Rebuilding Home: 13 Days in NehemiahSýnishorn

How can you turn your anger into action?

Were the Bible written by the same people who write the popular fairy tales in our day, chapter 12 would have simply concluded by saying, “and they lived happily ever after...” Thankfully, the Bible is an honest look at human nature, human history, and human fickleness. The Bible is the most truthful and painfully honest book ever written, and the closing chapter of Nehemiah is tragic. God brings real revival, and the people return to ruin. The account of apostasy is presented in three snapshots, each concluding with a personal prayer from Nehemiah (13:14, 13:22, 13:31).

After all the work to rebuild the wall, renew the city of Jerusalem, and return to the worship of God, the people went right back to the same old sinful behavior that caused the 141 years of discipline in the first place. Nehemiah had served as governor in Jerusalem for 12 years (5:14), and then returned to the capital city of Susa, which had been his home. Presumably, he felt that his work in Jerusalem had been successfully completed and that the leaders and policies left in his wake would ensure the ongoing worship of God and evangelization of the world from that city. Sadly, within an undisclosed number of years (perhaps between one and seven), he had to return to Jerusalem to salvage the gains that took 12 years of his life to make.

Importantly, Nehemiah feels “very angry” throughout this section (13:8). His anger is righteous because people deny God and destroy themselves. Exodus 34:6 says that God is “slow to anger,” but He gets angry, nonetheless. Even Jesus was angry on more than one occasion, and as God’s image bearers, we, too, should find ourselves experiencing righteous anger in the face of sin, evil, and injustice. Righteous anger should compel us to fight for holiness, goodness, and justice in ways that honor God and obey the law. Indeed, without anger, we are left with a passionless faith that is impervious and unmotivated to be an agent of change in a fallen and dying world.

Nehemiah is perhaps in his fifties or sixties at this point in the story. Rather than retiring, Nehemiah is determined to finish with his boots on, working for his King and Kingdom. The final chapter of Nehemiah is from his personal journal, stressing both his actions and feelings as marked by his frequent use of “I,” which is noteworthy.

This brutally honest section of Nehemiah reveals to us a process that took place in the lives of many of God’s people, threatening to destroy their entire ministry and city. That process, which is perennially tempting, is as follows:

1. In the name of politeness or personal gain, God’s people have friendships with those who do not care for God, and, rather than converting their friends to the Savior, they are themselves converted to sin (for more on this see 6:17-19 where the godless Tobiah who opposed Nehemiah and threatened his very life married into a prominent family and wound up with his own apartment in the house of the God he despised and opposed). Simply, tolerance overtakes truth as a priority.

2. Friendships and business partnerships outside of the ministry become more important than God. In time, those who do not know God are given prominence among God’s people so that God is dishonored by godless spiritual leaders.

3. Zeal and passion for God invariably wane among God’s people as the accommodation of godless spiritual leaders results in godless spirituality, even among professing worshippers of God. Simply, the distinction between Christians and non-Christians is muddied, starting with ministry leaders. Not unlike Jesus many years later at the Temple, Nehemiah feels angry (13:8), takes action, and prays to God for vindication as the people would have treated him like a villain. Nehemiah was angry that the Sabbath was violated and the worship of God was neglected. Rather than taking a day off from their work to worship God and rest with their family and friends, people kept working because it increased their own wealth. Nehemiah sought to end this sin by shutting the gates to the city so that business commerce would have to cease. Rather than obeying God and taking that day to Sabbath, the merchants simply lined up outside of the city. They waited for the gates to open, not unlike what happens outside a store debuting a new product or a theater debuting a new film. Tragically, people so loved their wealth and work that they chose to waste an entire day for a good spot in line rather than returning home to worship God and enjoy a Sabbath day with their family and friends. Nehemiah was angry that believers were marrying unbelievers, so there would be no godly legacy in future generations. The burden of this responsibility fell on the believing fathers. They merit Nehemiah’s anger most intensely as they had failed as covenant heads to lovingly lead their family for the purposes of God. Nehemiah was also angry that God’s men did not teach their children the biblical language of Hebrew, meaning children had no understanding of God or Scripture and were raised by the world instead of the Word.

Nehemiah turned his anger into action, holding the men accountable for their failed leadership. He also removed unfit ministry leaders who were not teaching the Bible or leading the people to obey God.

Theologically, what Nehemiah was battling is called apostasy. Unlike unbelievers who never claim to belong to or believe in the God of the Bible, apostasy happens when someone professes a faith they neither possess nor practice. A Bible Dictionary calls apostasy “A public denial of a previously held religious belief and a distancing from the community that holds to it. The term is almost always applied pejoratively, carrying connotations of rebellion, betrayal, treachery, or Faithlessness.”

The Greek term for apostasy is often used in ancient literature to describe military treason, where a soldier joins forces with their enemy to attack their former allies. Apostasy, in this case, is the spiritual warfare version and is common in every generation by those who want to deconstruct their faith altogether, turn the Bible into nothing more than social justice moralism, present Jesus as a good example but not a sinless Savior, or start an entirely new religion altogether while still claiming Christ. Fittingly, the book ends with a simple prayer from a humble elderly man who has stored up his treasures in Heaven and longs to be with the God he has given his life to serving faithfully. It also leaves us with the question of whether we will live our lives boldly in faith as Nehemiah did or live our lives badly and falter as many others did.

Question:

What does apostasy look like in the Christian Church today? What issues are the same as in the days of Nehemiah 13?

Thanks for studying Nehemiah with me. If you enjoyed this plan, some sermons accompany it as well as more free resources at realfaith.com.