Nehemiah 13: Ruthless and Restless
Notes
Transcript
Ayo and I are sharing Nehemiah 13. This chapter is structured like a sandwich. We have two stories of idolatry and ruthlessness, and in the middle, a piece about restlessness. So I’m going to take ruthless and Ayo will take restless.
Two scenes to what I’ll be preaching today. Both concerned, on the surface, with racial purity. Uh-oh. Is this going to be hard to hear? Whatever happens, we’re in this together. Most of us in this room are of non-Jewish heritage, so if this passage excludes gentiles from the story and presence of God, then I’m out, and so’s Ayo, and so are most of you.
Quick summary of context - past, places, people.
Past
Past
Temple destroyed, people exiled - 70 years and then the return initiated by Cyrus. Another 70 years, and the temple is kind of lame, the kingdom is still dormant/dead, and there is a very real possibility that the centre of Yahwism will shift north to Samaria.
Places
Places
We’re in Jerusalem. Town-sized once, village-sized now. Life amid the ruins of former glory. Nehemiah has rebuilt the walls, though note that’s not what he asks to be remembered for here at the end of his book. The story refers to Ammon and Moab - nations in modern-day Jordan. Ashdod is in modern-day Gaza. And of course, there’s Babylon. It was the centre of the Babylonian Empire which had destroyed the first temple and exiled the people from Israel and Judah. And now its Empire had been replaced by the Empire of the Medes and the Persians. And that’s who Nehemiah works for.
People
People
Nehemiah - his name means God is comforter. Tobiah - his name means God is Good. Ironic, because he spends his days opposing what that God is doing. Good god, bad guy. And Sanballat, who crops up in history as the governor of Samaria. It might be helpful to know that Samaria was a rival centre of worship, and we see that dynamic still playing out in Jesus’s day.
Nehemiah’s (and Ezra’s) place in the creation and preservation of JUDAism.
Scene 1: (v. 1-14)
Scene 1: (v. 1-14)
The Torah is read, probably Deuteronomy 23:3, and the people read:
1 On that day the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God,
map
As we said, the Ammonites and Moabites were neighbouring peoples living in what we now call Jordan. The capital city of Jordan is ‘Amman’, so we can see how long place-names stick around in the Middle-East! The Ammonites’ God was Molech, famous for, among other things, requiring child-sacrifice. This isn’t mentioned here, and instead the justification given is their lack of hospitality when Israel were wandering in the desert. You can read the story in Numbers 23:7.
So - that’s simple. No Ammonites or Moabites can be part of the assembly of God.
Except… King David’s great-grandma. If you were editing the Bible for propaganda purposes and you wanted it to be an easy read, the story of Ruth would be first for the chopping block. Ruth was a Moabite woman whose first Hebrew husband died, and the second was Boaz. She was the great-great-grandmother of King David. You can read about Ruth’s heritage in Ruth 1:1-4, and the book is short and well worth reading the whole thing.
Let’s look at that Deuteronomy verse more closely:
3 No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation.
1 On that day the Book of Moses was read aloud in the hearing of the people and there it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever be admitted into the assembly of God,
Let’s play spot the difference. What do you see?
It’s not forever. It’s ‘even to the tenth generation’. You could say ‘ah yeah, that’s just a poetic way of saying forever’, but later in Deuteronomy 23 a different limit is given for Egyptians - 3 generations. Ruth married into the eleventh generation from Abraham. Interesting…
So what do we do with this? Firstly, I want to highlight what we’re not doing. We’ve reached a place in the Bible that makes us uncomfortable. On the face of it, people are excluded from the assembly of God simply by virtue of their ethnicity. Ouch. Some of us might bring to this direct experience of that. I don’t have that experience, but people in my family do, and I know it’s monstrous. But what we’re not doing is saying ‘I don’t like this, therefore I reject it’. Rather, we’re looking at how this fits with the big story, to see if that helps us to draw out the principle. And we see clearly that this is extreme language used to make a point, rather than technical, precise language. As you read the big story, you see that the issue with foreign people is foreign gods. We’ll come back to that in a few minutes.
But let’s hold on to that principle - we wrestle with Scripture, refusing to let go until it blesses us, but we don’t just chuck out the bits we don’t like! Esau MacCaulley calls this a ‘hermeneutic of trust’.
So while I get Nehemiah’s point, there’s a Ruthlessness here. And I wonder if the people understood the big story they were part of. Maybe that went along with it all without really understanding why. It was never about Ammonite genes, it was about Ammonite gods.
So, we find out that the priest, Eliashib, who should have been looking after the Temple, had actually given a room in it to Tobiah, aka bad guy. And note that Tobiah’s penthouse office is in the place that should be storing the tithes and offerings for the Temple services. So something is going badly wrong.
47 So in the days of Zerubbabel and of Nehemiah, all Israel contributed the daily portions for the musicians and the gatekeepers. They also set aside the portion for the other Levites, and the Levites set aside the portion for the descendants of Aaron.
That’s where we were a few verses ago, and now it seems the storehouses are empty, and bad guy is using them as his private office suite. Double bad.
And then we find out, in verse 6, that Nehemiah is not around. Remember, things have changed and the kingdom is no more. While the return was a wonderful thing, they haven’t regained their former autonomy. Nehemiah answers to his boss, and is recalled to Babylon to serve there.
Have you ever seen this happen?
I’ve been at THCC for a long time. Like over thirty years. So I have a lot of memories of hot drinks at church. When I was a kid, the church met in a building called Trussler Hall, and I still remember one or two adults in this room telling me off for having tea after church with 5 or 6 sugars. So we’ve done hot drinks for a while. When Tony came to THCC, one of the first things he did was switch us from instant coffee to the other kind. He went on sabbatical in January. Within weeks, the coffee urn at Husk had broken and it stayed broken the whole time he was away, and then was somehow fixed the week before he came back.
Imagine how it was for Nehemiah. Having gone through this great trial with the people, fighting off criticism and nay-sayers, building the wall, and more importantly rebuilding the faith. And then he gets re-called back to the palace, and when he comes back to Jerusalem everything has slidden.
Next time Ayo will talk about the restlessness that these people find themselves in, but I think their restlessness comes from their rootlessness. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know who their god is. They’re facing criticism on one side, and temptations to compromise on the other.
Do we ever feel like that? We’ve made a decision - we’re going to go after God. But there’s temptation over here, and pressure coming from there. And no-one is watching…
Nehemiah comes back, and restores order. He puts people in charge, and the storerooms start filling up with the right stuff. But there’s a hint of sadness in Nehemiah’s prayer:
14 Remember me for this, my God, and do not blot out what I have so faithfully done for the house of my God and its services.
It’s almost as if he senses that if he was to go again, maybe the people wouldn’t hold on.
Except we know that somehow they did. Tat somehow by the time that Jesus was born there was still these people called Jews, living and worshipping in that same land, in that same city. And they were reading that same book. So God answered that prayer.
Scene 3 (vv. 23-31)
Scene 3 (vv. 23-31)
Language loss
Here’s where Nehemiah gets really ruthless. He has come back, and despite what ahs happened earlier, people are still intermarrying with peopel who worshp other gods. I wonder if you picked up on verse 24:
24 Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and did not know how to speak the language of Judah.
In the first scene the issue was foreign gods. Here we see the risk of people not understanding their own language, and that means that their children won’t understand the words of God. Nehemiah reminds them of Solomon, who was so great, and fell so far because his many wives worshipped other gods and the kingdom was divided.
Again, Nehemiah cleans up. But first, we see a different kind of ruthlessness as he doesn’t just use words, but beats some of them and pulls out their hair!
These passages show what happens to a rootless and restless people when a charismatic leader goes away.
These passages show us a Ruthless Nehemiah.
But they also point forward to a different kind of leader in Jerusalem who wasn’t ruthless.
Jesus was not ruthless, either in his ancestry, nor in his attitude.
Ruth was in his lineage. Matthew 1:5 tells us that Ruth was the mother of Obed, the father of Jesse, the father of King David.
And in his attitude, Jesus was not ruthless. We don’t have records of him being violent with people. He tore up the temple when it was being exploited, but taught against retaliatory violence in his sermons, and then on the night that he was betrayed he took blows again and again without retaliating. (point forward to the Revelation letters and Luke series - in both, we will see his patience with sinners and his inclusivity of the marginalised).
Nehemiah was a good leader, maybe even one of the best examples we have in the Old Testament. But he was ruthless. Jesus is not.
And Nehemiah was absent. This wasn’t his fault. He was a man under orders, and if the king called, he had to go. But his absence meant the people felt the pressure over here and the temptation over there, and they backslid.
Has Jesus left us?
In one sense, yes. John’s gospel gives us some insight into long talks Jesus had with his followers the night before he was crucified. He told them he would be going away. But he promised not to leave them alone. Remember that Nehemiah means God is comforter? Jesus said that the Holy Spirit of God would be our comforter. Jesus says this:
25 “All this I have spoken while still with you.
26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
We are not left to apply Jesus’ teaching without help.
So we’re almost at the end of Nehemiah. I’ve come to the last verse, though next week Ayo will be circling back to the middle section of this chapter. And where does it leave us?
A small, ruined city, with a slightly tumbledown temple. Powerful enemies all around, and even some within. At the mercy and condescension of a great Empire in the East, and about to be caught between them and an even greater empire arising in the West. There’s a kernel of faith, a remnant who hold on to the books, and the worship, and the language.
Ultimately, Nehemiah ends dis-satisfactorily. he has done so much, but he will go to his grave not knowing whether or not it has been enough. This book leaves us waiting for Jesus. This man whose name means God is comforter reminds us that we are in the presence of a comforter God who will never leave us.