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Speaker 1: I'm John Stangey, and today we're in Nehemiah chapter five,
Speaker 1: and we'll be reading from the New Living Translation. About
Speaker 1: this time, some of the men and their wives raised
Speaker 1: a cry of protest against their fellow Jews. They were saying,
Speaker 1: we have such large families, we need more food to survive.
Speaker 1: Others said, we have mortgaged our fields, vineyards and homes
Speaker 1: to get food during the famine, and others said we
Speaker 1: have had to borrow money on our fields and vineyards
Speaker 1: to pay our taxes. We belong to the same family
Speaker 1: as those who are wealthy, and our children are just
Speaker 1: like theirs. Yet we must sell our children into sla
Speaker 1: just to get enough money to live. We have already
Speaker 1: sold some of our daughters, and we are helpless to
Speaker 1: do anything about it, for our fields and vineyards are
Speaker 1: already mortgaged to others. When I heard their complaints, I
Speaker 1: was very angry. After thinking it over, I spoke out
Speaker 1: against these nobles and officials. I told them, you are
Speaker 1: hurting your own relatives by charging interest when they borrow money.
Speaker 1: Then I called a public meeting to deal with the problem.
Speaker 1: At the meeting, I said to them, we are doing
Speaker 1: all we can to redeem our Jewish relatives who have
Speaker 1: had to sell themselves to pagan foreigners. But you are
Speaker 1: selling them back into slavery again. How often must we
Speaker 1: redeem them? And they had nothing to say in their defense.
Speaker 1: Then I pressed further, what you are doing is not right.
Speaker 1: Should you not walk in the fear of our God
Speaker 1: in order to avoid being mocked by other enemy nations?
Speaker 1: I myself, as well as my brothers and my workers,
Speaker 1: have been lending the people money and grain. But now
Speaker 1: let us stop this business of charging interest. You must
Speaker 1: restore their fields, vineyards, olive groves and homes to them
Speaker 1: this very day, and repay the interest you charged when
Speaker 1: you lent them money, grain, new wine, and olive oil.
Speaker 1: They replied, we will give back everything and demand nothing
Speaker 1: more from the people. We will do as you say.
Speaker 1: Then I called the priests and made the nobles and
Speaker 1: officials swear to do what they had promised. I shook
Speaker 1: out the folds of my robe and said, if you
Speaker 1: fail to keep your promise, may God, shake you like
Speaker 1: this from your homes and from your property. The whole
Speaker 1: assembly responded, Amen, and they praised the Lord, and the
Speaker 1: people did as they had promised. For the hire twelve
Speaker 1: years that I was governor of Judah. From the twentieth
Speaker 1: year to the thirty second year of the reign of
Speaker 1: King Artaxerxes, neither I nor my officials drew on our
Speaker 1: official food allowance. The former governors, in contrast, had laid
Speaker 1: heavy burdens on the people, demanding a daily ration of
Speaker 1: food and wine besides forty pieces of silver. Even their
Speaker 1: assistants took advantage of the people. But because I feared God,
Speaker 1: I did not act that way. I also devoted myself
Speaker 1: to working on the wall and refused to acquire any land,
Speaker 1: and I required all my servants to spend time working
Speaker 1: on the wall. I asked for nothing, even though I
Speaker 1: regularly fed one hundred fifty Jewish officials at my table,
Speaker 1: besides all the visitors from other lands. The provisions I
Speaker 1: paid for each day included one ox, six choice sheep
Speaker 1: or goats, and a large number of poultry. And every
Speaker 1: ten days we needed a large supply of all kinds
Speaker 1: of wine. Yet I refuse to claim the governor's food
Speaker 1: allowance because the people already carried a heavy burden. Remember, oh,
Speaker 1: my God, all that I have done for these people,
Speaker 1: and bless me for it. Let's pray. Lord, we thank
Speaker 1: you for your word, and we thank you for the
Speaker 1: privilege of being able to look at it together today.
Speaker 1: And Lord, has this chapter opened up? We could see
Speaker 1: that the nobles and some of the wealthy people were
Speaker 1: selling their brothers into slavery by virtue of charging them
Speaker 1: interest on all sorts of things instead of lending freely
Speaker 1: to them. And while Nehemiah and some others were trying
Speaker 1: to redeem the people and restore the land, we see
Speaker 1: that until the nobles were confronted, they appeared to be
Speaker 1: doing the exact opposite. And as we look at this passage, Lord,
Speaker 1: we're grateful that we see a remind here of the
Speaker 1: joy of being redeemed from slavery. We know that, based
Speaker 1: on the shed blood of your son Jesus Christ, our
Speaker 1: freedom from the slavery to sin, satan, and death that
Speaker 1: we were born in has been purchased. We have been redeemed,
Speaker 1: we have been set free. And as men and women
Speaker 1: who believe in Your son Jesus Christ, and have been
Speaker 1: set free from our sin. You invite us to live
Speaker 1: as people who are free and to no longer go
Speaker 1: back to the chains that you've rescued us from. Lord,
Speaker 1: thank you for liberating us. And we pray Lord that
Speaker 1: we wouldn't go back to the kind of lives that
Speaker 1: we lived before, where we idolized our sin and where
Speaker 1: we idolize the things of this world. But rather we
Speaker 1: pray Lord that we would rejoice in the new life
Speaker 1: and in the freedom that we have as children of
Speaker 1: God through faith in Jesus Christ. We're grateful Lord that
Speaker 1: that's our reality today, and we're grateful that through faith
Speaker 1: in Jesus that's our reality forever. Lord, we love you,
Speaker 1: We thank you for all the wonderful and good things
Speaker 1: that you do for us at your expense, but for
Speaker 1: our benefit, and we commit this day to your care
Speaker 1: and thank you for all of these things in Jesus' name. Amen.