Nehemiah 13:23-28
*****

THE title I have chosen for this sermon describes the problem presented to us in verses 23-28 of this last chapter of Nehemiah. Nehemiah is dealing with another problem of spiritual decline in Israel which was the inter-marriage between the people of Israel and the heathen people living around them. For Nehemiah this was the focus of his attention, but it represents a wider problem which is the influence of the world on the Christian, and how this influence needs to be guarded against so that spiritual life is not impaired.

In one sense the problem was much easier to deal with in the time of Nehemiah. It had always been an instruction from God that the people of Israel should keep themselves separate from other people. Jews and Gentiles were not to mix. God gave this instruction because of the danger of the world influencing the people of Israel from God. The history of the Old Testament surely proves the dangers of the influence from the world, and the importance of guarding ourselves against it. Whenever the Israelites neglected this separation from the other people around them, there was always serious departing from their allegiance and worship of Jehovah, which brought disastrous results.

Even though Nehemiah focused on the issue of mixed marriages here, and this may seem to us rather archaic, yet there is a spiritual principle here which is very relevant for our spiritual health today, and one in which the pendulum is swinging dangerously towards the world. In my young days it could be said that the pendulum of culture in Christian society swung too much on the side of separation, but this is certainly not so today, and this is a reaction from the culture of the early 20th century.

When Nehemiah came back to Jerusalem after some years away, he found that a large number of the men of Judah had married heathen women, and many of the Jewish women had become married to heathen men. Nehemiah reacted against this because it was a violation of the direct command of God which prohibited marriage with people who were not Jews, but there was a very good reason behind the command of God which is just as relevant today as it has ever been.

We would not say today that it was wrong for a Christian to marry an unbeliever, but we would be wise to say that there are dangers involved. Love is a very powerful emotion and force, and it is very hard for a Christian man or woman to deny their unbelieving partner on religious grounds. It may be thought that the influence is equal in both directions - that is that the Christian can influence the unbeliever for Christ, as well as the unbeliever influence the Christian away from Christ - but this in not true in practice. The unbeliever, unless sovereignly moved by the Holy Spirit, will not have any desire to love Christ, whereas the believer, although having a holy principle of new life in them which loves Christ, also has a sinful nature which is not changed in any way. Experience proves that generally it is the unbeliever who influences the believer away from Christ rather than the other way around. The Christian may say that they will be firm, and even extract promises from their unbelieving partner that he or she will honour their faith, but over time these promises are forgotten.

But this is only one issue which represents a much wider problem. The influence of the world is all around us as Christians, and this influence is much stronger than it has ever been. This influence can seriously impair our spiritual vitality. The truth of the matter is that our minds are very much like computer memories in this respect. All the time we are inputting data into the memory banks of our minds. It goes without saying that the amount of time we spend in the world will fill these memory banks, and so the amount of time we spend in any activity is very important in the influence it has upon our lives, and the development of our character. Also there are some memories that are more powerful and more influential over our lives than others. If we spend all our time in secular worldly pursuits, and neglect spiritual activity, then we will soon find that our spiritual vitality will decline, grow sick even unto spiritual death. This is why we need to guard ourselves from letting the world crowd out spiritual activity in our lives. It does not matter whether the secular activity is of itself good and unharmful, the point is that we have only so much capacity in our minds, and we need to give time for the nourishment of our souls.

Nehemiah found that the children growing up in Judah were growing up using heathen language and just did not know the Hebrew language. Such was the influence of the heathen culture in the mixed marriage, that the children were now growing up in the heathen culture and not the culture of Israel.

Here is the example of the problem as we have already discussed it, but there is a further factor which we haven�t yet faced. The truth is that the believer has an enemy in the camp of their mind and heart. We have the problem of our sinful nature. This problem of the flesh, as it is referred to in the New Testament, is very real. Paul spoke of the flesh warring against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh. He then exhorted believers to live by the Holy Spirit so that the desires of the flesh would not be gratified. In Judah through these mixed marriages the damage had already been done. The flesh had won the day, and the heathen culture dominated, and Jehovah was well-nigh forgotten.

The truth is that we should live by the Spirit, and deny the flesh its gratification. The gratification of the flesh is to succumb to the evil influences in our sinful natures. We all have directions in our lives in which these evil influences are most strong. We may have no problem over selfishness, but we may have a very big problem with pride. We may have no problem about doing our work to the very best of our ability, but we may have a problem over laziness which counteracts this. We may have a particular gift such as being a gifted musician or sports person, and there is nothing wrong with this. These are gifts from God. But these very gifts can be a problem because our sinful natures will turn them into lusts, so that we can�t control our desire to succeed in these things to the neglect of our spiritual lives and our worship of God.

It is for this reason that we need to heed the problem of the world and the wisdom of separation from the world. If something in our lives, even if it is good in itself, is harming our spiritual lives, and causing our love for Christ to be diminished, or even causing us to disobey a call from God in service, then we need to take note and say no to the world, even though this may be painful and hard.

When we read how Nehemiah acted towards the people who were promoting mixed marriages, and so turning towards the world and away from Jehovah, we find his action very violent. We may well feel that his action was over the top, and even unacceptable. This may well be true. Nehemiah may have acted too strongly, but he did show how seriously he took the problem.

Our trouble today is that we do not take this problem seriously, and so we do not see how gradually we are loosing our devotion for Christ, and how the standards of Christ are being eroded. What is worse is that we don�t see what is happening to our spiritual lives. We are losing our first love which we found of such great joy when we first believed, and we wonder why, and can�t explain it. Christ has drawn away from us because we have drawn away from him.

The problem is so serious that if we identify some area in our lives that is taking up too much of our time and thought, to the detriment of our love for Christ, and destroying our joy in God thereby, then there is only one thing to do, and that is curtail that activity, or even deny ourselves of it altogether.

There is another factor which this history from Nehemiah�s life reveals to us. We read in the second half of verse 25 that apparently the parents in Israel were giving the daughters in marriage to the heathen. No doubt there was some profit is this, whether in business or in a social way, but Nehemiah saw how wrong this was. It showed that spiritual decline was already advanced in the life of the parents, and that the parents were influencing the children away from God.

The point of this for us is to show how important the life of parents, and the example of parents, is in influencing the life of a child. This can be extended further to take in the influence which all Christian adults have over one another, and over those young in the faith, or young in age in the church.

We need to take seriously the example which we give through our lives, and the example which is being given through the culture and atmosphere of the fellowship to which we belong. The problem is most insidious in the small things which gradually creep into life, which seem too small to be significant, but when they accumulate have a very big influence which is not noticed because this influence has crept in over time in small things we have not noticed.

It is very easy to suppose that this problem of worldliness endangering our spiritual lives is a problem for the those young in the faith, and that when we are mature in Christ, we have grown beyond such declension. Nehemiah gives as an example the case of Solomon which should cause us to pause and think.

Solomon loved his God, and God made him great. He was mature and a godly man of long standing, and yet later in his life he was seduced from his love for God by his love for foreign women.

In later life we may find that success in business has put us in a place of danger. Business and the claims of the business become so demanding that they take over our lives to the detriment of our love and service for God. We may have some friend to whom we owe a great deal, but who is not a Christian, and then loyalty to him, claims of our loyalty to him or her, may cause us to deny Christ because of them.

This problem of the world is always a danger. We find Paul saying tragically in 2 Timothy 4:10 that Demas had forsaken him having loved this present world. Demas had been a companion in the work of the Gospel with Paul, but the world had caused him to leave Paul and the work, because of some attraction in the world.

I am afraid this sermon has been rather bitty and discursive, and not very well held together, but I hope that we have been able to see the problem which separation from the world calls us to take seriously. We have to live in this world. We have to work in this world. We have to interact with the world. We are meant to go out into the world to seek and save the lost, and be witnesses to Christ in the world. We need recreation which can be found in many legitimate activities in our world, which are part of God�s bounty and provision. In spite of this the love of the world is a great danger, and so we need to separate ourselves in such a way from the world, so that the world will not influence us away from Christ. I am not talking here so much about obvious sins in the world, but of perfectly good things and activities which can be taken to excess, or over influence us so that Christ is elbowed out by the world.