We’re going to continue and wrap up the book of Nehemiah. And we’re not going to go verse for verse out of a couple of the chapters. I’ll give you a summary of those.
But then I wanted to show you what has happened in Israel at the time of Nehemiah, after the wall had been rebuilt. Because just having victory doesn’t mean the battle ends. Just having people turn to the Lord doesn’t mean Satan is not going to try to undermine everything that God is doing.
And that’s exactly what was happening at the time of Nehemiah. Those of you who have been with us through the whole study, you remember that Nehemiah was burdened to come. And when he heard that the walls were down, the city was in shambles, Ezra was in Jerusalem rebuilding the temple, but the people were in great distress.
And the Lord placed on Nehemiah’s heart to go and be the one that would lead the people into restoring the walls, rebuilding the city, and ultimately revival occurring and people turning back to the Lord. All those things happened. The walls had been finished, the gates were completed, they had Ezra reading the Scriptures, they had a revival occur amongst the people as they heard the Word of God and they heard the law being read, but not only being read, but explained to them by the Levites, so that they understood what God was telling them.
And the people who had hung on to their false gods and had not walked in obedience to the will of the Lord, suddenly wept and turned to God. All of this had occurred. And if you would turn with me to Nehemiah, I want you to look with me at the last, we’re going to be looking at chapter 13 this morning.
In chapter 12, a rededication of the wall occurs. And it would have been neat to be there, because if you read in chapter 12, the music was going, praises to the Lord, the Scriptures were read, praises were lifted to God, and thanksgiving was given to the Lord, because the Lord had enabled them and empowered them to be able to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem once again. And not only that, Nehemiah had stayed a little longer after the rebuilding of the walls.
As I said, revival had occurred, the people began to move back into Jerusalem, because the whole city had been destroyed, so the houses were destroyed, they had to rebuild everything. And the people began to move back, and things appeared to be on the right track. Nehemiah was a servant of the king of Persia, in Shushan, the capital city, and he’d been gone for a period of time, and he went back to Shushan.
But then Nehemiah comes back to see what’s happening. And what’s happening is the very thing that had caused Jerusalem to be destroyed in the first place. The people turning away from God, not listening to God, not following the direction of the Lord, thinking that they could do what they wanted to do and didn’t have to obey God’s will, was being done again.
The Sabbath wasn’t being honored, and not only that, intermarriage was occurring once again. And not only that, God’s house was being desecrated once again. The very things that had led to the Lord bringing judgment by Nebuchadnezzar against Jerusalem.
Nehemiah comes back and he finds some things and immediately he deals with them. He doesn’t let it go. Let’s take a look at chapter 13, and we’re going to be looking at those things. We’re going to read the chapter, and then we’re going to look at this, and we’ll also be taking a look at some verses that Paul has written warning the church of very similar things happening in it.
On that day they read in the book of Moses in the audience of the people; and therein was found written, that the Ammonite and the Moabite should not come into the congregation of God for ever;
2 Because they met not the children of Israel with bread and with water, but hired Balaam against them, that he should curse them: howbeit our God turned the curse into a blessing.
3 Now it came to pass, when they had heard the law, that they separated from Israel all the mixed multitude.
The first thing I want you to understand is we don’t understand exactly the significance of that, but if you go back and read what happened, to understand it, you have to understand the Old Testament. And if you look at the Old Testament, one of the things that you understand is that the Moabites and the Ammonites were relatives of the Israelites.
Their ancestor was Lot, the nephew of Abram. And they had established their land to be on the east side of the Jordan River. The Moabites and the Ammonites inherited much of the land that is Jordan today.
But when Israel was delivered out of Egypt by the power of God, they came into the promised land and they had to go by the Moabites and the Ammonites. And as it says here, instead of greeting them and meeting them and sharing with them bread and water, they sought to destroy them. And they sought to bring curses on them.
And when Balaam could not curse them, because God would not allow a curse to come out of his mouth against Israel, and every time he tried to curse them, a blessing came out. Finally, Balak, the king of the Moabites, came and said, well, I paid you all this money and you can’t even curse them. And he says, well, I’ll tell you how you can get God angry with them.
Have your daughters marry their sons? Have their sons marry your daughters? And cause your gods to become their gods through these mixed marriages. You see, it wasn’t that God was against people of a different, other than Israel, coming to worship him and say, that’s the whole point of him establishing Israel, to through them bring the word of God. And through the word of God, the prophets which would foretell the coming of the Messiah, and the Messiah would come, not just for Israel, but the whole world.
So why was God so angry at the Moabites and the Ammonites? Because they had known the truth, but they rejected the truth, and not only did they reject the truth, they wanted to destroy his vessel for bringing salvation to the world. The nation of Israel. And Balaam knew that the way you do it is to get the people of God not to believe in the God of the Bible.
And how do you do that? With a mixed marriage, where the husband or the wife brings in their false god, and you begin to teach the children and present to them confusion when it comes to the truth and the living God. That was the first thing that they had seen. And one of the things you’re going to see here is they didn’t listen.
4 And before this, Eliashib the priest, having the oversight of the chamber of the house of our God, was allied unto Tobiah:
Now those of you who have been here with us through the whole study, you know Tobiah is the enemy of Israel. Tobiah, along with Sanballat and Geshem, were the three that were the loudest critics of the rebuilding of the wall, critics of Nehemiah, tried to discourage the people, came and spoke so that the people would understand and tried to discredit Nehemiah, tried to discredit what God was doing in rebuilding the walls and reestablishing the nation of Israel.
Tobiah was one of the main culprits. And now you have a priest of Israel in alliance with the enemy of Israel. And this is after all of these things have happened.
The miraculous has occurred. They rebuilt the wall. How many days? 52 days to rebuild the wall around Jerusalem without modern equipment.
They’d seen it. But now this priest allies himself with Tobiah. And what does he do? What he does is despicable.
5 And he had prepared for him a great chamber, where aforetime they laid the meat offerings, the frankincense, and the vessels, and the tithes of the corn, the new wine, and the oil, which was commanded to be given to the Levites, and the singers, and the porters; and the offerings of the priests.
What he did was take and give this storage chamber on the Temple Mount to Tobiah. And he moved out all the gifts that had been given by the people according to the Word of God to be used for those that would lead the worship of the Lord.
God had established way back when the land was divided and when He made the Levites, those that would be a special tribe unto Him because they had stood for truth when the rest of the tribes hadn’t. At Mount Sinai, when there was rebellion against God, the Levites stood against the rebels. And God said, because of that, even though you would not to inherit land like the other tribes, you and Simeon, because of what you did, what your fathers did, way back at Sheol.
If you look at this, as you look at Scripture, there are consequences to decisions. And the thing is, the Levites have been given a special place. As part of that, they didn’t inherit land.
They only inherit what’s referred to in Scripture as suburbs or they inherited little cities or plots outside the cities. But it wasn’t enough to sustain themselves the way that the other tribes did. The other tribes had land where they could grow crops, they could raise herds, they could do all of this.
The Levites did not have that. Instead, the priests and the Levites and those that would lead the worship of Israel were to be supported by the other tribes. And this is what, if you look at the whole offering and sacrificial system, it was first of all to acknowledge and honor God.
It was also tied with the blood offerings that were given and tied to the ultimate offering where Jesus would come as the Lamb of God to take away the sin of the world. All of that was tied and pointing to that. But as part of that offering system, these people were to be taken care of.
You see, with all the people bringing their offerings and bringing their tithes, there would be all of this, the first fruits of the field, there would be the leftover meat from the sacrifices. What do you do with it? You give it to the Levites, you give it to the priests. And God proportioned who gets what, how much, and they were to be taken care of.
This Eliashib thought so little of God, so little of his people, so little of his worship, that he takes and moves all of that out of the place that it was to be stored and passed out and instead puts Tobiah’s stuff there. A pagan stuff takes the place of what God had intended for his people. And for those, it would be the spiritual leaders of his home.
God is not happy, nor is Nehemiah.
6 But in all this time was not I at Jerusalem: for in the two and thirtieth year of Artaxerxes king of Babylon came I unto the king, and after certain days obtained I leave of the king:
7 And I came to Jerusalem, and understood of the evil that Eliashib did for Tobiah, in preparing him a chamber in the courts of the house of God.
8 And it grieved me sore: therefore I cast forth all the household stuff to Tobiah out of the chamber.
9 Then I commanded, and they cleansed the chambers: and thither brought I again the vessels of the house of God, with the meat offering and the frankincense.
10 And I perceived that the portions of the Levites had not been given them: for the Levites and the singers, that did the work, were fled every one to his field.
11 Then contended I with the rulers, and said, Why is the house of God forsaken? And I gathered them together, and set them in their place.
He didn’t just say, well, this must be some kind of misunderstanding. No.
He came out, and he came out strong. Why are you doing this? Why are you allowing Eliashib to desecrate God’s house after we had cleansed it? After Ezra had been commissioned to rebuild it? We had cleansed it. We had dedicated the walls.
We dedicated the temple. We dedicated the city of Jerusalem back to the Lord. And you do this.
You can just about hear his voice ringing down through history. He’s not happy. Because they have destroyed the glory of God in the perception of men.
He didn’t just say, well, this must be some kind of misunderstanding. No.
He came out, and he came out strong. Why are you doing this? Why are you allowing Eliashib to desecrate God’s house after we had cleansed it? After Ezra had been commissioned to rebuild it? We had cleansed it. We had dedicated the walls.
We dedicated the temple. We dedicated the city of Jerusalem back to the Lord. And you do this.
You can just about hear his voice ringing down through history. He’s not happy. Because they have destroyed the glory of God in the perception of men.
A pagan stuff is more significant than the offerings given to God. Now we’re going to look at this in light of today when we get to the New Testament. But I want to finish and see what else is going to happen.
Then contended I with the rulers.
12 Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries.
13 And I made treasurers over the treasuries, Shelemiah the priest, and Zadok the scribe, and of the Levites, Pedaiah: and next to them was Hanan the son of Zaccur, the son of Mattaniah: for they were counted faithful, and their office was to distribute unto their brethren.
14 Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God, and for the offices thereof.
So see the first thing he does cleanses the place.
Then he puts people over it that he can trust. Men that are faithful.
Men that he knows have a heart for God. Men that are not going to compromise God’s authority and his word nor destroy God’s character in the eyes of the people. And he makes them the ones that are responsible.
Because me and my, I can’t do it all. Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and wipe not out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for the offices thereof. But it doesn’t stop there.
15 In those days saw I in Judah some treading wine presses on the sabbath, and bringing in sheaves, and lading asses; as also wine, grapes, and figs, and all manner of burdens, which they brought into Jerusalem on the sabbath day: and I testified against them in the day wherein they sold victuals.
Now what is so wrong with this? The nation of Israel had been given the seventh day was to be a day of rest, the Sabbath.
It was to be a day where they not only rested but they focused on God and they thought about the things of God and they worshipped the Lord. The whole reason they’d been taken into captivity in Babylon was because they didn’t honor the Sabbaths. The most important Sabbath of all was the seventh year, the year of the Sabbath.
And that was to be an expression of the nation of Israel which set it apart from every other nation. Because if you accumulated debt during the first six years, the debt was to be forgiven. If you had accumulated so much debt that you had to become a bond servant, an indentured servant to try and pay off your debt, you were to be set free.
It was an expression of what God’s grace meant and means to us. We have debts we can’t pay. But Jesus paid it all.
And this was a type of what Christ would do for us. And they mocked it, but God stepped on it and for 490 years they didn’t keep it. And that’s why God took them to Babylon.
And now He brought them back into the land and they’re there for just a few years and already they forget about the significance of the Sabbath day. Now this isn’t the seventh year Sabbath. This is the seventh day of the week Sabbath.
They can’t even keep one of those because they’re all trading and bartering. Let’s go on and see what they’re doing. There go all men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish in all manner of wear and sold on the Sabbath unto the children of Judah in Jerusalem.
And then I contended with the nobles of Judah and unto them, what evil thing is this that ye do and profane the Sabbath day? Not only do they allow the Jewish people to buy and sell, but they bring in the pagans from Tyre. See, Tyre’s on the coast. So Tyre had a fishing.
And they’d bring fish down to Jerusalem. Only got six days during the week to bring your fish and sell it. But they’d bring it on the seventh day, the day that was to be dedicated to the Lord, where they were to be reminded of what God had done for them to worship the Lord, to spend time with their God and realize that He was the one that was providing all things, not the men of Tyre.
But they opened up the gates of Jerusalem to the men of Tyre on the Sabbath day and they set up their warehouses. Then I contended with the nobles of Judah and unto them, what evil thing is this that you have to do and profane the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers thus and did not our God bring all this evil upon us and upon this city? Yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath. And it came to pass that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the Sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut and charged that they should not be opened till after the Sabbath.
And some of my servants set eye at the gates that there should go no burden be brought in on the Sabbath day. So the merchants and sellers of all kinds of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice. Then I testified against them and I said unto them, why lodge ye about the wall? If ye do so again, I will lay hands on you.
From that time forth came they no more on the Sabbath. And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves and that they should come and keep the gates of the sanctuary the Sabbath day. Remember me, O God, concerning this also and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy.
So we had to readjust their mindset again on worship. They forgot. We’re going to get into some of that a little later.
Then I want to look at the third thing that happens.
16 There dwelt men of Tyre also therein, which brought fish, and all manner of ware, and sold on the sabbath unto the children of Judah, and in Jerusalem.
17 Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing is this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day?
18 Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath.
19 And it came to pass, that when the gates of Jerusalem began to be dark before the sabbath, I commanded that the gates should be shut, and charged that they should not be opened till after the sabbath: and some of my servants set I at the gates, that there should no burden be brought in on the sabbath day.
20 So the merchants and sellers of all kind of ware lodged without Jerusalem once or twice.
21 Then I testified against them, and said unto them, Why lodge ye about the wall? if ye do so again, I will lay hands on you. From that time forth came they no more on the sabbath.
22 And I commanded the Levites that they should cleanse themselves, and that they should come and keep the gates, to sanctify the sabbath day. Remember me, O my God, concerning this also, and spare me according to the greatness of thy mercy.
23 In those days also saw I Jews that had married wives of Ashdod, of Ammon, and of Moab:
24 And their children spake half in the speech of Ashdod, and could not speak in the Jews’ language, but according to the language of each people.
25 And I contended with them, and cursed them, and smote certain of them, and plucked off their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, Ye shall not give your daughters unto their sons, nor take their daughters unto your sons, or for yourselves.
26 Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? yet among many nations was there no king like him, who was beloved of his God, and God made him king over all Israel: nevertheless even him did outlandish women cause to sin.
Solomon, the wisest man that has ever lived, when God asked him, I will give you anything you ask, when he became king of Israel, he asked for wisdom. God said, you have asked for something that is very good. But even though he was the wisest man, he allowed lust to enter his heart.
He allowed influence of his foreign wives to dictate how worship of God should be contended within the nation of Israel. And you can go, and we did the study on the kings and you came to Solomon. He had all these wives and concubines, hundreds.
Somebody said, man, if you were a wife of Solomon, you never got to see the guy. He did it because he thought he was being clever. He thought that he would make alliances with all the nations around him by marrying those kings’ daughters.
The only thing he didn’t think about, those nations around him were pagan nations. And those daughters brought their gods with them. And they set up high places.
And women have a way of getting men to do things for them that they normally probably wouldn’t do if they had been left to themselves. But his wives got him to build high places for them to worship their gods outside the city of Jerusalem. It was disgusting.
All these women with all their false gods that were no gods at all. Jeremiah addresses that. He deals with it because he’s dealing with the aftermath of Solomon before the nations go into captivity.
And he describes what their gods were like. They’d go out and they’d get a piece of a tree. And they’d cut this tree.
And they’d sculpt this tree. And then they’d put gold and silver on this tree. And then they would dress this tree up with beautiful clothes.
And then they would go and get something and build a carrying ramp to have servants carry this tree that was now covered with silver and gold and beautiful clothes. And they would worship this tree. And they would go out and they would ask this tree to deliver and answer their prayers.
And he goes, How stupid is this? It’s a tree. It can’t speak. It can’t see.
It can’t handle. It can’t talk. And it sure can’t answer your prayers.
But that’s what you’re worshipping. And then they’d go out and they’d even do more bizarre things. Start sacrificing to them.
And then more bizarre things. Start sacrificing people to them. More bizarre things.
Start sacrificing their own children to them. So God said, enough is enough. You don’t marry the other.
27 Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God in marrying strange wives?
28 And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was son in law to Sanballat the Horonite: therefore I chased him from me.
29 Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, and the covenant of the priesthood, and of the Levites.
30 Thus cleansed I them from all strangers, and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business;
31 And for the wood offering, at times appointed, and for the firstfruits. Remember me, O my God, for good.
It can’t see, it can’t handle, it can’t talk, and it sure can’t answer your prayers. But that’s what you’re worshipping. And then they go out and even do more bizarre things.
Start sacrificing to them. And then more bizarre things. Start sacrificing people to them.
More bizarre things. Start sacrificing their own children to them. So God said, enough’s enough.
You don’t marry the unbeliever. Don’t bring your gods in here. And what had happened prior to them coming back, it had gotten so bad that under Manasseh,he literally set up false god worship in the temple of God during the time of Manasseh the king.
Some of the kings of Judah actually set up worship places on the corners of the walls. Different places that you didn’t have to even go to the temple to worship these false gods. And Nehemiah says, we’ve rebuilt the walls by God’s grace.
We have sacrificed the walls. We’ve recommitted ourselves and now you do this.To the point that the children can’t even speak our language anymore.
They speak a language that they can’t understand, Hebrew. How are they going to worship God? How do they even know about God? And so he says, look at the example of Solomon again, and you should have learned from Solomon. Shall we then hearken unto you to do all this great evil, to transgress against our God by marrying strange wives? And one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, and getting back to Eliashib, was son-in-law to Sanballat, the Horonite.
Therefore, I chased him from me. Not only did they marry these pagan women, but one of them was the son-in-law to Sanballat, who was in cahoots with Tobiah, who was trying to destroy Israel. So you’ve got this Jewish guy marrying Sanballat’s daughter.
And he chases him right out of the city. Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, the covenant of the priesthood and of the Levites. Thus I cleansed them from all strangers and appointed the wards of the priests and the Levites, every one in his business.
And for the word of offering at times appointed, and for the firstfruits, remember me, O my God, for good. Was this easy for Nehemiah to do? The answer is no, because he thought he got it all right and then he comes back and it’s all messed up again and he’s got to readjust the people and refocus his thoughts. But if you would turn with me, I want you to see that Satan’s tactics don’t change.
And if you would turn with me to
2 Thessalonians 3:1 Paul is dealing with some of the same things.
Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and by our gathering together unto him, that ye be not soon shaken in mind or be troubled, neither by spirit nor by word nor by letter, as from us, as that day of Christ is at hand. He’s been dealing with the Thessalonians because they thought that they’d missed the second coming of Jesus.
So he wrote the first letter of Thessalonians saying, no, you didn’t miss it. He’s writing the second letter of Thessalonians to give them a clue of what’s going to happen before and around the time that the Lord comes. And he’s saying, listen to the things we’ve taught you.
And he says, you need to understand, apostasy is coming. What happened during the time of Nehemiah between his first coming to Jerusalem and when he came back, apostasy set in to those that said they were part of Israel and it didn’t take 490 years. It took only a little time.
And the apostasy was just as great or greater than it had been before God judged and took Israel and Judah into captivity. You see, sin, gone unchecked, will consume quickly. And Paul tells them, let no man deceive you by any means, for that day shall not come except there come a falling away first that the man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition.
What is he speaking of there? Keep your finger in 2 Thessalonians and turn with me to 1 Timothy and 2 Timothy and Paul tells us what he’s talking about. So, 1 and 2 Timothy. In 1 Timothy, chapter 4, it says,
Now the Spirit speaketh expressly that in the latter times some depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spiritsand doctrines of demons or devils.
Look at that, seducing spirits. Seduction is something that happens when you don’t realize it’s happening to you. If I’m going to seduce you, I don’t come and tell you, I’m seducing you, but rather I come and what I do is I try to deceive you into believing and doing what I want you to do even though under normal conditions you wouldn’t do it.
I’ll give you an example. I went to a charity before when I was a little kid. I went to the fair and this guy seduced me into thinking I could win a prize.
And so he gave me two free chances and on the free chances I had to throw a baseball and knock over these three pins, bowling pins. You’ve seen that game at the fair. And I threw the ball and knocked over the pins.
So he says, now we’ve got the thing. You’ve got it down. You know how to do it.
I need your dollar. I gave him my dollar. I could only get two of those pins off.
I couldn’t get the third one. I gave him another dollar. I gave him another dollar.
What he’d done is he seduced me into thinking I could do something that he was in total control of. I don’t know how he controlled it, if there was a magnet or what it was, but there was something that enabled him to prevent all three pins from going off. And he seduced me into thinking I could do it.
And so I gave him all my money, so I had no money for lunch. Well, that’s a kid.These are adults.
And it’s what they’re believing about God and their eternity. And he says in the last days they’re going to be seducing spirits. They’re going to come and they’re going to be filled with seduction.
And he says, what are they going to speak? Lies? They’re not going to speak the truth. They’re going to speak lies. In hypocrisy.
Having their conscience seared with a hot iron. In other words, they will do this and have no guilt. And they know they are telling you a lie that’s sending you to hell, but they don’t care.
Because Satan has placed something in it for them in this world, and they don’t look beyond today. And these are some of the things that he says are going to be marks of some of the last things. Forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them that believe, know the truth.
For every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer. I’m giving you to keep your hands in the Bible, but now turn to 2 Timothy.
And in 2 Timothy chapter 3. The results of this seduction. Beginning at verse 1.
This know also that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truth-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof from such turn away.
Now I want you to see that. Having a form of godliness but denying the power thereof. What is the power of God? What is the power of God? The power of God is to be able to transform a heart.
To change a life. The power of God is to make and transform someone who is in total rebellion and change their heart into one that loves and serves Him. That’s the power of God.
And where is it found? At the cross of Christ. I want you to tell you today, it’s not those outside the church that Christians have to worry about, but it’s often times those that are within the church. It wasn’t the person outside that Israel had to worry about when Nehemiah left.
It was Elijah, the high priest. The one that was supposed to be leading them and telling them what was right and wrong. The one that was supposed to be leading them in worship of God.
I want to tell you today, there are people that are teachers that are false teachers.And they’ve got huge followings and it’s with people that many of whom are born again Christians. But they’re not reading what Paul said.
They’re not looking at the Old Testament to see what Satan did with Israel. It’s amazing. It wasn’t legalism when I was a kid.
But it was because we, as we studied last week, were to be a peculiar people. A different people. We followed God.
When I was in high school, they had a prom. It was a dance. And the kids from our church didn’t go to the prom.
Because we didn’t dance. And some people look at it as legalism. I’m glad that I had somebody that taught me why do you want to put yourself in a position of potential compromise that you don’t have to put yourself in? Somebody asked me one time, well, you’re against dancing? I said, no, as long as you’re dancing with your wife, I could really care less.
Or if you’re doing a dance like they do in Israel where it’s a joyful dance, but to slow dance, which is what we were being taught to go to the prom, and you’re a high school kid, and you’re slow dancing. Thoughts come. And it just, it struck me one day.
You realize if you put yourself in that position, unless that woman or that guybecomes your husband or your wife, you’re dancing with somebody else’s husband or somebody else’s wife. Would you like that? It’s not legalism. We’re a peculiar people.
My dad didn’t have a full comprehension of the gospel until he died. Shortly before his death, he accepted Christ. But my dad had this understanding that God’s day was God’s day.
When I grew up as a kid, when somebody that had the same color hair as me, or when you grew up as kids, nothing was done on Sundays in the community. Nothing was done on Wednesday nights. Those were church days.
I remember one time, we had a really good crop, and it was forecast to rain on Monday. And I said to my dad, are we going to go combine? He said, no. I said, why not? He said, because today is God’s day.
That’s not in our culture anymore. Today, you’ve got Christians bussing their kids all over the country on Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, a whole week long for sports. The best days to have sales is the weekend, and Sunday’s a good day.
And it’s evident in the way that people respect coming to hear God’s word. I grew up in a little church in a little town. And that church was packed every Sunday.
Granted, there were a lot of kids. People had a lot more kids back then. But it was packed.
I was talking to somebody in my hometown, that same church. He said, yeah, we’ve got some new people coming. There’s about 10 people that show up on Sunday now.
Granted, the town is smaller, but I can tell you, there’s a lot of people that will have nothing to do with church. And even if you look at people that say they’re evangelicals, do we understand what Christians in other parts of the world have to go through just to serve Jesus? He wants everybody out of the country that’s not Hindu. The church is being persecuted big time. But it’s very interesting.
They have brought speakers, Christian speakers, over to India and people will walk hours to go hear this speaker and they want to be taught for three or four days and if the guy can’t speak for at least an hour, they look at him and say, you don’t have anything to say. Man, you come to America and you go to a church service where the guy preaches for an hour and everybody’s out the door because, wait a second, I’ve got a reservation down at the buffet. Or I’m going to miss the Vikings game.
Do we understand what Paul is talking about? In the last days, perilous times would come and the perilous times would be introduced into God’s people by false teachers who would come saying things that sounded so good that the people did it. Just like Elisha, I’m sure he told the others, hey, this is a good waythat we can keep Tobiah off our backs. Let me store his stuff for him.
Nehemiah isn’t here anymore. Just let me store his stuff for Elisha’s son. You know, if I marry Sanballat’s daughter, just like Solomon, I’ve got a relationship going.
But I set an example for everybody else in Israel and pretty soon everybody’s marrying everybody else’s daughter and nobody knows who God is and they can’t even speak the language. And today you have, pray for our young people.I’m hearing that young people are much more desirous to find out about God.
Just pray they find out the right God and the right Bible and the right Jesus so they can talk the right language. It’s perilous times. But the thing is, with perilous times, we have a God who’s greater than the enemy.
And Paul says in the book of Romans, we are more than conquerors through Him that loves us all. But we have to know who He is and we have to understand what He wants us to do. And then we have to do it.
And sometimes it’s not easy being a peculiar person. When you’ve got to sit and tell somebody, well, I really don’t do that. Why? Well, let me tell you about my Savior.
Satan always wants to get lies. The most effective lies are the lies that you sound like the truth. Right? And so Satan comes and he pulls Hegelian dialectics on us all the time, combining truth with lies and saying, look, it’s really truth.
And then you do it and you’re following the lie. So I challenge you, compare what teachers say to the Word of God make the Bible your standard and your authority.Because that’s what Nehemiah did.
He came in and said, what did God say? Not what did Eliashib say. Not what did Eliashib’s son say. But what did God say? And if I’m God’s child, if I’m God’s, part of God’s family, I need to believe God.
Not somebody who says they’re coming in the name of God. But it’s teaching a doctrine that’s nowhere to be found in this book. To lead people astray.
And to prepare them, even as we read, and didn’t go on to finish it because we’re out of time. In 1 Thessalonians, or 2 Thessalonians, where it talks about the fact that there’s coming one who’s going to be such a deceiver in the church. People who think they’re Christians are being set up to follow the deceiver instead of the true Christ.
May we know what we believe. And may it be based on this book. Let’s just close in prayer.
Lord, I pray that you’d just help us to understand these things. Help us to apply these things to our hearts and lives. Lord, help us to realize that I can be deceived, but you can’t.
And Lord, I pray that your spirit would give you the one that guides and directs my heart and my thoughts and help me to understand the truth. And that I walk in the truth and not in the deception of this world. This we ask in Jesus’ name.