Kingdom Oppression and Kingdom Generosity

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI …

Not sure if you can remember this, but, uh, we had Pastor Rodney Chand come and join us a while ago in the hall, and he opened up the Word of God, and he preached for us morning and evening. And in those 2 sermons, he picked up 2 sort of themes that go hand in hand from the book of Acts, from Acts 4 and Acts 5, on exterior and interior threats to the gospel. And so, in the first sermon in the morning, he talked about the exterior threat of persecution that was unleashed upon the church, and then after that, he picked up with Ananias and Sapphira and showed how this internal threat threatened to pull apart the church as well, and that through both of these, the devil was seeking to destroy God’s work in the early church.

And as we come to this passage, uh, there’s, there’s a huge sense in which that same reality of external and internal is, is being seen in the chapters we’re in, funnily enough, in chapter four and five of Nehemiah. And so, in chapter 4, we’ve been considering some of the external threats to the kingdom of God, haven’t we? Thought about the threats of destruction as they threaten to come and kill. We’ve talked about the way that we get discouraged. We’ve thought about the way that people deride us and attack us with their words, and most of these things are threats that come from outside of the kingdom within, right? Uh, it’s not generally within the church that someone tries to kill the church members. Okay, it does happen when you start going to really persecuted nations, but generally speaking, it’s threat from the outside coming in.

However, in chapter 5, we now consider a threat that is, if anything, far more dangerous than what’s happening in chapter 4, an internal threat, because internal threats are almost always more damaging than external threats. And so, we consider the internal f- pressure, the internal threat of oppression, the oppression of the poor.

You see, what’s going on in the chapter here is as, as the external pressure builds, external pressure being we’re laboring for a long time to rebuild the wall, we’re throwing all our resources at it, and we’re now being attacked from every side, so you’ve got pressure of funds, pressure of resources, pressure of workload, and then pressure of enemies pushing in on you. As these external pressures mount, the external pressure causes internal pressure to flare up within, and so people begin to oppress one another.

What’s the pressure? Uh, it’s pretty simple, isn’t it? The pressure’s money. It’s a money problem. There’s a money problem in Jerusalem. Uh, one of the things that I often point out in pre-marriage, pre-marriage counseling, we do a session on money, and we talk about the fact that money is one of the greatest causes of divorce in the world. Uh, it’s money. It’s not actually not whether you have enough money or not. That’s not the problem. It’s not because people don’t have money. It’s what we do with money. It’s, it’s the spending of money, the wanting more of money that almost always leads to divorce within homes, and it’s money that we look at today, and it all begins with this great outcry, doesn’t it, in verses one through 5?

You know, Nehemiah, you, you gotta feel somewhat sympathetic to the guy. He’s laboring really hard, working night and day, trying to protect, and, and you can’t blame the guy for maybe overlooking that there’s a problem in town, and, and the problem eventually surfaces, and that’s the way these things normally happen, don’t they? Things sort of quietly go under the surface, whether it’s, whether it’s abuse, whether it’s oppression, like there’s something just bubbles away in the background until eventually it hits boiling point and then it explodes, which is exactly what we see here.

And so, in verse one we’re told, “There was a great outcry of the people and of their wives.” Interesting, isn’t it? People and of their wives. Commentators think it’s probably because this was driven primarily by the wives, the reason being that the wives were at home with the children, and, and they’re the ones who are suffering the most. And the husbands are neglecting their families. The husbands are not raising what needs to be raised with the leaders. They’re biting their tongues, and it’s the wives and children at home. It’s always the wives and children at home that suffer, and here they are suffering and they raise their voices finally, and through their husbands and with themselves, they raise their outcry.

The threats of enemies force this to come up, and it leads to this big public outcry, and we see 3 groups of people who raise this outcry, 3 groups of people helpfully put in 3 different verses. The first group in verse 2, they say, “With our sons and our daughters we’re many, let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive.” What, what sort of people are these? The, the, these are the regular poor people. They don’t have lands, they don’t have much of anything, except for they’ve got lots of children. And if you’ve got lots of children, one thing you know is you go through lots of food because children never stop eating. It doesn’t matter how much food you put in them, they always want some more, don’t they? And, and so here we find big families with a big problem, they’ve got no food to feed their families. They’ve got no grain to grow food, they’ve got no seed, they’ve got nothing, they’re impoverished. they don’t want much, they’re not asking for much. They’re not asking for a mansion, they’re not asking for a Ferrari. All they’re asking for is their daily bread, “Nehemiah, we are out of food to eat and we’ve got nowhere else to turn, please feed us.” They’re not actually talking to Nehemiah, it’s just a great outcry in general. It’s like all the people just got together and started shouting, “Feed us, we’re hungry!” They’re beggars effectively at this point.

The second group is in verse 3, these are, these are a little bit more like landowners. So in verse 3, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” So your famine’s kicked in, the famine is probably not, not so much because of a weather famine that we often think of, but because all of their supplies have been cut off. Why? Because they’re surrounded by enemies. You can’t just go out shopping at the local supermarket. You have to travel to other cities if you want to trade or if you want to go get stuff. Well, you can’t, and all of your fields around the city are now cut off because of the threat of being attacked. So you’re really only left with the option of staying within the city, and you run out of food pretty quickly. And so now in an attempt to buy food, they’re having to mortgage all of their property. So that, that They had received this inheritance from their God, and now they were having to sell it and take out large debts in order to try and feed their family.

And then the third group comes up in verse 4, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax.” This is not Nehemiah’s tax, by the way. This is King Artaxerxes’ tax. Just for a bit of historical background, he was one of the richest kings of the time because his taxes were so severe. Uh, he, uh One commentator said, and this is about a 15-year-old commentary, so you’ve gotta put some inflation on this. He would’ve His average revenue would’ve been about $80 to $100 million a year in current times, US. So New Zealand, call it 140. Big money, right? And apparently when he was conquered by Greece, they found this enormous storehouse of just gold that he had melted down and turned into bars and done nothing, just literally just sat it there. Coins, minted things just sitting there doing that, just storing it, just storing it and storing it. Very, very rich. And so these taxes were very heavy and they say, “We, we have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children yet” By the way, that means, “We’re family.” Right? “We’re family.” yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves. And some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

This is one of the saddest groups, I think. Here is a group of people, they’re landowners, they’ve got family land, uh, things have gotten so bad that they’ve had to borrow in order to pay the king’s tax but the borrowing isn’t enough. They, they can’t borrow enough anymore, they’re out, and so they’ve started selling off their property, which seems like a logical thing to do, you know? Like, if you’ve got some good property to sell, sell it, keep yourself alive. But the property they’re selling is their children. They’re selling their children into slavery. Can you imagine, kids? You just wake up one day and one of your parents says to you, “Oh, by the way, I need some extra money so I’ve gotta sell you.” You’re like, “What do you mean you’re gonna sell me?” “Yeah, you’re gonna go work for John, Joe Blogs down the road for a while. He’s gonna have you for the next 5 years or so ’cause I need to feed myself.” That’s the situation where it’s ugly, but it’s actually a lot uglier than that for the adults to understand here. Uh, when it says that some of the daughters have been enslaved, it’s the type of slavery that you might think of that is particularly pertinent to females. The, the word used for “enslaved” there can be equally used to talk of, um, of abusing a woman. And so what, what’s being subtly implied here is that these, these Jerusalemites are selling their daughters into that type of slavery, into trafficking-type slavery. It’s horrible, right? But this is how bad things have gotten, and, and this isn’t a new thing, by the way. This is all through history, situations like this crop up, this horrendous outcry.

But I want you to notice what the real outcry is. See, the temptation is just to think to ourselves that the real outcry is, “I don’t have money. I want money! I need to eat!” That’s not actually the real outcry. Do you know what the real outcry in this section is? It’s in verse one. “There arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers.” Do you notice he doesn’t say, “An outcry arose against their enemies because they were being impoverished”? Who’s causing the impoverishment within Jerusalem? It’s their Jewish brothers. It’s their brothers and sisters of the church of that day that’s causing them to be impoverished. That’s what’s causing the outcry. That’s what’s making this so intensely problematic. The, the fault doesn’t lie with Sanballat. The fault lies with Abraham and, and Jehoshaphat down the road. The problem lies with fellow brethren that should have been there to love them. A- and what should have been a- an experience of rich, covenantal blessing and Kingdom of God, covenantal life instead pla- came a place of, of cursing, because you see, one of the covenantal blessings was, “You’ll be blessed in your wombs, so your children will be blessed. You’ll be blessed in your fields.” But instead what’s happening? You’re being cursed in your fields, there’s a famine, and you’re being cursed in your womb and you’re having to sell your own children.

And it’s seen throughout the Old Testament, there are times when parents boil their children and eat them, because they’re under the curse of God. And what’s happening here is that b- because the Jewish brethren are failing, the whole Kingdom of God is now beginning to suffer. The weak and the marginalized are losing their inheritance, their land, they’re losing their children, and therefore they’re losing their name, which means they’re losing the Abrahamic promise. See, in Abraham, God had blessed His people and promised them a land, a people, a nation. And, and what was being taken away from them? That very thing, right? Th- this is not just a matter of money. This is not just a matter of, uh, some people have money and some people don’t. This is a problem of kingdom life.

So, where’s the fault? Where’s the problem? Well, the problem is the sin of greed, You see, there’s, there’s actually There’s nothing wrong with one person having lots of money and another person not having lots of money. We don’t believe in communism where everyone has to have the same amount, theoretically. We don’t believe in that. However, there is a problem of greed here. You see, contrary to Old Testament law, which didn’t allow you to put usury tax on someone else, usury interest on someone else, the people were doing that. Now, you might Children, you might ask yourself what that means, “What’s usury interest?” Well, usury interest means basically exploiting someone else. When someone else really needs help, rather than saying to them, “Let me give you $20 to help you,” you say to them, “I’ll give you $20, but you have to give me 50.” You think to yourself, “Well, that’s not very nice.” No, it’s not, because it actually leaves the person worse off afterwards than they were when they first came to you. And what you’re doing is you’re leveraging, you’re using their bad place in life against them. They come to you and say, “I need help!” And then you say to them, “Oh! I can make a quick buck off this,” which is exactly what was happening here in Jerusalem.

Instead of obeying all of the covenantal laws that told them to love their neighbors as themselves and to love their brothers, that there should be no poor among you, that there were to be fields constantly ripe for people to come and pick through The whole of society in Israel was set up by God in a way so that no one would have to go hungry. And yet, here we have a whole covenantal people of God who are suffering under oppression by a few rich, greedy people. Why? Because as Ecclesiastes 5 says, “Greed never has enough.” Selfish greed never has enough. It is never satisfied.

Have you ever noticed that with really greedy rich people? You know, first they say, “I want to earn $250,000 a year.” Once they’re earning $250,000 a year, what do they say? “I wanna earn half a million.” Once they’re earning half a million, “I want a million. I want a billion.” It’s never enough. Greed is never content. You see, the, the love of money, as Jesus says, is what? The root of all manner of evil. And that’s what we’re seeing here. The people love money, and so they’re willingly happy to neglect and crush their fellow people. And the whole kingdom of God is suffering.

It’s a little bit like Achan. You remember the story of Achan? Achan goes out one day into the battle of Jericho, and he sees some gold, some silver, and some garments, and he says, “You know what? Those look lovely. I’m gonna hide them under my tent. No one’ll know.” So, he hides them under his tent. The next day, the people of God go out to battle and they get destroyed. They get wasted. Why? Because they’ve sinned. And so, the whole kingdom suffers because one man has a greedy heart, and that’s the way greed always works. Greed is never innocent. Greed never doesn’t hurt people. Greed always hurts others. That’s the way greed works, because it’s sin, and there’s a greed problem here.

The problem is not about haves and have-nots, it’s about ill-gotten gain at the expense of others, right? And I think this raises a really important lesson for us. Just be f- let’s be straight up with one another as brothers and sisters, this is a very solemn warning to us, a very solemn warning against all manners of covetousness and greed. We live in a consumeristic culture that constantly tells us, “More, more, more.” You buy a cell phone, what happens? 3 weeks later another model comes out, and you want the new model. You buy a new car, after a year it doesn’t feel like a new car anymore ’cause someone else just got the later model, and you feel like you need another one. “Always more,” our society says, and this text is challenging us to be very wary of the love of money that leads to the exploitation of others.

You see, the love of money will cause me to crush other people in order to get what I want, because if I can get what I want at your expense, well, that’s justifiable, because I need it, I want it, and I must have it. It, it’s also a solemn warning, I think, against the danger of exploitation of other people, and, and this actually goes both directions. There’s, there’s a temptation in passages like this to say poor people are always good and rich people are always bad. Rich people, please make sure you don’t exploit the poor people in the congregation. Rich people, make sure you give more money, and poor people, just carry on being poor and we’ll help But, you know, poor people can exploit rich people just as much. There are poor people who do absolutely nothing to help themselves, and expect you to constantly bail them out. There are ways they could help themselves and they refuse to do it because of their own convictions, their own opinions, and any number of other things. And so, we must be very wary that if we are of the poorer type people in the room, that we are not exploiting others to our own advantage by demanding things or trying to claim things for ourselves, but then also if we’re more wealthy that we’re not exploiting other rich people or other poor people. All of us are liable to commit the sin of exploiting a brother or sister, right? And we must be on guard against it.

And so, we see this great outcry that erupts in Jerusalem, and this great outcry leads to a great assembly in verse 6-6 through fif- uh, 13. You know, in life there’s lots of alarms, right? You get lots of alarms in life, whether it’s the horrible one that wakes you up for work in the morning every single day which feels like PTSD, or whether it’s, you know, the blood test that comes back a little bit dodgy. Something’s not quite right and the doctor calls you in for a follow-up meeting. You know, whether it’s the argument with someone you love that, that alarms that there’s something not quite right going on. There are alarms that sound, uh, like those wonderful fire alarms that always sound, but there’s never a fire for some reason. but the question is not so much about the alarm, is it? The, the alarm’s there for a purpose, but it’s just there to signal you to something. The real question is, what do you do in response to the alarm that sounds?

And, and Nehemiah is a wonderful example in how he responds to the oppression that he sees within Jerusalem. The alarm sounds, it’s the outcry. It’s like a foghorn over Jerusalem, “Ahh,” goes forth. And Nehemiah responds with real intensity, real zeal, and he responds very quickly. Do you see that word in verse 6? “I was very angry. I was exceedingly angry.” It’s one of the strongest Hebrew words for sort of making something extreme. “I was exceedingly angry when I heard the outcry.”

Have a look at this response. So first he says, “I was angry.” second, he says, “I took counsel” And this is striking, isn’t it? “I took counsel with myself.” I don’t know how you take counsel with yourself, but it’s marvelous. You know, people will always say, “Make sure you have wise counselors around you.” And I 100% agree, but sometimes there is no time for calling a secret counsel meeting. Sometimes you need to swiftly consider and swiftly act in order to do what’s right, and that’s what Nehemiah does. He acts swiftly.

And the third thing he does in verse 8 through 11 is he immediately begins by writing up charges. “I said to them” He gets this great assembly together. And in verse 7, he says, “You’re exacting interest.” He calls the assembly, and he lays out the charges. “We, as far as we are able have brought, bought our brothers. You’re getting them sold into slavery.” Verse 9: “The thing you’re doing is wrong.” And then he t- goes on to tell them what to do, to return what is rightfully theirs. Ha- having laid out the charges, he rebukes them, he calls them t- to repentance.

The people respond really well. And it’s striking, isn’t it? The people say, “We will do it,” but do you notice Nehemiah’s not contented with that? He says, “No, no, this is of such a grave nature that we can’t allow this to just sit with a, ‘Yeah, I’ll make sure I go and do that.’” He gets the priests and he says, “Come on, guys. Get in here. We’re making them take an oath.” And then after they’ve taken an oath, he gets his little garment and he shakes it out in front of them. It’s a prophetic action that’s used multiple times in the Old Testament. He says to them, “You see this? I’m shaking the dust out of my garment. Anyone who doesn’t do what they’ve promised, they’re gonna be like this dust in God’s garment. He is gonna shake them out.” He’s taking it really serious, isn’t it? There’s no mucking around in Nehemiah’s voice here.

And, and you might be tempted to say, “Well, that’s just typical Nehemiah, right? He’s really intense. Nehemiah is just the, the type of guy who does everything with zeal.” But it’s actually a lot more than that. You know, we, we, in the 21st century Western context, we’re encouraged constantly to be really passive about our faith, right? Like, “Whatever you do, keep your faith to yourself. I love that you’re a Christian. Just keep it to yourself.” And everything is about being low-key, not being loud, not being, you know, persuasive. Uh, Nehemiah is incredibly zealous. Why? Is it just because he’s that way inclined? No, it’s because Nehemiah recognizes that this is something far more important than just some poor people. Nehemiah recognizes that the very fabric of the covenantal society is at stake. This is not a matter of some people are going hungry, though that matters. The problem is the whole kingdom of God, which is made by God as the Church of God to flourish, and to thrive, and to build one another up, and to love one another, and to ensure no one misses out, and to care for one another, that was being stripped away. Core elements of kingdom and covenantal life were being ripped out. Nehemiah saw that this was not just a matter of poor people. This was the gospel at stake, the very livelihoods of the gospel.

And, you know, this shouldn’t surprise us, because we see a very similar attitude in other people in the Bible, don’t we? Do you remember that moment Paul writes to a church and he says to them, “Look, I want you to take the young man in Corinth. I want you to cast him out to the devil.” You know, “Well, that’s a bit extreme, Paul. Like, can’t you just say to remove him from the church building? That would be a little bit more politically correct.” He’s like, “No, no, cast him out to the devil. He’s in sin and we can’t have sin here.”

Or probably even more telling, do you remember the time, there, there’s a man in the Bible who, who’s very upset at the state of the house of God, and so he sits down and he makes a whip? And having made a whip, he begins whipping Pharisees and tax, a- and the tax gatherers and, and he walks through the temple and flips over tables, and lets birds free, and chases I mean, how does one guy chase out everybody from an enormous temple? His wrath blazed forth like the sun. That’s Jesus, meek and mild, right? Why? Because the Gospel of John says, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” That was a description of Jesus, “Zeal for your house. Zeal for my Father’s house will consume me.”

You see, Jesus saw that this was not a matter of convenient money being exchanged in the Lord’s house so that people could make offerings. He saw that the very Gospel was being denied within the house of God. A place set aside for prayer and sanctified worship had become a business market. And he was willing to offend every Pharisee and religious zealot in the local area in order to make his point.

Brothers and sisters, we need to have this same zeal. And, and I think this is a challenge for us, isn’t it? There’s a couple of points here. 1, one is, do we have this type of zeal for the house of God? Or are we so ho-hum about the church that when we see wrongs, we’re not actually that bothered? That when we see kingdom life being, being frayed, we just go, “Oh, well, no, that’s okay. This is, uh, it’s not our issue.” Or are we passionate about seeing the Kingdom of God really lived out within the church? Do we wanna see covenant life lived out in its fullest extent? Are we, are we happy to stand back and see people not cared for? To see people suffer and stand back and say, “Well, you know, that, it doesn’t really matter. It’s somebody else’s job, anyway.”?

The very Gospel calls us to be zealous for God’s house.

But the second thing this reminds us, Nehemiah’s response reminds us, is that we ought to hate sin with passion. One of the things that the reformers got really, really right, which was most things, but they did get some stuff right, but most things. But one thing they did get really, really right was a consistent passion for the purity of the church. A consistent passion for the purity of the church. And this is what drove them to do things like church discipline. Now I know some of us have experienced wrong church discipline. But the correction to a wrong is not to throw it out; it’s to do it properly. Biblically, chu- biblical church discipline exists for a reason. Why? Because sin kills us. And sin kills the house of God. The house of God cannot thrive, the Kingdom of God cannot be advanced while sin abounds. It’s a biblical principle. And so, if we want God’s house to be built up and the Kingdom of God to advance, we must hate sin with as much passion as Nehemiah does. Actually, with as much passion as God does. Because like David, we should be able to say, “God, I hate what you And I love what you love.” That’s a calling upon our lives.

And so, we see a great outcry. We see a great assembly. And then lastly, we see a great generosity. Verse 14 through 19. This is, like, a weird interjection here. You remember I said life in diary? Right? So you’ve gotta remember Nehemiah at the end of his life, writing his diary. Y- you don’t do it as you go, right? You go back and edit it. And he’s gone back and edited his diary. And he’s inserted a story here, a summary of his leadership as a governor over 12 years. He’s not saying necessarily, “This is what I was doing then,” but, “This is, was my pattern of life.”

And we get this weird interjection where all of a sudden he just says, “Oh, by the way, this is what I did as a governor. Uh, I didn’t take the allowance given to me by the king, because that would require me to tax the people. I happily paid and supported everyone that ate in my house off my own back from the money I got from working under the king as a cupbearer. I took all of the costs. I” Going back into the earlier section, “I went and bought my brothers back out of slavery.” What, what would you call all of this? Generosity, right?

We see an example of great generosity. Why? Is this just, is this Nehemiah messing up Matthew 6? Remember Matthew 6, when you give, how do you give? You blow a trumpet before yourself and go, “Hey, look at me, I’m giving gifts.” No. Jesus says you don’t do that. What do you do? You give with your left hand and your right hand’s in your pocket. It doesn’t know what you’re doing. And so, you give and no one else in the church even is aware you’ve done it. You don’t go, “Hey, by the way everyone, I just wanna let you all know that I just gave some money to so-and-so because they really needed it.”

Is Nehemiah messing this up? I, I don’t think we should read this as Nehemiah pridefully bragging about how generous he is. Rather, this is intentionally recorded by him to illustrate the solution to the sin and the great outcry and the oppression that’s taking place in the chapter here. By the, by the, uh, inspiration of the Holy Spirit, this is recorded to help us ’cause this is written for us, right? It’s not written for the people in Jerusalem who were there and alive at that time. They’re all dead by the time this is written. It’s written for you and I to help us see how to deal with selfish greed that will oppress and exploit those around us.

And the solution is a kingdom-minded, gospel-centered generosity with the proper cause at its root. You see, Nehemiah gives and gives and gives because his heart’s in the right place. Why does he do it? We get given some clues. Have a look in verse 15. “The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration 40 shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people, but I did not do so because of the fear of God.” And then, down in verse 19, “Remember for my good, O my people, all that I have done for this people.” He fears God, and so he gives and he has a mind towards a heavenly reward.

What’s going on here? Well, Nehemiah’s, Nehemiah’s living for another world, right? This is not Nehemiah’s home. He’s just traveling through. And in this temporary residence, God has richly provided him with much, and he’s taken that much and he’s freely given it away to others. Why? Because he knows he can’t take it with him, because he knows the teaching of his Master who said, “Store up for yourselves not riches on earth but riches in heaven,” right? Where the moth can’t eat and rust can’t destroy and thieves can’t break in and steal. One day, brothers and sisters, this is what Nehemiah really understood, one day we’re all going to die and rot in the ground. And someone else is gonna get all your money. Nehemiah understood that, and so he laid it all down at his Master’s feet. He used it for the service of the King. He understood what Paul would say of the Lord Jesus Christ, “He who was rich became poor so that we who were poor might become rich.”

And so, Nehemiah looks around himself at a struggling city and he’s passionate for the Kingdom of God and for the covenantal principles of God to be played out and the Kingdom to be advanced. And so, he says, “You know what? It’s worth every penny I’ve got. It’s worth everything.” And he lays it all down.

And so, this, this example of generosity, it doesn’t sit before us as a type that we must do, so you must start housing 150 people and feeding them all at your own costs. But it sets before us the recipe, the solution, the remedy to greed because each and every one of us have the seeds of greed in our heart, don’t we? Some bigger, some smaller. Some of us don’t really struggle and it’s not particularly hard. Others of us feel it every day. Some of us struggle with coveting. You drive down the road, and you see lovely cars, and you covet immediately. You see a lovely house, and you look at your own, and you wish you had it. You go to someone’s place for a meal, and you look at the cutlery they have or the dishes they serve in, and you go, “We only have second-hand op shop crusty stuff, and it’s all chipped.” And you’re tempted to covet and crave what others have.

The solution to greed is open-handed generosity. When you learn to freely give as you freely received from the Lord Jesus Christ, you’re set free from the love of stuff. Because you recognize that your Father can give you everything you need. You know the teaching of Jesus, don’t you? It’s more blessed to what? Give than receive. Do we really believe that? Or by our actions, do we actually show actually it’s far more blessed to receive? That’s why I do so much of it. It’s a challenging thought, isn’t it?

I think this brings 3 practical uses to us. Firstly, lay down every one of your resources for the sake of the kingdom. You remember the story of the talents? Man with 10, the man with 5, the man with 1. The man with 10 used his 10 to get 10 more. The man with 5 used his 5 to get 5 more. And then the man with 1 buried them in the ground. Jesus says, “Take what I give you and use it for the kingdom.” That’s not, it’s not just talking about money, is it? It’s talking about your lives. It’s talking about everything you’ve got. Everything you have is a gift from your Father in heaven because you deserve nothing because you’re a sinner. And you’ve done nothing to earn his favor, yet he has freely bestowed you with life and every good gift by his grace, by his love, by his mercy. So, take all of it and use it for the kingdom. But when I say, hear me, when I say, “Use it for the kingdom,” I’m not saying use it exclusively for RBC. Use it to build up your family. Use it to love your wife. Use it to serve your husband. Use it to care for people in the church. Use it for missionaries. Use it for whatever, but use it for the kingdom.

second principle, I think, here, and I’m always feel a bit loathe to say this, but give to the church. It’s a biblical principle. Tithing and gifts and offerings are commanded by God. You might not like it, but God commands it. Why? So that his kingdom might be built up, so that his will might be done on this earth, so that people might be cared for. And you might say, “I don’t have much.” Then give not But give nonetheless. Never forget the example of the little widow who gave more than all of the rich people. What did she give? One tiny little I remember Rob and I were speaking about de- deacon things, and he told me the story of a man who wanted to go to church, and he communicated to his church that basically he would have to stop tithing because he couldn’t afford the petrol to get to church. You know what that church did? They said to him, “We’ll pay the petrol so you can carry on tithing.” What a wonderful attitude. “We’ll, we’ll give you the money, so you can tithe it back to us.” Why? Because tithing matters. Why does it matter? Because every time you tithe, whether you tithe $1 because you’ve got nothing or whether you tithe $1,000, it makes no difference. Every time you tithe, what you are saying to God is, “I trust you to provide me with what I need, no matter And God, the Psalms say, God never lets the righteous go hungry. So, take him at his word. Trust him and give.

Thirdly, recognize that everything you have is borrowed. You cannot store it. You cannot keep it. So, live for heavenly riches. That’s what Nehemiah did so well. “Remember for my good, O my God, all that I have done.” In other words, reward me in paradise. And that should be our heart, shouldn’t it? Living for a world which fades is so pointless. What will you gain if you sow seed to this world? You’ll reap 10, 20, 30 years of joy? And then what? Decay? You won’t even get to see your children enjoy it. That’s a sad thought, isn’t it? When your children receive their inheritance, which you worked so hard for, you’ll be dead. it, it’s a biblical thing to leave an inheritance to your children. Don’t get me wrong. it, it highlights the place we’re living for. We are sojourning here. We are living for heaven. So, Colossians, we set our mind above upon heavenly places in order to live upon the earth while we’re here.

Brothers and sisters, in, in times of, of work and reformation, like we see here in Nehemiah, the devil comes and he attacks in an attempt to cancel out what God is doing, to undermine the work through internal pressure. One thing we have to keep in mind, brothers and sisters, is that sin is always crouching at the door. Remember the words that God speaks to Abel, uh, to Cain before he kills his brother. He says, “Cain, sin is crouching at your door and you need to rule over it.” And what happens? He goes and kills his brother. He lets the sin in.

So let us be on guard, lest sin devour us, lest sin consume us, and instead, let us give ourselves to generosity. Let us give ourselves to living according to biblical principles, honoring God in all that we do, so that may, God may grant the works of our hands not to be devoured, but rather, built up and advanced here in our very midst.

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