Dealing With Sin, Again!

Sin Cycle

Ever since the Garden of Eden, sin has been a problem for humankind.

Once Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the forbidden tree, every generation since has struggled with the question,

“Who is going to rule?” God or Me

That struggle is an ongoing one we face everyday.

Sin cycle in Judges

Rest, Rebellion, Retribution, Restoration, Rest

Cycle appears throughout the scripture

In the New Testament, Paul tells that due to sin, he does things he doesn’t want to do and does not do the things he wants to do.

Do you ever feel that way?

You get victory over sin, everything is fine and you feel so close to God.

Then that temptation comes along, you fight it at first, then you think “Oh, just one time”.

Then before you know it, you’re full fledged into it.

There always seems to be someone or something — a scripture passage you read or hear or friend — to confront you.

How do you respond?

What about the times you have had to confront others? Has that happened?

We are humans.

That means confrontation will always be necessary.

For us believers confrontations should result in humble repentance, sincere apologies, and strengthened relationships.

God show merciful love by causing the sin of His people to be confronted, correcting them and leading them to repentance.

Nehemiah 13 Context

In Nehemiah 1–6 the returnees rebuilt the wall, then in chapters 7–13 Ezra and Nehemiah worked to rebuild the people.

In chapter 7 Israelite identity was established on the basis of genealogical descent.

Then in Nehemiah 8 Ezra read the law, which convicted the people of their sin.

They confessed and repented of sin and cried out for mercy in chapter 9.

Then in chapter 10 the people engaged in a firm covenant (“binding agreement” in 9:38).

There were three specific stipulations of that covenant.

The first was stated in verse 30: “We will not give our daughters in marriage to the surrounding peoples and will not take their daughters as wives for our sons.”

Once again, this was not a racial issue; this was a problem of idolatry.

The second commitment was stated in verse 31: “When the surrounding peoples bring merchandise or any kind of grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day.”

The third commitment had to do with the upkeep of the temple (verses 32-39).

Reviewing these three commitments sets us up for the way that the people will break all three aspects of chapter 10’s firm covenant in chapter 13.

These events take place some time later, not sure how long, but maybe 12 years later.

God’s Word Nehemiah 13:1-3

Again we see the importance of God’s word in our daily lives.

The Book of Moses was read publicly to the people

They are reading Scripture, and the text in question was probably Deuteronomy 23:3-6.

God forbade acceptance of the Ammonites and Moabites, the descendants of Lot through incest with his daughters (Gen. 19:30–38) and the inveterate enemies of God’s people.

This prohibition was not the expression of revenge or racial prejudice but a spiritual safeguard for God’s covenant race.

In Numbers 22, the Ammonites and Moabites refused to help and they hired Balaam to curse Israel as Israel made their way from Egypt to the land of promise.

After God used that to bless Israel, they then led Israel to sin through adultery and prostitution.

The reading of God’s word was powerful because it led to a change in behavior of the hearers.

They excluded from Israel all who were of foreign descent.

Sound familiar? The same thing happened 30 years before and Ezra led in the reforms.

It’s easy to get discouraged when you, like them, commit the same sin again.

But there is some encouragement here.

It’s encouraging to know that just as sin persists in our lives, sin persisted in the lives of these people in the Bible, so it’s not new.

As you struggle with persistent sin, it is a cause for encouragement because God has not given you over to it. God continues to convict you, continues to show you kindness by leading you to repentance, just as He did with these Israelites.

That is the evidence of grace in the ongoing impulse to repent you have.

Cleansing of the Temple Nehemiah 13:4-14

Remember one of the three specific promises was to take care of the temple

Do you remember Tobiah, he was one of Nehemiah’s main opponents in rebuilding the wall.

Guess what? Tobiah is a now a relative of Eliashib the high priest who was in charge of the temple.

Tobiah was an Ammonite and someone in Eliashib’s household had intermarried into the line of Tobiah - another of the three.

As a result Eliashib’s true character asserted itself when he provided the wicked Tobiah ‘with a large room’ (13:5)

in the temple for his personal use.

This partiality towards Tobiah was reprehensible because he was an official of the banned race of the Ammonites (2:10, 19), and because the room was required to store items used in the temple worship and the contributions given for the upkeep of the Levites and priests - another of the three.

This is a physical picture of spiritual reality.

Because Israel had refused to be ruled by Yahweh, an Ammonite thug was ruling them.

Because Israel had refused to separate itself from the idolaters of the land and commit to the worship of Yahweh, an Ammonite strongman took up residence in the house of God.

Tobiah evidently had ability to influence, coerce, pull strings, and manipulate with the result that he gained quarters in the temple complex.

He was connected to the high priest. He had serious influence.

How did Nehemiah take of the temple

He turned Tobiah out of the the temple verses 6-9

One theologian put this way, “Nehemiah stormed in as violently as, one day, his Master would.” referring to Jesus cleansing the temple.

He acted decisively because he believed that God’s law must be obeyed whatever the cost.

He reproved the officials for their neglected duties verses 10-11

He didn’t point his fingers at the Levites and singers who had gone back to their farms to survive since Tobiah moved into the storerooms

He blamed the officials or the nobles for them not fulfilling their duties.

Then, He appointed trustworthy men for the distribution of the supplies verses 12-13

He set things right once again

When the sin was confronted, and when the Levites were put in their stations, revival broke out.

The revival can be seen in the supplies necessary for sustaining the worship of God being brought into the storehouses.

Then in verse 14 Nehemiah entrusted himself to the Lord in prayer

Enforces the Sabbath Nehemiah 13:15-22

After cleansing the temple, he turned to making sure the people honored the Sabbath as God prescribed.

The Sabbath was intended to be a protected space in which Israel could meditate on the Bible and rehearse the mercies of God.

The Sabbath was for worship.

The Sabbath was to be hallowed, made holy, so that people could enjoy their God.

This concern for the Sabbath is good for the people.

It is a concern for the people to know God.

For us there is a principle here that is valuable: the principle of having boundaries around our time so that we can sit and read the Bible and meditate.

We live in a world full of electronic toys, and there’s always something new coming across our social media outlets.

Or maybe an email has arrived.

Maybe I should grab a cup of coffee.

There are all these distractions that eat away at the seconds and moments, and suddenly the window we had to read the Bible has closed.

Ask yourself this: Am I able to sit still over the Word of God and read it slowly and meditate on it?

Nehemiah again asked for the greatness of God’s steadfast love, God’s mercy to be compassionate on him.

Cleanses the People Nehemiah 13:23-29

Why is important for Nehemiah to worry about who married who?

He sees that some Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

These are the people they were to be separate from.

What’s the big deal?

What is at stake here is the Bible.

Holy Scripture is in the language of Judah.

They need to be able to speak Hebrew so that they can read the Scriptures.

That’s why this matters.

This isn’t merely linguistic elitism or a concern for national identity.

If the people lose their language, they lose not only their identity but the biblical ways of see the world.

They way they think and express themselves in the language of the Scriptures

Thus the intermarriage with kids not knowing the language is serious business.

They were in danger of losing their language in one generation and with that goes their place as God’s people.

So Nehemiah called down curses of the covenant on them.

He pulled hair out of their beards and beat them.

This not flying off in a rage, but was righteous anger and punishment.

This was probably Nehemiah bringing prescribed punishments to bear.

A beating is less than a stoning, but a stoning is prescribed in some instances.

When he pulled out their hair, he most likely wasn’t just grabbing people at random and yanking their hair out.

This again was probably a public shaming ritual.

This was likely a formal ceremony where people were disciplined in this way to rebuke them for their shameful conduct

Again the issue of intermarriage comes to light because not did Tobiah marry into the high priest family.

Sanballat also married into the family too.

So he drove them all away including the priest.

This was necessary because there were strict rules for priests in whom they could marry.

Nehemiah cleansed the people, but he left room for God’s wrath.

He did not want unrepentant sin to go unavenged.

They desecrated the priesthood.

Nehemiah seems to be asking God to remember their sin on the day of judgment.

Ending in Prayer Nehemiah 13:30-31

He summarizes all of his work but doesn’t mention the building of the wall

The walls are certainly a part part of this as they enable the people to have a safe place in which to pursue purity, but what Nehemiah seems to be focused on here pertains to the worship of God.

He assigns the priests and Levites to their roles once again.

Nehemiah seems to view the reestablishment of the worship of God in Jerusalem as his major accomplishment, not merely the project of rebuilding the walls.

The book of Nehemiah begins and ends with prayer.

Nehemiah was a man of prayer.

He began by calling on the Lord to do what He had promised to do for Jerusalem.

He ended by calling on the Lord to remember him for good.

Notice who Nehemiah is asking to remember him: not people but God.

His final concern was to be remembered with favor by God

Our Takeaway

As we move to reset our identity in our community as we revitalize our church.

Especially as we think of our future post pandemic

Trying to figure out what church will be like

We need to remember that sin will creep into our midst if we are vigilant

The only way that we are going to be able to love each other and get along in harmonious, healthy, happy relationships is for us to confront sin and respond in humility and repentance when confronted.

That’s the only way to have good relationships—until the day, that hoped for day, when we are made like the One for whom we long.

So, let’s follow Nehemiah’s example by praying for ourselves, each other, and our church.

Let’s pray