The Ongoing Need For Correction And Repentance

Do you see how decisive Nehemiah was? He returned to Jerusalem in 445 bc, and in 52 days they rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. He returned again after some time had passed, found this Ammonite in the temple, and he cleansed the temple. Kidner writes, “If on his first visit he had been a whirlwind, on his second he was all fire and earthquake to a city that had settled down in his absence to a comfortable compromise with the gentile world” (ibid., 129).

Nehemiah would have none of the compromise.

In addition to the defiling presence of Tobiah in the chambers of the temple complex, which displaced necessary items for worship, in 13:10 Nehemiah relates how he found that the Levites were not being supported, with the result that they were looking to their own livelihoods. Imagine the Levites arriving in Jerusalem, and where their supplies are supposed to be, an Ammonite thug dwells. They saw that they were not being supported, so they went about their own business. The worship of God stopped, and the people were all taking care of themselves. Kidner says, “There had been great resolves of good stewardship in the ‘firm covenant’ of chapter 10, promising that ‘We will not neglect the house of our God’ (10:39); but by now the fine words were feeding nobody” (ibid., 130).

220Nehemiah 13:11 presents us with the first of three times Nehemiah will say the words, “I rebuked”:

Nehemiah was a righteously confrontational person.

If you see bad behavior in the lives of those with whom you are in covenant in your church, you should confront them. If you see ways that people are not living out and upholding the covenant that they signed, you should confront them. You don’t have to do what Nehemiah does, but you can be a channel of God’s love for His people. Be a conduit of God’s kindness.

Nehemiah states in 13:11, “Therefore, I rebuked the officials, saying, ‘Why has the house of God been neglected?’” I think their reply to this question would go something like this: The house of God is neglected because we need things that Tobiah has, and we’re providing for Tobiah so that Tobiah will provide for us. Nehemiah’s answer to that would no doubt be: the Lord has things that you need, and you need to provide for the worship of the Lord and trust Him to provide for you.

Nehemiah continues in verse 11, “I gathered the Levites and singers together and stationed them at their posts.” Nehemiah set things right, in response to which, we see in verse 12, “Then all Judah brought a tenth of the grain, new wine, and oil into the storehouses.” These storehouses were being neglected, and Tobiah the Ammonite occupied one of those chambers. He was not in the least concerned with Yahweh or His law. 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.

Nehemiah relates in verse 13,

Nehemiah put things in place so that what needed to happen would happen justly, fairly, according to the law of Moses.

221Nehemiah then prayed in 13:14, “Remember me for this, my God, and don’t erase the deeds of faithful love I have done for the house of my God and for its services.” Nehemiah confronted, and he didn’t look back with regret, thinking maybe that should have been handled differently. No, he entrusted himself to the Lord. Nehemiah did not want the steadfast loyal love he had displayed to the Lord to be erased. He wanted it remembered. Why would someone pray such a thing? I think he wanted these things remembered because he was looking forward to a final evaluation. I think we see a hope here that goes beyond this life. Nehemiah wanted these things remembered before God on the day of judgment.

Nehemiah 13:15-22

Having cleansed the temple, Nehemiah will enforce the Sabbath. Nehemiah tells us in 13:15,

We might be inclined to think that Nehemiah was moving in a legalistic direction, that he might have been more concerned with the law than necessary. But if we understand the way the Sabbath was intended to function, we won’t say such things.

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, therefore, is not legalistic. This concern for the Sabbath, rather, is for the good of the people. The concern for the Sabbath is for the people to know God.

I have previously said that I don’t think we are bound to obey the Sabbath, but I do think there is a principle here that is valuable for us: 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 222coffee. 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?

I’m not prescribing a law, but I would invite you to seek to apply a Sabbath-kind of boundary in your life. Maybe that means that when you know what your slot of time is to read the Bible, you say to yourself, “I’m not going to read the Bible anywhere near the computer.” Or, “I’m not going to read the Bible with my phone at hand, because I don’t want to be wondering whether someone posted something funny on Twitter.”

What we want to do is sit still and concentrate on the Bible. We have to be vigorous, or this culture is going to suck away all the moments we have to read the Scriptures and pray and meditate.

Nehemiah upheld the Sabbath, and he enforced it in 13:15-22. At the end of verse 22 he prayed again (my trans.), “Remember this for me also, my God, and pity me according to the greatness of Your steadfast love.” Nehemiah was clearly not piling up works that would stand him right before God. Nehemiah asked for the greatness of God’s steadfast love, God’s mercy, to be what resulted from him being pitied.

So if you’re at all inclined to think that to be right before God you must do what is pleasing before Him, I first want to say to you, “No, there is something that has been done for you. Jesus died on that cross to satisfy the wrath of God so that you can rest, so that you can have His righteousness, so that when you stand before God the righteousness of Christ is your righteousness.”

If in response to that you want to do what’s right before God, praise the Lord! Amen! Hallelujah! But you don’t do what’s right before God to be accepted. You do what’s right before Him as an act of steadfast love in response to the steadfast love He showed you when He spared you.

Nehemiah cleansed the temple and enforced the Sabbath; next he will cleanse the people.

Nehemiah 13:23-29

In 13:23 Nehemiah writes, “In those days I also saw Jews who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.” These are the very people the Israelites were to separate from in 13:1-3. We see why Israel needed to be separate from the nations around them in verse 24: “Half 223of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples but could not speak Hebrew.” Don’t misunderstand this. If you’re familiar with French people, you know that the French love their language. Modern Israelis love Hebrew, but there is more than nationalistic pride at stake in Nehemiah 13:24. What’s 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 separation is not enforced, as Kidner says, “A single generation’s compromise could undo the work of centuries,” because they could lose access to the Scriptures. Kidner also notes that the loss of the Hebrew language would mean “a steady erosion of Israelite identity at the level of all thinking and expression” (Ezra and Nehemiah, 131). We think in terms that are given to us by our language. The Israelite people’s language fund is stockpiled by the Bible, so they think and express themselves in the language of the Scriptures. If they lose their language, they lose not only their identity but biblical ways of conceptualizing the world.

Incidentally, this consideration also argues for a more literal Bible translation philosophy, because literal translations will result in people thinking and expressing themselves in terms and categories that are actually found in the Scriptures not just in the culture into which the Scriptures are going.

Nehemiah 13:25 is a verse that could cause people problems: “I rebuked them, cursed them.” Don’t misunderstand—we should not think of Nehemiah hurling expletives at people. No, he was probably calling down the curses of the covenant. He was not cursing them in the sense of using foul language but in the sense of speaking over them the curses God pronounced over such behavior. Nehemiah continues, he “beat some of their men, and pulled out their hair.” Again, we should not think of Nehemiah flying off the handle, losing control in his rage. 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.

224Nehemiah continues in verse 25,

The reason is then given in verse 26:

The statement that Solomon was loved by God is probably a reference to Nathan naming him Jedidiah, which means “beloved of Yahweh” (2 Sam 12:25). 1 Kings 11 tells us how the foreign wives led Solomon into idolatry.

The extent of the problem of intermarriage can be seen in Nehemiah 13:28: “Even one of the sons of Jehoiada, son of Eliashib the high priest, had become a son-in-law to Sanballat the Horonite.” This means that Israel’s two enemies that we have seen throughout the book of Nehemiah—Tobiah and Sanballat—are both married into the family of the high priest. Nehemiah tells us what he did about this: “So I drove him away from me.” Nehemiah had to cleanse the people.

Nehemiah again prayed in verse 29, “Remember them, my God, for defiling the priesthood as well as the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.” When these people were confronted, they did not repent. Nehemiah prayed that God would remember them. He did not himself visit the final measure of God’s wrath but left room for it. 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.

Nehemiah 13:30-31

Nehemiah summarized his work, and what is interesting here is what he didn’t mention. We remember Nehemiah for rebuilding the walls, but that’s not what he mentioned here at the end of his book. When he summarized his work, he said, “So I purified them from everything foreign.” Now the walls are certainly part of this as they enable the people 225to 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 continues, “... and assigned specific duties to each of the priests and Levites. I also arranged for the donation of wood at the appointed times and for the firstfruits.” 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. Back in Nehemiah 1, when he got the report about the state of Jerusalem—broken down walls, fire-scorched gates—he responded to that with prayer. Now his last words in the book are, “Remember me, O my God, for good” (my trans.).

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.

There will come a day when God’s people no longer need to be summoned to repent, when we will no longer need correction. Between now and then, 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.