Nehemiah 13
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Text: Nehemiah 13:1–14
Series: Rise Up and Build
Introduction
Nehemiah 12 feels like the place where the book ought to end.
The walls are rebuilt. The gates are hung. The people have returned to the Word. There has been confession, covenant, worship, sacrifice, singing, and rejoicing.
Nehemiah 12:43 says:
“Also that day they offered great sacrifices, and rejoiced: for God had made them rejoice with great joy…”
That sounds like an ending.
If this were a movie, the music would swell, the camera would pull back over Jerusalem, and the credits would roll.
But God gives us another chapter.
And I am glad He does, because chapter 13 tells us something chapter 12 cannot:
It is one thing to rebuild. It is another thing to keep from losing what you rebuilt.
You can rebuild your marriage and then neglect it.
You can get your finances in order and then drift back into old habits.
You can get your family faithfully attending church and then slowly begin allowing everything else to crowd it out.
You can rebuild your prayer life and six months later realize you hardly pray anymore.
You can get victory over something that has controlled you for years and then gradually begin making room for it again.
That is Nehemiah 13.
Nehemiah had left Jerusalem and returned to King Artaxerxes. When he eventually came back, he discovered that some of the very things they had committed themselves to had begun to unravel.
And perhaps the most shocking example was found inside the house of God.
Eliashib had actually prepared a room in the temple for Tobiah.
The enemy who had opposed the building of the wall now had a room inside the temple.
Tobiah could not stop the wall from being built.
So eventually he simply moved in.
There is a warning here for every Christian:
The enemy does not have to destroy everything in your life if you will simply give him a room.
The great question at the end of this series is not merely:
What have you rebuilt?
The question is:
What are you going to do to protect what God has rebuilt?
I. Restoring Holiness Requires Cleansing
Nehemiah 13:4–9
Eliashib had prepared “a great chamber” for Tobiah.
This was not an insignificant corner. This was space that had previously been devoted to the things of God.
Nehemiah returned, saw what had happened, and his response was immediate:
And it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah out of the chamber.
Nehemiah did not negotiate with Tobiah’s furniture.
He did not organize it.
He did not move it to another shelf.
He threw it out.
Then verse 9 says:
“Then I commanded, and they cleansed the chambers…”
There are times when restoring holiness requires cleansing.
A. Identify what has been given room
That is where this becomes painfully practical.
What have I allowed into my life that would have shocked me five years ago?
What have I slowly gotten comfortable with?
What am I watching?
What am I listening to?
What am I saying?
What conversations have become normal?
What relationship has crossed boundaries?
What am I doing on my phone that I would immediately close if somebody walked into the room?
What bitterness have I given a room?
What fantasy have I given a room?
What habit have I given a room?
What compromise have I renamed so that I don’t have to call it sin?
Sometimes we imagine spiritual collapse happens dramatically.
Usually it does not.
Usually we just give something a room.
A little entertainment.
A little flirting.
A little dishonesty.
A little bitterness.
A little secret.
A little compromise.
And eventually something that once stood outside opposing us is comfortably living inside us.
B. Call it what God calls it
Verse 8 says:
“And it grieved me sore…”
Nehemiah had not learned to live comfortably with what should never have been there.
One of the most dangerous things that can happen to a Christian is not that he sins.
It is that sin stops bothering him.
We learn to rename things.
Greed becomes ambition.
Gossip becomes concern.
Bitterness becomes discernment.
Lust becomes attraction.
Worldliness becomes relevance.
Neglect becomes busyness.
Pride becomes confidence.
And before anything can be cleansed, we have to become willing to call wrong wrong again.
C. Get it out
There are some things you cannot manage.
You cannot put a filter on them.
You cannot establish reasonable boundaries around them.
You cannot keep them around and simply promise to do better.
Nehemiah “cast forth all the household stuff of Tobiah.”
There may be something you need to delete.
Something you need to cancel.
Something you need to throw away.
Someone you need to stop privately communicating with.
Some place you need to quit going.
Some account you need to close.
Some habit you need to confess.
Holiness sometimes looks remarkably unspiritual.
Sometimes holiness is deleting a phone number.
Sometimes holiness is turning the television off.
Sometimes holiness is walking out of a conversation.
Sometimes holiness is handing somebody else the password.
Sometimes holiness is saying:
“This has had a room in my life long enough.”
Come clean. Call it wrong. Cast it out.
II. Restoring Holiness Requires Replacing Priorities
Nehemiah 13:10–12
Nehemiah then discovered another problem.
“And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them…” — Nehemiah 13:10
The Levites had returned to their fields because the people had stopped providing for the work of God.
Notice the progression.
Tobiah had been given the room that had previously been used for storing the offerings.
Once something else occupied the space that belonged to God, the things of God began to suffer.
That still happens.
Your schedule only has so much room.
Your heart only has so much attention.
Your family only has so many evenings.
Your paycheck only goes so far.
Your mind only has so much capacity.
Something will occupy those spaces.
And when the wrong things are given priority, the things of God are usually not formally rejected.
They are simply crowded out.
Nobody wakes up Monday morning and says:
“I think I will become spiritually cold this year.”
It happens much more ordinarily than that.
Prayer gets crowded out.
Bible reading gets crowded out.
Church gets crowded out.
Giving gets crowded out.
Serving gets crowded out.
Family worship gets crowded out.
Fellowship gets crowded out.
And eventually we wonder:
“What happened to me spiritually?”
Nehemiah asks in verse 11:
“Why is the house of God forsaken?”
That is a penetrating question.
Maybe we should occasionally ask ourselves:
What part of my spiritual life have I forsaken?
A. Get back to the Book
Not merely reading enough chapters to say you did it.
Get back to opening the Bible expecting God to correct you.
Get back to reading slowly enough to hear it.
Get back to letting Scripture confront your attitudes, decisions, priorities, marriage, money, speech, and private life.
B. Get back to prayer
Not merely emergency prayer.
Not merely praying before meals.
Get back to talking with God.
Get back to confession.
Get back to thanksgiving.
Get back to intercession.
Get back to shutting everything else off and getting alone with God.
C. Get back to the things that keep your heart warm
You probably already know what they are.
There were habits present when you were spiritually strong that are missing now.
Maybe you used to arrive at church ready to worship rather than rushing in distracted.
Maybe you used to take notes during preaching.
Maybe you used to pray with your spouse.
Maybe you used to talk about spiritual things with your children.
Maybe you used to give faithfully.
Maybe you used to serve somewhere.
Maybe you used to memorize Scripture.
Maybe you used to have Christians around you who sharpened you.
And somewhere along the way, you stopped.
Restoration may not require discovering something new.
It may simply require returning to something you abandoned.
“Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries.” — Nehemiah 13:12
They put back what belonged there.
That is restoration.
Remove what does not belong, and restore what does.
III. Restoring Holiness Requires Establishing the Long-Term
Nehemiah 13:13–14
Nehemiah could have cleaned the room and stopped.
He could have restored the offerings and stopped.
But he knew something about human nature.
If nothing changes structurally, eventually you will be right back where you started.
So verse 13 says:
“And I made treasurers over the treasuries…”
Nehemiah established trustworthy men who would make sure the problem did not simply return after he left.
He created accountability.
He built something that could last.
There is an important lesson here:
Good intentions are not a plan for holiness.
“I’ll never do that again” is not a plan.
“I’ll start reading my Bible again” is not a plan.
“We need to get our family back in church” is not a plan.
“I need to spend less time on my phone” is not a plan.
“I need to fix my marriage” is not a plan.
Those may be sincere intentions.
But long-term holiness requires us to establish some things.
A. Establish boundaries
If something repeatedly pulls you away from God, quit trusting yourself around it.
Set a boundary.
Jesus said:
“And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee…” — Matthew 5:29
Christ was describing a radical willingness to remove whatever continually leads us toward sin.
There should be places I will not go.
Things I will not watch.
Conversations I will not participate in.
Relationships I will not allow to become inappropriate.
Times and situations in which I know I am vulnerable and therefore establish boundaries beforehand.
A fence built before temptation is much more useful than regret afterward.
B. Establish accountability
Sin grows extraordinarily well in secrecy.
James 5:16 says:
“Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed.”
Some Christians desperately need another mature Christian who knows the truth.
Not the Sunday version.
The truth.
Someone who can ask:
“How are you really doing?”
“Are you still staying away from that?”
“How is your marriage?”
“What have you been looking at?”
“Are you keeping your commitment?”
“Did you do what you said you were going to do?”
That is one reason God gave us the church.
Christianity was never designed to be lived anonymously.
We need preaching.
We need fellowship.
We need correction.
We need encouragement.
We need people who notice when we are drifting.
C. Establish submission
Ultimately holiness requires surrender to God.
Not merely:
“What can I get away with?”
But:
“Lord, what would please You?”
Romans 12:1 says:
“I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”
The Christian life cannot be lived successfully while continually negotiating the terms of surrender.
At some point I must say:
“Lord, this belongs to You.”
My body belongs to You.
My marriage belongs to You.
My phone belongs to You.
My money belongs to You.
My entertainment belongs to You.
My relationships belong to You.
My private life belongs to You.
My future belongs to You.
Conclusion: Protect What God Has Rebuilt
We started this series standing in the rubble.
Nehemiah looked at broken walls, burned gates, and a discouraged people.
And the challenge was:
“Come, and let us build up the wall of Jerusalem…” — Nehemiah 2:17
And they built.
But the book does not end with Nehemiah standing on top of the wall admiring what they accomplished.
It ends with Nehemiah fighting to preserve what had been restored.
Maybe that is exactly where some of us are.
God has done something in you.
Don’t lose it.
God restored something in your marriage.
Guard it.
God gave you victory over something.
Guard it.
God got your family moving spiritually again.
Guard it.
God restored your appetite for His Word.
Guard it.
God convicted you about your priorities.
Guard it.
God helped you rebuild.
Now protect what He rebuilt.
Because Tobiah is always looking for a room.
And perhaps the question with which this entire series should end is not:
“Did you build the wall?”
But:
“What have you allowed back inside?”
Maybe tonight there is a room that needs cleaned out.
Maybe there is a priority that needs put back where it belongs.
Maybe there is a boundary that needs established.
Maybe there is a Christian you need to talk to.
Maybe there is something you need to confess.
Don’t merely leave church saying:
“I need to do better.”
Name it.
Confess it.
Remove it.
Replace it.
Guard it.
And then pray the prayer Nehemiah prayed:
“Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.” — Nehemiah 13:14
Rise up and build.
And when God has helped you build—
don’t give the enemy a room in what God restored.
