Sermon Tone Analysis

The Scriptures speaks of both God and Satan, trying or testing people out to see what is in them,

testing them as students are tested in school tests.

We read that Jesus was tempted by the devil (), and that God tested Abraham (),

and the truth is, that in every testing situation

both Satan and God are involved.

God tests us to bring forth excellence in discipleship, as Moses explained to the Israelites at the close of the wilderness wanderings:

“Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.…

He gave you manna … to humble and to test you”—to drill you, that is, in grateful, confident, disciplined, submissive reliance on himself

—“so that in the end it might go well with you” (, ).

Satan, by contrast, tests us with a view to our ruin and destruction, as appears from Paul’s reason for sending Timothy to strengthen and encourage the harassed Thessalonian Christians:

— 2 and sent Timothy, our brother and minister of God, and our fellow laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you and encourage you concerning your faith, 3 that no one should be shaken by these afflictions; for you yourselves know that we are appointed to this. 4 For, in fact, we told you before when we were with you that we would suffer tribulation, just as it happened, and you know. 5 For this reason, when I could no longer endure it, I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter had tempted you, and our labor might be in vain.

Satan was, of course, with the Israelites in the desert,

laboring to ensnare them in unbelief and lawlessness of various kinds, and

often succeeding in his purpose, in the short term at least;

and God was with the Thessalonians in the furnace, disciplining them for their good,

that they might share his holiness (see ).

Temptation is always two-sided in this way; so whenever we are conscious of Satan seeking to pull us down,

we should remind ourselves that God is present too

to keep us steady and to build us up through the harrowing experience.

That is something we must never forget.

But Satan is a hater, a wrecker, and a destroyer, and only when he is ruining God’s work in individuals and communities is he happy.

Earlier in Nehemiah’s account of opposition to the building of the walls

I suggested that it should be understood in terms of Satan’s hidden hand of hatred to the work of God,

and in the in the next two weeks we’ll study that out further.

In we saw Satan using three devices—psychological warfare, physical threats, and personal discouragement—to nullify Nehemiah’s rebuilding project.

In and 6 we shall see him, having failed so far, turning his attention to Nehemiah in a more direct way,

Incrimination

working to destroy him personally in the sense of so discrediting him

that his role as leader of God’s people in God’s work would be forfeited.

We shall watch Satan deploy four devices to this end: The first one we’ll see today is: ACCUSATION.

Nehemiah RECEIVES complaints leading to the ACCUSATION (5:1–5).

In chapter 4 the picture was of a community rallying and closing ranks under pressure; here,

however, the picture is of the same community coming apart at the seams

because of festering grievances among its members.

We hear of “a great outcry” in which wives—homemakers and mothers—joined with their husbands in protesting the way homes and families were being threatened (5:1).

It looks as if the public flare-up was sudden, although, as we shall see,

the matters of grievance were long-time running sores in people’s lives.

A sense of corporate grievance can travel through a community like wildfire once the initial complaints have broken surface,

and one imagines committees and demonstrations appearing as if from nowhere

to alert Nehemiah to this cluster of social problems that,

as a new arrival, he had not yet realized was there.

We are not told exactly when this happened, but it is natural to guess that it was something like a month into the rebuilding,

before the invasion threats had fully cleared,

while the rubble problem was still severely felt, and

before it was possible for those on the job to feel that the end of the work was in sight.

A new crisis at that time was the last thing Nehemiah needed, but under Satan’s skillful orchestrating hand

that was what he faced:

but under Satan’s skillful orchestrating hand that was what he faced:

the armed-camp conditions in the city,

plus the blood, toil, tears, and sweat of the labor on the walls,

had brought a variety of hostile feelings to a head, and now that they were out in the open

there was nothing for it

but to deal with the grievances as quickly and decisively as possible.

What was it all about?

Well... as stated to Nehemiah, the grievances were these:

Work on the walls was cutting out work in the fields.

If things went on as they were going, there would be no harvest next year, and then families would starve (5:2).

— For there were those who said, “We, our sons, and our daughters are many; therefore let us get grain, that we may eat and live.”

Famine conditions (one or more bad harvests in the past) had already obliged some of the people

to mortgage some of their land to raise money for seed-corn (5:3).

But that meant they were already desperately near to ruin; if now bad times continued and

they were unable to make repayments, there was no future for them, and soon they would lose their land entirely.

Loss of land in the manner just described, plus the need to pay interest on loans from other sources,

had compelled some families to sell their children into slavery,

as the only way they could now keep going (5:4–5).

The bottom line was that the rebuilding of the walls, on top of everything else, was ruining poor people and

should therefore be abandoned; and in any case the impoverished workers themselves would have to come off the job.

In all of this, however, as Nehemiah notes, the immediate object of hostility was not himself, but

“their Jewish brothers” (5:1, 5),

the wealthy folk (“nobles and officials,” 5:7)

who had lent the money, confiscated the lands, and were now cheerfully accepting girls from poor families as slaves and preparing to take the boys as well (5:5).

The bland readiness of the rich to take advantage of the poor, on a business-is-business basis, and

to deal with them in a way that left them poorer and unhappier than before had long provoked resentment.

It was this, basically, that was now breaking surface, and it had to be dealt with.

Legally, nothing was amiss; but morally, the behavior of the well-heeled was callous exploitation in a community that God had called to live in brotherhood,

by a principle of loving your neighbor- (see ), and it is very much to Nehemiah’s credit

that when the facts were laid before him he was shocked and furious and resolved to do something about it (5:6–7).

This takes us to the next section.

Nehemiah’s RESPONSE to the ACCUSATION (5:6–13).

Nehemiah’s anger at the victimizing of the poor was like the anger of the Lord Jesus at the trading in the temple—

not the sinful anger of one whose personal plans were being thwarted, but

an agonized sense of outrage at behavior that was against their behavior, which was:

ungodly in its nature and

abusive of others in its effect.

His anger led him to think hard (5:7a)—and certainly, as we know Nehemiah, prayerfully about what he should do.

1.

He confronts the nobles (5:7–8)

After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and rulers, and said to them, “Each of you is exacting usury from his brother.”

So I called a great assembly against them.

8 And I said to them, “According to our ability we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nations.

Now indeed, will you even sell your brethren?

Or should they be sold to us?” Then they were silenced and found nothing to say.

Nehemiah did not flinch from the unpleasant task of confronting the nobles with their sin.

Their transgression against God was notorious; therefore he convened ‘a large meeting to deal with them’ (5:7).

There was really only one option—namely, to take the bull by the horns, and this Nehemiah did.

He accused the wealthy to their face of “exacting usury from your own countrymen” (5:7)—that is, arranging things for the sole purpose of making money out of them (commentators and translators hem and haw here, but this is clearly the heart of the meaning)—and, said Nehemiah, that has got to stop.

He formally indicted these moneymen at a public meeting that he required them to attend (5:7b–8).

There he made a speech that said two things, as follows:

Nehemiah emphasized the enormity of the nobles’ wickedness in two ways:

firstly he accused them of exploiting their ‘own countrymen … our Jewish brothers’;

Second, the impoverishing of the already poor must cease and must be replaced by positive brotherly generosity.