this evening. God, I pray that you would be with us through every step of our lives. God, we thank you and praise you for the amazing love that you have for us. I pray that through that love you would open our hearts and minds and ears and everything just to understand what you would have us to learn about Nehemiah this evening.
You know, my pray, you know. All right, you guys, I have a seat. We'll open up your Bibles to Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter 5. It's in the Old Testament.
Don't worry. No one's going to judge you if you go to the table of contents, but we will have the Scripture up on the screen so you don't have a Bible. It's okay if you can't find it. All right, so Nehemiah, we are in a series walking through this Old Testament book.
I love the Old Testament because I love seeing illustrations. How many of you work well when you get to see an example, right? When you get to see an example, you learn it better. I do too.
And I love the Old Testament because oftentimes we get to see what was God's people back in the Old Testament. We get to see a picture of what God wants for the New Testament church. And so we get to see an example of sometimes what God is calling us to. And so I love that we get to go see that in the book of Nehemiah.
Now, up to this point, Nehemiah was crying the first time we saw him. Remember, he's crying. I'm going to be repeating myself by the way over the next couple weeks just to make sure we know why Nehemiah is doing what he's doing. He is crying because the people of God have lost their sense of security.
They've lost their sense of identity. They've lost their passion and purpose in God. And he was going to Jerusalem to rebuild the walls, to rebuild the broken down gates to help restore this identity, security and passion for God. And so that's what Nehemiah is going to do.
Remember, then he prayed for four months. He took a long time waiting for God to open up an opportunity. And then he did it with King Art of Xerces. And he took it.
He had courage. He stepped through the door that got opened. And he got the whole entire project funded. King Art of Xerces, he said, I'm not going to send you a safe passage.
I'll provide you all the lumber, all the materials that you'll need to do this job. So Nehemiah gets there and then he starts seeing oppression from the outside. Right. Last week we talked about how to sand ballot and to buy a raging war against them or trying to get other people from outside the walls to discourage them and to stop them and building this wall.
Well, now today in Nehemiah chapter 5, the attack is not going to come from outside the walls. It's actually going to come from inside the walls. I know it's a funny thing that most people don't understand. But did you know that church people can actually hurt other church people?
What's happening here, which we're about to see, it is people of God who are taking advantage of, who are really doing despicable things in this chapter to other fellow Israelites. It's going to be talking about church people. Now this is important for us to make a distinction here. When we read the Bible, when we come to a text, we're going to ask a couple of questions.
One is who's the writer talking to, right? In order to get a proper understanding and a proper interpretation of what Nehemiah is trying to describe, we need to understand who is Nehemiah talking to. And he's talking to church people. Alright, so if you're not a follower of Jesus, Nehemiah is not talking to you.
Okay. I mean, he's going to be giving some good pointers. But this is for people who follow Jesus. And what Nehemiah is going to be doing is he's going to be giving no excuses for the ignorance, no excuses for the fragrant, a dismissal, or turning a blind eye to poverty, to oppression, to injustice.
And he's going to say, if you're a follower of Jesus, if you're a follower of God, there is no way that you can turn a blind eye to the poverty and injustice that's going around you. And so he is calling out church people here. So if you say you're a follower of Jesus, then this message is for you. And God is going to be calling that out of you, just like Nehemiah called it out of the Israelites.
The best way I can probably think to describe the atmosphere that we're about to enter in a Nehemiah chapter 5 is through a movie that came out in 1996. Now just by show of hands comes got some younger ones here. How many of you were alive in 1996? That's what I thought a lot of you, young ins, not here.
Okay. How many of you were like one in 1996? Yeah, there you go. Okay.
Really young. Well, listen, in 1996, by the way, number one hit song in 1996 was Mokarayna, if anybody cared. But there's a movie that came out by Disney called The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Have you guys ever seen that?
No. Okay. So listen, Hunchback of Notre Dame. In this movie, there's a scene where, as Mirelda, you know, the gypsy, she goes into the church and she just starts, remember that she has that prayer that she's lifting up through song.
And in the middle of the prayer, she says, God help the outcast. Because if you don't, no one else will. And that is what is happening here. People are crying out to God.
They're crying out to Nehemiah. God's representative right now in Israel, in Israel. And they're saying, please help us because fellow countrymen are taking advantage of us. They're doing despicable things that we're about to see.
Please, if God cannot come through, then I do not know what is going to happen. And that's the state that they're in. So if you have our Bibles, Nehemiah chapter 5, let's look at verse, sorry, I'm jumping ahead of myself. Sorry, I'm jumping ahead.
So Nehemiah, it's going to be doing this. And he's going to be at one clear point. Sorry, one clear point. I want you to be the point before we go into it.
Here's the point. So I go back one. Did I have a point? Perfect.
Yeah. Here's the point right here. Followers of Jesus should be disturbed by poverty and injustice and should be at the forefront of restoring peace through action. So I want to say think about that main point as we're walking through this text.
Okay. I want to be thinking through this. And another way we can put that is that Proverbs passage, Michael, when I said speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute, speak up and judge fairly, defend the rights of the poor and the needy. That is the idea that Nehemiah is going to be getting across.
And for us as followers of Jesus, we need to take up that mantle. All right. And so I want to say that in the background as we as we read through. So now go to Nehemiah chapter, Nehemiah chapter 5.
Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers for their for those who said, with our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive. Verse three, there are also those who said, we are mortgaging our fields and our vineyards and our houses to get grain because of the famine. And then with those who said, we have our money from the kings taxes on our fields and our vineyards.
Now, the flesh is that the flesh of our brothers and 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 have our vineyards. So here's the situation.
There is a extreme famine and there's not enough food. There's just isn't. There's not enough resources to feed everybody. And the first group that we see in verse two says, listen, we have a lot of kids here.
Some families had way more dependence than other people, right? They had more children. They had more people to look out for. And they have no food.
Wow, just down the street. There's a family that doesn't have as many, uh, dependence and they have plenty of food, but they just don't care. What's being described here is people who willingly turn a blind eye and are ignorant to people's poverty. I think the best way I can describe this is probably when Amber and I lived in the burbs a couple of years ago.
When you live in the burbs normally, when you're driving around, you may see someone who is in need of money or need of some sort of help. And the natural inclination is to do what? Keep looking straight, right? They're wide by your window.
Don't make eye contact, right? It's a little bit different here in the city because we normally see the people who have need every single day. And so we're a little bit more aware of the need that they have. But when I lived in the burbs, I was thinking to myself, man, I just need to not interact.
And I was willingly turning a blind eye to people who actually had an edema saying, everybody does that. Hasn't, I'm just saying there are times when people really have a need and we tend to just turn a blind eye. We are naturally developed to do that. We just live in a culture that wants to steer clear of that type of stuff.
And then Jesus, or Neomiasis, I think Jesus is going to tell us in a little bit that ignorance or blindly turning your eye towards poverty or towards enslavement or towards injustice does not get you off the hook. You can't just plead ignorance. Oh, I didn't know that these people were in poverty or I didn't know that these people needed help. What Neomise is going to say is there's a family right down your street who has a need.
Why don't you go search for it? Search for that family that has the many kids. You know there's a family going on. You know that they have many kids.
This was a small society. You know that they've got many kids. You know that they're probably not going to make it. Why don't you do the loving thing as a neighbor, as a follower of God, and go bring them something.
So they're turning a blind eye. The second group we have here, it says that we are mortgaging out our stuff. That's first three. We're mortgaging out our lands.
We have to borrow money. So not only are we losing our lands while we borrow our borrowing money, but if we can't pay it back, it's what's going to happen. All the loans that we take out, well we may even lose our land. I guess what?
It's followers of God who are doing this to us. And then the last group and it's the saddest group of them all. There are some people who went there and said, you know what, I want to make sure that you give me what is owed to me and you prepaid his debt. So you need to give me your child as a slave.
These were fellow followers of God, Israelites, countrymen who are saying, you know what, your son or daughter needs to be my slave because I'll give you incentive to pay me back. Do you see why in a second in verse 6 Nehemiah is going to say he was angry? See, what's wrong with these people is that they have forgotten God's design for how they were supposed to interact back in that day. According to the Old Testament, they were supposed to forgive debt every seven years.
According to the Old Testament, they were supposed to lend money without interest. According to the Old Testament, they were supposed to return property that was mortgage to them after 50 years. And yet the people of God decided instead to charge outrageous interests. They decided to take children as slaves as collateral and they decided to enforce loans that no one could pay.
Well, that is the damaging effects of what they did in a cultural way. The principle is still the same for us today that God gives us and says, don't take advantage of other people when they are in need. And yet these people tend to do that. So, so Nehemiah, look at verse 6 says, I was very angry when I heard their outcry and these words, he was angry.
You should be angry. I should be angry when we see this. So the first point is as followers of Jesus should be disturbed when they witness poverty and oppression just like Nehemiah. God's intention for Israel at this time was that anyone in their walls would be taken care of.
Now, there would be no poverty that everyone because of radical generosity and because of forgiveness, there wasn't any systemic or a cyclical of lasting poverty amongst the people. God's plan was for the people of God to be a place where people can flourish, not to have an abundance of wealth, but that their needs would be taken care of. We see that in Acts chapter 2 when it says, guess what? When someone had need in Acts chapter 2 says, well, the church came along and provided for them.
This is the vision that God gave the Old Testament of the people of God. And this is the vision that we have in the New Testament as the church. I love this because what God's trying to do here, through Nehemiah, is he's trying to reverse the culture, a culture that was doggy dog, a culture that practiced despicable forms of slavery. What God's trying to do is he's trying to reverse the culture and say, you know what?
You need to lend without strings attached. Now, the people of God should be so trustworthy that if you need somebody, the lender knows, I don't have to charge you interest because I know you'll pay me back. And then if you're the lender and you're a follower of Jesus, you love them in such a way that says, you know what, you're going to lend for me, guess what? I'm going to be gracious and not hold this over your head and you know what?
I'm not going to charge you interest. That's how God was establishing this type of people to be a people that were going to be for people and before their well-being. And yet they had gotten it all wrong. Jesus has the same opinion.
The religious leaders and Luke 16 and 20, what he tells them is that he says that they are money lovers and they devour the houses of widows. The religious people, the Pharisees, they're kicking widows out of their house to get their property, they have good real estate. It's sickening. He tells a rich, wrong ruler.
So everything that you have and distributed all to the poor. And the rich, wrong ruler couldn't do that because he loved his money too much. See, it's clear that Jesus was extremely concerned about the well-being of those that were in poverty, those who were in oppression. Even James says, what is real religion?
It is those who take care of the orphan and the widow. It's taking care of people who don't have a voice who can't stand up for themselves. Jesus is so angry and outraged at this that in Matthew 25 it's going to be on a screen for you. It says, well I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat.
I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. I was a stranger and you did not invite me in. I need to close and you did not close me and I was sick and imprisoned and you did not look after me. Look at how they responded verse 44.
They answered him. The religious people. Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or imprisoned and did not help you and he says, truly I tell you whatever you did not do from one of the least of these, you did not do for me. And then what he says, it's extremely telling, verse 46, then they will go away to eternal punishment but the righteous to eternal life.
Jesus is so passionate about this. He is so passionate that he says evidence of a life separated from him is someone who turns a blind eye and who does not care about the poor. What he's saying is this, you show me a Christian who neglects the poor and I'll show you a Christian who neglects the very presence of Jesus in their life. You cannot have a relationship with Jesus, not be transformed by Jesus yet not care about the poor and the oppressed.
That's how strong Jesus is here and so we should be outraged as followers of Jesus. We should be outraged when we see injustice and slavery and poverty because in a spiritual way God has released us from our debt and from our enslavement. First Timothy tells us that he has released us that our debt has been paid. Romans 6 tells us that we have freed from sin to serve our gracious master because we have been freed and somehow understand what it's like spiritually to be in that state.
Our hearts should break for those who are in a physical state. We should have a desire to see them flourish and see their well-being because for the first time in our lives because we have Jesus we can now stop thinking about only ourselves and we can start only thinking about each other. That's what it means when he says love your neighbor as yourself. It's not the people you like, it's everyone around you.
Do you care more about the person outside you're sleeping on a bench and their well-being than your own? That's the type of atmosphere that Jesus is trying to create. So what should we do? Well followers of Jesus, the second point should take action to stop the oppression.
That's what Nehemiah does. That's look at verse 7 in Nehemiah chapter 5. It says, I took counsel with myself. I mean he collected his thoughts and that brought charges against the nobles and the officials and I said to them, you are exacting interest each from his brother.
Look what he does. He holds a great assembly against them and said to them, we as far as we are able have brought our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us. What he's saying here says, we have gone to great lengths. Remember all these people are coming back to Jerusalem saying, we have gone to great lengths to get these brothers and sisters out of slavery and when they get home, guess what's happening?
They're going back into slavery. It's unacceptable. And then he says, that's like a verse 9. He says, so I said, the thing that you are doing is not good.
All you not to walk, look at this, in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations or enemies. More over, I and my brothers and my servants are lending money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them, this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, their houses and the percentage of money, grain, wine and oil that you have been exacting from them.
Nehemiah makes no qualms when he goes to these people. He tells them straight up what is wrong and how they are pressing the people. And look how he does it. He does it with an assembly, right?
He gathers people. He gathers like-minded people because he knows if he goes to them by himself, they're probably going to turn him down. But if he goes with a multitude of people, people have the same vision to want to see justice being done. That has force.
That's why I've been in our culture today, if we are able to do anything, it's partnering with people who can actually influence the world. Mercy Hill Church, by God's grace regarding that's an amazing thing, but we are still small. There's only very little of what we can do to end slavery in our nation, or in our sex slave trade in our nation and around the world. But if we can find groups of people, if we can find organizations that we can partner with to say, we're going to do this together, then we can really have an influence to start doing this type of ministry and this type of ending injustice being done.
And the goal of this is to see what happens in verse 12. Look at what he says here. He says, then they say we will restore these things. These are the cooks, the oppressors, the slave owners.
They say we will restore these things and require nothing from them. We will do as you say, and I call the priests and made them swear to do as they were promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, so may God, check 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 the assembly said, Amen, and praise the Lord and the people did as they had promised. The goal of us speaking out against this type of oppression is so that they would be humbled by the fear of God and that they would stop what they're doing. Nehemiah saw this in a beautiful way, but I think he knew that sometimes speaking out against it is not enough. And that's where action comes in, which is that last point is that followers of Jesus need to lead by example and do our part.
Look at verse 14. This is beautiful. When Nehemiah does moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the Judas, so he's gotten a major, major climbing the ladder here. He just went as a dignitary.
Now he's a stinking governor of this place, okay. He has got the world at his feet. Remember he was just a cup bear before and now he's the governor. He says that it was the 20th year of our church.
He's the king. He was there for 12 years. Blah blah blah. And what cares about that?
I'm just going to be doing that. That's like it's not first four, 15. The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them their daily rations, 40 shekels of silver. Even their servants loited over the people with this, but I did not do so because of the fear of God.
He said, even though guys before me guess what they did, they made everyone give them money so they can have a lot of money. He said, I'm not going to do that. I love it still. He said, I also persevered in the work of the wall and required no land and all my servants were gathered there for work.
Verse 17, Moreover, they were at my table 150 men, Jews and officials, besides those who came to us from the nations and they were around us. Now what was prepared at my expense for each day was an ox six to us choice sheep and birds and every 10 days all kinds of wine in abundance. Look at this. Yet all of this.
I did not demand the food allowance of the governor because the service was too heavy on the people. Nehemiah decided that he was going to make decisions in his own personal life to make sure that the people were not taxed. He said, I don't need an ox and whatever six choice sheep and birds and new wine in abundance every 10 days. He said, no, let me pee, pee, pee and jay, right?
Let's lighten the road of the people. Let me sacrifice a little bit so that we can make the well-being of the people around us better. We can make our society better because we're sacrificing. And so what we see Nehemiah doing is not using the resources that he could simply could have had her comfort.
We see him instead building margin in his life so that other people would benefit from it. That's a beautiful thing about what God does in our life. When we understand that we have been rescued from ourselves, that we're not the center of attention of our own universe but God calls us to love other people. What happens in our heart is this love to actually serve, love to actually sacrifice in our own life to see someone better off.
And that's what's happening here. But here's some practical and quick ways that you as an individual can start doing this in your own life. Something that Amber and I do is that we carry around with this $5 McDonald gift cards. Simple as getting a $5 gift card, keeping it in your wallet, keeping it in your purse, and when you're going throughout the day, if you see someone I need, don't just give it to them and say, hey, I got $5 on this gift card.
I hope it helps you eat. And can I pray for you? What's your name? There's plenty of people in our neighborhood that I know them on a first-name basis just because we so often interact with each other.
And I'm able to pray with them or able to hear their story. It's a beautiful thing when you're able to do that. And that's what God calls us to do as individuals. It's $5.
Listen, anyone in this room probably has $5 so they can sacrifice this week in order to get a gift card and go bless somebody. Another way that you can do this is December time. We do a homeless Christmas homeless gift where we just come together. We pack them here, but it's you using your own money to buy the stuff, right?
This is your money and you go, you buy blankets, water bottles, hand warmers, whatever else is on the list, right? And we pack them here at the church and then we go out and find people who are living on the streets who are normally overlooked at Christmas time and we give them a gift and say, Merry Christmas. Even that has tangible benefits of us showing the love of Jesus to the oppress and to the abhorrent those in our poverty. So that's how we do that in some individuals.
Let me share with you just about Mercy, how we do that as a church as a whole. I think it's really important that you understand why we do what we do, right? We do it to proclaim the name of Jesus, but we also care about those that are poverty. So one of the things that our church does is we partner with an organization called Stonemission.
Now Stonemission is in Columbus, Ohio. And what they do at their center is they have a community kitchen, a food pantry, dental services, educational services, job training. They also have a church plant there. They have a vision and medical care for the less fortunate.
And so part of the money that you give to Mercy Hill Church goes out to this organization to help support their ministries so that those in areas, somewhat like where we live, so that in the urban center, people who don't have access to those things can't get access to those types of needs. And so it's a beautiful thing. Another thing that we do is that we partner with the farmers market and get the word out that there's a program there that allows people to get fresh fruits and vegetables, even if they can't afford it. That's a beautiful thing that we can do that.
We can partner as a church to be able to provide for those that are less fortunate. But there's one particular way, and I can go out with other ways that we do that, but there's one that I really wanted to highlight because it's really important that we do. And that is the international justice mission. This is a wonderful, wonderful wonderful organization that we partner with.
And they specialize, at least their focus, is primarily on those that are in slavery and are oppressed through violence and oppressed economically. Alright, and so let's go ahead and watch this video. Make sure that the mute is off on the soundboard for the video. And yeah, let's watch it.
So this is the right of the establishment. First of the second, you can grow out our meetings, and remember to have served in a new situation, and give yourself the position. We've got to go with the police. We saw our former group kids about eight years back on eight years back.
These kids were on this boat. They were out of that. They were a huge new imagination. We got to talk about it.
This is all. And then there were some hit by these camps. I imagine in my mind that we respond. We have operations all over the world, rescuing people from slavery.
Because today there are criminals who abuse children, sell girls, put 12 people in the house, and force families into slavery. criminals prey on the easiest target, the world's poor, because they expect no one to defend them. But today, there are thousands of people gathering to seek justice for those in slavery. We are a group of lawyers, counselors, activists, and supporters.
We are called International Justice Mission. And together, we formed the largest international anti-slavery organization in the world. The slavery won't come to an end until criminals know they can't get away with it. So we partner with local police to arrest and prosecute criminals.
This sends a message to slave owners. We will not go. We stay with the survivors until they are here, until they are free. We are now in the region of the world.
We are now in the region of the world. Each year, we rescue thousands of slaves and protect millions around the world. We are transforming how justice systems protect their citizens. To those who are still enslaved, we promise to find you.
We will get new home to your families, so you can have the freedom you deserve. International Justice Mission, we have a few updates from last year's annual report. By God's grace, we gave to them last year. Last year alone, we have seen almost 6,000 victims of violence and oppression rescued.
We have seen 266 criminals arrested last year and convicted. The coolest story I saw in South Asia last year, in one sting operation, 564 children, were rescued from sex trade. That is amazing. And so, when we think about how we as a church can partner with people who fight injustice, some of the other things that they do, by the way, is they fight economic, oppression, they fight violence.
So, in very tense areas where law enforcement go too far or they don't have any boundaries, they help people there. So, there's a lot of things that they do. But the reason why we partner with them is that they are very little, as a church, that we can do to help kids in Asia that are going through this. Because we can't go over there right now, but what we can do is find people who are on the forefront, find people who are trained, and what we can do is we can support them.
In September, we are going to be celebrating what they call Freedom Sunday. It's going to be the first time our church ever does Freedom Sunday. And what I wanted to do is, I didn't want us to wait until September, just to talk about International Justice Mission, because I want this to be on the forefront of our prayers, praying for this organization, praying for the people involved, praying for the unknown children that are caught up in the sex trade, and praying for God just to move into their life. But I want us over the next few months to be really critically thinking about how we as a church can put our best foot forward to support them.
So, if you don't give, it's emergency health church. Now's a really good time to do it. In total, and as our church, I mentioned this a few times, almost 20% of our inward giving goes out to different missions organizations, and one of them is IGM. So, it's a great time to start giving and to start supporting the ministry here of IGM.
But the question is why do this? Why as a church, why support them? And it's really simple. It comes down to Nehemiah's last verse in chapter 5.
So, look at verse 19, chapter 5, verse 19, it says this, remember for my good, oh my God, all that I have done for this people. Why sacrifice? Why give? Why focus on mission to end something like this, for the oppressed and for the poor, and those that are currently in difficult circumstances?
Why do this? Because at the end of my life, the end of your life, the end of mercy, the end of your life, the end of mercy, the end of your life, whenever that is, I pray to God we can look back and say, God, did we do something good? God, did we actually make our life worth it? That's why we do this.
That's the call that God is getting to all Christians. Yes, we are supposed to preach the gospel. Yes, we're supposed to preach that He is the only hope, but at the same time, Scripture is very clear. At the same time, we are supposed to be for the people who do not have a voice.
Michael, go back to Proverbs, that Proverbs verse at the very beginning. I just wanted to read that. He says, for Christians to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute, speak up, judge fairly, and defend the rights of the poor and needy. That is a part of the Christian life, and we cannot ignore it.
And so my prayer is over the next few months, you'll be compassionate about this. It's going to be a great time in September to invite other people who might be interested in getting involved in IGM or supporting IGM, but I just thought this was a perfect text to fit with the partners that we have at IGM, and I wanted them to get them in front of you. But again, I'm closing with this. This text though, while it does show the physical poverty and the slavery that we went to, and I alluded to it earlier, we have all suffered a spiritual poverty.
See, it's not enough just to take care of poverty. IGM is a Christian organization, and so they're not only trying to support through physical means, they're also trying to bring the hope of the gospel to these kids' lives, to these families' lives. See, what we really need to understand is that we all have experienced poverty, and it's a spiritual one. We were separated from God.
We were all the Bible tells us enslaved. We were slave to sin. The reason why we need Jesus in our lives is because He broke the chains off the gates that held us away from God. That's why we need Jesus.
He is the only one who was able to do that. No one else was. Our good works weren't good enough to break our own chains and set us free. We needed a rescuer, and Jesus was that rescuer.
And that is a beautiful thing. As Jesus is a rescuer now, as the people of God, we can be the rescuers as well, and show them that the ultimate rescuer, Jesus, is there for them, and He's their hope. Let's pray. Lord, we just thank You.
We thank You that You are our hope. Lord, I pray that when we ask the question in our life, and what...