Liberty Baptist Church
March 8

      • Luke 22:31–34KJV1900

  • tis so sweet to trust in Jesust
  • HE WILL HOLD ME FAST
  • KING OF KINGS
  • DOXOLOGY

      • Psalm 100ESV

  • Ok 4 & 5 year olds you guys are dismissed to go on upstairs for children’s church!
    Last week we started sharing these videos of you. Our hope is to do a couple things…we want to testify to what God has and is doing in the life of our church and we want to know one another. We won’t show a video every week, but we are working on developing these. As we get them, we’ll even include videos of our missionaries because God is working here at Liberty and around the world and we want to celebrate what He is doing.
    If you have your Bibles, and I hope you do, go ahead and grab them and head on over to Nehemiah 5. We’re going to pick back up in our series that we started back at the beginning of the year. While I’m grateful to have had a couple weeks off, it is really good to be back. I’ve missed preaching and our study on Nehemiah.
    A few weeks ago during Men’s Bible Study we were discussing fear and how much of our lives are driven by fear. Now, I don’t mean phobia fear—as in I’m afraid of rattlesnakes—although, that particular fear drives my life too. I mean the type of fear that the Bible talks about and calls the fear of the Lord. It’s commonly defined as a reverential awe. It’s a fear that is rooted in deep trust & respect because of the object of that fear and it sees that object as it’s primary thing it lives for. Nehemiah 5 we see how fear drives a person both positively and negatively and this passage calls us to walk in the fear of God. That’s our main point this morning:
    Walk in the fear of God.
    So let’s read all of Nehemiah 5 and then we’ll see how we are to and how we are not to walk in the fear of the Lord.
    Nehemiah 5 ESV
    Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.” I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words. I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and the officials. I said to them, “You are exacting interest, each from his brother.” And I held a great assembly against them and said to them, “We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us!” They were silent and could not find a word to say. So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, and their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them.” Then they said, “We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say.” And I called the priests and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, “So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied.” And all the assembly said “Amen” and praised the Lord. And the people did as they had promised. Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I did not do so, because of the fear of God. I also persevered in the work on this wall, and we acquired no land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work. Moreover, there were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations that were around us. Now what was prepared at my expense for each day was one ox and six choice sheep and birds, and every ten days all kinds of wine in abundance. Yet for all this I did not demand the food allowance of the governor, because the service was too heavy on this people. Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people.
    This is God’s Word for God’s people, and we respond: Thanks be to God. Let’s pray.
    There’s 5 different ways that Nehemiah teaches us from this passage to to walk in the fear of our God. Here’s the first:

    Don’t substitute preferences for references.

    It’s been a few weeks, so by way of reminder we find Nehemiah having returned to Jerusalem with a burning passion that God has stirred in his heart to see the walls, city & temple of Jerusalem built so that the presence of God might dwell among His people. As only God can do, he uses Nehemiah to persuade King Artexerxes to send him to accomplish the task but as Nehemiah arrives, the problems begin.
    The people are discouraged, yet God uses Nehemiah to motivate them to work by turning their eyes toward the God who has worked in the past.
    There’s outside turmoil. The surrounding nations who’ve had an economic chokehold on the Israelites are greatly disturbed and have mounted battle plans and made alliances with the other nearby nations. The people of Israel are surrounded and cutoff from the rest of the outside world. This causes Nehemiah to tell all of the men who are building the wall from the surrounding villages to move to Jerusalem and help stay prepared for battle and accomplish the task. Now they’re working with one hand on their weapon and the other carrying bricks. It’s a hard job with constant threats from the outside.
    And now, in chapter 5 this has caused other problems. Because the men are working to build the wall who’s left to tend to the fields? Either no one or women & children. If the women & children are working the fields who’s caring for the home? No one. On top of that famine strikes. So now, no economic flow and no food. What do those who have land and homes do? They look to their wealthy Israelite neighbors and say, hey, we don’t have money or food, so here’s our land or our home. Give us money so we can buy food. Some don’t have that luxury, so they say, here’s our children so we can have money to buy food. The wealthy Israelites see an opportunity so they say yes, we’ll do that, but we’re going to charge interest on this loan we’re giving you. So the Israelites are in wartime mode, cutoff from help, there’s a famine, and now the wealthy Israelites are exploiting the less fortunate. If you were felt like you were called on a mission by God to do a work for God and this was how it was panning out, how do you think you’d feel? I think I’d give up.
    What do they do? The people & their wives cry out against their Jewish brothers to Nehemiah. Things are so bad that now mama is walking up to let you know how she feels and they come and tell Nehemiah, “it is not in our power to help.”
    The language used in the first 5 verses here echoes the same language used by the Israelites in Exodus 2 when they cried out to God because of the oppression of the Egyptians, except now it’s not a foreign power oppressing them, it’s their own people. The greed of the wealthy has led to exploitation that has no certainly caused division. The people are not longer united in mission or purpose—it isn’t about building the kingdom of God, but about their own little kingdoms. And why? Why has this happened?
    As I heard one pastor say this week, “The people of Israel have substituted personal preferences over biblical references.” You see God has made a provision for the people of Israel back in Lev. 25:35-38
    Leviticus 25:35–38 ESV
    “If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God, that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit. I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan, and to be your God.
    God, in His Word, had given instruction to His people on how to help a brother who was suffering, but the wealthy elite of Israel said instead of obeying God’s Word, I see an opportunity so I’m going to seize it. My preference for my own wealth building supplants God’s commands through His word.
    This actually still happens today. I saw just yesterday a certain female prosperity gospel preacher tell her audience that she wouldn’t pray for them until they filled out the offering envelope. No prayers for you until you pad our pockets. How opposite of what Jesus was in his ministry!
    And while I think it is true, especially of the prosperity gospel movement to exploit the poor & needy, there’s other areas in our lives in which we’ve substituted our preferences over what God has given us in His Word, isn’t there? Our tendency to insist on our cultural preference, especially within the body leads to division, and the reason we insist on our preference reveals what we really fear.
    Based on Leviticus, the proper action for the wealthy Israelites was to give generously to support their people, but in Nehemiah, the hesitation and rejection of that shows that they were more concerned about their financial security than their neighbors well being. So the first way we are to walk in the fear of our God is to not substitute our personal preferences for biblical references.
    The second thing Nehemiah 5 teaches us about walking in the fear of our God is to:

    Be emotional, but not emotionally driven.

    As Nehemiah hears the news of what’s going on what wells up within his heart? V6, “I was very angry.” It is without a doubt in my mind that Nehemiah’s time in prayer & The Word formed his heart to hate the things that God hated, and when he saw the exploitation, injustice, and greed that his fellow leaders & other wealthy Israelites were exhibiting he grew very angry.
    Angry because they knew better. Ezra had been teaching the law to the people for sometime now. They would’ve heard. Angry because his people were suffering. Angry because as we’re going to see here in a second, their testimony to the watching world was tarnished. Their God now seemed insufficient to provide for their needs, and Nehemiah not only knew that God was sufficient, he had experienced it and he believed God would provide again.
    Church, when we see the exploitation of the less fortunate or injustice, especially towards children, or greedy people being greedy, what should swell up in our heart is anger. When the Word of God shapes our desires and our time with Him in prayer shapes our emotions we hate what he hates.
    But while Nehemiah was emotionally stirred—he was very angry—he didn’t fly off the handle. He felt appropriately, but then what do we see in verse 7? “I took counsel with myself.” That’s Hebrew for, “he took a chill pill.” Nehemiah withdrew, he stepped back to truly grasp the situation, I’m willing to bet that he probably prayed based off what we’ve seen elsewhere in the book, and he thought about it.
    He couldn’t go take counsel with other nobles & officials, because as we’re about to see, they’re involved in the exploitation. He didn’t go march around town and talk about it to gain opinions from others. He kept his mouth shut, calmed down, and then chartered a course of action. He was emotionally informed but not emotionally driven.
    I mentioned earlier how this language echoes Exodus 2:24-25
    Exodus 2:24–25 ESV
    And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
    God knew. I wonder what all is encompassed in that phrase, God knew. God knew His people were suffering unjustly. The Egyptians feared the Israelites would overthrow them, so they oppressed them. This must’ve stirred up anger in His heart. But God also knew He was God. He did have a plan that would display his magnificent glory not just to the Egyptians, or the Israelites, but to the whole word. He would make His name known.
    I wonder what it is God knows about me and about you. When he looks at us and sees how we respond to the injustices of the world around us or to the ones we’ve experienced in our own life or the ones that maybe even we have caused how does he respond? Exodus shows us. Nehemiah gives us a picture. The cross is the answer. God grows angry at the injustices you’re experiencing or causing, but he doesn’t fly off the handle. He doesn’t have a short fuse. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. But feeling isn’t sufficient, is it? If God just grew angry at injustice, but never acted, what kind of world would this be? Where would hope exist? Would he truly be God?
    That leads us to the third thing Nehemiah calls us to in this text:

    Treat exploitation & greed appropriately.

    Having considered the situation Nehemiah knows that he must now act. In verse 7 he brings the charges directly to the nobles and officials. No mincing words. He calls them out specifically for the sin that they had committed, and then says, we’re going to deal with this right now and find resolution right now. Since their sin was a communal & public sin it required the community to to be present to deal with it. Public sin calls for public confrontation.
    As the people gather Nehemiah lays out just how horrific this situation is. When he came from Jerusalem, like Ezra & Zerubbabel before him, he brought back as many people as he could. They were delivering them out of slavery to the Persians only to come home and have them begin to enslave their own people. Oppression & exploitation from the outside world was bad enough, but now from their own was despicable.
    How do the people respond at the end of verse 8? “They were silent and could not find a word to say.” Like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar, the Israelites were busted. They had no come back.
    Then Nehemiah gets to the root of it all. Verse 9
    Nehemiah 5:9 ESV
    So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?
    There it is…truly, the exploitation wasn’t the problem. It was the symptom. The problem was they didn’t walk in the fear of God. Instead they were walking in the fear comfort, the fear of security, the fear of man. What if this whole construction thing doesn’t work and they are invaded? Better to have some financial security when the bad guy shows up; maybe they could buy their way out this time.
    What might the other nobles think of them if they saw their lifestyles being hindered? You see, who they feared, what they feared, determined how they lived, it revealed who they truly worshipped, and it said something about the God whom they worshipped. Their action weren’t just indicative of what they believed, they were also direct reflection of the God whom they said they believed in. For them to exploit, manipulate, and oppress says that their God is a God who exploits, manipulates and oppresses. To the outside world, their is no distinction between the people of God and the people of the world or the God of the Israelites and the gods of the world.
    So when Nehemiah hears of this situation he grows angry and then he confronts it directly because at the end of the day their sin towards one another is really an issue of their faith. For just a second, if the people of God hadn’t substituted their personal preferences for biblical references, what would have happened?
    The wealthy would’ve cared generously for those who poor and in great need of help. You see this actually doesn’t condemn wealth. It condemns it’s misuse. If the people had obeyed God’s word the outside world would’ve looked in and seen something entirely opposite of what they were used to. People who came alongside and cared and helped regardless of the cost or the payback. Walking in the fear of God leads to a generous love for one another that creates a compelling community.
    So let me ask you, if someone were to peer over the walls into your life what would they find? If someone were to peer over the walls of this church, what would they find? Insistence on your way? Exploitation at the expense of others? Greed?
    These injustices Nehemiah takes head on. He confronts them directly, he addresses the real issue, and he points out the implications. But that’s not the end of it. He doesn’t get mad and just call out, he calls for immediate repentance. That’s the fourth thing Nehemiah teaches us about walking in the fear of the Lord.

    Repent & worship.

    Having called them out, Nehemiah gives them their next steps, but notice how he doesn’t just call them out, he leads by example. Verse 10
    Nehemiah 5:10 ESV
    Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest.
    Now, Nehemiah was lending grain and as governor of the people he had a right to exact interest on what he was lending out. Scholars point out that that’s actually how he would’ve been paid. So for him to abandon exacting interest is to say, I’m not going to be paid anymore. I’ll give freely.
    Now recall the totality of the situation. Famine. Threats. Armies on the horizon. & now this. It seems like at this moment, maybe Nehemiah had made a wrong choice. Yet in his anger he doesn’t walk away, he walks directly towards the sin of the people. He doesn’t just feel about this. He moves towards this, and then, he carries the debt of the people even though he didn’t have to…just like Jesus does for us.
    He sees you and me in the state we’re in. Maybe you’re the one who is exploiting others; maybe you’re the one who’s insisted on your preference; maybe you’re the one who has seen opportunities through the lens of what it gains you instead of how it might serve others and grow the kingdom of God; or maybe you’re the one who’s been oppressed, been taken advantage of and manipulated, been used for the promotion and pleasure of others; regardless of which you are, the offended or the offender, Nehemiah points us towards something greater, he points us to Jesus who comes to the one who oppresses, insists and exploits and he looks at them in the eye and says, what you’re doing is not good. And the shame that you feel for what you done, he says, I’ve got that. Repent and believe.
    2 Corinthians 5:21 ESV
    For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
    On the cross Jesus dealt with your failures to walk in the fear of the Lord and he beckons you to look at the cross and see a better way. One of sacrifice, one of death, for redemption. One of hope & resurrection.
    And on that cross he looks at those in the room who, like the Israelite people in Neh. 5 cry out because they’re unable to do anything, and he moves toward them and says, I got this. I am just. I will deal with all sin and I will make all things right. You are not guilty for your inability. So you can come to him, all who labor and are heavy laden, all who are burned out and worn out, all who are unable to take another step, and he will give you rest. Through faith, you can take his yoke upon you, you can lock arms with him and walk with him and find that he is the one who will carry your burdens. He is gentle & lowly in heart, and it is only in him that you will find rest for your soul.
    Nehemiah calls the people to repent and believe, but repentance isn’t complete until what’s been taken away has been restored; what’s been wrong has been made right. It’s not enough for them to just acknowledge their sin & to acknowledge their God. In order for repentance to be complete they must turn and return what was taken away.
    That’s what Jesus did. He came to restore to you the relationship that your heart longs for. He came to give you life & life abundantly, joy & joy completely in the Lord. But that doesn’t happen when you look at your sin and say, yep, I did it. Yep he’s God. It happens when you bend the knee. When you trust him to be Lord over your life completely. It’s repentance & faith which is displayed by obedience.
    So how do the people respond? “We will restore.” Nehemiah calls up the priests and says we’re making this official. Have the people make an oath to do this and that if they break their oath may God shake them out and take from them. And all the assembly said, “Amen and praised the Lord.”
    Repentance isn’t complete until worship is multiplied. All of the community has now once again been united in mission and worship. Their relationships are deepened, unity has been cultivated, purpose has been renewed, because now instead of walking in the fear of something else, they’re walking in the fear of God.
    When you repent and believe, Jesus restores you to a right relationship with him that gives you a people who are united. He gives you real relationships that are thicker than blood, he gives you a purpose and the only response to that is Amen! and singing. Can I get an amen?
    If you have been separated and isolated, oppressed & exploited, or if you’ve been the one causing the problems Jesus fixes it all. What both you are looking for He has and He is.
    But that’s not all of Nehemiah 5. One last, really brief 5th point that Nehemiah calls us to and shows us about walking in the fear of the Lord.

    Live by example

    The last 6 verses of chapter 5 are Nehemiah’s recount of how he has walked in the fear of the Lord. How he has lived obediently, generously, and self sacrificially. He laid down his rights because the service was too heavy on the people and the reason he did all of this? Look at the end of verse 15: “Because of the fear of God.”
    Walking in the fear of God caused Nehemiah to live differently, to live by example. But he ends with this really interesting last statement in v19
    Nehemiah 5:19 ESV
    Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done for this people.
    It almost sounds a little conceited, doesn’t it? As one scholar points out, “[This last statement] is one of confidence that God is judge, and judges favourably those who sincerely seek to do his will.” Nehemiah wasn’t being self-promoting. He was claiming that he had acted in good faith and from right motives and that he was trusting God to be both just and the justifier of all things.
    And because he truly believed God to be those things he walked in the fear of God. This enabled a lifestyle of servant-leadership, extreme generosity (as a single dude he cooked for 150 men every day at his own expense), he was humble, he cared, he gave sacrificially. He led and lived by example because He feared his God.
    When we walk in the fear of God we don’t substitute preferences for references. We’re emotional, but not emotionally driven. We treat exploitation & greed, or sin, appropriately. We repent & worship, and we live by example.
    Don’t substitute preferences for references.
    Be emotional, but not emotionally driven.
    Treat exploitation & greed appropriately
    Repent & worship.
    Live by example.
    So let me ask you this morning—what fear is driving your life?
    Nehemiah gives us an example, but points us towards something greater. Jesus was these things perfectly. He perfectly submitted to the Word of God. He felt anger towards the sin of this world and it drove him to come redeem it. He has confronted sin head on and conquered it and he is calling you this morning to repent & worship.
    Because Jesus was these things and did these things we can trust him to deal with us justly whether we are being exploited or are exploiting others. We can trust him to deal with the injustices because he already did on the cross.
    Whether you’re ashamed for what you’ve done or feel guilty for what you couldn’t do you can look to Jesus and find covering for your sin and provision for your insufficiency. You can walk in the fear of a good God because of Jesus.
    I want to go ahead and invite the music team on up and we’re going to transition into a time of observance of the Lord’s Supper.
    Reflect & repent.
    Marvel at the glory of God and his gracious covering for us.
  • WORTHY OF IT ALL
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