Getting Right
Nehemiah 5:1–13
The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God? Nehemiah 5:9

We must ask of ourselves: What good is it to build great evangelical institutions, constructing walls against the “evil” of our opposing, secular world, if within the walls the so-called people of God are indistinguishable from those without? What good is it to preserve a separate “Christian” identity if Christians behave like unbelievers? To put it in sharp terms, we need to stop calling the world to repent until we repent ourselves.

Of what should we repent? There are scores of things, but a thoughtful consideration of this chapter of Nehemiah suggests two of them.

1. Disobedience to the revealed law of God. The nobles of Nehemiah’s day were disobeying the teachings of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. Why is it that so many within the evangelical church take the revealed law of God so casually? It is no surprise that the world does this. The world does not receive the Bible as God’s Book. But we do. We even maintain that it is inerrant “in the whole and in its parts.” How then can we take it so lightly? How can we say, as I have heard many so-called evangelicals say, “But that [specific teaching] was for that day, not today.” Or, “Well, we have to be realistic. Life just doesn’t fit those clear-cut categories.” We play loose with the Scriptures and we need to repent of it. We need to become people of the Book—in fact and not just in our profession.

2. Putting our personal prosperity before other people’s well-being. That is what these nobles were doing. They were enriching themselves at the expense of poor people. May I suggest that the evangelical church has been doing this too—or at least enriching itself while disregarding its poorer members. The only times in history in which the church has been really godly and really strong have been times when it was out rubbing shoulders with the poor and helping them. Revival has always borne fruit among the masses. But most of us do not even know the poor. We will give contributions to help them, sometimes—if we are not asked for too much. But we are not a church of the poor. We are not even a church of the masses. We need to repent of our elitist dispositions.

What is our problem? Isn’t it our love of money, the very thing that was causing the officials of Nehemiah’s day to exploit those around them? Don’t we put the good life for ourselves first, at whatever cost?

We need to repent of such wickedness. We need to get right within the walls before we build the walls higher.

Taken from Come to the Waters by James Boice ISBN 9798887790954 used with permission from P&R Publishing, Phillipsburg NJ 08865

Scripture quotations are from the ESV (the Holy Bible English Standard Version) copyright 2001 by Crossway a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.