“Moreover in those days I saw men of
Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon and Moab. Half of their children
spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples, and
did not know how to speak the language of Judah.”
Nehemiah
13:23-24
The
final gaping spiritual hole Nehemiah was forced to address was the intermarrying
of God’s people with nations they specifically been told not to unite
themselves with. Nehemiah declared:
“Was it not because of marriages like these that
Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like
him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even
he was led into sin by foreign women. Must we hear now that you too are doing
all this terrible wickedness and are being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign
women?”
Nehemiah 13:26-27
This
unequal yoking of God’s people with heathen nations led to Israel’s downfall;
as the men of Israel began to be led into idolatry by their foreign wives. In
fact, they drifted so far from the things of God that half of their children
grew up speaking the language of these nations rather than the language of
Judah.
Like
Israel, we have allowed ourselves to become married to the things of this
world. Our children are growing up speaking the language of the world and are
completely ignorant of the language of Holy Scripture. They can tell you all
you want to know about Miley Cyrus, the Kardashians, and LeBron James, however
they can tell you very little about stalwarts of the faith like Abraham, Daniel,
David, and Paul. They know very little about who Jesus is, what He said, and
how He lived.
The
Apostle Paul warned us in 2 Corinthians 6:14-15:
“Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.
For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can
light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What
does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?”
Paul
admonished the Corinthian believers, who had begun to adopt the practices of
their culture, to “Come out from them and be separate.”
Nehemiah
was so distraught by what he was seeing, scripture tells us, that he called
down curses on those who had intermarried; he beat some of the men and pulled out
their hair, and made them swear oaths to God never again to yoke themselves
with foreign nations. Sound intense? Nehemiah knew, from past experience, what had
caused Israel’s downfall and refused to allow them to travel that road again.
Like
Nehemiah we have a responsibility to carry a genuine concern for the spiritual
condition of the Body of Christ; but we cannot be simply concerned, we must
take care of the breeches nearest to us. Nehemiah entrusted the repairing of
the walls to those who lived closest to the breeches. You and I have a
responsibility to examine and address those breeches nearest to us; beginning
with ourselves, our family, our church, and our community.
Pastor
Scott Burr
http://faithandworshipseries.blogspot.com/
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