Nehemiah 3:15-5:13, 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, Psalms 32:1-11,
Proverbs 21:5-7
Today is the 12th day of August welcome to the Daily
Audio Bible I’m Brian it is great to be here with you today as we move our way
through the center of the week get ready for the back half. And we are continuing
our journey through the book of Nehemiah that we have found ourselves in. And
there’s much for us to learn from that book as well as the letter to the
Corinthians, first Corinthians that we’re reading. So, let’s dive in and take
the next step forward, which is Nehemiah chapter 3 verse 15 through 5 verse 13
today.
Commentary:
Okay. I want to spend some time talking about what we read
in Nehemiah today because Nehemiah is just so helpful for us as we discern a
calling and a direction and counting the cost and just trying to follow the
will of the Lord as we understand where we’re to go and what we’re to do. And,
so, I don’t want to miss that. But I want to second to just kind of catch us up
in first Corinthians. We kind of passed this section today about, you know, whether
you should get married or whether you should not get married or how you should
stay how you are however that is and it causes this confusion where people, “like
should I be pursuing a spouse? Should I…should my passions all be put into…into
the things of the Lord? What should I do?” Because here it is in first
Corinthians. And this brings up like a contextualization thing that we find in
these letters. And it gets a little prickly, right? Because this is the word of
God. And, so, we read this, and we go like, “this is the word of God for all
time. And, so, it’s got have some sort of meaning now that it had then.” And,
so, if you start discussing, “what…what…what…what might that be?” Well that’s when
you get into this territory where…where you get people kind of making
accusations like, “you’re just trying to make the Bible say whatever you want
the Bible to say and you’re just trying to water down the word of God and…and…and
my experience among scholarship, that’s really not the case at all. People are
looking for the essence of what was trying to be communicated in context. And,
so, when Paul says today like now, concerning the betrothed, so those engaged
to be married. I don’t have a command from the Lord but I’m telling you what I
think. I think that in view of the present distress, which is what they were
going through at that time in the world, specifically in the region of the city
of Corinth, where this church and these people were although all of these
letters were passed around other churches. So, we can we say at this time, this
present distress that he’s talking about. It’s good for person to remain as he
is. So, if you’re married don’t try to not be married in. And if you’re free then
don’t try to get married. But if you do it’s not a sin. It’s just that it’s gonna
introduce all kinds of worldly problems that you have to deal with in your
marriage instead of being able to focus wholeheartedly on God or just to quote
Paul, “I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about
the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious
about the worldly things, how to please his wife.” And then he goes on to say
the reverse that the woman is in the same boat, basically. And, you know, I read
is, and I’ve read this, you know…I don’t know… most my life, “the unmarried man
is anxious about the things of the Lord and how to please the Lord.” I used to
read and think, that’s not what. I’m anxious about the opposite sex. That’s
what I’m anxious about. Because the natural order of things id for us to come
together, reproduce and create the next coming generation. Like this is
biological, this is spiritual, and this is reality. So, how is it that Paul is
saying, “just however you are right now, just stay that way.” It’s because
Paul’s conviction, and it’s not just Paul’s conviction, like it's…it’s a large
part of the conviction in the letters in the New Testament. The conviction is
that the world is passing away. In fact, let me just quote Paul. He says, “this
is what I mean brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on
let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn, as
though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not
rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal
with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of
this world is passing away.” That last sentence is the key one, “for the
present form of this world is passing away.” And we could say, even though we
are a couple of thousand years in the future from this letter, we still believe
that trajectory. “The present form of this world is passing away.” That is our
eschatological view, like that this is all going somewhere and what we now know
is passing away, but something new will be reborn, right? And, so, it’s like,
that’s why we watch the signs of the times. And that’s why we, every generation
from that generation to this generation thinks this is the last one. The signs
are all lining up. This is the end of it all. This is the big one. Paul thought
that but not in the distant future, like imminently. This is one of the things
that drove the church forward in its early inception, the imminent arrival of
the return of Jesus Christ and the establishment of the kingdom of God. And
like I said, like generation after generation forward all the way until today
continues to have that thread of urgency because it’s all throughout the New
Testament since they believed this was in imminent thing. Then when we read it
we are also in the same place. This is an imminent thing which leads us to live
our lives accordingly which is appropriate, like with an urgency that there is
something going on that we are a part of, and we are carrying that story
forward and we may be in this transitional moment. Like, we should live
accordingly. That’s living awake and aware. But I don’t think it’s like in any
way sacrilegious or anything disrespectful at all to say what Paul thought
about this imminent transition and what the earlier…early church writers, early
things that we read in the New Testament, what they thought was imminent
wasn’t. I mean we’re 2000 years from there. They have all passed on. They are
all restored ad whole in God, but this story has continued forward. So, when we
read some of these ethical things and this advice that Paul is giving along the
way, not just right here, this isn’t just the only instance, it’s all
throughout the letters. So, when we come across these things where we’re like, “how
would that work? Like how…how…how do I live into that? How do I do that?” Let’s
first understand they were trying to figure that out too. They were trying to
figure it out against a backdrop in which this transition, this return, this
reemergence of Jesus was going to happen any second. And, so, Paul gives advice
accordingly. This is what he thinks. And, so, yeah, if that’s the case, if the
return of Jesus is imminent, like any day…and I know this gets a little
sideways because…because we read the New Testament and then we enter into that
same story – any day, maybe today, hopefully today. And I feel that…like
hopefully today. But we have 2000 years of history to say, “okay. It wasn’t
like in the next month. It wasn’t even in like the next year. And what they…they
thought they thought. And it’s not disrespectful to say that what they thought
wasn’t exactly accurately right. We’re still here and it’s 2000 years later. So,
that’s a fact that’s not, like just disrespectful. And, so, having context for
what they were thinking and what they were trying to press into helps us define
that place in our own lives to press into. But like suggesting that you
shouldn’t be married you should stay how you are, like you shouldn't…you should
pretend like nothing’s going on, like you’re not mourning if you are, you’re not
sad if you are, you’re not rejoicing…if you’re rejoicing…like you’re just
trying to focus here on the immediate task at hand then reading it 2000 years
later can be confusing because it’s like, “okay I don’t know exactly what…how
I’m supposed to be aimed. And, so, I’m pulled in all kinds of different
directions because I don’t know exactly what I’m supposed to be doing.” So,
what I’ve learned and what I’ll point out as we continue through our year and
as long as I am able to continue to do this however many more years into the
future, but what I have learned as a student of the Bible as a student of our
faith is that context actually matters a lot trying to peel back the layers
over thousands of years of time. And, so, my motives for saying what I’m saying
today have nothing to do with like trying to make a theological statement or
create some sort of theological position. I’m like completely devoid of that at
this point. I’m trying to say context matters when we try to do that work. And
as we pass this specific section of first Corinthians where Paul’s saying, “like
the whole thing is coming down. Like the whole thing is about to blow up, the
end is upon us.” Well then, his advice is strong, true, and absolutely good but
like just from a logical perspective, we would have to say if people stopped
getting married, for the most part, in order to live and what Paul is saying,
then by now 2000 years in the future the faith would not have flourished around
the world, it would have died out because people stopped having kids because
they stopped coming together in union and the union of marriage. So, you see, context
matters. And that was an awful lot of words to say context matters but context
matters. And that’s why we look at the context of things as we navigate.
And, so…and, so, now to Nehemiah. So, Nehemiah just helps us
understand that there is a process when there is a calling and there are steps
that need to be taken as…as we continue to try to live into what we feel like
God is leading us to do. And when we watch Nehemiah we see a person acting in
collaboration with wisdom really, So, Nehemiah has gotten to Jerusalem, he has
cast the vision, the people have caught the vision, they have gotten on board,
they are building this wall, which was the dream. This was the thing that
Nehemiah wanted to come from Persia all the way back to Jerusalem to do, to
protect God’s temple with a wall. And the building of this wall is happening
faster than anybody would have suspected. It's…it’s actually happening. And, so,
when we have prayed and planned and sought God and launched that’s what we
would hope for is that things go faster than we even planned. But it…it’s like
the idea that everything’s gonna downhill and we’re just going to be coasting
into this new destiny that God’s dropped into our lap is unrealistic. Nehemiah
faced all kinds of opposition in our reading today alone. So first was the…the…the
outside voices of ridicule. Like, I’m quoting this out of Nehemiah. “What are
these feeble Jews doing? Will they restore it for themselves? Will they sacrifice?
Will they finish up in a day? Will they revive the stones out of the heaps of
rubbish and burned ones at that? Even if fox goes upon it it’ll break down
their stone wall”, right? The voice of discouraging ridicule. So, like, when we’ve
launched into something and our heart is in it, like we are working tirelessly
and all of the risk that’s involved, our heart is invested, and then those of
voices of ridicule, like “you think you can actually do something that’s gonna
matter.” When those things come against us that can be the end of the dream. And
if we think about it, we can probably confine places in our lives where it has
been, like that it was just debilitating and we just couldn’t, we lost heart
and we couldn’t find it. What Nehemiah does in the face of this ridicule is to
cry out to God, to cry out to God, to name it, to say, “look at what they’re doing”
and then to keep going, to keep moving forward. That’s what he did, and the
wall was soon half of its height. Like it was all the way around and half of
its height. Once that happened, then these voices of ridicule got more serious
and threatening. And, so, yeah the psychology of it just kind of gets in your
head. Like an army is going to swoop down and destroy us at any moment. All of
these threats are coming against them. This wall that was easy to ridicule when
it was just a pile of burnt up rocks is now actually becoming a wall and people
are starting to see that this is going to happen and so they’re trying to
intimidate the people to get them to stop building this wall, to come down off
that wall and leave it behind. And in our own lives, like man, we reach a point
where the dream was awesome but the blood and sweat of trying to make it happen
is difficult. And, so, all of these threats that seem to come against us in all
kinds of ways can get us off course or to give us…get us to give up completely.
What Nehemiah did when he believed that the threats, like he was taking the
threats seriously. They weren’t just words of discouragement. This was an
actual, intimidating threat. What he did was prepare. Pre…like if you’re gonna attack
us, it’s not…you’re not attacking an unprepared person or people. We’ll be
ready for you. So, if that’s what you’re gonna do you’re not going to just take
us out. We’re gonna stand here and oppose you. And, so, he armed everybody along
the wall, even cut the workforce in half so that half the people could be on
guard and ready while the other half of the people worked kind of one-handed
while they had weapons ready as well. And as fast as the first half of the wall
went up and things have ground to a slow process now, because everybody can’t
work without fear and wholehearted…like everybody…everybody’s got to be on guard
now that can be very discouraging when things begin to slow down. But let’s
notice that even though things slowed down significantly…significantly in the
book of Nehemiah they still moved forward. Like every stone that got laid was
one more stone toward completion. Every brick that was put in the wall was one
more brick forward. Like even though things have slowed down they were still
going forward. And then problems begin to erupt from within the camp. Like this
is the next thing that Nehemiah faces today. These people are building the wall,
but they have other obligations and taxes to pay and land to maintain and it’s
becoming very, very difficult. And, so, some of the more wealthy people are
praying upon the more unfortunate people, even to the point of selling their
fellow Hebrew brothers and sisters into slavery, a horrible thing. And Nehemiah
finds out about this and he doesn’t just try to work the back channel of
politics so that, you know…so that the behavior can continue but at a…in a
different way or at a different rate of what…like he calls the whole thing out
into the light. Like he drags this issue into the light and names it and
confronts the people doing it. And they are ashamed because they have no
defense against it. It is what they’re doing. And so often when we are on some
sort of mission, man, its when things go sideways within…within the team, right,
that…that there are problems in all these kind of back channels and this is
where gossip festers. Nehemiah just drug it into the light right away and named
it. And, so, in our reading it’s like ridicule, intimidation, threats, trouble
from within the camp. These are all obstacles that Nehemiah faced while trying
to achieve the dream, the dream that there would be a wall around the city of
God, where the temple of God dwelled. And, so, we should, on the one hand, take
heart. We’re not the only ones that go through this kind of stuff. This is how
it works. But too, we see that however Nehemiah responds, however it is that he…he’s
doing everything with wisdom, he’s doing everything ethically but whatever he
does, he’s doing it in such a way that forward progress can still happen. Even
if it slows to a crawl the thing doesn’t stop. It continues forward however
it’s got to be situated so that it can.
Prayer:
Father, there’s a lot to here, there’s a lot here and we
invite Your Holy Spirit, as we do every day because it’s You who will lead us
into all truth. It’s You who will guide our steps. It’s You that we are
depending. In fact You help us to realize how utterly dependent we are upon You
when we see the context of the stories in the Bible, when we understand that
these are examples and these people all had to wrestle with the same things
that we wrestle with as well, that like we’re not just reading the superhero
version of the faith where all of these people were just so powerful that they
didn’t face any kind of challenges. They’re not exceptions, they’re examples, examples
for us in our own lives. And, so, come Holy Spirit we become aware of You. And
as we think about these things today, tomorrow, whenever it is You bring them
to mind, however it is, that we are listening and that we are seeing where You
are leading. We do need You now more than ever and You are not distant, and You
are not unavailable. We are just largely unaware. So, give us eyes to see and
ears to hear we pray in the mighty name of Jesus. Amen.
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And that’s it for today. I’m Brian I love you, I
do, and I’ll be waiting for you here tomorrow.