Well, good to see everybody here this morning.
Take your Bibles and turn to Nehemiah chapter 13 if you
would. And I will be with you in just a
moment there. Let me share just a couple of
words with you as we get rolling.
What a great morning already. Yeah, after in the first
service, I after everything I just recognized, you know, you
were just don't mess this one up.
So see what we can do here in, in, in our time together.
So thankful for you. Listen, I don't know if you
realize this. You know what next week is?
It's Palm Sunday. That means Easter is 2 weeks
away, believe it or not. So I do hope that in your
worship guide, you'll pay close attention to the schedule for
the Easter activities coming up. And then at all the little
tables and out at the welcome center, there are buckets of
these invitation cards. Grab about 14 billion of them
and take them to everybody you know, because some of you people
know 14 billion people. You're that popular.
Anyway, it has the schedule on the back with AQR code and an
invite card for your neighbors, your friends.
Invite them here. Let's see if we can't pack out
the house 2 times over. But remember, we're going to
have a special prayer service. We're going to have a Good
Friday service. We'll celebrate the Lord's
Supper at the Good Friday service.
We have a sunrise service Easter Sunday morning, our two services
on Easter. I look forward to everybody
being here. And so please invite your
friends and see who we can come, who will come and be here for
that. Then also, kind of on a lighter
note, but not so much, you also see these on the little table.
These are actually decals for your vehicle.
That's a Englewood Baptist Church on them.
And so I hope you'll take some of these and put them on your
car, put them on your computers, put them on your backpacks, take
them on your eyeglasses, wherever they need to go, and
talk about how you're excited to being in a church where God's
working, where you're seeing people of all ages coming to
Christ and being baptized. Wasn't that amazing?
Yeah. So you already heard incredible
testimonies. You've already heard some
incredible testimonies and messages for the morning.
My question to you is just who's next?
Is your testimony going to be the next one that we share?
And maybe this morning God will lead you to that.
Then after Easter, we're going to have our time with our
friends again. The Sunday after Easter, the
Wednesday after Easter, I'm going to share my full board
testimony. Several of you have asked me
about that, and so I'm going to share my testimony with you.
I don't know that I've actually every in my entire life shared
that whole story that way. That may seem amazing to you.
I've shared bits and pieces many times, but I'm going to share
that host story that Wednesday night.
Then we'll have our time with our friends.
And then following that, we're going to dive into the book of
Romans coming up. It's going to be huge.
We're going to love that. And and then we're also going to
start a midweek series called Heaven, Hell and the Hereafter.
Going to talk about heaven, talk about hell, talk about what
happens the second that we die, who all is going to be where and
why? Not just us, but also folks like
the angels and the demons and other things like that.
So that'll be coming up in our midweek for a few weeks
following Easter as well. So just letting you know what's
coming up. But next week is H week for our
reach ministry and our connect groups.
So please, please, please be in a connect group next week and
participate in reaching out for Easter.
We'd love to see a lot of your friends here because I promise
I'm going to show the gospel on Easter.
You know, it's, I love it when God reveals his plan and word to
us and, and when people obey and God's been taking us on quite a
journey. And, and one of the things that
we were talking earlier with our friends that God always knew
what the journey was going to hold.
We don't, we don't know what's going to happen to us 10 seconds
from now, but God always knows. And it's amazing when he guides
us through these experiences and what each trip might, might
contain. And today we're actually going
to complete a segment of the journey.
Today, we're going to finish our study in the book of Nehemiah as
we talk about restoration in chapter 13 and what happens
there. Now, last week when we were in
Nehemiah, if you're a guest here, we've been walking through
this entire book together, but you'll be just fine.
Last week, the people were praising the Lord.
They were marching along the walls.
They were dedicating the wall to the Lord.
They were having a big temple celebration because the walls
were complete, the city was done.
It was time to fill the city and they were celebrating well in an
incredible moment and, and God's people were unanimously united
in their pursuit of him. They'd they'd renewed the
covenant. They were all fired up for the
Lord. And it's powerful when God's
people join in that kind of purity and that kind of praise.
And those moments need to be cherished, just like moments of
baptism need to be cherished. Don't ever grow tired of that.
Don't ever grow weary of that. If you do, let me know and I'll
send you to a church that will baptize nobody this year because
I know a bunch of them, thousands of them.
And so be thankful for what God's doing.
Amen. But what we also see is it's
powerful when God's people join together.
But, and I'd make up this story, it's Nehemiah 13.
Sometimes God's people forget. They don't remember what they
were supposed to remember. They forget who they are.
They forget who they're supposed to become.
They forget who who who they're supposed to belong to.
They forget what they're supposed to bring along with
them, the lessons they're supposed to learn, what they're
supposed to take with them on the journey ahead.
And they just forget. I saw an article in the news
this past week about the airline industry and it was talking
about the millions of items that people leave behind on airplanes
or at airports or baggage claim, etcetera at airports.
Now they they claimed, I don't know if I believe this stat, but
they claimed that 99.9% of those checked bags make it to the
people they belong to. I've had other experiences, but
anyway, 99.9% but then those things that don't make it to
people, I don't know if you've ever maybe you've been there.
There's a they all end up in a in Alabama, in a small store in
Alabama called the unclaimed baggage store.
This is a real place you can go to Alabama to this store and you
can buy the stuff that people have left behind a security or
on an airplane or a baggage claim.
And in 2025, they were to describing some of the items
that were left and they're for sale now.
They're in Alabama. There's a robot, there's a
bionic knee, there's a $10,000 gold teeth grills.
You put it right on your teeth. Some of you might want that
look. There's a meteorite, there's
fire sticks used for fire dancing.
There's a set of samurai swords. There's a beekeeping suit.
There's go plated golf clubs and even a teak didgeridoo.
The most expensive items. You'll like this better.
The most expensive items left behind was a white some white
diamond earrings valued at $43,000.
Somebody just left that at security.
A Rolex watch with 18 carat yellow golden diamond dial worth
around $35,000, a bass clarinet worth $17,000, a leather jacket
worth $12,000, and a thermal camel valued at more than
$12,000. Sometimes people leave valuable
things behind. Sometimes they forget what
they're supposed to bring with them on the journey.
Sometimes people forget, forget who they are, forget who they're
supposed to become, and forget what they were supposed to bring
with them on that journey with God.
They also forget to just whom they belong to and to who the
whole journey belongs to. And they leave behind the
lessons that they were supposed to learn.
They leave, leave behind the truths they were supposed to
carry with them. They forget God's faithfulness.
They forget God's grace. They forget his perfect plan.
And they turn back to old habits.
They turn back to old practices. Sometimes they even think
they've arrived. Sometimes they think they've
already arrived and they can just relax and get comfortable
and, and, and not have to work so hard.
And at times God has to remind them of the truth.
And me, we must be reminded this morning in this passage.
Don't go back. That's the message of Nehemiah
in chapter 13. Listen, not everyone receives
his reminders well either. I don't know how you respond.
I don't know how you respond when you're confronted by God.
Is your knee jerk reaction to justify yourself?
Is your knee jerk reaction to defend yourself or to fight?
Maybe it's to run and hide. Maybe it's just to try to ignore
him. Maybe if I just don't pay any
attention, he'll go away. I deserve to have what I want,
don't I? I deserve to have what I want
exactly the way I want it, when I want it, how I want it.
I mean, that's what every TV commercial and every social
media post screams at me. You deserve it that way.
You have the right to have that. That's what the world says to
me. And we're humans.
And so because we're humans, we're naturally, selfishly
sinful. All of us, all of us, all of us.
And so there are moments when we need or we deserve
confrontation. And it's in His love for us that
God confronts us and convicts us.
If we're not disciples who are properly loving Him and loving
others. He demonstrates His grace this
way. In fact, listen to Hebrews 12
for a moment and we'll get right into Nehemiah 13.
He says, have you not? Have you forgotten the
exhortation that addresses you as sons?
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor
be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one
He loves and chastises every son whom he receives.
So when we refuse this correction, when we ignore the
Holy Spirit's conviction, when we run from God, we're actually
refusing His love and grace. But if we respond, we respond to
humility, we accept his forgiveness, we accept his
restoration. The way opens up to experience
an even deeper intimacy with Him and even deeper love and even
deeper discipleship with Him. So remaining faithful, remaining
spiritually healthy disciples requires a constant focus.
It requires incredible discipline.
And so that's why the practices that we talk about here at
Inglewood we call the seven essentials of discipleship, that
with these things are called spiritual disciplines for a
reason. But remember, the enemy never
sleeps. The enemy never relents, the
enemy never gives up. And our sinful nature always
seeks self. Our sinful nature always seeks
the easy, our sinful nature seeks the lazy.
Frankly, William Booth, who's the founder of the Salvation
Army, was training a group of young leaders and he said this.
I want you young men always to bear in mind that is the nature
of a fire. To go out, you must keep it
stirred and fed, and the ash is removed.
So Nehemiah discovered ash. When he comes back, he had to
leave for a while and that the fire had gone out in his
absence. He discovers that our in our
last moment with him, or after our last moment with him,
Nehemiah had to go back to serve the king for a while.
But when he returns to Jerusalem, the fire had fizzled.
The people had forgotten and it needed to be stirred.
The ashes had to be cleared away.
One of my jobs, actually, we called him chores in the old
days. Anybody remember chores?
Yeah. Yeah, some of us actually had
those. Some of us actually had to do
those. And you know what?
We didn't get paid for that either.
We just had to do them and one of my chores as a child was we
had a wood burning fireplace and it had this cool that some of
you have. This probably had a cool little
opening in there and you could shovel all the ash into that
little opening and it went down a chute.
And then you could go outside at the bottom of the houses to kind
of a up there. And down here was a little bitty
metal door and you could go in there and you could scoop out
all the ash. And every now and then I had to
go clean out the ash. Yes, indeed I was Cinder fella.
Now, see, you did better than the first service.
And part of my job was to clean out the ash and my dad would
warn me because it would get water in there, sometimes
rainwater in there. And when you miss, when you mix
wood, ash and rainwater, you can get what's called Lye and it can
be caustic. It can actually burn you.
And he would warn me, don't get burned by the lie.
And I know this is true. If you leave the ash long
enough, it can become caustic and burn you.
And I know that from experience. Well, we're going to find that
Nehemiah came back to a pile of caustic ash in our passes, had
to be cleared up, had to be, had to be moved out.
It was burning the people. It was creating problems for
them, compromised forgotten covenant commitments that led to
a progression of failure. I'm going to show you how 1 led
to the next led to the next If and if you were to go back to
Chapter 9 and 10, you'll remember they signed this new
covenant and it's almost to the word the violations that we're
going to see in this passage. So the very things they agreed
to just a few chapters ago. Look at Nehemiah 13.
One, on that day they read from the book of Moses and the
hearing of the people, and it was found written that no
Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the Assembly of God.
For they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water,
but hired Balaam against them to curse them.
Yet our God turned the curse into a blessing.
As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel
all those of foreign descent. So they're violating A
commitment that they made. And so the first thing we need
to not forget is do not forget your commitment to purity.
And they're going to violate this very thing that they'd
agreed to earlier in the covenant they just signed
because they were obviously reading from Deuteronomy chapter
23, and they're experiencing what we're going to actually
read next. So what we read next actually
happened before verses 4 through 7 actually happened before
verses one through 3. But so they're they've
experienced this thing and the people were reminded of their
command to separate themselves. Here's the bottom line.
Separate yourself from Pagan influence in your life to
maintain your purity. These foreigners were born.
The Ammonites and Moabites were born from incestuous
relationships between Lot and his daughters, and they were
sworn, avowed enemies of Israel. And so they dealt with this very
same issue back in Chapter 9 and 10.
And here they are again dealing with the exact same problem.
Now list this important for us. Some lessons take longer to
remember than others. And and they were just spinning
in these old cycles of sin. Dealing with the same sin
repeatedly, over and over and over and over again can be very
discouraging. But but that's sometimes what's
going on in our life. Old compromises require
replacement with new commitments.
And maybe you struggle with this same sin cycling, the sin
spinning in your life. You find yourself falling and
stumbling in the same way in the same area of your life over and
over and over again, just spinning.
I don't want to do this anymore. I'm not going to do this.
You know, when we get into Romans and we read Romans 6 and
seven, we're going to hear Paul himself talk about this.
I do the very thing I don't want to do.
And we find ourselves sometimes just spinning in the same things
over and over and over again. And we got to get out of that
spin cycle. So listen, learn, and lean upon
God to break that cycle. Confess your sin.
When the Holy Spirit confronts and convicts you about it,
repent and turn away from that struggle.
But intentionally. Here's the key, and I've said it
to you 16 times in a year. Intentionally and passionately
replace that void in your life with the essentials, the holy
essentials of healthy discipleship.
You can't just try to stop something.
You got to replace it. You got to make new commitments
to get rid of these old compromises.
So these 7 essentials we talk about, we got to depend upon Him
daily to disciple ourselves, to engage the Bible, to unite in
fellowship, to abide in prayer, to commit to service, to respond
in worship, to live out evangelism, to participate in
missions. These are just a few of the
things that will help us. But you don't just need one of
these essentials. You don't just need some of
those essentials. You need all of these things in
your life to make a well balanced field life where you
don't have the void. So submit.
Submit your wilful decisions of obedience and accountability to
the strength of the Holy Spirit. And then maybe we'll be reading
your testimony next, or maybe you already know Him and you've
been baptized, but you've just been struggling as a believer
because the, the people of Israel were just struggling with
the same issues that led them into the exile in the 1st place.
They're just repeating the old mistakes.
So these, these outsiders, these Ammonites and Moabites, they're
not going to turn from idolatry. That wasn't what's going to
happen in that day and time. They're just going to draw the
people down into idolatry with them.
And so the so the raw, the law said avoid them.
Separate yourself from those who have sinful influence in your
life. Don't let them influence you.
Surround yourself with people who love the Lord, who encourage
your commitment to him. Be with those who equip you to a
stronger walk with him. Take full advantage of the
church. And if you ever wonder, when I
say that 100% of you ought to be in a what I'm not just saying
that it's just so I hope that we have a high attendance in
connect groups, it's because you need to be in a small family of
accountability and nurture and discipleship and growth.
And so we recognize that they're struggling.
They, they need to be strong enough not only to be healthy,
but to intentionally engage the world around them in the right
way, in the same way we do for us now.
We need to engage this lost world with the gospel rather
than allowing it to bring us down.
So influence your lost friends. Get him here for Easter.
Let him hear about a resurrect, the resurrection of an
incredible Lord this this holiday.
But but the people forgot and they're in a mess again.
And you come back and comes back and finds this mess.
And this happens when we forget. This happens when we leave
behind the things that we should have brought with us on the
journey and we forget him. It'll catch up to you and if
you're not careful to become caustic, it'll burn.
So let's see just how bad it became in verse 4.
Now note the very the first 3 words.
Now before this. So what we're about to read
actually happened before verses one through three.
One through 3 happened because of what is about to be read.
Now before this, Elijah of the priest who was appointed over
the chambers of the House of our God and who was related to
Tobiah, don't forget that name, prepared for Tobiah a large
chamber where they had previously put the grain
offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the ties of grain,
wine and oil, which were given by commandment to the Levites,
singers and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priests.
While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the
32nd year of our desert seas, King of Babel and I went to the
king. And after some time, I asked
Leva the king and came to Jerusalem and I then discovered
the evil that Elijah had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a
chamber in the courts of the House of God.
And you may not understand what just what just was read.
Here's what's going on. Now remember before this.
So this is the backdrop to them saying no more Ammonites, no
more Moabites in our midst. Nehemiah discovers that the high
priest had blatantly defiled God's command and permitted an
Ammonite, Tobiah, to live on the grounds of the temple, defiling
the holy storage area where the consecrated items, the holy
items for temple worship, were to be stored.
And this wasn't just any Ammonite, if you know the story
at all, or you've been here during these weeks, this is one
of the enemies who attempted to stop Nehemiah from accomplishing
God's will and threaten Nehemiah with his life and threaten them
with destruction. I told you weeks ago that some
of the Jews had alliances with Tobiah.
They even intermarried with his family, and this included some
of the family members of the high priestly line.
And so his ungodly influence was obvious.
They weren't going to bring Tobiah up.
He's just bringing them all down.
And so they literally just think about this.
They move the holy items for the worship of God and the temple
out of their designated spot and set up a spacious area for the
enemy of God to move in and squat.
And so they move out the holy and made room for the unholy.
Now I want you to catch that reverse negative replacement
because this is a hellish ploy of the devil.
This is a hellish ploy of Satan. This is what he'll this is what
he'll do in your life. Allow the unholy to creep in
until it pushes out the holy. The crazy and the sinful that
you knew was crazy and sinful just a little while ago will
suddenly seem normal. It'll even seem right.
The world's going to constantly reinforce this message in our
lives. Things that so many thought were
evil just a few years ago, a decade ago, or just even
yesterday will not seem so bad today.
I mean, everybody on TV accepts it, everybody, all the
celebrities accept it, all these sports people.
So it must be OK because a constant message of rightness is
being pushed upon you. It's not the the, the message of
the word of God. It's the message of the world.
And So what used to be horrible and sinful, it's just not so bad
anymore. It's normal, right?
I mean, here you have an an Ammonite thug living in luxury
in the temple complex, wielding influence over the high priest.
This could not be so. Look at verse 8.
And I was very angry. You, you, the Hebrew makes it
stronger. He's enraged.
I was very angry and I threw all the household furniture of
Tobiah out of the chamber. I knew I liked Nehemiah.
Then I gave orders and they cleansed the chambers and I
brought back there the vessels of the House of God with the
grain offering and the frankincense.
So here's this enraged Nehemiah. And but here's the catch, and
here's what I want you to see. Nehemiah should have been
enraged, but so should have everybody else.
He should not have been unique in his rage, but it was just OK.
It was normal. He's just Tobiah.
Everybody knows Tobiah. He's not that bad.
Well, that stuff can be stored elsewhere.
It's not that big a deal. What was wrong yesterday can
easily be perceived as right tomorrow.
This world will work on you with that.
It'll work with you on that. But the he, he recognizes that
this should never been allowed to occur in the 1st place.
So the man of God evicts Tobiah and all his junk and passionate
righteous indignation. It reminds me of somebody who
comes along later and he and he and he takes a whip of cords and
he drives the robbers the, the, the, the, the den of thieves out
of his House of his father's House of prayer by overturning
the tables at the temple. So the temple storeroom was then
ritually cleansed. It's put back into service the
way it's supposed to, the proper place for these holy utensils,
these offerings, this incense. And so don't miss the lesson.
When you move out the unholy, when you kick out the junk in
your life, you toss the junk out.
You got to move the holy back in.
You can't just stop right there. Getting rid of the junk is not
enough or you'll just leave a void.
Trust me. You can clean out your garage
all you want. You can clean out that storage
shed. Oh look how clean it is in here.
How long does it take before you accumulate the junk again?
Same thing can happen to us spiritually.
And so, So what we recognize is that we can't leave this void or
sin and Satan will take advantage of an opportune
moment. Satan will come in and put a
foothold or a stronghold, as one passage says.
So this leads the people to recognize their sin back in
verses one and three, 2-3 and they remember their commitment
concerning the unholy influences in their life.
They had compromised, they'd forgotten and and they had to be
reminded. But this was not all that
Nehemiah found when he returned. I wish that was it, but it's
not. It gets even deeper.
Look at verse 10. I also found that the portions
of the Levites had not been given to them.
So the Levites and the singers who did the work had fled each
to his field. So I confronted the officials
and said, why is the House of God forsaken?
And I gathered them together and set them in their stations.
Then all Judah brought the tithe of the grain, wine, and oil into
the storehouses. And I appointed his treasures
over the storehouses. Silomiah the priest, Edict the
scribe, and Padaya the of the Levites.
And as there is assistant Hannan the son of Zakhar, son of
Madaniah, For they were considered reliable, and their
duty was to distribute to the brothers.
Remember Me, O God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my
good deeds that I've done for the House of God and for His
service. So not only do we not forget our
purity, but here's what happens progressively.
We also cannot forget our commitment to obedience because
this is what happens. There's a progression.
When I forget purity, my actions are soon going to follow.
When I forget who I am and what I'm supposed to be and how I'm
supposed to believe, then the next thing that's going to
happen is it's going to leak over into my behavior.
So there's no motivation to keep the commandments, there's no
motivation to keep the law. There's no motivation to serve
God. If there's no ongoing growth of
spiritual health and focus internally, your practice is
going to follow what's in your heart and mind.
And so Nehemiah learned that they'd reneged, that they'd
reneged. I mean, they just committed to
this. They reneged to bringing their
tithes and offerings to the temple to support the work of
God. They were doing it for their own
greed. They were doing it for their own
selfishness to keep for themselves what actually
belonged to the Lord. And since the Levites and the
singers were not receiving their food supplies to support their
families, they had neglected the temple surface.
And they were out there working their fields in order to feed
their families. So Nehemiah recognizes that now
the proper worship of the whole temple is shut down.
I mean, your actions affect other actions.
You may not believe that, but your presence or absence effects
others. And so Nehemiah recognized the
whole temple thing is getting ready to shut down.
So he caused the people to renew the practice of giving and he
appointed faithful men to oversee the distribution so that
worship could continue. We need to remember our
commitment of obedience to continue to make ministry here a
joy by continuing to support those who serve to lead in the
work of God and also our core ministries.
That's why you hear me harp on this 100% stuff over and over
and over again. And by the way, I want to thank
you and brag upon you. It's been an interesting year.
You know, we lost so much time and momentum in January.
I felt like because of the weather and because of flu and
sickness, but your stewardship has been wonderful.
Thank you for giving the way you have and just continue to do
that On the on the financial side, this wonderful thank you
for that faithfulness On the service side, we're going to
provide you more and more opportunities to plug in because
this people forgot their commitment to honor the Lord and
that everything belonged to him in the 1st place.
And I wish that were the end of this.
I wish that was all. There's no more to chapter.
Surely there's no more. But there were some other
covenant practices that were being violated.
Look at verse 15. In those days I saw in Judah
people trading wine presses on the Sabbath and bringing in
heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine
grapes, figs and all kinds of loads which they brought into
Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them on the day
when they sold food. Tyrians also who lived in the
city brought in fish and all kinds of goods and sold them on
the Sabbath to the people of Judah in Jerusalem itself.
Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and I said to them, what
is this evil thing that you're doing, profaning the Sabbath
day? Did not your father's act in
this way? And did not our God bring all
this disaster on us and on this city?
Now you're bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the
Sabbath. I mean, this is one of the basic
commandments. One of the basic parts of God's
law was the Sabbath. And they forgot.
They forgot the this proper practice of worship as well.
This the Sabbath was to teach us to depend upon God, to trust his
sustenance, to trust his provision and to rest.
And it's interesting because just a couple of chapters go
look at chapter 10, verse 31. And if the peoples of the land
bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will
not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day, and we will
forego the crops of the 7th year and the exaction of every debt.
I mean, they had just committed to these specific things.
So these Jews were performing secular business related work on
the Sabbath and Nehemiah just couldn't take it.
He entered immediately shuts down the Jerusalem marketplace.
And then go on to verse 19. As soon as it began to grow dark
at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded the
doors should be shut and gave orders that they should not be
opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of the my
some of my servants at the gates, that no load may be
brought in on the Sabbath day. Then the merchants and sellers
of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice.
But I warned them and said to them, Why do you lodge outside
the wall? If you do so again, I'll lay
hands on you. I love Nehemiah.
From that time on. They did not come on the
Sabbath. I bet not.
Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify
themselves and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath
day holy. Remember this also in my favor,
Oh my God, and spare me according to the greatness of
your steadfast love. So he rebukes these foreign
merchants who are conducting business on the sacred day, but
he also chews out the political leaders who are allowing this to
happen in the 1st place. His sharpest words were actually
for these Jewish leaders. They knew better.
They should have known better. They knew that God brought
catastrophe on the Israelites in the past because they violated
His commands. And so Nehemiah orders all the
gates of Jerusalem to be shut at sundown on Friday, not to be
opened again until after the Sabbath is over.
And to enforce that, he actually assist, put some of his own
assistance on the gates during the Sabbath.
Then he banned these merchants from conducting business within
the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, threatening to harm
him if they violate a disorder. If you do so again, I'll lay
hands on you. And he wasn't messing around.
And so, to guarantee the Sabbath would not be broken in Jerusalem
again, Levites were then assigned permanently to guard
the gates, to guard against violating God's Word.
We need to desire accountability.
We need high expectation. We need discipline.
But they'd forgotten to bring along with them their covenant
purity and their covenant practices.
I wish that was it, but we're not quite done.
Look at verse 23. In those days also I saw the
Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Amman and Moab, and half
their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they
could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of
each people. And I confronted them and cursed
them, and beat some of them, and pulled out their hair.
And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, You
shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their
daughters for your sons or for yourselves.
Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin on account of such women
among the many nations, that there was no king like him, and
he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all
Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made
him even him to sin. Shall we then listen to you and
do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by
marrying foreign women? So the third thing we need to
remember, we got to remember purity.
We got to remember obedience. We got to remember the truth is
truth. We can't just ignore His law,
His rules, His word. When we forget purity, our
practices will soon follow because they they have no
foundation and our promises and commitments soon become empty
and become meaningless because they're going to be based upon
some self created truth that we invented ourselves.
So once purity is gone, sin is going to reign and our truth
means little. So Nehemiah has to address this
practice of intermarriage with the pagans around them again.
And Nehemiah confronted the marriage to the women from these
places. It's fascinating.
You know where who asked the people of Ashdod are.
These are the Philistines, one of their oldest enemies and bad
influences upon them and so it violated the law, it violated
history, and it also violated God's truth in the covenant that
they had made back in chapter 10, verse 30.
Listen, how specific can you get?
We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or
take their daughters for our sons.
Sign sealed and delivered until Nehemiah leaves town.
They promised to follow God's word, the truth, but forgot,
left it behind, and they violated their own promise
because we got to remember in those days that marriage isn't.
Again, as I've said before, marriage wasn't some romantic
thing. It was more of an alliance.
It was more of a partnership. It was it was the influence
where you made a pact with another family or another tribe.
And so it had huge influence. But the physical reality of
intermarriage also represented the spiritual reality of
including the mixing of the sinful with the holy.
And they needed to remain pure. In fact, it was practically a
problem. Half the children who were
raised in these homes couldn't even speak the language of the
Hebrews. Well, they were speaking the the
Aramaic of Ashdod and and Moab and Amman, which was a different
dialect totally than what the Hebrews even spoke.
So some of these children were being raised up and they
couldn't even understand the words of Yahweh.
This is a national crisis. And so, recognizing that threat,
Nehemiah made a public example of the men who broke this
promise. So he publicly rebuked them,
called down curses. He beat some, and then he pulled
out their hair. Does that sound harsh?
It was. It was supposed to be.
He did not want them to forget this lesson.
So recognizing how significant this was, he intended for them
to to recognize that this was a direct violation of God's law
and a severe departure from the covenant promise they just made.
We got to remember, we got to learn.
We need to be taught relevancy and redundancy are always
required. We got to tell tell you things
that are important. I got to tell you over and over
and over and over and over again, what percentage do I want
you in? The core, 100%.
Sometimes the lesson can be tough to sink in.
Sometimes they're caustic and burn and no one is above.
No one is immune. No one's too important.
No one's too powerful to not be held responsible.
You might think that I'm talking to everybody else but you, but
listen to verse 3028. And one of the sons of Jehoiada,
the son of Elijah, the high priest, was the son-in-law of
Sanballat the horror night. Therefore, I chased him from me.
Now, if you don't know what's going on here, you haven't been
part of the study. Just listen.
So Nehemiah was particularly harsh.
And Jehovah's son, the grandson of the high priest, he's in the
lineage of the high priest. He marries the daughter of some
ballot, perhaps the greatest enemy of the Jews.
I mean, Can you imagine this? It wasn't an unholy alliance.
This man sought to kill Nehemiah.
This, this man sought to, sought to, to, to reject their ability
to rebuild the city. He fought them tooth and nail.
So his violation is particularly serious since he's a member of
the high priestly line. Even the grandson of the high
priest gets kicked out. No one's immune.
It was time to clean out the caustic ash.
No one's above God's word. No one's above God's will.
In fact, Nehemiah compared these actions to the sinful marriages
of King Solomon, who married several foreigners and brought
judgement on Israel in a former day.
So finally, let's look at verse 29.
Remember them, Oh my God, because they have desecrated the
priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites.
Thus I cleanse them from everything foreign.
And I established the duties of the priests and Levites, each in
his own, in each in his work. And I provided for the wood
offering at appointed times and for the first fruits.
Remember Me, O God, for good. So Nehemiah restores the ritual
purity and he restores the practices of the priests and the
Levites, and they begin to engage once again in the proper
service of worship, the temple. And they're providing the the
necessary resources for that to take place.
The question at the end of this book it's how long would they
remember? Nehemiah and Malachi are the two
last books written in the Old Testament chronologically.
After this, you have hundreds of years before the New Testament.
By the time the New Testament comes along, the what?
The law has been twisted and twisted and twisted to be a
burden. By the time Jesus comes along,
how long would the people of God remember?
And I, I, I, I ask you to look into this story, this whole
story of Nehemiah, and ask yourself, how long will I, how
long will I remember my covenant purity, my covenant practices,
my covenant promises? How will I respond when God
confronts me with my sin? Will I resist it?
Will I, Will I try to sneak about in secret sin, or or run
away or or leave in a huff? Or openly, intentionally,
authentically confess? Repent.
Commit an honest commitment of the Spirit and the will.
The intentional replacement of the of the old unholy with a new
holy. That has to happen.
You know, it's interesting because you can take that
caustic Lye that wood ash and rainwater make.
Sometimes when they mix together, you can actually take
that caustic Lye. And if you know how to mix it
just right, you know how to handle it just right, you can
make powerful cleansing agents used to make Lye soap.
Anybody remember Lye soap? Sure, you could make Lye soap
and Lye clean cleansers out of this if you know how to handle
it right. So it's fascinating in it.
God can take your past. I'm going to share you some past
in a couple of weeks. It's kind of embarrassing, the
failures of my life, but I'm going to do it so you can see
what He did because God can take your path.
I don't care what your past is. I don't care what your present
is. I don't care who you are right
now and where you think God loves you or doesn't love you.
I'm telling you He can take all of that.
Your sin, my sin, everybody's sin, The mistakes we make, we
all make them. He can take your ash and
perfectly handle it, mix it, use it to not only show and convict
you of your need for him, but to bring cleansing and change to
your life. Now He can recreate you.
He can prepare you for a purposeful new life.
But it might burn a little. Sometimes conviction does that.
Might just burn a little in the beginning, but if but if you
listen to the Spirit working in your life right now, right now,
not later, not later today, not next week, but right now.
Listen to the Spirit working and you realize he's just burning
away what needs to be left behind, what needs to be
forgotten, and trying to help you to bring with you what you
need to remember that to which you need to commit.
Inglewood, it's time to turn the page.
First, let's celebrate Easter. Well, let's praise our Lord for
his resurrection. Let's invite everybody we know
to join us for that. Please do that.
And then I want us to move forward into deeper, deeper
discipleship as we tackle the book of Romans together and we
look deeply at what we believe, what the Bible teaches, and how
we're really saved and what that means together.
But for some of you this morning, there's a step one.
You heard testimonies earlier, Powerful testimonies, man.
You talk about all different ages, all different backgrounds,
people being saved and baptized. Maybe you're next.
Whose testimony will we read next?
Which one of you? Maybe you're here this morning
and you recognize that my first step is to trust in Jesus Christ
as my Lord and Savior. I recognize that I'm just
spinning, I'm just spiraling. I need to get out of this.
I need to get off the carousel. I need help.
The Bible says that we've all sinned.
So if you want to trust in Christ, you know, pray a prayer
or something like this, admit to God that I know I've sinned and
I'm sorry for my sin and I want to turn for my sin.
And I trust in Jesus as my Savior.
I trust in Jesus as my Lord and I want to live for him and I
want to serve him in the church. And then come talk to us, talk
to a pastor, talk to the people in the Next Steps room who just
love to pray with you, love to share with you more.
Maybe you need to be baptized or maybe you need to join the
church, or maybe you just need to come and pray.
It's time to move forward. Spring what we need to.
Let's leave behind what we don't.
You let the Lord tell you what that is right now.
Father, thank you. Thank you.
You don't leave us alone. Thank you that you're pesteris
and pesteris and pesteris. Thank you for that, Lord.
Thank you for conviction. Thank you for the way you draw.
Thank you, Father, for the way you show now.
Father, Pierce our hearts right now.
Pierce our minds right now. Help us to make a willful
decision to follow you, to surrender our will to yours.
For some, that's salvation. For some it's baptism.
For some it may be a call to missions or ministry.
Some need to come and intercede. Just pray for others in their
life or pray for some area of their life.
Help us to get out of the spin cycle, Father, and help us to
live for You now as we sing and we glorify You and our ushers.
Take up an offering, Father. We pray that it'll be used to
your glory. But Father, our primary offering
today is our lives, our commitment to the future.
We're on the verge of Easter, the high holy holiday of the
year for us, Father, in which we celebrate victory.
So let that victory begin right now as people surrender in
Christ's name, Amen. Stand with me if you would.
We'll have pastors here. We have folks in the Next steps
room ready to go. You surrender.
You come right now as God leaves you.