to a halt. Nearly always that way, when you have a major revival, the trouble is going to come. And the whole spiritual movement, which was so important to the ongoing history of the people of God, to the writing of Scripture, to the preparation of the messianic line from which Christ would be born and from which the salvation of the world would come, all of that tremendously significant movement threatens to be stopped because of serious defection and breakdown in the area of economics. Economic problems threatened to stop this mighty, God-sent revival. Now, there were economic problems, and if those problems had not been addressed, The work of God in that generation and for generations to come would have fallen down and would have been lost, humanly speaking. Therefore, common sense will indicate that nothing could have been more spiritual at this particular stage in Israel's history than to deal with economics. Dealing with these economic problems, this was of the essence of true Godly spirituality. This we will look at for the next several moments. In chapter 4, some of you may remember that the people of God were faced with external enemies, outside enemies. That was a problem, but they were able to deal with that. But in chapter 5, it is a more serious problem. It always is. because here they are faced with internal breakdown because of internal enemies. That's worse. If I had to pick one of the two, whether in the United States at the present juncture our most serious problem is external enemies or internal problems without the slightest hesitation. I would say that our major problem is by no means external enemies, though we know they're there. That isn't the major problem, not for a moment. The major problem is internal confusion. And that's how it was. in the fifth chapter of Nehemiah. Now, I divide this text into two simple parts under two headings. The first heading is the problem, and the second heading, you'll guess, is the solution. Now, let's look a little bit at the problem as we read in chapter five. First, let's look at the situation, and then let's look at the real causative factors that lay behind all the external symptoms. We'll look at the external symptoms first of all. Most people stop with the external symptoms. That's why if you get a conservative government elected in the United States, a conservative administration, generally they will only deal with external symptoms and they won't look at the real causative factors behind it because it's too costly to deal with causative factors behind the external symptoms and that's why That's why they get nowhere and then get voted out. That didn't happen, however, in Nehemiah's time. This man of God went behind the symptoms to the causative factor. But let's look at the symptoms. There was great economic scarcity in Jerusalem. There had been a time evidently of lack of rain, and the agriculture apparently in the last year, had not prospered as much as normal. There was also a greedy elite. I wouldn't say the very top-level leadership, but the secondary leadership next to the top. They had power, they had position, they had information, they had money, property, means of distribution, and they were using it for self-centered aggrandizement. Then you also had the problem that the economy was more or less on a wartime footing. Some people might say, well, why was not the population of Jerusalem, why didn't they have their own fields, their own gardens? Why would they have had to borrow? Anyway, well, you see, they were under command, as many of them as possible, to sleep in Jerusalem and to work on the wall, and so they did not have the time to carry on agricultural pursuits that they normally would have done. So this particular depression by no means is attributed to the fault of the people in Nehemiah. It wasn't that they were lazy and wouldn't work, they were working on the wall. And they were also in the town and couldn't get out, very many of them, to the field, and so they had to buy the produce In a sense, Jerusalem was like a refugee camp. The whole world has been telling them about these awful incidents in the refugee camp in Beirut two or three weeks ago. And so we're all emotionally and intellectually aware of refugee camps. And Jerusalem wasn't exactly that way, but there was an element of it. Many of them were intent. Indeed, many of them had lost their houses because of the greedy elite. And so it was not unlike a certain type of refugee camp because there were a lot of enemies outside the city that wanted to do all the damage they could. We find the problems are revealed as the ordinary working class people and probably some that were in higher classes than that who had gotten in serious difficulty, they come to Nehemiah and they lay out their difficulties. One group said that all their resources were gone. They didn't have a thing to buy groceries with that week. It makes you think of the famine in Egypt, how a certain stage was reached and the Egyptians first parted with their money, then they sold their land, then they eventually had to sell themselves to Pharaoh through the administration of Joseph to get bread. And so many of these people who had come back and were working on the wall doing the best they could, all their slender resources were now gone and they had to be able to feed their children. They didn't have any cash or any land, to exchange for the food that they needed. Some of these people told Nehemiah that they had mortgaged their property either to obtain groceries for their family or in some cases to pay taxes. You might say, well, I wouldn't mortgage my property to buy groceries. Well, if your children were hungry, wouldn't you do it? I would. rather than see them starve, some of these people had to sell their children into bondage to get food to feed the rest of the family. This is not unknown in today's world. I got a missionary prayer letter a month or two ago from Hong Kong, from the Christian National Evangelism Commission, I believe. And they were telling about the warlords in Thailand, in Cambodia, a certain warlord named Khun Son in what they call the Golden Triangle where they are having these opium wars. He has been going in on Christian villages and he requires every family to give up at least one young man to serve in his army. And if the Christian family or any kind of family refuses to give the young man to serve in this Kunsan's army, then he just kills the whole family. So what choice would you have? And it wasn't exactly that way in Jerusalem, they weren't killing anybody at all, but people had reached such a state that unless they would sell their daughter into bond service to a wealthy family, the family would starve to death. Well, what was really wrong? What was the problem behind it? You could say it was a wartime economy, it was a bad crop year, but that wasn't the real problem. Those made the circumstances worse, but that was not the real problem. What was wrong? It wasn't the circumstances, though that always entered into it. The real problem was direct deliberate, willful disobedience of the law of God. That was what was wrong. The ruling elite, the establishment, was acting in direct disobedience to God's law. Say, what do you mean by that? All right, Leviticus 25, 35 through 37 and 42, I shall read, speaks about this situation that when there are hard times, when there are people that don't have the resources, how do you treat them when they're your own brethren, when they're Jews, when they're believers? How do you treat them? God's Word dealt with that in the establishment. They'd been educated in the rabbinical schools. They'd memorized. Some of them probably knew the Pentateuch and other portions of Scripture by heart. They knew. This is what God said to do. And if thy brother be waxen poor and fallen in decay with thee, thou shalt relieve him, yea, though he be a stranger or a sojourner, that he may live with thee." In other words, even help the outsider, you're required to do it. Take thou no usury, that is, interest on money of him, or increase. But fear thy God that thy brother may live with thee. Thou shalt not give him thy money upon usury, nor lend him thy vittles for increase." In other words, say, I will give you some grain, but you bring me back double that much. No, you give him the grain and let him bring you back the same amount. Don't charge him either on money or on food. For they are my servants, which I brought forth out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as bondmen. In Deuteronomy 15 verse 8, God says, "...thou shalt open thine hand wide unto him," that is, the poor brother who is in need, the believer who is in trouble, "...and shalt surely lend him sufficient for his need in that which he wanted." Wanted means lack, what he needs. In chapter 23 of Deuteronomy, the Lord promises a blessing for those who will treat people that are in need right. This is what he says, ". ..that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land, whither thou goest to possess it." Deuteronomy 23, verse 20. Now, God had laid down in His Word very clearly how you were to deal with those who had economic needs. And this is precisely what the ruling classes were disobeying, they were not doing, and that is why the whole movement of God, the revival, the blessing of the nation was grinding to a halt because God's Word was being willfully, knowingly broken by those who were in authority and who'd been blessed with the resources and the natural leadership. I remember hearing Dr. Rush Dooney Some of these tapes somewhere say that if in the United States just the real Christians would lend one another money without interest so that Christians wouldn't be at the bank borrowing on interest, this would act as a tremendous decreaser of inflation, because inflation is fueled by debt. And not only do the printing presses for the money contribute to inflation, though that's the main thing, but also the increase of debt in fractional reserve banking greatly makes inflation get worse. And if God's people were out of debt and were lending to one another, This would be one of the practical ways of vastly slowing down inflation, as it has been explained to me, as I believe. Well, I would say that this matter of those in the natural control of society and the church and school and the business world, deliberately disobeying the Word of God in order to fleece the people of God, to fleece their own people. It would be very comforting to think that that had stopped in so-called primitive Bible times. But it's going on today just as strongly as it did then. In fact, I would suggest in certain respects it's even worse today because there There are ways that it can be carried out on an even more vicious level. I want to mention to you one or two things of how this is being done today to explain the situation that we're in. And I want to quote from one or two places in R.E. McMaster, who puts out The Reaper from Phoenix, Arizona. I wanted to make a little quotation from a thing or two he said March 26, 1982, and then March 12, 1982. This is what McMaster has said, and I think he's very much to the point of what was happening in Nehemiah's time, what's happening now. We're talking about problems, then we'll look at solutions. McMaster says, I have long written that in our relativistic evolutionary society the common man gets the legal dredges. We have no protection under law because law is whatever the politically and economically powerful say it is. For example, the March 29th U.S. News stated, quote, A law calling for a balanced budget is already on the book. President Carter signed it in 1978. It declares that beginning in fiscal 1981, federal outlays should not exceed receipts. But the law has no teeth. It has never been repealed or altered, just ignored, end of quote from U.S. News, and then McMaster goes on. The law he means humanistic statute law, is now a tool of tyranny to enforce compliance with the whims and programs of the federal and state bureaucracies. This legal hammer is just as effective, but more subtle, than the brutal tyranny still exercised by the Soviet Union and China. This bankrupt governing system is further supported by the decadent public school system, which takes our young and conditions them to act contrary to their own self-interest, and teaches them to support an economic and political system which is antagonistic to the good of both the individual and the group long term." Now, this is what McMaster says. in March 12, 1982, REAPER, page 3 and 4. What we find is that big oil, big banking, and big government all benefit from high oil prices. There is a potential loss of $5 billion to be absorbed by someone for every dollar drop in the average price of oil. In 1980, Every dollar that an oil company shareholder received in dividends was maxed by $12 in taxes paid to the federal government by the oil company. A 10% increase in OPEC oil prices results in a 20% increase in revenues to the U.S. Treasury. So the Treasury has everything to gain from high oil prices The big multinational banks are dependent on the cash flow generated by deposits from OPEC. If oil should fall to its technically projected level of $20 to $24 a barrel, a banking panic could occur. OPEC's deposits are concentrated in Chase Manhattan, Citibank, Morgan Guarantee, Chemical Bank, and manufacturers Hanover. The international oil companies, the federal government, and the multinational banks all have a considerable stake in maintaining high oil prices long term. And it is not that these vested interests do not talk to each other. The interlocking directorates among major oil companies and commercial banks, and I would add the government, are numerous. That's the end of the quotation from R.E. McMaster. And in a more simple form, but an equally evil form, Nehemiah confronted just this type of burgeoning economic problem in his own society that threatened to break down the work of God. What did he do? This brings us to the second point of the sermon and of the text, and that is the solution. We mentioned earlier that the problem was not in circumstances. The solution was not in circumstances either. Most people today propose remedies that deal only with the circumstantial. No, the problem was in breaking of the law of God, the solution was in keeping of the law of God. Now, I want you to notice that God's man, Nehemiah, did three things. First, God's man had to take a lonely stand for what was right. Abraham Copland, the leader of the Zionist movement last century, had a saying which is very true. He said, a leader, by definition, has to be out ahead and therefore will be lonely. By the time the group is caught up with him, then he's further out ahead and still lonely. Nehemiah says that he communed with himself. In other words, there was not a person in his own social class that he could discuss this problem with. The whole aristocracy, or at least the majority of the aristocracy, was sold out to sin at this point. It's not to say that they were wicked in every point. They weren't. But they were sold out to disobedience of God's law at this important point, and Nehemiah could not talk to those people and ask for their advice and ask for their help and prayer and comfort. He had himself and, of course, God. Now, I've known of ministers that were in situations like that, not a person in the church that they could turn to. I'll have to say when I was a minister, God always blessed me with godly elders and others that I could turn to for guidance. But there have been many pastors and missionaries and professors who had to commune with themselves in the presence of God, and that was it. In other words, Nehemiah knew he was going to be taking on the whole establishment if he dealt with this problem in its roots. Jesus Christ said in one of His parables, no man builds a tower, but first he sits down and counts the cost, whether he has enough money to finish that tower. Jesus Christ said further that no king that has any common sense will organize an army and march out to a war unless he counts the cost of how many men the other king has, They couldn't work out something to prevent a war if his numbers are smaller. Christ said that this makes common sense that we should count the cost. And so Nehemiah had to count the cost of what he was going to do, risking alienating most of the people who, in a worldly sense, really mattered. In Jerusalem, he'd been working hand-in-hand with these people. But now, if he's going to be absolutely faithful to the Word of God, he risks turning them into eternal enemies. But this is a risk he's prepared to take because God is worthy of nothing less than our total obedience. And if we ever have to draw a line of offending someone, better to offend a neighbor and a friend and a relative. than to offend God. And Nehemiah makes the right decision. He's a wise man because he knows that healing begins with exposure of sin. Healing begins with exposure of sin. There's a certain type of preaching now in our country that doesn't want to deal with sin, that always and only and exclusively wants to accentuate the positive. And I believe that the Christian message largely is positive, yes. But sin must be exposed before the gospel of grace can be meaningfully applied to the situation. Not to expose sin and to offer a gospel without telling people who they are before a holy God is not to offer them real Christianity. Nehemiah knew what 1 John said. He didn't know 1 John, it hadn't been written, but he knew the principle. That sin is transgression of the law. It wasn't just a matter of feeling, it was transgression of the written law. And Nehemiah in chapter 5 verse 7 shows them where they transgressed the law of God, the exact usury, every one of his brothers. Now, the law of God allowed enters to be charged on money if it was lent out to those who were not Israelites, who were not in the covenant, who were not brethren in the faith. And it was legitimate to charge enters. But to the brethren, within the bond of the covenant, it was against the law of God to charge interest. And so Nehemiah points them to the law of God where they've gone astray, and they knew that law. They knew they were doing wrong. Then he goes on to show them ungodly, unkind, cruel ramifications among God's people. He becomes uncomfortably specific. And then he goes on to show where they're hurting the testimony to the pagan world by their cruelty to their own people, making their own people become slaves as they were when they were in Egypt. What kind of testimony would that be to the surrounding nations? That's the first thing he did. He took a lonely stand for what was right, and he exposed sin to its roots. He wasn't mystical, he was specific. Secondly, God's man recalled these people who were doing wrong to obedience to the law. He didn't expose their sin just to beat them on the head. There's too much of that in the press today. There seems to be a fiendish delight to find something that some public figure did 30 or 40 years ago, or even if they've been dead 20 years, drag up something that they did long ago and expose them to the public. That's not done to heal. That's very mean to do that. But no, Nehemiah exposed the sin in order to bring righteousness back into the situation. That's why he exposed it. It wasn't to delight himself in pulling down important people, because he was more important than any of them. And he wasn't that kind of a man anyway. He did it in order to recall them to obedience to God's way in verses 10 and 11. He speaks about this and he is able to say, stop it. Stop it. Start doing right. Here's what is right. You can do it. Start doing it. He recalls them to obedience to the law of God and he means business, he is in a position such as we are not in, in our society, he threatens them with legal action if they don't obey. And then the third thing God's man does, or I would rather say the third thing God's man had done for a long time which gave him moral authority, was he had backed up his preaching with his own life and with his own practice. Here was a man in an immensely powerful position because he had practiced for years what he was preaching. Those who practice what they preach and have practiced it for years are in a strong moral position. As was Nehemiah. And he says that he even had held himself back from legitimate income in the same way that St. Paul did in certain circumstances. Held back from legitimate income in order that no one would be offended. In order to set an example of selflessness. Now if Nehemiah had had been taking a few bribes under the table or had just been speculating in property. Boy, those aristocrats would have had something on him. But they knew they had absolutely nothing on him, like Daniel. Nothing on him, and thus they had to follow the way that he pointed out, because they knew it was right from God's Word and they knew he had lived by that way himself. A Christian leader has first got to be a follower, a follower of the Holy Spirit, a follower of the written Word. Then they may be in a position to do a certain amount of leading, but not before. Too many lead today without following. Nehemiah led after he had followed twelve years, twelve years. This gave him an immense respect and power for God, not for himself. Now in conclusion, let's think of this. We know how Nehemiah, with the help of God, turned this situation around. He was in a position of authority where he could do so. He had governmental backing from the top. He was governor. He had a certain amount of military support. And he was able, not only with that, but also with his moral stand, his stand on God's Word, he was able to straighten out the situation. But God's Church is not in this position in the United States today. We are not in the top echelons. Yes, most of the officials in the university, in business, in the government, most of the officials are probably members of some kind of church, I assume. But I'm saying those who are sold out to God through Jesus Christ, living a life of obedience to His Word, are in general not in the positions of authority. So how are we going to take back the country when we don't have a Nehemiah on the scene right now? I'll make certain suggestions from God's Word. First of all, we can do what Nehemiah did and we can submit to God's way ourselves. We can live God's way ourselves. First of all, I liked what Elizabeth McCahan Miller said in a speech to some monetary conference, and this speech was included in Dr. Rush doing his Roots of Inflation as an appendix to it. This is what Elizabeth Miller said, to stop the present crumbling, which means in our economy, in our country, morally. We began, not in Washington, D.C., but in areas where we still have authority. As parents, we still rule our homes. Reclaim as much responsibility as you can in your communities and businesses. Become leaders. Home education, if only in the field of economics, will determine future events. Our young learn in the home what it is like to live in a debt-free family or in a family environment burdened by debt. We can become wasteful or frugal according to the habits of our parents. If this present generation is content with debt living, their offspring will be even greater borrowers than the parents. Family money, managed with proficiency and profit, will bear fruit in the next generation. We start with where we are and with what we can do, and we obey God as thoroughly as possible in that little corner. That's what we do first. This means, of course, we always are to be certain that we belong to Christ, that we are regenerate, that we are walking in God's Spirit. We're not to take it for granted. Then we're to walk in God's way consciously by studying His Word, walking His way in home, education and, for instance, in economy, let's get out of debt if we're in it. Do all we can to come out from under debt. Let's be prepared when we can and when we think the situation is appropriate to lend to other believers, to help them. Be prepared to share compassionately. God will bless us and God will Elevator now conclude with one word from the introduction to the roots of inflation by R.J. Rush Dooney. Our world economy is today bankrupt because the world is morally and religiously bankrupt. We cannot restore our economic order without, first of all, restoring moral order. And we can have a hand in that. Let us pray. Oh, God, Bless Thy Word to us today. Help us to live it and apply it. For Jesus' sake, Amen.