Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham

A Foundation of Compassion; Nehemiah 5:1-19

• Jason Sterling

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Jason Sterling October 19, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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SPEAKER_00:

If you have a copy of God's word, turn with me to Nehemiah chapter 5. I want you to keep your Bible open this morning. I'll be reading the first 13 verses, but I'll be we'll be looking at the entire chapter, which is printed in your bulletin. We've been in a series in Ezra Nehemiah. And in chapter 4, which Jamie looked at last week, Nehemiah faced some serious opposition from his enemies. And the opposition was coming from outside the walls. People were mocking and threatening and plotting attacks. And this morning in chapter five, it opens with a new crisis, a crisis that Nehemiah didn't see coming, and from a direction that he didn't see coming. And I think you'll see what I mean as we read our passage this morning, Nehemiah chapter 5, verses 1 through 13. This is the word of God. Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. For there were those who said, With our sons and daughters, we are many. So let us get grain that we may eat and keep alive. There were also those who said, We are mortgaging our fields and our vineyards and our houses to get grain because of the famine. And there were those who said, 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 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. I was very angry when I heard their outcry in these words. I took counsel with myself, and I brought charges against the nobles and officials, and I said to them, You are exacting interest each from his brother. And I held a great assembly against them, and said to them, We, as far as we are able, have bought back our Jewish brothers who have been sold to the nations, but even but you even sell your brothers that they may be sold to us. They were silent, and they could not find a word to say. And so I said, The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations, our enemies? Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest. Return to them this very day their fields, their vineyards, their olive orchards, their houses, and the percentage of money, grain, wine, and oil that you have been exacting from them. And then they said, We will restore these and require nothing from them. We will do as you say. And I called the priest and made them swear to do as they had promised. I also shook out the fold of my garment and said, So may God shake out every man from his house and from his labor who does not keep this promise. So may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen, and praise the Lord, and the people did as they had promised. Nehemiah goes on in those next few verses, and it reveals that Nehemiah actually practiced what he preached. For twelve years, Nehemiah didn't take the governor's salary and actually fed a hundred and fifty people daily out of his own pocket. Let's pray and let's ask God to bless the hearing and the teaching of his word this morning. Let's pray together. Father, one of the hard parts about preaching is you have to face your own heart. And as I read this passage, I see that I am prone to so many of the sins that are revealed here. And so would you be with me as I preach this passage? Give me boldness, but also great humility. I pray that you would be with those who hear, and that you would take this and apply it to each heart, that you would convict and challenge, but also show us the gospel, show us the goodness of the greater Nehemiah, the Lord Jesus Christ. May we all encounter him this morning. In his name we pray. Amen. Have you ever noticed that the worst wounds often come from the people closest to us? The worst wounds often come from people closest to us. A business partner who embezzles from you, a spouse who betrays you. Maybe a family member who takes advantage of trust for personal gain. It stings when a stranger betrays you. But when it is someone close to you, it cuts right to the core. Nehemiah knew this pain. Nehemiah had given up the comforts of working in the Persian palace, and he had given his life to rebuilding the walls in Jerusalem. He handled the external enemies, the mockeries, the attacks, the threats, but what broke his resolve and ignited righteous anger wasn't the opposition out there. It was the corruption from within. People were sacrificing to rebuild the walls, and their own brothers were profiting off of that sacrifice. And what makes this story very uncomfortable is it's not just about them. This is about us this morning. Because if we're honest, yes, we often are victims of betrayal, but we are also often the ones who are doing the betraying. We are also the ones who can get so focused on our own comfort and our own rights, on our own security that we become blind to the people that we are crushing right beside us. We have one hand that's working for God while the other hand is actually crushing other people. Throughout this series, we've been discovering essential foundations that we want to build as a church as we move forward into this new season of ministry and new sanctuary and ministry space. And Nehemiah chapter five shows us the importance of building a foundation of compassion. And compassion isn't just a nice feeling that we have when we encounter something that moves us. Compassion is something that we can deliberately build. And Nehemiah shows us how to build it in this passage. Building a foundation of compassion involves three things. It involves us seeing other people, confronting, and sacrificing. Seeing, confronting, and sacrificing. Let's take those in turn this morning. Look at verse one. Notice the word arose, not just an outcry, a great outcry. This wasn't just a minor complaint. This was a desperate public cry for help. And notice who they're crying out against. Again, I've said this, not external enemies, but against their Jewish brothers. This was not pagans and outside nations exploiting the Jews. This was Jews and God's people exploiting each other. And look exactly what they're doing. Look at verses two through five. Look at how widespread this crisis was. Some families in the community were starving because they had nothing left. Others were mortgaging their land and their property just to survive. And still others keep reading were being forced to enslave their own children in order to pay taxes. The crisis had reached everyone from the poorest families to the wealthy landowners. No one was spared. And then you get this devastating line. Look at verse 5. Some of their daughters had already been enslaved. And then here it is, but it is not in our power to help it. Do you hear the heartbreak here? It is not in our power to help it. They're helpless. They can't buy their daughters back. There is no way out. They are utterly powerless. Let me try to explain what's going on here. This was not just unfortunate economics. This was covenant betrayal. Wealthy Jews were charging interest on loans to their poor brothers, and that was explicitly forbidden in the law of God. And they weren't just charging interest, they were playing loan sharks. They were making it impossible to escape debt, which led the people into debt slavery. Do you see the irony? God had delivered his people from the slavery of Egypt. And now God's people are making slaves out of one another. God's people, God's covenant people are a messy bunch. And the church is a messy bunch. That's why people often will say, you're nothing but a bunch of hypocrites in the church. To which I respond, you don't know the half of it. Come and join us. Doesn't mean we settle, it means that we take call the serious, this call seriously to build something better. And so how do we do that? How do we become the kind of church that doesn't repeat this pattern? Well, it begins, if we're going to build a foundation of compassion, it begins by seeing, really seeing people and seeing the suffering around you. The nobles here had stopped seeing. They had become blind to the pain that they were causing. They had learned to just simply walk past the crying. They had learned to walk past the poverty. They stopped seeing and started rationalizing. Well, this is just the way it works. We're within our legal rights. That's their problem. How do we get there? How do we stop seeing the suffering around us? You know what it is for me? And it's part of being, uh it's part of the human heart. We have this bent, but it's self-absorption. We slowly make ourselves the center of our world so that everyone around us becomes invisible. And even worse, they become tools for our own agenda. And when we become self-absorbed, we stop seeing people as people created in the image of God, and we start seeing people as problems and opportunities and obstacles. That's what happens when we're the center of our world. But when God and worshiping Him is the center, we see people as image bearers, full of dignity, worth our attention, and worthy of our compassion. And so how does that happen? How do we start seeing people? Well, obviously, you've got to own your self-centeredness. We've got to own our self-absorption and experience repentance unto life for those things. And part of repentance involves seeing and savoring Jesus because here's the stunning truth that will change you and lead you from a person who's self-absorbed to a person that's full of compassion and who sees every person around them. And it is the stunning truth of the gospel that God heard, God saw us, and God came in the person of Jesus Christ while we were dead in our sins, Jesus came and saved us. And when we grasp that, that Jesus saw us in our desperation, our eyes start to open to the people around us. And so, what suffering have you learned to ignore around you? What people, what suffering have you stopped seeing? Maybe it's within your own family. It's the spouse that you stop listening to, or the child who is in deep pain, and you just keep saying and dismissing it as it's just a face. Or maybe it's in your workplace. You've stopped saying, or you're ignoring the colleague who's being mistreated, or the things that you've noticed, but you are too afraid to name. Or maybe it's in our church, a single parent, or a widow who needs help, or a young couple who is drowning in debt, or someone who is battling addiction and they're all alone, or maybe it's the poor in our community and city. Who have you stopped seeing? But it takes more than just seeing, it takes confronting. And that leads us to our next point. He heard the outcry in the charges. Look at verse 6. Again, these words. Um, a great outcry, not just an outcry. He's not just angry here, he's very angry. And notice what he does with the anger in verse 7. I love this. He took a minute. He took counsel with himself. So he has initial outrage. He gets control of himself, he thinks it through, and then he acts decisively. And he confronts the nobles and the officials directly for what they are doing. Look at verse 8. It hits with full force. Let me help you feel the weight of this. Some of the faithful Jews had been pulling their resources together in order to redeem or to buy back fellow Jews who had been sold into slavery in pagan nations. Beautiful. I mean, think about that. What a ministry. But Nehemiah discovers the cruel irony that one group is sacrificing and giving in order to set people free, but there is another group who is enslaving people for profit. And how does Nehemiah respond? Or how do they respond to the confrontation? Look at verse 8. They were silent and could not find a word to say. They had nothing. And then comes the devastating line. Look at verse 9. So I said, the thing that you're doing is not good. Translation: the thing that you're doing is sin. And then here it is: ought you not to walk in the fear of the Lord. I think that is so instructive for us as we think about confrontation. Confrontation is invitation. Shouldn't you walk in the fear of God? It is an appeal to God's people to be who they're supposed to be. He's saying, remember who you are. You're God's people. You belong to Him. Doing this to people is not who you are. Real confrontation calls out, but it also calls people to something greater. It calls them to be who God created them to be as the image of God. It calls them to live out of their identity that sin has obscured. Nehemiah's confrontation here, it's not just to uh for the oppressed, but it's also for the oppressor who is destroying themselves and their own souls by what they are doing. By confronting them, Nehemiah is giving them a chance to repent and to save themselves. He confronts, notice, and it's not to shame, it is to restore. Confrontation is about loving people enough to tell them the truth. Now, let me be clear on something. This is not a license for you to become the sin police and to find fault with every single person around you. Why? Because Jesus says take the log out of your own eye before you notice the speck in someone else's eye. Your most aggressive confrontation is always reserved for yourself. And we actually see that here. Nehemiah models this. Look at verse 10. Did you pick up on this? Nehemiah says, You must abandon. Is that what he says? No. Let us. Nehemiah is including himself in the call to change. It's not from a position of superiority. He's not standing above them. He stands with them as a fellow sinner in need of repentance. He calls to action. Look at verse 11. Return to them everything that you've taken to them. Verse 12, we will do as you say. They repented. Once confronted with the truth, they turned around. This model is incredibly practical for us. Very practical model as we think about confronting someone in their sin or injustice around us. Look, he pondered first. He didn't fly off the handle. He didn't let his emotions run wild. He pondered first and thought it through and was very thoughtful. He confronted directly. He didn't go around the people. He went straight to the people. He called it what it was. He named the sin very clearly without sugarcoating it. He called them to repentance and change. Look at, and then finally, he creates this accountability for them. And it shows us that confrontation doesn't mean being cruel and harsh and self-righteous. Rather, it means being clear, direct, and redemptive. And then the question is, how do we do this? How is this possible? Gospel. We need to do this confidence and humility. And the gospel gives you both. It gives you confidence. Why? Because your security is not in what other people think. God tells you who you are. And so you can move forward towards someone and deal with hard things because you are anchored in something deeper, and that is in Jesus' opinion, in his opinion of you. But the gospel also leads to humility, doesn't it? Because it allows you to see and to own that you're a mess. And I'm a mess. And Jesus has been so gracious and kind with our sin and brokenness and the memory of who we are and how Jesus has been gracious and kind with us keeps us from being harsh and judgmental and self-righteous. And so let me ask you: is there a conversation that you've been avoiding that compassion demands that you have? Is there an injustice in your sphere of influence that you need to name and confront? Is there someone around you, maybe in your schools or workplace or neighborhood that is being hurt that you need to stand up for? Real compassion speaks up. Real compassion names the sin. Real compassion risks comfort for the sake of the vulnerable, but also out of love for those who are blinded by their sin. And that brings us to our last building block for building a foundation of compassion, and that is sacrificing. Look at verse 14. Didn't read this, but it's in your bulletin. And also, if you have your Bible open, you can look. For 12 years, very interesting section of the passage, he never took a food allowance that came with being the governor. Let me make a note here. Um, this food allowance was paid by taxing the local population, and it was considered a legitimate right for that position. And Nehemiah chose not to exercise that right. Why? Look at verse 15. Because he had watched the other governors and how they had laid heavy burdens on the people, taking what they wanted, and he didn't want to repeat that pattern. What was his reasoning? Here's this phrase again: because of the fear of God. His relationship and worship of God led him, notice the connection, to give up his rights, to give up the things he was entitled to and to sacrifice for someone else. And here's what's remarkable. Look at verses 17 and 18. Nehemiah was obviously a wealthy man. Notice how he was using his resources. He was feeding 150 people out of his own pocket for 12 years a day, never billing the government, never demanding his entitlement. Look at verse 18, because the demands were heavy on these people. And he didn't want to add to the burden. He wanted to lighten the burden at his own personal cost. Most people try to influence through power and control and dominance. And Nehemiah goes to the back of the line. He gave up the things that he was entitled to for the sake of other people. That's our vision for this church. That when people think of faith church in our city and in our community, my prayer is that the first thing they think of is not the beautiful building, and it is beautiful. Not the great programs that we have, and we got great programs. My hope in prayer is the first thing they think of is like, I don't know what's going on there, but those people lay down their life for the people around them. They love sacrificially their families and their neighbors and their schools and their workplaces. And maybe you hear this and you're thinking, this is completely overwhelming. I mean, you've talked about seeing other people. That's overwhelming, confronting people in their sin. And now you're talking about sacrificing my comforts. There's no way. That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? How do we do this? We need someone better. We need someone greater than Nehemiah. And we have one, and his name is Jesus. Philippians chapter 2 tells us, think about this, Jesus being the very nature God didn't consider a quality with God, something to use to his own advantage. But what did he do? Made himself nothing. Taking the very nature of a servant, he humbled himself to death, even death on a cross. Mark 10, verse 45, Jesus Christ, God in the flesh, came to serve, not to be served and to give his life as a ransom for many. Second Corinthians chapter 8. Jesus became poor so that you could be rich. Nehemiah gave up his salary. Jesus, the greater Nehemiah, gave up heaven and gave up his life. The power to lay down our lives and to serve the way we are called to serve and live as Christians in this world comes from the The heart of the gospel is not the sacrifices you make for God, it's the sacrifices that God has made for you. Love and service come out of the gospel. We love and serve. Why? Because Jesus first loved and served us. And so, in order for us to live this way, we must see Jesus sacrificially loving and serving us. And what that means, that sounds easy, but that means that you have to admit that you're someone who needs to be served. There's a documentary called A Beautiful or A Walk to Beautiful. And it's about a group of women in Ethiopia, and it's about a fistula clinic. Fistula is a child-bearing condition that happens. And these women in Ethiopia that would get fistula would become disfigured. It would make them outcast in their own communities. And when they got this disease and condition, their husbands would immediately leave them. Their families would no longer let them in the house. So they had to build these rooms that were attached to the house. And so these women lived the rest of their lives as outcasts and lived in loneliness. And one of the women in this documentary said that she was thinking about drinking poison to end her life because her life felt so worthless. And then someone comes along and opens up a fistula clinic in Ethiopia. They bring these women in, they perform surgeries, they give them hope and a chance, they fix their problem, they give them new clothing. These women are transformed from downcast to smiling and full of joy. And what do the women do when they're completely done with the procedure and they have new clothes and they get their life back? They don't go home. They want to stay in the clinic. And they want to love the other women who are coming in. The gospel says that you are one of these women. That I am one of these women. That we have a chronic problem that has disfigured our souls. And we can't see it from the outside, but we have this debt hanging over us that needs to be ransomed. And Jesus comes and he buys us back. He comes and he buys you and me. People who don't see suffering. People who are consumed and self-absorbed, who protect their own comfort at the expense of others. Jesus comes and he meets us where we are, not where we pretend to be or should be. And he sacrificed his life for yours. And now that you've been seen and confronted by grace and loved with sacrificial love, you're free. You're free. Just move out into the world and start building a foundation of compassion, not to earn God's love, but because his compassion has transformed you. When you've been transformed by the compassion of Jesus, all of a sudden we become agents of that same compassion to the broken world around us. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your compassion. Thank you for seeing us, for confronting sin for us, and for sacrificing to save us. Would you forgive us, forgive me for being blind to the people and to the suffering around me? Forgive us for our selfishness and the ways we protect our comfort. Holy Spirit, I pray that you would make us a church that would be marked by compassion. In Jesus' name, amen.