"A HEART FOR WHAT IS RIGHT!"

NEHEMIAH 5:1-19

Nehemiah and the Jews had been building the walls of Jerusalem despite the discouragement and the opposition of their enemies. The story takes a turn in chapter 5. Here we find problems within the corpus of the people. Here we see how Nehemiah dealt with the problem. The narration parallels closely that of Charles Péan, a young French salvation army officer. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. Men were dying of fever, leprosy was rampant, good food unknown, beatings commonplace. The place was Devil's Island, a colony of prison camps in French Guiana established in 1852 as a so-called 'white experiment." French convicts were sent to Guiana to perform work once done by African slaves. The experiment was an easy way to get rid of dangerous criminals and provide free labor for Guiana. Reports of maltreatment of the convicts had been filtering back to France for decades when, in 1928, Charles Péan was asked to visit the prison camps by the head of the salvation army in France. Péan spent a month in the South American colony, visiting many sites that made up the complex known as Devil's Island. He was appalled at what he found, and he vowed to seek reformation. Péan had the right kind of heart; the kind of heart Nehemiah had and the kind of heart we ought to have; a heart for what is right. What kind of heart is that?

1. A HEART THAT FEELS WITH THE DISTRESSED: VV1-5:
1. What kind of distresses were the people suffering?
1. There was a lack of food; too many people working on the wall, too little produce.
2. They were in debt due to mortgaging their property to buy food.
3. Their children were in actual bondage to other Jews as collateral for the loans to buy commodities.
4. King Artaxerxes was taxing them heavily.
2. Economic woes, social injustices, lack of necessities is not new, is it? Jesus said to the disciples, "the poor you always have with you." Matthew 26:11. That is a simple fact of life.
3. But because the distresses are so prevalent, there are some negative responses we may make.
1. We may become overwhelmed and seek to block out any awareness of a seemingly impossible task.
2. We may invest for awhile and then suffer what some call "compassion fatigue" as we grow weary in well doing.
3. We may conclude that they have made their own bed and ought to lie in it.
4. We may say, "better him than me!"
4. A better approach is
1. Try to remember that what we do to and for the least of these is done to and for Jesus Christ himself.
2. Try to put ourselves in that other person's shoes for awhile and consider what we'd do given that person's set of problems.
3. Try to develop a sense of compassion so that our hearts are not calloused and indifferent to the plight of others even if that plight is self generated.

2. A HEART THAT CAN BECOME RIGHTEOUSLY ANGRY: V6:
1. The word Nehemiah used implies a mixture of wrath, grief and indignation. And he was not mildly perturbed, he was genuinely vexed. He was "very angry" but you can be sure his was righteous anger.
2. There is unrighteous anger: anger is unrighteous when it is:
1. Selfish. Something is wrong when we are angry because we are inconvenienced or bothered.
2. Vitriolic, venomous and vindictive. Our anger is unholy when we will have our pound of flesh and we will get in the last blow.
3. Out of bounds. Anger is sinful when we want to exact a more severe penalty than the crime warrants.
4. Explosive. Like a shot-gun blast it erupts and strikes a lot of targets.
5. Seething, festering, nurtured, perpetuated. Anger is unrighteous when we won't let it go, won't forget it, won't forego the pleasure of our wrath.
6. Misdirected. Anger is sinful when we take out on the wrong people because they are convenient.
3. But as Henry Ward Beecher said, "a man that does not know how to be angry does not know how to be good. A man that does not know how to be shaken to his heart's core with indignation over things evil is either a fungus or a wicked man."
1. We ought to be angry when the media portrays all sorts of depravity, Godlessness, profanity, secularism, and degeneration as wholesome, normal and acceptable.
2. We ought to be angry when sports figures, movie stars, religious leaders and political figures engage in immorality and flaunt it.
3. We ought to be angry when the rights of the guilty weigh heavier on the scales of justice than the rights of the victims.
4. If we have lost the capacity to be moved to moral indignation, to be righteously angry, something is wrong, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves, and ought to determine to renew our ethical conscience.
4. My good friend, Dave Redick, said in a sermon, "Anger is a God given emotion designed to stir us up against problems and do something about them." (Mulberry Trees And Mass Murderers, hwy20coc@proaxis.com). When we can become angry at the right things, for the right reasons, and with the right results, we can experience righteous anger.

3. A HEART THAT WILL CONSTRUCTIVELY CONFRONT EVIL: V7-13:
1. Nehemiah took definite steps to deal with what he perceived was an evil he could correct:
1. He took counsel with himself: he thought about the problem; he deliberated before he jumped into action.
2. He determined what he could do and what he couldn't do:
1. There was little likelihood that he could alter the taxation problem.
2. He might not be able to do much to see to it that there was more food produced.
3. He could resolve the injustices done by his people to his people.
3. He confronted the right people head-on; he didn't talk to everyone else; he did no backstabbing; he went to the source.
4. He set the example himself!
2. There are many destructive, negative, and even immoral approaches to what is perceived as evil:
1. I am totally pro-life but I unilaterally denounce burning abortion clinics since that merely substitutes one evil for another.
2. I am a law and order man, but believe unbendingly that taking the law into one's own hands is always immoral.
3. Fighting fire with fire may be an acceptable tactic in a burn, but fighting evil with evil is never honorable.
4. But it is proper and appropriate
1. To write letters to the editor and to political representatives in order to speak the Christian mind on current events.
2. To be part of the political process as Christians become candidates to public office.
3. To witness to our faith in the circle of our own personal acquaintances. Where the gospel is shared and believed, evil loses.
4. To realize that we are not responsible for what we are unable to do, but will never be able to shirk responsibility for what we are able to do. Someone once said, "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing."

STORY FROM "ONE WHO BELIEVED" VOL. II, PAMPLIN AND WORCESTER, CHRIST COMMUNITY CHURCH, P.O. BOX 88, DUNDEE, OREGON 97115

Return To Sermons On Nehemiah

Return To Archive

Return To Home Page