Open your Bibles again this morning to Nehemiah chapter 13. Nehemiah chapter 13. Our text for today is verses 15 to 31, but I'm going to start reading back in verse 4 because really this is the second part of a two-part sermon. And we want to start back in verse 4 to get us the context again. Remember that since verse 3, been a number of years that have passed. That's about, the end of verse 3 is about 7 months into the first year of Nehemiah's first term as governor. So you had those 7 months, a total of 12 years for his first term. And then some amount of time, we know that it was less than 10 years, probably in the five plus year range. So a good, probably 17 years has passed between verses three and four. All right, keep that in mind. Let's go ahead and start reading now in verse three. Follow along as I read. Nehemiah writes, now prior to this, Eliashib, the priest, who was put in charge over the chambers of the house of our God, being related to Tobiah, had prepared a large room for him, where formerly they put the grain offerings, the frankincense, the utensils, the tithes of grain, also new wine and oil commanded for the Levites, the singers and the gatekeepers, as well as the contributions for the priests. But during all this time I was not in Jerusalem, for in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I had gone to the king. After some time, however, I asked leave from the king. And I came to Jerusalem, and discerned the evil that his liaiseb had done for Tobiah by preparing a chamber for him in the courts of the house of God. And it was very evil to me. So I threw all of Tobiah's household goods out of the chamber. Then I said the word and they cleansed the chambers. And I returned there the utensils of the house of God with the grain offerings and the frankincense. I also came to know that the portions of the Levites had not been given to them. So the Levites and the singers who did the work had fled each to his own field. So I contended against the officials and said, why is the house of God forsaken? Then I gathered them together and had them stand in their posts. All Judah then brought the tithe of the grain, the new wine, and oil into the storehouses. And in charge of the storehouses I appointed Shelemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, Padiah of the Levites, and in addition to them was Hanan the son of Zechur, the son of Mataniah, for they were counted as faithful. And it was their task to apportion everything to their relatives. Remember me for this, oh my God. And do not blot out my lovingkindnesses, which I have shown for the house of my God and its responsibilities." And then our text for today. In those days, I saw in Judah some who were treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in sacks of grain and loading them on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads. And they brought them into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. So I testified against them on the day they sold food. Also men of Tyre were living there, who brought in fish and all kinds of merchandise and sold them to the sons of Judah on the Sabbath, even in Jerusalem. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, what is this evil thing you are doing, even profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do the same? So our God brought on us and on this city all this calamity? Yet you are adding to his anger on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. Now it happened that just as it grew dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I said the word and the doors were shut. Then I said that they should not open them until after the Sabbath, and then I had some of my young men stand at the gates so that no load would enter on the Sabbath day. Once or twice, the traders and merchants of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside Jerusalem. Then I warned them and said to them, why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will send forth my hand against you. From that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. And I said to the Levites that they should cleanse themselves and come as gatekeepers to keep the Sabbath day holy. For this also, remember me, oh my God, and have compassion on me according to the greatness of your loving kindness. In those days, I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, from Ammon and Moab. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak in the language of Judah, but only the tongue of his own people. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take up their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God gave him to be king over all Israel. Nevertheless, the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you? That you have done all this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women? And even one of the sons of Joida, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. So I made him flee away from me. Remember then, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites, thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and ensured that the responsibility stood for the priests and the Levites, each in his work. And I arrange for the supply of wood at the fixed times, and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good." Heavenly Father, this morning, as we come before you now to hear your word, to consider what you have written through your servant, Nehemiah, Father, we pray today that you would help us to understand the seriousness of worship. That is really what this text is speaking about. Worship not just as we gather on Sunday, but every single day of our lives. That this would be what we hold as primary, what we hold as important. For you, Father, matter to us. Help us understand it, in Jesus' name we pray, amen. Of all the things that we do in life that are to have first place, the one thing that is to have first place always is worship. As we said last week, that's always the case. We are called to be God's holy, set-apart, worshiping people, which means we are to have lives of worship. That's true in everything you do. In fact, I challenged you last week, if you weren't thinking of worship this way or weren't thinking of your life this way, you need to think of all of life as an act of worship. This is what really the Israelites had learned in Nehemiah chapters eight through 12. And now in chapters 13, we're going to see that they have to really relearn that. We've seen that Nehemiah has been governor in Jerusalem for about 12 years. And then he was away for a number of years. We don't know for sure how long, but it's impossible for it to have been more than 10 years. So likely at least 15 to 17 years has passed since the rebuilding of the wall of Jerusalem and the renewal of the covenant between God and Israel. And we can assume that the rest of Nehemiah's term as governor was a good term. We really don't have anything of that first term beyond the first seven months. He led them to obedience. He led them to faithfulness. And after his return, he's going to do that again. And so we have no reason to think that he hadn't done so during the rest of his time as governor. But in those years when he was gone, corruption and disobedience came rushing back into Israel like a flood. And that is a warning to us, both personally and corporately, that as we serve the Lord, sin, corruption, and our depravity are only one heartbeat away. And as soon as we stop being vigilant, as soon as we decide that we're going to take a breather in our striving against sin, that's exactly when it's going to attack. It's exactly when those who are waiting for an opportunity, waiting for an opportune moment, will spring into action. Satan loves a lack of diligence on the part of the people of God. And in Israel, that took the form of corruption of their worship, which it always does. Sin always corrupts worship. And if our lives are worshiping lives, then it's clear that sin disrupts and corrupts our worship. So last week we saw, first of all, in verses 4 to 14, that disobedience corrupts the priority of worship. We saw that the high priest was related likely by marriage to one of Israel's greatest enemies of the time, this guy named Tobiah. He was one who together with Sanballat had sought to frustrate the rebuilding of the walls and threatened to assassinate Nehemiah as the leader in Israel and threatened to kill the Jews. He was a horribly ungodly person. He was a great enemy of God. And this high priest now, Eliashi, was allowing Tobiah to live not just inside the walls of Jerusalem, but on the very temple grounds themselves. He had taken up residence, in fact, in the storerooms for the temple offerings. He had cleaned out all the offerings. Those offerings had ceased to function the way that they were supposed to, and he instead had moved all of his household goods in there and was living within the confines of the temple grounds themselves. So those offerings went to pay and provide for God's ministers. What happened was God was being shorted. And since they were no longer being paid or provided for, they left so that they could take care of their family's needs. In fact, all of the ministers of God went back, the Levites it tells us, not necessarily the priests, but the Levites who were the priest's assistants, went back to farming so that they could meet their family's needs. So there was this great hindrance to temple worship, and it threatened to bring it all to a standstill. And God spoke to convict them of this through the prophet Malachi. Malachi chapter 1, and by the way, if you don't know, the book of Malachi was written during that time between Nehemiah's first term of governor and when he came back some years later. Malachi chapter one verse six, God is speaking through Malachi and he says this, he said, a son honors his father and a slave his master. Then if I am a father, where is my honor? And if I'm a master, where is the fear of me? Says Yahweh of hosts to you. Who's he addressed this to? Malachi one six, where is the fear of me? Says Yahweh of hosts to you. Oh, priests who despise my name. These were evil priests. Evil priests. The holy city had been defiled by the presence of the enemies of God. The defilement went right into the heart of the temple itself. The priority of worship among Israel had been forsaken. Both the leaders and the people were guilty, and so the first point of disobedience, or the first point rather from last week, is that disobedience corrupts the priority of worship. And as we said last week, the warning to us in this text is the same as it was to Israel, and it's also the central idea of the text, which is disobedience will corrupt your life of worship. So all of that we saw last week. Now this week, starting with point number two, if you're taking notes, here it is, disobedience corrupts the faithfulness. First it corrupted the priority of worship, second we see it corrupts the faithfulness of worship. This is in verses 15 to 22. Look at verse 15 with me. In those days I saw in Judah some who were treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in sacks of grain, and loading them on donkeys, as well as wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads. And they brought them into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, so I testified against them on the day that they sold food. The second thing that Israel was doing was in direct defiance of the law, they were ignoring the Sabbath day. They had corrupted, they had defiled the Sabbath by refusing to follow God's laws regarding it. That's a clear, intentional dismissal of the consistent worship of God. They were forsaking it. They had corrupted it by making their day of rest and worship a day of work. and a day of profit. All the normal workday activities were going on here that you might find in Israel on any of the other six days of the week. Wine presses are pressing out wine. They're engaged in buying and selling grain. They're loading grain onto donkeys to ship it out. So the wine was being made and sold. And grapes and figs were sold in the marketplaces. And in the text, Nehemiah says all kinds of different loads. That is every possible kind of produce and food and commerce is being sold and purchased and shipped out. They're not just importing, they're exporting as well. Goods in and goods out in a steady stream. And they weren't just engaging in trade locally either. Verse 16. It tells us also men of Tyre were living there who brought in fish and all kinds of merchandise and sold them to the sons of Judah on the Sabbath, even in Jerusalem. So we have men from the city of Tyre who were living in Jerusalem. Remember how careful they were before to keep the unbelievers out? Not anymore. Not anymore. Tobiah is in the temple. Men from Tyre are living in the city. That means that they've been doing a healthy business there long enough to decide, oh, we don't just want to do business here, we want to make this our permanent residence. In other words, this has been going on for quite a while. We could expect a newly repopulated Jerusalem to engage in trade, but not on the Sabbath day. Not on the day that was set aside for God's worship. That day's special, that day's different, that day is worship. Or is it hard for us to get that because we haven't set aside Sunday as a day of worship? Oh, you might be in the church, but that doesn't mean you've set aside the day for worship and for rest. To them, the Lord's day was becoming as nothing, And the text tells us not just fish these men from Tyre were selling, but all kinds of merchandise. And they were so bold to sell this to the Israelites on the Sabbath. And then Nehemiah emphasizes, even in Jerusalem itself, meaning even in the city that he has called holy, even in the city that the text says will be called by my name, said God. This is shocking. After all the reform that happened before, all their commitments and covenant renewal. Remember Nehemiah 10, verse 31, it says, as for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not receive from them on the Sabbath day or a holy day. Back in chapter 10, they said, we're not gonna do that. And what we find here is that the Lord, by this time, meant so little to them that they would rather do business when they were supposed to be worshiping. They here care more about their bottom line than what should have been their top priority. Rather than consistently and faithfully worshiping Yahweh, they chose to engage in profit making. That's appropriate, isn't it, when money is your God? It's appropriate when you worship that instead of Yahweh. How's Nehemiah gonna handle this? Well, verse 17 tells us. Verse 17 says, Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and said to them, What is this evil thing you are doing, even profaning the Sabbath day? Verse 17 tells us he had it out with the nobles, didn't he? You remember the nobles? They're the ones who earlier in the book of Nehemiah, back in chapter five, these were the group who were financially taking advantage of other Jews with exorbitant interest rates. They were selling people into slavery and even into prostitution to pay their loans off. This is just as despicable. They held God as worthless to them. If Yahweh is truly what you worship, you will place his worship before everything else. School events, sports, going to the beach, sleeping in. Worship is not something you do to get it out of the way. Worship is not something for the people of God that is inconvenient. Worship for the people of God is not optional. Worship for the people of God is not something to set aside so that you can seek other pursuits. It's not your second option or what you do when the other things are done. It's not something you compromise or give the second best to. Corporate worship is to be done faithfully, weekly, as God has prescribed. Now, if you're going to do that, you need to plant a stake in the ground, don't you? You need to have a point which you will not go past and you will not compromise on it. It's a determined heart that says, I will honor this as the Lord's day. That doesn't mean that every other day doesn't belong to the Lord, because it does belong to Him. What it means is that this is the day that Christ rose from the dead, and the New Testament church celebrated the resurrection, and they worshiped then, and to follow all the pattern of God's people throughout the years, we will set aside this day for rest and worship. Now, how did Nehemiah drive that stake in the ground? What actions did he take? Well, he knew that the Jews were obstinate people. They knew that they were prone to return to their own sin. Israel's history told him that. He knew that they would forsake the Sabbath, or rather that they had forsaken the Sabbath over and over again. And unless he did something, they were gonna keep right on doing it just exactly as they had been. And if they did not have strong leadership, they would fall back into the same pattern. In fact, they already had, hadn't they? So here's what he does. The first thing he does is rebukes them. Second half of verse 17 and verse 18. What is this evil thing you are doing, even profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers do the same? So our God brought on us and on this city all this calamity, yet you are adding to his anger on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. Nehemiah clearly identifies their sin in verse 17. They're profaning the Sabbath day. This is part of what drove the nation of Israel into exile in the first place. It's part of what brought God's wrath against them to begin with. They took what God called holy and they made it common, they made it ordinary, they made it profane, and they made it filthy. And Nehemiah says when you do that it's an evil thing. Why? Because the Lord Yahweh says it's evil. And so he called them to remember the history, both of what Israel did and how the Lord worked and how the Lord responded to that. And in the past, Israel had ignored the Sabbath. They took what God said is holy and they drug it through the mud. And God responded to that by displacing his people, by driving them out of the land, by taking them into captivity to a foreign nation. Discipline. This is a perfect example of how God responds to our sin and our refusal to be holy. We've said it before, but this is critical. God is holy and he will be seen as holy through the obedient lives of his people. And if his people are not holy, God will be seen as holy by his discipline of his people, won't he? So what happened in the past? Well, God had commanded for them to hold the Sabbath as holy. Israel refused and he disciplined them. And because his holiness is not seen in their lives, he displayed that holiness by disciplining his people. And that disobedience brought calamity for the nation, didn't it? Now, if they continue to do it, it's going to bring the continued discipline of God on them as well. So he rebukes them. Second Nehemiah takes action, doesn't he? He takes action. Look at verses 19 and 20. Now it happened that just as it grew dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I said the word and the doors were shut. Then I said that they should not open them until after the Sabbath. Then I had some of my young men stand at the gates so that no load would enter on the Sabbath day. Once or twice the traders and merchants of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside of Jerusalem. And then I warned them and said to them, why do you spend the night in front of the wall? If you do so again, I will send forth my hand against you. And from that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. What's Nehemiah doing here? Well, he ordered first of all that the gates of Jerusalem be shut as the Sabbath began. he kept them shut all during the Sabbath day, and then he opened them back up after the Sabbath was over. In other words, he ordered his men to stand at the gates and make sure that no one sent anything into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. One way that you can make sure that business and trade doesn't happen is you close the gates of the city and you keep the traders out of the city. And so that effectively shut down all external trade on the Sabbath. That's a bold stand of obedience to the Lord. And when you do that, you should expect that others will test your resolve. And that's exactly what they did in verse 20, isn't it? The merchants and the traders, verse 20, once or twice, the traders and merchants of every kind of merchandise spent the night outside of Jerusalem. So the merchants and the traders say, okay, well, we can't get into the city, but we're gonna stay right out here. We're gonna stay right outside. And their presence reminded everyone inside the city that they were there, that they were ready to do business. All you have to do is shake off this tyrant, Nehemiah, and we're here, we're ready. We'll engage in whatever business you want to engage in. In other words, their presence was there to entice Israel to sin. And effectively, they're asking Israel, if you follow Yahweh, what's the point? Look at all the profit you're losing. Look at all the trade that you're forfeiting. And if you'll just disobey, look at all that you can have. I mean, after all, the Lord loves you, right? He would want you to be happy. Do you see how enticing this is? See how it calls? How it causes you to rationalize your own sin. And just like here in Nehemiah, the unsaved world is not going to do anything to encourage holiness on your part. Don't look to them to encourage your holiness. They're not going to do that. No, the unsaved world is there to enable your sin. And Nehemiah knew that. He knew we had to remove that temptation. So in verse 21, what does he do? He warns them. We read it just a second ago. He warned them that if they stay outside of Jerusalem, if they rather, if they camped outside of Jerusalem, if they spend the night there, if they stay there all day on the Sabbath, if they entice the people of God into sin, what does Nehemiah say he's gonna do? He says he's gonna send out his hand against them. Beloved, let me tell you something. That's the Old Testament way of saying, I'm gonna come out and I'm gonna put a whooping on you. That's what he told them. Now, it seems that Nehemiah spoke in such a way as they actually believed him. Why do I know that? Because in verse 21, it says, from that time on, they did not come on the Sabbath. Apparently, Nehemiah could be a persuasive man when he needed to be. Finally, then in verse 22, Nehemiah commanded the Levites to cleanse themselves, to set themselves apart as holy. And what was the purpose of that? He's going to have them be the gatekeepers. And by them guarding the gates of Jerusalem, it was going to keep out the unsaved. It's gonna keep out the merchants on the Sabbath. In other words, their holy presence was to keep the Sabbath day, the day of worship from being corrupted by those who would turn it, instead of a day of worship, into a day of merchandise. and a day of sales. You know what else putting the Levites back as gatekeepers does? It restores the perimeter of the city so that it would encompass a holy worshiping people again. What is Nehemiah doing? He's working to reestablish a holy people in a holy city to worship a holy God at a holy temple. And so what Nehemiah is doing here, he is removing both the physical ability to sin and he's also removing the temptations to sin. Now that's really instructive for us, isn't it? As you battle the temptation to set worship aside for other things, you also have to remove the things that tempt you, whatever that temptation might be. Why? Because even if you do actually make it to worship, those temptations will consider to be a distraction for you. And so whatever you need to put off in order to keep worship your top priority, you also need to remove anything that is a distraction for you in that. That's the second action that Nehemiah took. Third, if he's doing this to protect the purity of the Sabbath, what are the implications that they are supposed to be doing on the Sabbath? Well, they're to forsake all these worldly activities, they're to set themselves apart as holy, and they're to obey God by faithfully worshiping him. That's what they're supposed to be doing. There's always a put off and a put on, isn't there? Putting off the sin that we have in order to put on righteousness and holiness and godliness. These were radical steps of Nehemiah to attack the sin and disobedience of the flesh. And by the way, in this action of Nehemiah, we see a great model to mortify sin in our lives, don't we? First, he's rebuked it. He's reminded them of the wrath of God that is analogous to confession and repentance. He named the sin. He called it evil. He called for them to turn from it. Nehemiah is agreeing with God about the evilness of their sin. That's confession. And in calling them to turn from it, he called them not only to stop doing it, but then also he called them to worship, isn't he? That's repentance. He confronted this boldly, and that's exactly how you need to confront sin. No excuses. To boldly call it out. And when you call it out, call it out by the ugly names that the Bible gives for it. Don't sugarcoat it. Don't make it sound better than what it is. That's how you agree with God about it. And you need to know that just like the Israelites needed to know that if you don't repent of it, God may discipline you. So then you do the hard work of turning from it. Second, he took action to create physical barriers to their sin so it was harder to commit. Nehemiah literally removed the physical ability to commit the sin. If you want to get serious about your sin, in many cases, that's what you must do. do whatever you can to place barriers up in your life between you and it so that the temptation is simply removed from you. That's what Jesus was talking about when he said, if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off. He didn't really mean lop off your hand. He's saying, look, whatever thing causes you to sin, remove that from your life. Third, you have the clear implication in the text that if you put off commerce on the Sabbath, that you are to put on faithful, consistent worship. What motivated Nehemiah to do all of this? The answer is he loved God. That's the heart of the matter, isn't it? He loved God, therefore he was zealous for the worship of God in obedience to Him. See, in order to conquer sin, you not only take it off, but you also must put on the character of Christ. This is also what the New Testament pattern is for us as well. It's the exact same as the Old Testament pattern. What does the New Testament say about this? 1 Timothy 6, verse 11, Paul writes, See, it's incomplete if you just put off sin. That's good as far as it goes, but you need to do more than that. You need to put off sin and put on the righteousness of God. Colossians 3, verses 8-10, Paul says it again this way, wrath, anger, malice, slander, and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you put off the old man with all of its evil practices and have put on the new man who is being renewed to a full knowledge according to the image of the one who created him. Sin often needs radical amputation. That's what Nehemiah was doing here. And it may very well be what you need to do in certain areas of your life, especially in that one stubborn area of sin you know about. Just one last thought about killing sin. Romans chapter 6 verse 11 is a really critical text on this. There Paul writes this. He says, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin. Did you hear that? Dead to sin. You consider yourself to be dead to sin, but he says, alive to God in Christ Jesus. What's Paul saying? He's saying after you've done everything that we mentioned above, you pray and you ask God for the strength to overcome sin. This is how it practically works out. You pray and you ask God for the strength to overcome sin. Now, if you do that, do you think that he's going to give you the strength to overcome sin? Do you think that there's any world, any universe in which you go to the Lord, you pray, and you ask him for the strength to overcome sin, and he says, nah, I'm not gonna give that to you. When you know that the very purpose He has for you is to conform you to the image of Christ, do you think He's not going to give you the strength to overcome sin? There is no world and no universe in which that happens. That's granted. Prayer granted. You want a prayer in which He's always gonna answer, yes, that's it. So what do you do then? You consider yourself dead to sin. So what are we saying? We're saying that you ask God for the power to overcome that sin and then believe that he has actually given it to you. And so long as you actually believe that he has given you the power to overcome that sin, you believe that he has done that, you believe that he has given you the power to overcome that, guess what happens? You will. Guess when you sin? When you stop trusting that he has given you the power to overcome it. Disobedience corrupts the faithfulness of worship, doesn't it? That was second. But third, disobedience corrupts the family of worship. Disobedience corrupts the family of worship. Look at verse 23 through 29. Nehemiah writes, and in those days I also saw And as he writes this, this is gonna have to be a moment for Nehemiah, that he almost can't believe the words are coming off the end of his pen as he writes it. In those days I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, from Ammon and Moab. As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah. But only the tongue of his own people. This is shocking. This is deplorable. It's almost impossible to read these words and believe that they are true. Not because we doubt the Word of God, but because we see again the same people falling to the same sin over and over and over again. The book of Ezra, the book right before Nehemiah, we think the originally both one book. The book of Ezra ends how? With all the Jews divorcing their foreign wives in the pouring down rain. In chapter nine, verse two of the book of Nehemiah, the text tells us that Israel did this again. They separated themselves from all foreigners. This is once again the commitment to separate themselves from their foreign wives. In chapter 10, verse 28, it defines them as people who have separated themselves from all foreign people. Listen to chapter 10, verse 30, and that we will not, we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. we will not marry foreigners. Why is this? Because that somebody from another ethnic group is evil? No, the reason was because if they married foreigners, those foreign wives were going to lead them astray to worship other idols. We already saw previously when we went through that text the first time, that if somebody would leave their nation, leave their people, leave their idols, leave their foreign gods, and come and worship Yahweh, then they were free to marry within the nation of Israel. This isn't about ethnic cleansing. It's a worship issue. And after all that they had been through, Just a handful of years later, what do we find? They marry women from Ashdod, from Ammon, from Moab. They had married the very idol-worshipping pagans that they had promised not to marry. Many of those marriages then produced children, and half of the children spoke the language of Ashdod, which is probably Phoenician. Which meant, and the text tells us none of them spoke Hebrew, none, not a single one. That meant that they were raising a generation of children who could not even read the Bible. How do you raise your children in obedience to God when they can't even read the word of God? The disobedience of the parents is prohibiting their children from knowing God. That is horrible. It tells us that they are literally raising a generation of idol worshipers. Again, all within the gates of Jerusalem. The city which is supposed to be set apart is God's holy city. This is definitely a case where sin has impacts on others, doesn't it? What's Nehemiah's response? Well, he gets pretty serious. Verse 25. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair. I think I've told you before that Ezra was said to have rant and raved and pulled out his own hair, and Nehemiah rant and raved and pulled out everybody else's. And made them swear by God, you shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take up their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. And then he gives the example of King Solomon. and what had happened through him. So what's his response? First he says he contended with them. That means to strive with them. It's likely a verbal argument, or at least it started that way. He cursed them. Understand, this is not employing foul language or cussing at them the way we would think of using that word today. it likely means he invoked upon them, upon this group, the curse that was to be used for someone who broke the covenant. Back in Nehemiah chapter 10, verse 29, in Nehemiah 10, verse 29, the Jews said, we are entering into a covenant and a curse. That if we do not keep our end of this, then God can curse us. That's what Nehemiah is talking about here. The text tells us he pulled out their hair. That sounds brutal, doesn't it? It likely referred to the hair of their beards of the men. That was considered a tremendous sign of great disgrace. Why? Because they were not acting as Jewish men were to be obedient to God. And so Nehemiah was effectively saying, fine, you want to act like men? Then I'm not going to treat you like a man. Derek Thomas even thinks that this could refer to forcing the men to shave their beards. Their beard, their hair, everything on their head. That was an utter disgrace to the Jews. Utter disgrace. He made them swear an oath. That's a promise with stipulations. That's what it means when he says, I made them swear by God. You will keep this oath and here are the stipulations if you do not. And He made them swear that they would not give their sons and daughters over to those other nations in marriage. Again, not because it was a different people group, but because those other nations, the children coming from there, unless they had converted to Judaism, unless they had converted to become a genuine follower of Yahweh God, were going to lead them astray. As we've mentioned in the past, This is about the worst thing they could possibly do and verse 26 tells us why. This is the great sin that King Solomon committed. How he married all these different wives That's what kings would do back in those days. One king would want to make a peace treaty with another king. And a way that you could ensure that there was going to be peace between the two nations is you gave your daughter as a part of the peace treaty to the other king. And then he's not going to want to go to war with your nation anymore because he's now married to your daughter. Solomon took all kinds of foreign wives. And what happened? They led his heart astray. took him straight away from Yahweh God. And what happens when the leader does that? What do you think the rest of the nation is going to do? They did exactly that. So it's how Israel got corrupted in the first place with idolatry. And it eventually brought Israel to such a place of apostasy and rank unfiltered sin that God judged them severely and had to exile them from the land. That's what brought on them, originally the forsaking of the Sabbath. Now they're pursuing the same path again, and Nehemiah's saying, no, after we've just come out of exile for this, you're gonna do this again? I will not let you. Nehemiah's point here is that if someone like Solomon and their forefathers could be led into idolatry, so can they. And in verse 28 it goes even deeper. The corruption goes further. We find out that the grandson of the high priest is married to Sanbalat's daughter. You remember him. He was friends with Tobiah who was also one of the greatest enemies that Israel had. He was conspiring against them. He was trying to keep the walls from being rebuilt. He wanted to also murder Nehemiah who also wanted to kill and destroy the Jews. So the whole priesthood has been defiled because of this action. It's terrible. But unlike the ending of Ezra here, Nehemiah doesn't require these marriages to be broken up, instead he made them swear that marriages like this would never take place again. He's not excusing sin, he's confronting it. The priesthood itself is defiled and the covenant they made in chapter 10 is defiled. This is sin of the highest level when the priests of Yahweh get caught up in sin. In verse 29, he's actually asking God to remember them in judgment. That's what he means. Verse 29, remember them, oh my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Remember them for their defilement. So how does the book end? I mean, it was so good at the end of chapter 13, verse 3. Nehemiah lets us know, verses 30 and 31, that he cleansed everyone from everything that was foreign. He's telling us he got them back on track again. Even down to the wood that was needed to burn offerings. for the altar, verse 30. Thus I cleansed them from everything foreign and ensured that the responsibilities stood for the priests and the Levites, each in his work, and I arranged for the supply of wood at fixed times and for the first fruits. Remember me, oh my God, for good. He reestablished the priests to be doing what they were supposed to do. He cleaned out the corruption. Remember them, remember the evil people to be judged, Nehemiah asked God. They deserve to be judged again. But when you do judge them, Lord, please remember the good that I did. Please don't sweep me along with them. He's standing before the Lord in his integrity and asking the Lord to remember that he is not worthy of judgment in that way. What does this tell us about Nehemiah? It tells us he took sin seriously, doesn't it? He understood that it offended a holy God. Why? Because he knew who God was and he loved Him, didn't he? And that's how the book ends. That's how the book ends, with the corruption of the people again. Nehemiah did what was right, but he knew that because of their track record, even after the exile, they were likely to defile themselves again. And as we said last week, we want that book to end at chapter 13, verse 3, don't we? We want the book to end at 13, verse 3, where they've just made their covenant, where they're fully committed to the Lord, where everything is good. Everyone rides off into the sunset victorious and they all lived happily ever after. That's not the ending we get. It's not the ending we want. There's an absence here, a vacuum of righteousness, and there is a presence of sin. Because see, the hope is after they had returned from exile, there would be a rebuilt temple that was the great temple that was described in Isaiah chapters 60 through 66, this glorious place, and Messiah would return right away, and there would be a nation that was fully committed to Him, and ideally, Israel was hoping to return from exile, and Messiah would appear. Well, neither Ezra nor Nehemiah was that king, were they? And this feels like the wrong ending. Because remember, this is the last thing that happens in the Old Testament. This is the end of the narrative. The next thing that happens is the Gospels. It seems like this isn't how it's supposed to go. A great way to sum this up is a few years back in our family, one of our daughters really drove her nuts when we were singing a song and we changed the words. change the ending, does that drive you nuts? Anybody else? Or we'd be telling a story and she knew exactly how it was supposed to end and we would give the wrong ending. And every time she would get mad and she would just, oh, daddy, that doesn't how it goes. That's what we want to cry out here, isn't it? God, that doesn't how it goes. We in the Jews read the end of Nehemiah and we want to shout out, that isn't right. This isn't the ending we want. And even as good a leader as Nehemiah is, he's not the right one because he's not the Messiah. He's not Jesus Christ. And the people are definitely not the righteous people they needed to be. But I want to suggest to you that this wrong ending is actually the right ending. It doesn't end how we want it to end, but it definitely ends how God wanted it to end. Because what it created in them and what it should create in us is a longing for things to be right. When does that happen? It happens when Christ comes. It happens when Christ comes. When he comes first to take away our sin in the gospels, and then in his second coming, to establish His millennial kingdom, the kingdom that's future to us. Then He rules in righteousness, then everything is made right. This ending is right because it causes us to long for the time when all will be right in Christ. Does your soul long for His return? Do you long for that time when you're right, when you'll be with Him and have no sin? Do you long for that kingdom and the future glory that awaits in it? Does your heart burn for that? The time when everything that is wrong now is right. That is the sure hope and the longing of every Christian. And that is only realized in Christ. So what this does is point forward to Him. And this is why you fight sin now. First, because God has commanded it, but you fight sin because you have God and you love God and you want to be obedient to Him. Because you are and have worshiping lives now. And second, because there is a time coming when Christ will return and all will be right in His kingdom and there is a time when He will reward all of His faithful servants for their worshiping lives now. You strive against sin and serve him now because you live in the light of eternity. And what you do now matters for eternity. Every moment you live in faithfulness to Christ proclaims his victory and the fact that God is right to a watching world. What you do now matters. And so this Very wrong ending. It's very right. Because in it, they realize there's something more. Because Christ isn't here yet. The Messiah's not here. And when he returns, it will be right. Perhaps you're here today and you don't know Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Perhaps you've never trusted in him to save you from your sin. To do that, you must do the same thing that every Christian has ever done. You must admit that you're a sinner. You must confess that to God. You must understand that there is no good work that you can do to save you. There is no work on your part that will make you good enough, that will clean you up, that will cause you to be right in His eyes. Because on your own, you and I are no better than the Israelites who kept failing. but it's when you admit that you're not good enough to save yourself and you trust in Christ alone to save you that God will do that. Romans 10, nine says, if you confess with your mouth, to confess means to agree. You're agreeing with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, in other words, he is my Lord. And you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. This is to agree with God that Jesus is your Lord, it is to trust in the work that he alone did for your salvation. then you will be saved. This is the call to become a disciple of Christ, to give up all that you are in favor of him, to live for him, to be willing to give all to him, to die for him when persecuted if need be. No cost is too high for his disciple. Is that what you want? Is that what you crave? To belong to him? and you must trust in him alone to save you from your sin, and he will. Dear friends, we join together with the Jews at the end of Nehemiah. As we said, this is the last piece of history before Christ in the Bible. This points them forward to him just like it does for us. And so I ask you again, do you long for the return of Christ? Do you long for his kingdom? May that desire burn in your heart today. This world is passing away. James tells us, the one who does the will of God abides forever. Amen? Amen. Let's pray. Father, your word is good. Your word is complete. Your word is pure. Your word gives us hope. And so father this morning together with the Jews who at the end of the book of Nehemiah are realizing this isn't the way it's supposed to be. Know that this isn't the way it's supposed to be because Christ isn't there yet. So father cause us to long for his return. Cause us to crave that day when righteousness will flow like a river from his throne. And cause us, Father, to realize that even though we're in a very broken world, we want to be the people who are obedient to Him, in all ways and in all things. It's Christ's name we ask it. Amen.