Guarding Our Unity
Nehemiah 5 – 28 October 2007

Andrew Lim

I wonder how many of us are familiar with the term “the fifth column”
The term was first coined in 1936 / during the Spanish Civil War

The Nationalist general during the war was Emilio Vidal
There were four columns of rebel troops attacking that city of Madrid
But right inside the city / there was / unknown to many
to a group of rebel sympathizers / the fifth column

As four of his army columns moved on Madrid
the general had put in place a sizable of militant supporters
right within the city of Madrid / he called it his “fifth column”

And Vidal was so assured of victory / because right inside the city
there was already this clandestine faction of subversive agents
working to undermine a nation’s solidarity / from the inside

And ever since then / the term fifth column / has come to refer
to a group of secret sympathizers or supporters of an enemy
that engage in sabotage within a nation or an organization

Now how does this relate to the church?
In a frightening way / it relates sometimes rather identically

For there have been times / when Christians / unknown to themselves
have becomes the fifth column of the Enemy
but sitting right among us / with the ranks

They may break the same bread / drink the same cup
but unwittingly / they have become the enemy’s fifth column

And that / is what we are seeing right here in Nehemiah chapter 5
There are people within the community
who by their strife and dissension
are undermining the community’s welfare

And this is what we often see in churches today
There is a threat that often disrupts God’s church and scatters the flock

What’s that? / internal dissension / infighting
as a result of sin with the body that has not been dealt with

Think of the many church splits that you’ve heard of
Did that church split because of false teaching?
Did that church split because the community ganged up against her
and attacked her / with such force / she had to break up?
Did that church split / because the city council
imposed some unbearable sanction against her / she had to split?

No / most churches that split / split because there is sin / within the church
Sin that’s been allowed to brew and brew over the many years
either because there was no inner resolve to deal with it
or because the leaders had no guts to deal with it
or the leader had the guts and resolve to deal with it
but were hamstrung / politically / by powers within the church

In short / most churches that split / split because of internal discord
that were brought about by sin
that was either allowed to go unchecked / or openly tolerated

And that’s what is threatening God’s people / right here in this chapter
Right here / we see a community of God’s people
having this conflict among themselves / there’s serious infighting

V.1 “Now the men and their wives / raised a great outcry
against their Jewish brothers / Some were saying:
“We and our sons and daughters are numerous
in order for us to eat and stay alive / we must get grain”

Now you’d be forgiven if you thought / What’s the big deal
You want grain / go out and buy some!

You’ll know why when you read on
verse 3 / “Others were saying: / “We are mortgaging our fields
our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine”
There was this famine which was bad enough / but as in all crises
there will always be people who will exploit a crisis like this
and make a whole pile of money

Read on / verse 3 / “Others were saying
‘We are mortgaging our fields / our vineyards and our homes
to get grain during the famine / 4 Still others were saying
“We have had to borrow money (from other Jews)
to pay the king's tax on our fields and vineyards
5 Although we are of the same flesh and blood as the rest of our people
and though our children are as good as theirs
yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery
Some of our daughters have already been enslaved/but we are powerless
because our fields and our vineyards belong to others”

What seems to be happening?
There is a grave shortage of food
People are having to mortgage their fields / to have money in hand
both to buy food / and to pay their taxes to the Persian government
During this time of Jewish history Judah is a colony of Persia

And as time goes on / they just got poorer and poorer
They have had to sell their properties / sell their fields
until there came a time / when the only real tangible capital
they have left / were their own children
Just imagine having to put your children up as slaves
just to get the resource to get food and live by
you’ll never going to be able to redeem them

What seems to be happening?
Well / it is what’s always been happening
when you see the gap between the rich and the poor widening
- the rich are exploiting the poor
and getting richer at the expense of the poor
- they were exacting heavy interests
on the poor who borrowed from them

Now who do you think was exploiting them / Outsiders?
No! / they were exploited / not by people outside the covenant
but by their own Jewish brothers / people within the covenant
- people who ought to know better

Now please notice how Nehemiah respond when he heard it
verse 6 / “When I heard their outcry and these charges / I was very angry”

Nehemiah? Angry? / I thought you told us Nehemiah is a godly man?

Let me take this opportunity to say a few words
on what God thinks about anger

Where God is concerned /anger / in and of itself /is not a sinful emotion
Fury is sin / but not anger / Rage is sin / but not anger
Rampaging and terrorizing is sin / but not anger

The Bible and the history of the church
tell us of godly men and women / who knew how to be very angry
at some things / that make the heart of God angry

Elijah was angry / turning to Ahab after the murder of Naboth
he says: / “In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth
shall dogs lick your blood” / I King 21:19

And David / young David / when everyone was shivering in his pants
young David ‘ looking straight into Goliath’s eyes said
“Who is this uncircumcised Philistine
that he should talk about our God like that!”

Amos was angry with Amaziah / he says to her:
“Your wife will die as a prostitute in a foreign land
and your children shall die in the land of the heathen”

John the Baptist was angry by the sins of Herod and Herodias

And what about our Lord Himself
Our Lord / at several points in His life became incensed with what He saw
He was angry with the narrow-mindedness of the Pharisees
He was incensed with the hypocrites / He called them broods of vipers
He told the unbelievers / “You are of you father the devil”
He called the religious people “whitewashed tombs”
He attacked the evils He saw around Him / with unsparing vigor

This is partly why /Bertrand Russell in his book / “Why I Am Not a Christian”
said Jesus couldn’t be God / For if God is God / He is perfect
But Jesus couldn’t be perfect / because He lost His temper
Therefore He cannot be God

But the Bible would say the very opposite to what Russell has said
The Bible would affirm
- that Christ’s anger was very much a part of his perfection
- that His perfection / was never more perfectly expressed
than in this moment of his anger

A Christ Who couldn’t be angry
would be a Christ who was less than perfect

To say that Christ was ever angry would not be to compliment Him
It would be to deny that He was completely perfect

In all these cases / all these godly men share one common passion
They were all angry over the people’s defiant repudiation
against God’s Word / and ultimately / God’s glory

A person who cannot get angry worries me
because he might well be the same person / who doesn’t have
a lot of passion and enthusiasm for good and justice

H.W. Beecher once said: “A man who does not know how to be angry
does not know how to be good / A man that does not know
how to be shaken to his heart's core with indignation
over things evil / is either a fungus or a wicked man”

If you cannot get angry about certain situations in the world today
Beware / it may just be that something God-given inside you / has died
If you cannot hate evil / then it is very questionable
if you really love righteousness and holiness

Have you ever realized that the Bible commands us to be angry
Ephesians 4:26 / “Be angry!”
In the Greek it is in the present imperative / It is a command
which means that there are times
when if you’re not angry / you’re disobedient

God is here saying: “Get mad!” / But He does not stop there
He goes on to say / “But sin not!!”

Someone has very cleverly said: “To be angry and not sin
one has to be angry at nothing / but sin”

If you are not getting anywhere in your spiritual life
could it be / that you’re not angry enough
not angry enough with your own sinful indulgences
not angry enough with the shoddiness of your discipline
not angry enough with sin you see all around you

No good is ever accomplished in this world
without a strong intense anger over evil
Martin Luther: “When I am angry I preach well and I pray better”

Never never pray / for anger to be uprooted from your heart
for if God should somehow answer that prayer of yours
a vital pulse of life in you / begins to die

You should pray rather / that your anger be tempered and redirected
to that which makes God angry
so that you’ll love what He loves
and be angry / with that which makes Him angry

And here we see Nehemiah / angry
It is a righteous emotion / when sin within the church
threatens to destroy the unity of God’s people

There is a truth that is not often appreciated / It is this
Unity is not natural for us sinful people
This is the reason Scripture keeps telling us
“guard your unity” / “keep your unity”
“cultivate your unity” / “protect your unity”
Eph 4:3 / “Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit
through the bond of peace”

This is God speaking to us / and He says “Make every effort”
Do your utmost / Do all you can to protect your unity

What’s happening here? / Isn’t unity natural among us God’s people?
Don’t we all worship the same God?
Aren’t we all baptized in the same Name?
Do we not eat from the same loaf / and drink from the same cup?

Shouldn’t unity be something so natural for us?
Well / just take a look at your family for example
Do we not have to make the effort / within our family
to be patient with one another to endure each other’s idiosyncrasies
Do we not sometimes have to walk the second mile to keep peace
Do we not sometimes have to forego our own rights for the sake of unity

We do / don’t we! / We all work hard at trying to preserve our family unity
It’s not something that comes natural to us all / you have to work at it
You so much as take the brakes off a little / let things slide a little
and you’ll find / that within only a few short years
your family will break up / from sheer erosion of its foundations

Now this is what puzzles me
If we know that to be true / about our own biological family
how come we don’t think like
that when it comes to relating to each other in church
This is so utterly incredible
We don’t have a clue that / this IS a family where God is concerned
we allow sin go unchecked within the body
we let dissension go unresolved / and gossips go un-confronted
quarrels go un-intervened / and accusations go uninvestigated

And yet / when the church splits into two / people get all surprise
as if they couldn’t see that coming!

Why do you think God lists so many “one another’s” in the Bible
I counted at least twenty of them:
be devoted to one another / honor one another / receive one another
bear with one another / forbear one another / forgive one another
love one another / accept one another / admonish one another
restore one another / wash one another’s feet / prefer one another
do not judge one another / salute one another / greet one another
serve one another / comfort one another / edify one another
exhort one another / consider one another

Why is God placing such a great emphasis on “one anothering”
Because He knows / that unity is one the most unnatural thing around

It is far more natural to back-bite / to be disgruntled / to fight back
to accuse / to blame / condemn / complain / oppose / confront

And may I say that most pastors agree that by far
this / is the main reason / why people pick up their toys
and leave for another church

Its the same way some men pack up and leave their wives
Far easier to pack up and leave / than to work things through

But when are disunited like that / we weaken the church within
We keep the church from achieving its full mission
“Divide and conquer” has long been Satan’s strategy

This is why Paul says / “Never give the devil a foothold” / Eph 4:27
He says / “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God
Get rid of all bitterness / rage and anger / brawling and slander
along with every form of malice” / Eph 4:30–31

And it has to begin with each one of us
Someone came up with this obvious but clever line
“Unity begins with “U”

Let me share my heart with you / as a pastor
Whenever as a pastor / I hear of people
reaching out in love toward one another
it fills my heart with encouragement and hope and gratefulness

When I hear of someone
- lending a vehicle to another person who needs it
- helping a person get a job / cooking a meal for someone who’s ill
- cheering up a person by giving him a surprise birthday party
- help clear up the garden of someone who has been ill
When I hear of stuff like these
it never fails life me up and fill my heart with deep sense of joy
that there is such love within the flock

But the opposite of all this
grieves me to the extend / that I get very disturbed sleep
When I hear someone say:
If she is serving the communion /I’m not going up to receive it
If he’s going to the picnic / I’m not going
If she teaches nursery / my kids are not going in there
If he’s leading worship next week / I’m not in church
If he’s ever appointed to the eldership
as a family we’re leaving the church
He’s all talk / he doesn’t lift a finger
Why should I forgive her / that’s such a gross sin

Talk like that / not only deeply saddens me it angers me
because it threatens the fragile health of the body of Christ
it sends a fissure right through the foundation of this house
and a house divided against itself / cannot stand

Worse of all / it tarnishes the glory of God

And yet this is happening in far far more churches
and Christian organizations than we really want to believe

And in many such places / the leader is just not speaking up
- maybe he’s timid / maybe he fears losing his job

Whatever the reason may be / for the leader’s silence
he is causing grave harm to the body of Christ
by allowing sin to fester

But not Nehemiah / this is what he does
Verse 6 / “When I heard their outcry and these charges
I was very angry / I pondered them in my mind”

Nehemiah stops doing whatever he is doing / he takes stock of things
he reflects / he thinks things over
he is allowing his anger to simmer down
he is allowing himself time to regain his rationality
he needs to be sure that whatever action he is going to take
that it does not stem from his own natural desire to get even
but from his passion for the glory of God

It is only after this moment of pause and simmering down
that he turns to the nobles and the officials and talks to them

And verse 7 says “he accuses them”
He is not worried that he may become unpopular
He is not interested in saving his own skin
at the expense allowing sin to go unchecked in the community

It does not matter to him that he might be disliked
Truth needs to be spoken / and Nehemiah a man of God will speak up

There comes a time in the life of every leader
when at the risk of losing everything he had built up
and risking his very own livelihood
to speak up against the unrighteousness he sees around him

Nehemiah chooses to confront the nobles and the officials
because he cannot be silent in the face of such blatant unrighteousness

Verse 7 / “You are exacting usury from your own countrymen!”
they were imposing interest / upon what they lend
“So I called together a large meeting to deal with them
Verse 8 / “and said: “As far as possible / we have bought back
our Jewish brothers who were sold to the Gentiles
Now you are selling your brothers/only for them to be sold back to us!”

Nehemiah is here saying / Why / How very ridiculous
These are our very own brothers
fellow-Jews / people of the same covenant

We’ve journeyed together / suffered together
we’ve sacrificed for one another
And now we’re making slaves of our own people
so much so that we’ve got to be buying them back
- buying back Jewish slaves / from Jews slave owners
- how very unthinkable

Nehemiah exposes the selfishness / the greed / the betrayal
He talks about stuff / people would rather not talk about
But Nehemiah / has such a deep passion for God’s righteousness

And what is the result? / Second part of verse 8
“They kept quiet / because they could find nothing to say”

They know their scriptures as well too
Every Jew worth his salt / remembers Exodus 22
“If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy
do not be like a moneylender / charge him no interest
26 / If you take your neighbor’s cloak as a pledge
return it to him by sunset / 27 because his cloak
is the only covering he has for his body
What else will he sleep in? / When he cries out to me
I will hear / for I am compassionate” / vv 25-27

Why does God give such a law?
Every other nation around them practiced the law of the usury
When you borrowed a sum of money
you’re expected to pay interest / over and above what you owed

But God says to His people / It shall not be so with you
I am asking you to put love above money or anything else
I am giving you this special law
just so that you would be different from all the other people
in the surrounding regions / who do not know the Lord

So that people will sit up / and take a look at you and say
“Wow! I really like your way of life / I like your law
Wonder Who your Law-Giver is!!”

And isn’t this what Jesus says to us exactly
“By this / shall all people know that you are my disciples
that you love one another”

Looking at it like that / can you not see how ridiculous
all our infighting is!

When we as Christians love one another in a radical way
when we gladly sacrifice for one another
when we give and not expect anything in return
when we borrow and not exact an interest
the world will know that we’ve got the real thing

But that / is exactly what is not happening here in Judah
The rich people are exploiting the poor
they are not only charging interest
they are making slaves out of those who couldn’t pay up
something the Levitical Law clearly prohibits

Nehemiah goes on to rebuke them
verse 9 / “So I continued / What you are doing is not right
Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God”
Why? / “to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?”

There comes a time when we should be very worried
about what the world sees when they take a look at us

By our disunity we not only make ourselves the laughing stork of society
we invalidate the gospel of love we preach

If we are quarreling so frequently / can we still dare tell people
that we know and worship the God of love

So Nehemiah rightly says / “Shouldn’t you walk in the fear of our God
to avoid the reproach of our Gentile enemies?”

Who laughs the loudest / when word gets around this little town of ours
that another church has split up / cut right down in two
leaving the people
not only with the confusion of having to choose where to go
but the grief and pain that never seems to go away?

Who laughs the loudest when word gets around
that in such a such a church
the people fight among themselves so much
nobody feels happy go attend anymore?

Answer / the people outside the covenant faith

And they tells us / “You’re not really any different from us
you fight and bitch and claw / just like us
But there’s a difference between us
At least we’re open about it
Whereas you Christians pretend / you’re not like that”

But the saddest thing for me / is not that they laugh the loudest at us
The saddest thing for me is this
They praise their gods / on account of our weakness

You’ll remember Samson
He fooled around / didn’t take his calling seriously / disobeyed God
till the day came / when the Philistines took him in
gouged out his eyes / bound him with a bronze shackles
put a yoke around his neck
and got him to work on the treadmill / like a mule

And the word of God adds these very sad words for our learning
They praised their pagan God Dagon
because of Samson’s weakness / 16:23

When people look at our disunity / it is often God / that they mock
“Mustn’t their God be a weak God / look at their weaknesses?”

Now that / is the big tragedy
when our disunity becomes known to the world
you not only fail yourself
you not only spoil the testimony of the Church
most of all / you smear the glorious name of the Lord

Can you not see now / if you haven’t before
how very crucial it is for the leaders of a church / any church
to take very seriously the beginnings of any rumbling or murmuring
for the sake of the name of our God

Will you not support your leaders / when tough as it is
he has to be the one to have to deal
with people’s grumbling / and murmuring / and discontentment?

Will you not pray seriously / daily / for the unity of our church?

Finally Nehemiah says / in verse 10 “I and my brothers and my men
are also lending the people money and grain
But let the exacting of usury stop!
v.11 Give back to them immediately their fields / vineyards
olive groves and houses / and also the usury you are charging them
the hundredth part of the money / grain / new wine and oil”

“Just stop it” / Nehemiah
“You don’t have to ask for financial advice / don’t have to think it over
don’t have to look for God’s will over the matter
God has already made His will known to you in His law
Just stop it / will you!”

Nehemiah knows the stakes of disunity are high
and he speaks strongly right into the people face

Now notice the people’s response!
Verse 12 / “We will give it back” / they said
“And we will not demand anything more from them
We will do as you say”

What a response! What a good response!
They could have collectively defied Nehemiah
But they didn’t! / They responded so very positively
to the strong / firm but loving words of Nehemiah their leader

But Nehemiah is not a fool
He does not want them to respond favorably now
only to come back in a month’s time / and turn back on their words

So we read in verse 12 / “Then I summoned the priests
and made the nobles and officials take an oath
to do what they had promised”

He made them take an oath before the priests

He also gave them an object lesson / a common Hebrew practice
Verse 13 / “I also shook out the folds of my robe and said
“In this way may God shake out of his house and possessions
every man who does not keep this promise
So may such a man be shaken out and emptied!”

In those days the robes have huge pockets
and Nehemiah takes off his robe
and he shakes everything he has in his pockets
and he says to them / “In the same way
if you turn back on your word / God will shake out of your life
all the possessions you ever own”

v. 13 / “At this the whole assembly said “Amen” / and praised the LORD
And the people did as they had promised”

Can you not see that this is a very serious pledge
They are making a vow / and vows are not to be turned back on

I believe God is asking us here this morning
to make a similar pledge too

God is asking us
- to confess our sin of not loving each other as we ought ot
- to release forgiveness to someone we haven’t forgiven
- to pledge to do our best
to guard and preserve the unity we now have