Did y'all ever hear the one where Jesus from the Bible is talking with one of his friends? His friend's name is Peter. And he tells Peter and a bunch of their other friends, like, hey, you're all gonna ditch me. You're all gonna abandon me. And Peter's like, No, I'm not. I'm never gonna do that, ever. Even if everybody else does, I'm gonna hang with you forever. That's what Jesus' buddy Peter says. And Jesus responds to that saying, Well, actually, not only are you going to abandon me and deny me, but you're gonna you're gonna actually deny me three times tonight before the rooster even grows. And Peter's like, I even if I have to die, I wouldn't I'm I'm not gonna do that. I'm totally not gonna do that. And Jesus is like, Okay. That paraphrases mine. Jesus didn't say, like, okay. Maybe a page of Bible happens after that, and Jesus gets arrested, and things are not going well in Jesus' trial, and Peter, his friend, is kind of skulking around the edges. Because I think Peter really does like Jesus, and I think he meant what he said, but he just couldn't follow through on it. And so he's scared. I mean, it's understandable, right? Like your buddy just got arrested, he's gonna get killed. Somebody comes up to him here during the night while Peter's skulking about, and they're like, Hey, don't I recognize you from uh hanging around with Jesus? And Peter's like, no, definitely not. That is a different guy. You were thinking of someone else. But then somebody else comes over and they're like, No, no, no, no, no, you're the guy, right? From the thing. I remember you because I remember the thing. I was there at the thing. And he's like, No, come on. You're thinking of somebody else. That's two, if you're keeping track. And then somebody else comes over and they're like, You're definitely the guy. I'm telling you. I saw, hey, everybody, this is one of the guys with Jesus. I saw him at the thing. Slight paraphrase is mine, but this is basically how it went. And Peter's like, no, definitely not. You are all confused and you're all being weird. And then right then the rooster crows and he goes outside and he weeps bitterly. And that's actually the last thing that you ever hear from Peter in the book of Matthew. It's a pretty sad story, right? And you read that story in the New Testament, and you can't help but go, Wow, how could you get that so wrong? This one page ago you said that you were gonna get that right, you swear on your life, you're definitely not gonna deny Jesus, and then you get it wrong three times, boom, like that. But then upon further reflection, you're supposed to go, eh, I do things like that. Sometimes you get caught up in the moment or fear, insecurity, or whatever, just selfishness takes over. And you can swear up and down that you're gonna do the right thing when you're in one state of mind, and then you just the practicality of the moment or whatever, everything flips, and then you get it wrong a second later. I think that whole story of Peter immediately failing to follow through on this blood oath covenant swearing that he does to Jesus is really reminiscent of what we're getting here at the very end of the book of Nehemiah. And in the same way that you're supposed to be shocked by how quickly Peter could screw it up, but also then a second later, you're supposed to be like, well, I guess I could do that too. So at the end of Nehemiah, I think you're supposed to be shocked by how quickly the people who just made a vow to do three things then went and violated those three things. But then also, after a couple minutes to reflect, I think you're supposed to be like, well, I mean, it could have been me. I do things like that sometimes. In this case, it's a pretty ugly situation. The thing that keeps biting the descendants of Abraham in the butt is that they keep marrying into other people groups. And it's not the marrying between people that is necessarily what messes it up. It's in this ancient Near Eastern context, every time you do that, you mingle all the money, you mingle all the customs, you mingle all the language, you mingle all the belief and the religion and where the sacrifices go. And it watered down the whole thing for this exclusive people group. And of course, every time they intermarried and half worshipped another god and half worshiped the one true God, things got watered down to the point that it was barely recognizable. And that's, according to Nehemiah, how they got into the whole mess in the first place of being slaves and in captivity, defeated by Babylon, owned by the Persians. But now there's been this opportunity to get things back on track. They made a great big oath. Everybody made the oath in chapter 10, a lot like Peter. No, we're never gonna get anything wrong again. We're totally gonna do all of these things. We are totally gonna honor the Sabbath, we are totally going to provide for the household of God and not neglect it, and we are totally not gonna do the intermarriage thing anymore. Well, in Nehemiah 13, we discover that Nehemiah went away for a little bit and they immediately neglected the care of the house of God. And then we discover that also Nehemiah went away for a little bit and they immediately quit honoring the Sabbath. And then most recently we figured out here in the last little bit of Nehemiah 13 that Nehemiah went away for a little bit and immediately everybody started doing the intermarriage thing again and adopting the customs of other people groups and beliefs and all that. It's just the same problem on repeat. Here we go again. So Nehemiah explains the problem in verses 23 and 24 of Nehemiah 13. Moreover, in those days I saw men of Judah who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. Half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod or the language of one of the other peoples and didn't know how to speak the language of Judah. They couldn't even hear the words of God in the language in which they were written because they didn't know it. Well, Nehemiah's been a man of action in the past. What's he gonna do this time around? Verse 25. I, Nehemiah, rebuked them and called curses down on them. Dang. Well, for that to be anything other than impotent and ridiculous and mockable, you've got to be somebody who's got a lot of credibility and a pretty decent following, and somebody who's operating from a position of massive moral authority, and apparently Nehemiah is just such a guy. What else is he gonna do? Oh boy, I beat some of the men and pulled out their hair, period. Huh. Okay. Well, theoretically, we are against religious violence. I would be against somebody in church beating someone and pulling out their hair. But you know what? Truth to be told, I've kind of wanted to do that a few times. I've seen people claim to believe a certain thing and hold a certain set of values, and then wantonly and willfully and defiantly blow up something beautiful on purpose, just like the moment when Bilbo refused to give back the ring, and they you can just see the evil come over them. No, why shouldn't I have this thing that I want? You're like, oh my goodness, you probably need to be beaten and to have your hair pulled out. What is the matter with you? I've never done it. Uh I probably will never do that. So I get the impulse, I guess, to want to when people who claim to believe a certain thing just wantonly, willfully, destructively, ruthlessly, cruelly ignore all the things that they pledged themselves to. I don't know, maybe I've had that coming at times here or there. I mean, I like to think that most of the stupid stuff I've done is because of stupid, like just not paying attention or well-intentioned, and I got it wrong, or just inattentive and oh wow, if I should have been more thoughtful, that wasn't very helpful. But no, I can even think of a few things over the course of my life where I'm like, no, I just it's me time, and I'm gonna be selfish and I'm gonna say something mean right now. I'm gonna do it, or whatever it is. And so I don't know, maybe I've had it coming as well. But jokes on you, Nehemiah, or whoever would want to correct me. I don't have any hair to pull out. All of that said, theoretically, you don't want to beat people in a religious setting, but I don't know, different time, different context, different stakes. I mean, if somebody gets something wrong at church or in a church community, they tear up their family, they hurt people they love, they deeply damage their children. That's pretty bad. Maybe beating worthy. You're not allowed to do it in our culture. But in this culture, it was that horribly destructive for their family. But also, Nehemiah, who's steeped in this story, can draw straight lines between we violate God's commands, he punishes us. Those are the literal spoken terms of the covenant that has been around at this point for a thousand years. This isn't church, this isn't a liberal democracy in modern times. This is a covenant community whereby, if they meander too far collectively from the commands of God, God sends an empire to crush their temple and take them away into slavery. There are collective consequences for the moral failing of the group. The deal God made with them and that they agreed to is very clear. If they obey God, everybody's gonna know that he's the one true God because he will bless them in ways that don't make any sense. If they disobey God, everyone else is still gonna know that he's the one true God because he will punish his own people in ways that, according to the laws of history and time and space, don't make natural sense. Either way, everyone is gonna know that he's the one true God and he will not be mocked. Nehemiah has got a hundred data points to support that this is indeed exactly how it works. And so, in the grand scheme of things, a little bit of beating and hair pulling in this context maybe makes more sense than it would in other contexts. I don't know. Am I arguing for beating people and pulling out their hair right now? Maybe I am. In a given context, I don't know. I hope that I don't ever beat anybody or pull out their hair, and I hope that nobody beats me, then claws helplessly at where my hair should be. I made them take an oath in God's name and said, You are not to give your daughters in marriage to their sons, nor are you to take their daughters in marriage for your sons or for yourselves. And it's cool that he made them take an oath and everything, but again, per our earlier conversation about Peter saying one thing and then doing another thing one page later, may I remind you that they took an oath to this exact effect with their names and a seal of their family crest and everything, right back here, this many pages earlier. Three pages earlier, they all agreed to this. We promise not to give our daughters in marriage to the peoples around us or take their daughters for our sons. It's the same vow they just took. At what point are these vows not worth the air they are breathed upon? But I gotta respect Nehemiah's persistence. He knows there's something really big at stake here, and that this seemingly harmless gesture over a huge sample size of history has proved itself to be their Achilles' heel. This is our downfall. Don't do it. And a little bit of beating and hair pulling is far better than the consequences of if this doesn't get checked. Also, then the same way that I look at the story of Peter back at the beginning, and I'm like, man, idiot. And then two seconds later, I'm like, uh, yeah, kind of me. I kind of relate to Peter more than Jesus in that story. So I look at this story and I want to relate to Nehemiah more, but probably I relate to the idiots more. There are lots of good things that I have intended to do, and then just forgot or was selfish or whatever. I don't know. The whole dang situation, all of it, the Peter thing, the Nehemiah thing, the whole Old Testament, all of it begs for a solution that is more potent than my willpower, than Peter's willpower, than these guys' willpower. It's gonna take something more, and that really is, I think, what the whole Nehemiah thing is ultimately gonna set up as we get toward the home stretch here. I'm Matt. This is the Ten Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.