We are getting close to the end of our foundation series. Today we are picking up in chapter 10 of Nehemiah starting with verse 8: Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons and their daughters, all those who had knowledge and understanding, 29are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses, God's servant, and to keep and to observe all the commandments of GOD our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes; 30and that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.
I want to make a couple of comments about this passage. When it says that they separated themselves from the peoples of the land it doesn’t mean that they didn’t have interaction with unbelievers or that they didn’t do trade with unbelievers. The fact that Deuteronomy tells us that they were able to charge interest to unbelievers tells us that it was ok for them to have relationships with unbelievers. Unbelief doesn’t wear off on you. Sin doesn’t come from outside you. It comes from the lust in your own heart that desires to leave the path of life. Notice how they are to be separating themselves from the unbelievers: they separate themselves TO the law of God.
You have to make a choice to stay on the path of life regardless what those around you do. You have to decide whether you want to live or die, be blessed or be cursed. That is the only separation that matters. If you have come to Christ and entered into communion with him then you have entered a covenant relationship with him and you have taken on yourself a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses, God's servant, and to keep and to do all the commandments of GOD our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes. I know that’s something that is not talked about in our day and age but that doesn’t mean it’s not true.
You have made a covenant with God and if you break that covenant you will receive covenant curses; Now, if you are truly in Christ and not pretending, then Paul tells us that those curses turn out to be the discipline you need to grow up. If you are only pretending in your faith then the covenant curses will lead to your destruction. God is not mocked and you will reap what you sow whether belief or unbelief, obedience or disobedience.
Notice that they also made a promise not to let their children marry unbelievers. Even if the potential spouse of your children goes to church you need to be involved enough in your kids’ lives to make sure that to the best of your ability you are aware of the spiritual condition of your children’s potential mates. I know that our culture doesn’t go for that kind of stuff and it makes us look weird but it is the eternal fate of their soul that you are concerned about as well as ensuring the best chance possible for your children to stay on the path of life.
Now comes the hard part of this chapter, at least for me: As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day; and we will forego the crops the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.
This is where the rubber hits the road. Are we willing to give up buying and selling on Sundays? Are we willing to stop going out to eat on Sundays? Are we willing to not go shopping or not go to the movies? Would that include not watching TV since tv stations are creating revenue by showing commercials? These are the things that we need to be asking ourselves. Are we serious about keeping the law? Notice here that it didn’t say pass laws to keep the unbelievers from being able to buy or sell on Sundays. If unbelievers want to break the law and come under curses, that’s their business. It is not our job to police the unbelievers.
It is our job to police our own hearts and I confess that I am guilty of this. What that means is more than anything is that I am guilty of poor planning. I’m not thinking ahead. I go out to eat after church because I haven’t planned to eat anything else. I buy gas on Sunday morning because I didn’t fill the tank on Saturday night. I buy a tea in the mornings because that’s what I always do and I don’t have anything at home or I don’t take the time to make it myself.
What not buying or selling anything on the day of rest means is that I have grow up a little bit more. I have to be responsible enough to prepare. That’s something I’m not good at.
Now keeping a day of rest doesn’t mean that you can’t do anything on the Sabbath it means you have to be prepared. If you want to go for a ride on the Sabbath then fill your tank with gas the day before and plan a trip you can take on one tank, or carry a spare tank with you. If you want to watch a movie then you need to rent it on Saturday. If you want to watch a game on Sunday maybe you should record it. I’ll be honest with you if we can commit ourselves to just not buying or selling on our day of rest then that’s a big thing in our culture.
We each need to decide if we want to walk on the path of life or not and well the Sabbath, a day of rest, a day of not buying or selling is one of the pieces of the path of life.
I want you to understand that breaking the Sabbath laws are the very thing that caused God to send Israel into Babylonian captivity; one year for every year they refused to have a sabbatical year.
You see I’m afraid that taking a day of rest is just the tip of the iceberg. God expects us to let the land rest for an entire year once every seventh year. But also in that seventh year he expects all debts to be forgiven. He expects everybody’s financial situation to be balanced once every seven years. I realize that the first response to such ideas is: are you crazy? I realize that we have all been raised in a country were business is Lord, where banking is Lord. We have been taught to trust the grocery store to always have food and therefore we can allow ourselves to only think short term. We have in fact for the most part learned to live two weeks at a time. We live from paycheck to paycheck. God expects us to plan. He expects us to think long term. He expects us to figure out a way to keep his laws.
You see all of this goes back to the idea of separating yourselves from the lawless, and the unbeliever. We are to live differently.
I’m not making any of this up. It’s right here in the word of God you have to decide if it is worth it to try to figure out how to do it or not. 99.99 percent of the church in the world, not just our country, has decided that God doesn’t mean what he says when it comes to these laws. God doesn’t know what he’s talking about, these things can’t be applied in the modern world.
You want to know something? Every generation since these laws were given has said the same thing. I’m not sure that these laws have ever been kept by the people of God. I know these people here in Jerusalem said they would keep them but it’s easy to forget what you promised to do in six years. I’m pretty sure we have no record in the bible of them keeping these laws. But that doesn’t mean I’m saying we don’t need to keep them rather I’m wondering what kind of blessings would God pour out on a people that actually figured out how to do this in their community and tried to implement it?
To say it can’t be done is to call God a liar. To say it could only be done in ancient times is to say that God didn’t know what the future was going to be like.
This really is where the rubber hits the road. We have to decide how to live. As I am working to develop a publishing company in my spare time am I going to be willing to figure into my business plan short term debt and a sabbatical rest for my employees and myself every 7 years? I’ve never thought like that before. What kind of trust does it take to take a year off from making money? What kind of forethought and planning does it take to live off of last year’s income trusting that God will provide double in the sixth year so you can be taken care of.
You see the real question in all of this is how much do you trust God to take care of you. The historical answer is NOT MUCH AT ALL.
As I’m thinking of all this I wonder about Jesus and the fact that he kept the law perfectly, How did he keep these laws in the midst of a culture that refused to do so? We have no record of that but unless this book is a lie he had to have kept these things to be perfectly obedient.
I’m not demanding anything of you this morning. I am simply laying out the word of God and leaving the choice to you what are you going to do with these verses? I guess I am asking something of you. I’m asking you to seek God and ask him how he would have you live. Again if you look back on the course of history God never forces people to keep the law but he does keep his covenant promises. Eventually cultures pay the price for disobedience. And because it is eventually and not immediately, more often than not, we are willing to lay up covenant curses for our great grandchildren because WE won’t have to suffer through them. Isn’t that what is going on now? We are reaping the destruction of our great grandfathers’ refusal to walk according to the word of God.
I will say this out loud, though I should probably just keep my mouth shut. Since I wrote this early in the week God has stirred my heart to be a guinea pig for you. I am going to try and commit myself to working out these Sabbath laws in my own life and in my publishing company. I’ve been racking my brain about how to do that the last few days and it has reminded me that the word of God, the law of God is meant to be applied to our lives. Well, that takes work, it takes thought, it takes effort and more than anything it is risky. To even think about going against the grain of what is considered normal is to risk ridicule and even harassment. But it’s time that somebody started taking the law of God and the promises of God seriously and I might as well put my head on the block.
So I’m trying to think through all of this and what it will look like fleshed out in the real world. I am going to put it together in a plan and when I get it done I will make copies for everyone and we can talk about it and discuss it. And as it gets implemented then we can talk about that too.
Let’s move on to the topic of providing for the body of Christ, the church starting in verse 32: We also placed ourselves under obligation to contribute yearly one third of a shekel for the service of the house of our God: 33for the showbread, for the continual grain offering, for the continual burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moon, for the appointed times, for the holy things and for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and all the work of the house of our God. Let’s put this in dollars so we can understand it better. The passage doesn’t say but to make it at the high end we will call this a shekel of gold. In doing some research I found that 3000 shekels were the equivalent of a single talent. In Babylon a talent was weighed at 67 pounds. In our day and age 67 pounds of God is worth just over a million and a half dollars. That kind of puts the parable of the talents in a new perspective doesn’t it?
What that means for this passage is that every family contributed about $172 dollars a year to provide for the needs of running the temple. Notice it wasn’t a percentage everybody paid the same flat rate unlike the tithe which was 10 percent.
Then to supply fuel for the priests and other workers in the temple they cast lots, or in our terms they drew straws and the one picked had the responsibility of supplying wood among the priests, the Levites and the people so that they might bring it to the house of our God, according to our fathers' households, at fixed times annually, to burn on the altar of the LORD our God, as it is written in the law; 35and that they might bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all the fruit of every tree to the house of the LORD annually, 36and bring to the house of our God the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks as it is written in the law, for the priests who are ministering in the house of our God. 37We will also bring the first of our dough, our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the new wine and the oil to the priests at the chambers of the house of our God, and the tithe of our ground to the Levites, for the Levites are they who receive the tithes in all the rural towns. 38The priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive tithes, and the Levites shall bring up the tenth of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. 39For the sons of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of the grain, the new wine and the oil to the chambers; there are the utensils of the sanctuary, the priests who are ministering, the gatekeepers and the singers Thus we will not neglect the house of our God.
I want to try and look at all of this from a new covenant perspective and I think that is something that often times gets over looked in our day and age. You see the old testament temple is a picture of the church – we are the temple of the Holy Spirit now. The people back then could not be the temple because the work of Christ had not been completed, sin had not been atoned for and the Holy Spirit could not and still cannot, abide in sinful man. With the coming of Christ and the completion of his work we are now able to be born again and cleansed from our sins so that the Holy Spirit can and does abide in all who believe. That is a wonderful thing but it should cause us to think differently about the Old Testament passages that refer to the temple.
The fact that we spend so much time and money building and maintaining physical church buildings tells me that we do not understand the concept of temple or the body of Christ in scripture. The building is not to be the center of all we do; the house of the Holy Spirit is to be the main focus. In the Old Testament they had to go where the Holy Spirit was. Now the Holy Spirit is with those who believe wherever they go. The building is no longer to be the focus of the people of God. It is simple a place where the people assemble to be ministered to and be equipped to do the work of advancing the kingdom of God in every area of life the other 6 days of the week: The building is no longer holy the people are.
The tithes and offerings then should be spent on the things that provide the spiritual care and the maintenance of body of Christ, the temple of the Holy Spirit: Solid teaching, preaching, those things that facilitate the building up of the body of Christ. Sure some of that goes to the buildings in which those things take place but the emphasis should not be on the physical facilities but on the true temple of the Holy Spirit: the body of Christ.
We are still called to tithe but the use of the tithe is different now than it was under the old covenant because things have changed. Perhaps it is time for us to rethink how we as a corporate body gather and spend money. What are the responsibilities of the church? I have heard some say they long for us to start a school. That would certainly be in keeping with the responsibilities of the church. Others have pondered the idea of an interest free bank for the congregation to help eliminate the slavery of usry in our midst. I think for too long we have gone with the status quo in determining what the church should do. But I don’t think the status quo has a clue what a biblically based church should look like and function like. We only know the traditions of the last 200 years.
I want to propose that each of us seek God in his word, read the books of the law, read the New Testament, and the prophets and see what causes God to bless his people and what causes him to discipline them. Then I would have us to ask Him to show us what that should look like in the real world in the 21st century. How can we be what god wants us to be in such great measure that he opens the flood gates and bless us by expanding his kingdom, his rule and reign in our midst. That’s what a kingdom is you know: a Kingdom exists anywhere that the King’s rule is respected and obeyed. I don’t know about you but I’m tired of living in the Kingdom of Satan everywhere I go. I want to live in the Kingdom of God, under his rule and reign in every area of my life because that is where real life is and I want to have the opportunity to live just a little bit before I die.
Let’s pray. Father, I am asking a lot of both you and the people that I am given charge over. I pray Lord that if the things that I am saying are not according to your will that you will silence me and not allow me to speak in this pulpit or anywhere else – take my voice away from me. I realize in asking that I am asking you to take my life if I am not pleasing to you and walking according to your will because words really are my life. I pray Lord that if you let me continue to speak that you would also change our hearts and attitudes so that we may fall in love with your law and obey it with our whole hearts. It is our only hope in this world. Pour out your gracious mercy and bring us to repentance. In Jesus’ power and authority I ask these things so be it. Amen.
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