Christ, Our Perfect Leader

0:58And Bill Belichick, perhaps the greatest talent evaluator and coach America has ever produced, was fired by his first NFL team. You can be a great leader and not always get great results. That was the case with Ezra as we saw last fall. And sadly, as we'll see today with Nehemiah in chapter 13, that's the case with him as well. Friends, we're tempted to believe that as long As we just have the right human leadership, the right officials in government and business, in the church, in athletics, that success is guaranteed.

1:45We'll be reminded today, though, that specifically when it comes to our relationship with the Lord and the holiness that He requires of us, that we need something more than great human leadership. Let's take a look at the text together as we begin in the chapter. I want to actually draw your attention first to verse 6 of chapter 13. And you see from this verse that Nehemiah actually left Jerusalem for a period of time. He served as governor beginning in 445 BC for a period of 12 years, but then in the 32nd year of the reign of King Artaxerxes, he actually went back to Persia. So this is 433 B.C.

2:27He stayed there for some time, and then after some period of time, Nehemiah asked leave of the king again, as he did at first, to return to Jerusalem. Perhaps he had heard that things weren't going as well as when he had left. But at any rate, he does come back to Jerusalem, and he does this seemingly unannounced. Everyone seems to be taken by surprise that he's there. And he finds that things are nearly as bad as they were before Ezra the scribe arrived back in 458 BC.

3:00While he was gone, Eliashib the priest, who apparently had charge over the storerooms, prepared a chamber in the temple for Tobiah, seemingly his extended family member. Just set up an Airbnb right there in the temple. There is so much wrong with this situation, it's hard to know exactly where to begin. First, only Levites and priests were allowed to stay in any part of the temple for a short period of time. And they certainly would not have been allowed to stay in the storerooms where the offerings for the Lord were kept.

3:38Second, Tobiah is an unbelieving Ammonite, so he wasn't allowed in the temple at all, anytime or anywhere. Third, Tobiah is violently opposed to God and to his people. He, along with Sanbalot, was the one who opposed the rebuilding of the wall earlier in the book. So when Nehemiah returns, he cannot believe this situation. The text says he is very angry, and he chucks all of Tobiah's furniture out in the yard. He is not the least bit happy about this.

4:17But, friends, here is the question: Why was there enough room to prepare a chamber in the temple for Tobiah to begin with? In verses 10 through 13, we have our answer. The people had broken the promises they made when they renewed the covenant. If you flip back a couple of pages in your Bible to chapter 10, I want to draw your attention to the very last verse of the chapter, verse 31, or verse 39, rather. Look at this last statement that they make when they renew the promises. We will not neglect the house of our God.

4:59But what happened? Just a short time after they made this promise not to neglect the house of the Lord, the people have stopped giving, which meant that the storerooms in the temple were empty. And because the storerooms were empty, the Levites and singers couldn't support their families. Because they couldn't support their families, they had to return home and find other work. And because they returned home to find other work, no one was conducting worship. It effectively ceased.

5:31So with empty storerooms, with no Levites and no worship, Tobiah the Ammonite is free to move into this empty space in the temple. So in verse 11, Nehemiah confronts the officials, these leaders in charge, and he asks them this question, why is the house of God forsaken? In other words, why have you broken the promise you made to God? You see, when the people first renewed the covenant back in chapter 10, they were committing to put first things first.

6:08And that meant, above all things, ensuring that God was worshipped according to his commandments, according to the ways that he had prescribed. They were going to put first things first. But that could only happen if the people prioritized generous giving to support God's work and God's workers. When the people stopped giving, the people stopped worshiping. And when the people stopped worshiping, the people stopped giving. That's the way that this works. Our hearts follow our money, and our money follows our hearts.

6:48That's why Jesus taught that wherever our treasure is, there will our heart be also. The same is true for us. And so we have to ask the question: what is my giving saying about my priorities? What is my giving showing me about what I love and what I value? As we said a few weeks ago, money is the great truth-teller. So Nehemiah takes action. He purifies the storerooms, he gathers all the Levites and he puts them back in their stations. And then he calls the people to once again give their offerings to the Lord as they promised to do. And then he appoints reliable men. As treasures to ensure that the people would continue to give and that offerings were distributed according to the law. Then he prays this prayer, and you see this here, the end of this section.

7:41He asks this, Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service. Now, again, we don't know how long Nehemiah was gone. Given that it took two months to get back to Susa, the capital, and two months to get back to Jerusalem from there, he's probably stayed away at least a couple of years to make the trip worthwhile. But from the text, it doesn't seem like this was a very long period of time.

8:13And yet, even in this short or relatively short length of time, the short time that he was away, you see how quickly the people broke their promises. And that's after 25 years of Ezra's leadership, 12 years of Nehemiah's leadership, and the people have turned away from their promises. And that shows us, friends, that maybe we need something more than great human leaders to reach the level of holiness that God requires. Well, as Nehemiah walks through Jerusalem, as you see in the next section, it becomes clear that the people have broken another promise they made.

9:00They are dishonoring the Sabbath. They're not keeping it holy. Instead, we see here in verse 15 that the people in Judah are treading wine presses. They're bringing in heaps of produce to sell. They're even allowing foreigners to come into the city and bring in goods to trade on the Sabbath. Let's turn back again to chapter 10. This time, let's look at verse 31. In chapter 10, verse 31, they make this promise: And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day.

9:47Now, remember, the Sabbath day was a very important day in the life of Israel. In Exodus 20, verses 9 through 11, we find the fourth commandment. Look on the screen at what God commanded: Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you or your son or your daughter, your male servant or your female servant or your livestock or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.

10:37Another way to translate the Hebrew word that is rendered holy is set apart. Those are two different translations of the same word. So, when something is holy, it is treated differently. It's set apart, it's special. It's not supposed to be like anything and everything else. That's how the Israelites were supposed to be treating the seventh day. It was supposed to be set apart and special and different from every other day. Because what God communicates to us all throughout His Word is that when we rest and when we worship on the Sabbath day, we're doing several things. First, we are remembering that God is our Creator, that He is the one who made us and all things, and that therefore we owe everything to Him.

11:28We are remembering that our spiritual forefathers were slaves in Egypt, and that God delivered them from their slavery. We are proclaiming on the Sabbath day that we do not share the world's value system, that we have a different value system, and that we trust God to provide for us and to take care of all of our needs. But you see, the people weren't remembering the Sabbath. They weren't honoring it. They weren't keeping it as holy and special and set apart. Instead, it had become just another workday, just another day to produce and consume, just another day to get ahead in the world. It was just like every other day. So, once again, Nehemiah confronts the leaders about the problem. This time, the nobles of the people, because ultimately, this also is a leadership issue. Look at what he says to them in verse 18.

12:30Did not your fathers act in this way? And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. He reminds them, your forefathers were doing this very same stuff. It's one of the primary reasons that we were sent into exile to begin with. He can't believe that they're repeating these same patterns. And as we saw back in chapter 10, honoring the Sabbath day was one of the specific promises that they made to the Lord. That wasn't that long ago, and they're already breaking that promise. So again, Nehemiah takes action. He commands that the city gates be closed at sundown, that they not be opened again until the next day at sundown. He stations his servants and the Levites at the gates to enforce obedience to the law. But you notice in the text that some of the merchants still came and they lodged. They actually camped out. Right outside of the gates. And so Nehemiah approaches these guys and says, Look, if you do this again, I'm going to lay hands on you. I don't think he meant to bless them. He says he's going to lay hands on them.

13:43They don't return, which is probably bad for business, but good for their life expectancy. They stay away. And Nehemiah again prays in verse 22 for God to remember him for all this good. Friends, the Sabbath comes up over and over in the scripture, not just in Ezra and Nehemiah, but in the whole Bible. And if you've been paying attention to a lot of the writing and the things that we're hearing in the media lately, even secular thinkers are coming to the obvious conclusion that working 24 hours a day, seven days a week, is killing us.

14:20Working at our jobs every day, working at our studies every day, trying to get ahead, trying to make more money, trying to climb the ladder of success in academia or wherever else, it is killing us. I listened to a podcast just this past week called The Case for the 24-6 Lifestyle. This guy was not a believer. There are dozens of books that you can find on Amazon arguing, even without the word and the terminology, for the practice of Christian Sabbath. There are two books by the same title called 24-6.

14:58Everyone is coming to this conclusion. Independently through research that working 24-7 is not sustainable for finite human beings. It ruins our mental health, emotional health, spiritual health, and eventually our physical health as well. We cannot do it. So, Jesus taught us that the Sabbath was given as a blessing, not as a burden, a blessing. It was and is a good gift from a good and holy God to his people. But whether we're talking about the 5th century BC or 21st century America, God's people have always found it difficult to obey this command and to believe that taking one day off in seven for worship and rest is the best thing to do, is a worshipful thing to do.

15:50While preaching in Nehemiah 10, I mentioned a moment ago that we said that money is the great truth-teller. It tells us what we love and what we value. But I think its twin in truth-telling is time. What we spend our time on tells us what we love and what we value just as much as our money does. How we spend that precious, limited resource tells us what we love and value. And what becomes clear as we look at this text together is that the Israelites valued money more than they valued worshiping God, more than they valued rest. Wanted to make money seven days a week, just like the other nations. And as a result, there was nothing holy, distinct, or special about the seventh day. And that's in spite of everything that Ezra and Nehemiah had taught and modeled over decades of ministry.

16:52And so, once again, we see maybe we need something more than great human leadership if we are going to reach the level of holiness that God requires. In verses 23 through 29, because two broken promises are not enough, the people go for the trifecta. Nehemiah discovers here in this section that some of the men have married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. These are longtime sworn enemies of God's people. They have been so assimilated into foreign culture that their children cannot even speak the language of Judah.

17:40So, once more, let's go back to chapter 10, and I want you to look at verse 30 and consider this final promise that they made. Chapter 10, verse 30. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters. For our sons. Pretty explicit, pretty straightforward with their intentions. But this is exactly what they did. Just as they had been doing years before when Ezra returned, just as they had been doing before they were exiled, just as they had been doing ever since they arrived in the promised land, they continued to marry and to give their children in marriage to unbelievers.

18:27The worst part, if you look at verse 28 of chapter 13, is that the high priest's family was leading the way into sin. Eliashib's grandson was married to the daughter of Sonbalat, the man who, along with Tobiah, led the opposition to rebuilding the wall just earlier in the book. So Nehemiah reminds them: look, even Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived, was led into sin, was led into idolatry by his unbelieving wives. So Nehemiah was mad before, but he is really upset now. Look again at verse 25. I trust you didn't miss this. He confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair.

19:22Anybody within whacking distance got hit? Anybody closer got their hair pulled out. This was intense. Was it too intense? I mean, Jesus made a whip of cords and drove people out of the temple. But then again, Nehemiah is not Jesus. As I thought about this, it occurred to me that the best way to spend our time is not really trying to evaluate what we are actually unable to evaluate at this point, and that is whether Nehemiah was right or wrong in beating people and pulling out their hair.

20:05Instead, I want to ask a couple of questions for us to consider based on his actions. The first question is this: Why does Nehemiah seem to be so much angrier about this than about the first two broken promises? I mean, he throws Tobias' furniture out on the yard, but he doesn't beat anybody for not giving. He confronts those who are violating the Sabbath, but he doesn't pull their hair out. It could be that this was just the straw that broke the camel's back. It's been a bad day, right? He's walking around, and no one's giving. People are violating the Sabbath, and now you've got these people who are married to these unbelievers, and maybe he just came unglued. He is a human being, and that is entirely possible.

21:01He thinks, well, my words are not getting through. Maybe my fists will get through. But, friends, I think that Nehemiah was more upset about people marrying unbelievers than about the first two broken promises because this legitimately is a bigger deal. Here's what I mean. If you haven't been giving faithfully to support God's work, you can start today. Repentance is pretty simple and pretty straightforward, isn't it? You weren't giving, you start giving. If you haven't been honoring the Sabbath, you can start this week.

21:41You weren't doing it, you could start doing it. Repentance is pretty simple, pretty straightforward. But if you've married an unbeliever and you've started a family with them, there's no simple or straightforward answer to that at all. That's a decision that's going to have lifelong consequences for you and your spouse and your children. I think that's why Nehemiah is so mad because he knew what these marriages meant. Israel had already compromised. And he knew what this was probably going to mean, that Israel would end up forsaking God again to worship and serve. Serve these false gods from other nations.

22:35So, that's the first question that I think we have to ask and answer: why is Nehemiah so mad about this? The second question that I want to ask, and that I want you to consider, is this: How come we're not angrier about disobedience? I don't just mean everyone else's disobedience, I mean our own. Now, listen, I'm not saying that we start running around, beating each other, and pulling each other's hair out. Some of my brothers in the room ain't got enough hair to spare.

23:11So, I'm not advocating that. What I am saying is that if we're going to respond to our own disobedience or the disobedience of other professing believers in our church with either a yawn or a yell, I choose yelling. You have to actually care enough about something to yell about it. And my concern is that we have become so comfortable with our own sin and disobedience and with the sin and disobedience of other professing believers in our lives that we know and love, that we are not even willing to confront. We're not even willing to deal with it. We're not upset about it. We're yawning over it.

23:56And I think this situation provides the opportunity for us. To reflect on the way that we have treated our own disobedience and the disobedience of others in our lives, do we care enough to confront it? Or do we shrug it off like it's no big deal? See, both Ezra and Nehemiah did everything in their power to confront this pervasive issue and to call the people back to obedience. They cared enough to pray and to confess their own sins and then to confront those who were in disobedience and to call them to do the same.

24:33And yet, the people still fell back into the same patterns of sin. And so, once again, we see that maybe what we need is something more than great human leadership if we're going to reach the level of holiness that God requires. Nehemiah concludes in these final verses with a summary statement of all of Nehemiah's efforts. You see it there in verse 30. And then a third and final prayer for remembrance that God would reward him for all that he has done.

25:12But the ending of the book feels just like the ending of Ezra, doesn't it? It's almost exactly the same. It's a real downer. In both books, the people made these great promises to obey God, and then the book ends with them breaking all of the promises that they made. It is not an encouraging, positive ending to the story. And that's in spite of the heroic, godly efforts of courageous leaders like Ezra and Nehemiah. Well, four centuries later, God sent another leader to Israel.

25:51And he was given the name Jesus, which means the Lord saves. And as Jesus walked amongst his followers in John chapter 10, he began to teach them that he was the good shepherd, that his sheep would hear his voice, that they would know him, they would follow him, he would lead them. And if we just take those words by themselves, we might come to the wrong conclusion that the only thing Jesus came to do as the good shepherd was to lead us, was to set us an example, to show us the way. In fact, that's the very thing that the disciples thought that Jesus was saying that he came to do. Thomas spoke up and said, Lord, show us the way.

26:42Lord, show us the way. What we just need is a great example to follow. If you will show us the way, we'll get on it, we'll follow it. But if he knew his own people's story better and believed it, He would know that Jesus showing him the way wasn't going to help anything because they already had plenty of great examples to follow. And even though Jesus' example was a perfect example, it still didn't deal with the root of the problem.

27:21And so, Jesus, as he begins to talk about himself as the great shepherd, he says not only that he's going to lead his sheep, but that he's going to lay down his life for his sheep, for all of his followers' failures, for all of our sin and disobedience against the Lord. He offered himself in our place and for our sins, dying on the cross. He was buried, and on the third day he rose from the grave, victorious over sin and death.

27:51He did that for us. And now, through faith in Jesus, the good shepherd of our flock, we have forgiveness. We are justified and declared righteous. We are reconciled to God. But more than that, friends, we are given the grace and the power through the Holy Spirit to actually keep the promises that we make to God. We are set free from the power of sin, not just the penalty of sin, so that we can live lives that honor. God.

28:32What great news that is, both for now and for eternity. Friends, the book of Nehemiah is a wonderful historical account of a godly man who achieved great things through faith-filled, courageous leadership. But Nehemiah's achievements, just like the achievements of any great human leader, are temporary because they can't get to the root of the human problem, which is the heart. Only Jesus can regenerate our hearts. Only He can give us the desire and the power to walk in obedience to God for the duration of our lives. Only Jesus is able to declare us holy and then to make us holy by his grace.

29:24The book of Nehemiah is many things. It is a great biography. It's an encouragement and model for prayer. It's a manual for leadership. It is a challenge to attempt big things for God. But more than any of that, Nehemiah is a wonderful book because it points us to Christ, our perfect leader, who alone can lead us to reach the level of holiness that God requires. Let's pray. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.