UNFAITHFUL COVENANTS
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on March 13, 2024 under AM Bible Study |
AM Bible Study Group: March 13, 2024 from Nehemiah 13:23-31
Theme: We must be careful not to enter into the kind of relations with the ungodly that will draw us away from a pure devotion to God.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
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When our God redeems His people to Himself, He enters into a covenant of love with them. It’s a covenant that is deeper, and more profound, and more jealously guarded by Him than any human relationship can be. And He will not put up with the unfaithfulness of His people in any respect.
Think of what He told the Jewish people when He first set them apart for Himself after their deliverance from bondage in Egypt. He gave His law to them and warned them sternly not to enter into any covenants with the inhabitants of the land that He was going to give them; saying,
“Take heed to yourself, lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land where you are going, lest it be a snare in your midst. But you shall destroy their altars, break their sacred pillars, and cut down their wooden images (for you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God), lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they play the harlot with their gods and make sacrifice to their gods, and one of them invites you and you eat of his sacrifice, and you take of his daughters for your sons, and his daughters play the harlot with their gods and make your sons play the harlot with their gods. (Exodus 34:12-16).
God warned His people to keep themselves a separate people, so that they wouldn’t fall into the sins of the surrounding nations in unfaithfulness to Him. But it wasn’t long before the people of Israel began to compromise that standard. Numbers 25 tells us the horrible story of how the people of Israel
began to commit harlotry with the women of Moab. They invited the people to the sacrifices of their gods, and the people ate and bowed down to their gods. So Israel was joined to Baal of Peor, and the anger of the Lord was aroused against Israel (Numbers 25:1-3).
One of the most tragic examples of this kind of compromise occurred in the life of King Solomon. It would be hard to find a man who had a greater privilege of blessing from God than Solomon did. He was even given a gift from God of wisdom that was so great that people from all around the world were drawn to him for advice. And yet in 1 Kings 11:1-4—near the end of his life—he foolishly was drawn to them. We’re told;
But King Solomon loved many foreign women, as well as the daughter of Pharaoh: women of the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians, and Hittites—from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, “You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.” Solomon clung to these in love. And he had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart (1 Kings 11:1-4).
Solomon’s failure led to terrible loss for himself and for his people. It even had an immediate impact upon his own offspring; because it was during the reign of his son Rehoboam that the kingdom of Israel became divided. Eventually, 10 of the tribes were lost and scattered into foreign lands because of unfaithfulness to God; and the kingdom of Judah itself eventually went into captivity because of the idolatrous influences of the foreign nations that were allowed to take root among the people.
That brings us to the times of Ezra and Nehemiah. After 70 years of captivity in Babylon, when the people returned to their land, a horrible thing had been reported to Ezra the scribe:
“The people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, with respect to the abominations of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken some of their daughters as wives for themselves and their sons, so that the holy seed is mixed with the peoples of those lands. Indeed, the hand of the leaders and rulers has been foremost in this trespass” (Ezra 9:1-2).
This resulted in Ezra tearing his garments in sorrow, plucking out his own hair and beard in shame, and sitting down in astonishment. He prayed the remarkable prayer of repentance that we find in Ezra 9. And then, in Chapter 10, we read of how he led the people in the very difficult and grievous task of terminating those marriages, and sending away the foreign wives and children in order to restore the nation to obedience and devotion to God. We can safely suppose that those Jewish men honorably provided for the wives and children that they put away from themselves. But a full repentance from their profound disobedience to God required a painful process of separation over the course of several months. It was an absolutely necessary thing to do in order to become—once again—the pure people that God had required them to be; and in order to set themselves apart for the sovereign purpose for which God had redeemed them to Himself in the first place.
Later on in their history—when they once again set themselves apart by rebuilding the wall of Jerusalem, and after they experienced a revival of spirit—the Jewish people entered into a solemn covenant before God. This covenant was written and signed by the leaders of the people, and the people consented to its terms in a whole-hearted way. And one of the things that they specified in this covenant was this:
We would not give our daughters as wives to the peoples of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons (Nehemiah 10:30).
It would be reasonable that they would specify this; since it had been a failure to keep to God’s command in the past that resulted in the terrible loss of 70 years of captivity. And so; it’s a truly shocking thing to discover that at the very end of the Book of Nehemiah—the book of the story of the separation of the people from this world and unto God—that we find this terrible sin being committed yet again. Nehemiah—the Jewish cupbearer to the king of Persia—had gone back briefly to the service of the king. And when he returned just a few years later, he made the horrible discovery that the people had violated their separateness and entered into marriages with the pagan peoples of the surrounding nations.
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Now; why was this such an important thing? It wasn’t strictly meant to be a matter of ethnicity. After all, Moses—in his later years—married an Ethiopian woman (Numbers 12:1). Rahab, the woman of Jericho, eventually became the wife of Salmon—the son of one of the chief leaders of the Tribe of Judah (Numbers 1:7; Matthew 1:4). And Salmon’s and Rahab’s son Boaz took the godly woman Ruth the Moabitess as his wife—who was the great-grandmother of King David (Ruth 4:18-22). The issue didn’t appear to be one of ethnicity or skin color; because these were all clearly women of faith who had embraced the God of Israel, who had left their former lives behind, and who worshiped Him according to His law.
Rather, what appeared to be the issue was the way ungodly alliances through marriage to unconverted spouses brought the influence of their pagan beliefs, and false worship, and immoral practices to bear on the men of Israel. The godly didn’t end up influencing the ungodly. Rather, it went the other way around. King Solomon didn’t fall simply because he married foreign wives. He fell because he married unconverted pagan women who remained committed to their pagan ways and turned his heart from God. Perhaps the clearest statement of the issue is found for us in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16; where the apostle Paul wrote,
Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will dwell in them
And walk among them.
I will be their God,
And they shall be My people” (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).
The story of the closing section of the Book of Nehemiah, then, teaches us an important spiritual principle that—if we will heed it—will save us a great deal of heartache and loss in our walk with God. It’s that we must be careful not to enter into the kind of relations with the ungodly that will draw us away from a pure devotion to God.
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Now; much has been told to us already of the things that Nehemiah needed to correct in his second term as governor over the people in Jerusalem. The pagan people groups of the foreign lands—specifically those who were the sworn enemies of the people of Israel—needed to be removed from the sacred assembly of God’s people (Nehemiah 13:1-3). Then, specific individuals who were intentionally compromising the worship of God needed to be expelled from the temple (vv. 4-13). Most recently, we read of how the violation of the sabbath was causing the work of the temple to be hindered; and this error needed to be corrected too (vv. 14-22).
And now comes what perhaps must have been the most painful correction of all. The story of it all begins with …
1. THE SAD DISCOVERY (vv. 23-24).
It came about in the days when Nehemiah returned for the second phase of his governorship (see 13:7, 15). Verses 23-24 tell us;
In those days I also saw Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. And half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and could not speak the language of Judah, but spoke according to the language of one or the other people (vv. 23-24).
We’ve already considered the problems that the Jewish people faced with the people of Ammon and Moab. Those two nations grew from the children of Abraham’s nephew Lot (Genesis 19:30-38). They were in a continual state of hostility toward the people of Israel; and God had commanded that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the sacred assembly of His people (see Nehemiah 13:1-3). The people of Israel were, of course, forbidden from entering into marriages with the hostile people from these nations. Ashodod was a people group of the Philistines. They were the people who captured the ark of the covenant in 1 Samuel 4-5 and set it before their false god Dagon.
Nehemiah was horrified, then, to find that—during the time he was gone—Jewish men had entered into marriages with the still-pagan women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. In fact, he was able to see that at least half of the children from these relationships could not speak Hebrew—which would have meant that the families of these men would not be able competently to read the Scriptures or participate in the sacred times of worship.
One of the great tragedies of these kinds of relationships is the impact it has on the generations that follow. As one Bible scholar has written;
The babble of languages among the children … was not only a symptom but a threat; it meant a steady erosion of Israelite identity at the level of all thinking and expression, and a loss of access to the Word of God, which would effectively paganize them. A single generation’s compromise could undo the work of centuries (Derek Kidner, Ezra & Nehemiah, TOTC [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1979], p. 131).
The seriousness of this terrible discovery explains what we find next …
2. THE STRONG REACTION (vv. 25-27).
The precious souls of Nehemiah’s people were at risk; and the years of hard work in rebuilding the wall—and the devotion of the people—were about to be lost.
So I contended with them and cursed them, struck some of them and pulled out their hair, and made them swear by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters as wives to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourselves” (v. 25).
When we’re told that Nehemiah “contended” with them, the same word is being used that was found in v. 17—a word that suggests a formal charge as if in court. Perhaps Nehemiah once again pointed to the covenant that had been entered into a few years prior—and how that covenant was now being broken again. We’re told also that he “cursed” them—not in the sense of using foul language at them, but rather proclaiming the solemn “curse and oath” that they entered into when they made that covenant in Nehemiah 10:29—bringing condemnation upon themselves for having broken it. But we’re also told that he became quite physical with them. He struck some of them, but this may be because some of them had tried to strike him. And we’re told that he pulled out their hair—quite a bit like Ezra who pulled out his own. It was a symbol of deep humility and shame. Clearly, he pointed to the covenant by which they had sworn by oath to keep.
Nehemiah had authority from the king of Persia to take these kinds of actions, and the fact that he did so demonstrates how seriously he took the matter. This was a dangerous compromise with sin that was like what had sent them into captivity in Babylon in the first place. And it had the potential of dishonoring and completely undoing all that God had done for them in bringing them back to Jerusalem. No wonder he was passionate about it!
His passion for this matter is clearly exhibited in how he then pointed back to their own history. In verses 26-27, he said;
“Did not Solomon king of Israel sin by these things? Yet among many nations there was no king like him, who was beloved of his God; and God made him king over all Israel. Nevertheless pagan women caused even him to sin. Should we then hear of your doing all this great evil, transgressing against our God by marrying pagan women?” (vv. 26-27).
Perhaps they had thought that, by entering into these marriages with unconverted pagan women, they could have a positive influence upon them. But not even Solomon was able to do that. It ended up that the unconverted wives dragged him down into paganism too.
To illustrate to us just how serious this compromise had become, we go on to read of …
3. THE PROFOUND DEFILEMENT (vv. 28-29).
We’re told that this had even affected the family of the high priest. Verse 28 tells us;
And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest, was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite; therefore I drove him from me (v. 28).
Earlier, we read of how the high priest had compromised by allowing Tobiah the Ammonite official to have an apartment within the temple (vv. 4-9). Nehemiah had to go in and cast Tobiah’s household goods out into the street. And now, we find that the high priest’s grandson had entered into a marriage that united him to the family of Sanballat the Hornoite—yet another of the fierce enemies of God’s people. Sanballat appears to have been the person who took the lead in seeking to prevent the building of the wall in the first place. He was the one who was the first to be ‘deeply disturbed’ that anyone would seek the well-being of the children of Israel (2:10; 4:7). Later—as the wall was being completed—he was ‘furious and very indignant’, and took the opportunity to mock the Jewish people (4:1). He was even the main force in an effort to trick Nehemiah into having a meeting—in which Sanballat and his colleagues would have brought him harm (6:1-14). He was not the kind of man that anyone of the priestly family of Israel should have been—in any way—related to.
It must be that this grandson of the high priest—who would have possibly been in line for the high priesthood himself one day—would not repent of this ungodly marriage. And so Nehemiah chased him out of town. Nehemiah refused to compromise, and even afterward prayed:
Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites (v. 29).
All of this was done in order to protect the holy integrity of God’s people—and the priesthood by which they were to serve God. It required the thing that we find in the final two verses of this book …
4. THE THOROUGH CLEANSING (vv. 30-31).
Nehemiah wrote—not just with respect to the problem of the ungodly marriages that had been entered into—but with respect to his actions throughout the whole book;
Thus I cleansed them of everything pagan. I also assigned duties to the priests and the Levites, each to his service, and to bringing the wood offering and the firstfruits at appointed times (vv. 30-31a).
The cleansing of “everything pagan” would have involved what we have read in the final verses of Chapter 13. The assigning of the duties of the priests and Levites would have involved the re-establishment of what was promised in 10:38-40; 12:33-37; and 13:12-13. And the restoration of the delivery of the wood for the offerings and the firstfruits at their appointed time would have involved what had been promised in 10:34-37, and what had been facilitated by the restorations of 13:10-13.
It was a lot of work. And that’s why Nehemiah confidently prayed at the end of it all;
Remember me, O my God, for good! (v. 31b).
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These final words of Nehemiah are vital for us to hear in our day—especially in an age that values and esteems compromise. We’re not, of course, under the same kind of ceremonial obligations that the people of Israel were specifically under. But we are under the call to be a holy and separate people unto God. And we must not allow ourselves to enter into any kind of relations or alliance that would compromise that full devotion.
We need to have the attitude our Lord described when He said;
“If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire” (Matthew 18:8-9).
Of course, our hand or our foot or our eye doesn’t cause us to sin. But if it did, we should be ready to part with it in order to remain holy to our God. And if that’s true of a hand or a foot or an eye, it must be true of every other ‘lessor’ thing.
May God help us to be careful to conduct ourselves always to the glory of God—and to not willingly enter into the kind of relations with the ungodly that will draw us away from a pure devotion to God.
AE
