Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham

Nehemiah 13:1-31; A Foundation of Need

• Martin Wagner

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Martin Wagner November 23, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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SPEAKER_00:

Some of you may remember the Saturday Night Live character Debbie Downer. Debbie is a character that no matter where she was, it could be a family reunion or Disney World or Thanksgiving dinner this week. Everyone around her was having a great time. Everyone is celebrating. And then she comes off with a line like, Well, did you know that your chances of getting bird flu were increasing exponentially every day? And the mood in the room drops, and she stares at the camera, and the sad trombones come out, and it's wah wah. Debbie Downer's favorite chapter in Nehemiah is chapter 13, undoubtedly. We come off of chapter 12 last week, and there's this big celebration. We've walked the walls. Everyone is worshiping thanksgiving. God had answered prayers. They had reflected upon his goodness. Everyone is overflowing with gratitude. The future looks bright for God's people. And then we come to chapter 13. And what we see in our passage today is that everything is unraveling. Everything that they had promised that they were never going to do, they've done. Everything they said they wouldn't do, they have compromised on. And the sad trombones make another appearance in chapter 13. Nehemiah does his best Debbie Downer impression, and he turns to the camera and he says, Well, did you know that Tobiah, our arch enemy, now lives in the temple? Or a little later in the chapter, did you know that the Levites, they've all gone home because they couldn't afford to eat while living in the temple? The contrast between chapter 12 and chapter 13 is not just jarring, it's sobering for us. Because when you think about the time span between chapter 12 and 13, it's not centuries. It's only a few years. In less than a decade, they had gone from one of the high points of the Old Testament, the greatest worship service they'd had in generations. And in less than a decade, they find themselves full of forgetfulness and compromise. This hits home to us because, in many ways, our church right now is in a Nehemiah 12 kind of season. God has been extraordinarily gracious to our church. He's answered our prayers. We get to see, we experience great unity and growth. There are new buildings coming up. God has been extraordinarily gracious to us as a church. So the passage confronts us with the question: how do we keep the chapter 12 we're experiencing right now from turning into a chapter 13 collapse that we see? How do we keep blessing from becoming forgetfulness and compromise? How can we keep Nehemiah 13 from becoming the story of Faith Presbyterian Church? Well, we can think that chapter 13 is a bit of a downer for us. This is not exactly the way that we want to go into the Thanksgiving holidays. This chapter is actually a gift to us because it is a reminder to us that all of us, without God's sustaining grace, we will all drift from faithfulness to God. The danger of success, the danger of blessing is that we begin to think that we don't actually need the grace that brought us here all along. And in this series, we've talked a lot about the kind of spiritual foundations that we long for God to build in us. And so this morning we're going to look finally at the last part of this series at a foundation of need. A foundation that we long for God to build in us that says we can't save ourselves, a foundation that says we can't keep ourselves faithful to our God. And therefore we stand in desperate need of a redeemer to do for us what we can't do for ourselves. We're going to read the passage. We're actually going to read the entire chapter. It's a long passage, but hang with me as we read through it. I think you'll see in the first point why we want to read the entire chapter. Um, but listen as we read this, listen for ways that we see the people of God abandoning what they said they would never do. Hear God's word to us today from Nehemiah 13. On that day they read from the book of Moses and the hearing of the people, and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever enter the assembly of God. For they did not meet the people of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. Yet our God turned the curse into blessing. As soon as the people heard the law, they separated from Israel all those of foreign descent. Now before this Eliashab the priest, who was appointed over the chambers of the house of our God, and who was related to Tobiah, prepared for Tobiah a large chamber where they had previously put the grain offering, the frankincense, the vessels, and the tithes of grain, wine, and oil, which were given by the commandment to the Levites, singers, and gatekeepers, and the contributions for the priest. While this was taking place, I was not in Jerusalem. For in the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes, king of Babylon, I went to the king, and after some time I asked leave of the king, and came to Jerusalem, and then I discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah, preparing for him a chamber and the courts of the house of God. And I was very angry. And I threw out all the household furniture of Tobiah out of the chamber, then I gave orders, and they cleansed the chambers, and brought back there the vessels of the house of God with the grain offering and the frankincense. And also found out that the portions of Levites had not been given to them, so that the Levites and the singers who did the work each had fled to the field. And so I confronted the officials and said, Why is the house of God forsaken? And I gathered them together and set them in their stations, and then all Judah brought the tithe of grain, wine, and oil into the storehouses. And I appointed treasurers over the storehouses, Shalemiah the priest, Zadok the scribe, Padiah of the Levites, and their assistant Hanan, the son of Zachar, son of Mataniah, for they were considered reliable, and their duty was to distribute to their brothers. Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service. In those days I saw in Judah people treading wine presses on the Sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day, and I warned them on the day when they sold food. Tyrians also who lived in the city brought in fish and all kinds of goods, and sold them on the Sabbath to the people of Judah in Jerusalem itself. Then I confronted the nobles of Judah and said to them, What is this evil thing that you are doing, profaning the Sabbath day? Did not your fathers act in this way? And did not our God bring all this disaster on us and on this city? Now you are bringing more wrath on Israel by profaning the Sabbath. As soon as it began to grow dark at the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I commanded that the doors should be shut, and gave orders that they should not be opened until after the Sabbath. And I stationed some of my servants at the gates, that no load may be brought in on the Sabbath day. Then the merchants and the sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them, and I said to them, Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again I will lay hands on you. From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites that they should purify themselves, and come and guard the gates to keep the Sabbath day holy. Remember this also in my favor, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love. And those days also I saw the Jew who had the Jews who had married the women of Ashdod, Ammon and Moab, half of their children spoke the language of Ashdod, and they could not speak the language of Judah, but only the language of each people. And I confronted them, and cursed them, and beat some of them, and pulled out their hair. And I made them to take an oath in the name of God, saying, You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Did not Solomon King of Israel sin on account of such women? Among the many nations there was no king like him, but he was beloved by his God, and God made him king over all of Israel. Nevertheless, foreign women made him even to sin. Shall we then listen to you and do all this great evil and act treacherously against our God by marrying foreign women? And one of the sons of Jehoiada, the son of Eliashib, the high priest, the son-in-law of Sanbalat the Horonite, therefore I chased him from me. Remember them, O my God, because they have desecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. Thus I cleansed from them everything foreign, and I established the duties of the priest and Levites, each in his work, and I provided for the wood offering at appointed times, and for the first fruits. Remember me, O my God, for good. Amen. Let's pray. Father in heaven, this is your holy word given to us. You have given this to us, you have spoken this for our good, but yet we confess that our hearts are slow to hear and to receive your word. And so by your spirit we pray that you would open our eyes to what is true, that you would uncover what is hidden in us, and that you would gently confront what has grown calloused in our hearts. And so let this word search us and humble us, and let it lead us to Christ, our Redeemer. Speak, Lord, for we are your needy people, and we are listening. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. And so how does Nehemiah 13, how does it show us how we are to build a foundation of need? Or to put it another way, how can we be a church that doesn't look like Nehemiah 13 in 10 years from now? How can we, as followers of Christ, remain faithful to our God? To answer that, I want to look at this passage in three parts this morning. The first is that the word of God reveals our need. Second is that our efforts cannot fix our need. And the third point is that only Christ can meet our need. So first, the word of God reveals our need. It seems obvious from the text that the people had been ignoring the word of God. Because how does the passage start? They begin by reading the word. Everything, from the moment they read the word of God in verse one, everything that was hidden now comes to light. The reading of the word exposed their need. It showed them what they had done, the things that they had excused. It had shown them how far they had wandered from God. The cascading events of chapter 13 were set off by simply reading the word of God. They read in God's Word that no Moabite, no Ammonite should enter the assembly of God. And so then they think, oh yeah, remember that guy, Tobiah, our arch enemy, the guy who has been a thorn in our side since we arrived 30 years ago. The guy who at every turn has tried to oppose us, who has threatened to stop the work, who has harassed us every moment. Yes, this guy also happens to be an Ammonite. This is the guy, for some reason, we set him up a really nice apartment in the temple. We thought that was a good idea. We have moved out all the holy things of God, and we've given him enough space to be able to live in the temple. But it's not just that the word of God being read exposed Tobiah's new living arrangement. In verse 10, we read that the Levites, these are the tribe of people who were commanded to work in the temple, that they had left their post, they had gone back to work in the fields because they couldn't, the people had stopped giving their tithes. They couldn't eat. The pastors didn't get a paycheck, and so they had to go find other work. And the same thing happens with the Sabbath. In verses 15 to 18, Nehemiah sees the people of God treading wine presses on the Sabbath, bringing grain into the city, running a marketplace in Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. Foreign merchants are camping outside the gates. They're just tromping at the bit to get in and to make some money off of the people. What is going on? The people had forgotten the Sabbath. They'd forgotten that God gave them this as a gift to remind them that their productivity is not what sustains them, that it is their God that sustains them. And then as we go on in the passage, there's this issue of intermarriage that shows up at the end in verses 23 to 27. And if you read the Old Testament, you know that one of Israel's perennial sins was the issue of intermarriage, marrying people who worshiped other gods. Over and over, we see this that the people of God lose their identity and they forget who they are. Nehemiah shows up. Think about this, less than a decade later, and half of the children didn't speak the language of Judah. What that meant? They didn't know the worship, the language of worship. They were speaking the language of Ashdod. In other words, the next generation was losing the ability to know and to worship the Lord. But once again, nobody saw this until the Word of God exposed it. And that's why Nehemiah 13 begins where it does. Because before God restores us, he exposes our sin. Before God heals us, the word of God diagnoses us. The word of God shows us where we have fallen short. And this is the mercy of God's word to us. It shines light on us, it shines light on the places in our lives that we would rather keep hidden. And it still does that today. That's why every week when we gather together as God's people, we are called to confess our sins, to be honest with God about how we have sinned. Bully led us in that part of the service this morning. But it wasn't bully just standing up here saying, Here's my opinions on all the ways that you people have sinned this week, and here's how you need to repent. No, Jeremiah 17 is read. The word of God is what calls us to repent and to turn. And so one of the ways that we know that we are reading the Word of God rightly is that when it confronts us, when the Word of God says things we'd rather it not say, when it shows us our sins. But exposure, our sins being exposed, can't change our hearts. And that leads us to our second point, and that our own efforts can't fix the need that has been exposed. When Nehemiah comes back to Jerusalem, what we see in the first part of this chapter is that Nehemiah went away. He went back to Babylon for a season, and then he comes back, and this is what he finds when he comes back. And when he comes back to town, he begins a series of necessary and bold reforms to address the sins of the people. But there's a pattern that you notice as you read through this chapter is that reforms can clean up the mess, but reforms can't cure the disease. Look at the pattern. When Nehemiah learns that Tobiah is living in the temple, he throws his furniture out to the street. He kicks him to the curb. He orders the room to be cleansed. He puts the vessels of worship back in. He does everything that a godly leader should do in this situation. But the deeper question still remains: why on earth was Tobiah in there in the first place? What was going on in their hearts that made it seem like that was a reasonable, good thing to do? Nehemiah can evict Tobiah, but he cannot evict the compromise that made room for it. When he sees that the Levites have left their posts, that the Levites are starving, Nehemiah confronts the officials. You notice he doesn't go to the Levites, he goes to the officials who let it happen. And in verse 11, he says, Why is the house of God forsaken? He reorganizes the Levites, he brings them back in from the fields, he reinstates tithing in verse 12. He appoints faithful overseers. He comes and he patches together this broken system. But the hearts of the people that let the worship of God collapse, those remain unchanged. Nehemiah can restore the structure, but he cannot produce devotion in the people. Nehemiah sees the people breaking the Sabbath. And so he shuts the gates and he stations guards in verse 19. He goes and he warns the foreign merchants. He says he will lay hands on them. He's going to fight them if they try to get into the city on the Sabbath. And for a brief moment it works. But nothing inside the people has changed. Nehemiah can make the people stop working, but he can't make them trust their God. Nehemiah sees Israelites marrying people who worship other gods. He sees the next generation losing the language of worship, losing the ability to know the Lord. And he confronts the people. It says he disciplines them and he curses them. And in verse 25, he beats them up and he pulls their hair out. And we do not have time to talk about Nehemiah's anger issues that come out in this chapter. But we can see that Nehemiah is not a man afraid of physical confrontation. I take that as descriptive, not prescriptive, for the people of God today. After he beats them up and rips their hair out, he makes them take an oath that they will never do this again. But again, he can't create faith in the next generation. The mind can address behavior, but he can't create, he can't transform hearts. And this is the pattern we see. We have external reform without internal renewal. Reform can restrain sin, but it can't remove sin. Reform can clean the room, but it can't cleanse the soul. And that is why every attempt at self-reform eventually fails. You and I in our own strength, we can try to change our habits. We can change our scenery, we can change our structure, we can develop accountability and different schedules. But apart from the work of the Spirit renewing us, we are the same as the people in Nehemiah 13. All of this reminds me of a sketch on Saturday Night Live. And I know that I have two SNL skits, which puts me over my quota for the sermon. But if you'll bear with me, forgive this indulgence. Comedy has a way of exposing our foolishness and our folly in a way, in a very unique way. And I can't think of a better example of that than Adam Sandler's skit on Romano Tours that came on SNL a few years ago. In this skit, Adam Sandler plays a brutally honest tour guide, Italian tour guide, who is talking to potential customers and he gives them some very brutal truths about what his company can and can't do for them. He says this, but remember, you're still going to be you on vacation. If you are sad where you are, and then you get on a plane to go to Italy, the you in Italy will be the same sad you from before, just in a new place. There's a lot a vacation can do for you. It can help you unwind, it can let you see different-looking squirrels, but it cannot fix deeper issues about like how you behave in group settings or your general baseline mood. Then he says, We can take you on a hike. We cannot turn you into someone who likes hiking. We can take you to the Italian Riviera. We cannot make you someone comfortable in a bathing suit. We can provide the zipline. We cannot give you the ability to say we and mean it. We can give you a wine-tasting tour of Tuscany, but we cannot change why you drink or the person you become when you do. And yes, our friendly tour guides will take your picture. But remember, the pictures will have you in them. If you don't like how you look back home, it's not going to get any better in a gondola in Italy. We laugh, but that is the point of Nehemiah 13. You could move Tobias' furniture to the curb, but you can't move a sinful heart to repentance. You can shut the gates, but you can't shut out temptation in our hearts. You can discipline behavior, but you can't create delight in God. And once we see how limited our own efforts are, it opens us, Nehemiah prepares us for what only God can do. And this is where this text meets us with where we are as a church. A new sanctuary will not keep us faithful to our God. A capital campaign, as great as it is, it cannot produce spiritual fruit. It cannot bring new life. The all generations campaign, the new building, it is a gift of God's grace to us, but it cannot be the foundation. It is not the solution. New buildings have no ability to sustain us. We need something better. We need something better than walls and structures. We need new hearts. We need a redeemer to come for us. Nehemiah shows us what human effort can accomplish in these reforms. But more importantly, what Nehemiah shows us is that ultimately human effort is going to fall short. And that brings us to our final truth, to the third point, that only Christ can meet our need. If the Word of God reveals our need, if even Nehemiah's best reforms can't fix our need, then the chapter leaves us asking the most important question: where is it that our help comes from? There's something remarkable about this passage that is actually easy to miss as we read it. When you zoom out, what you see is that Nehemiah 13 is the very end of the Old Testament's historical writings. This chapter right here, what we just read, is the last recorded scene we have in Old Testament history. There's a sense in which Matthew 1 could be Nehemiah 14. After this begins 400 years of silence. And how does the Old Testament story end? It doesn't end in triumph, it doesn't end in revival. It doesn't end in lasting obedience from God's people. It ends in failure and in frustration and in longing. The Old Testament doesn't end with God's people celebrating. We finally did it. We finally remained faithful to God. It ends with God's people whimpering. Lord, we still need rescuing. It's as if the entire Old Testament takes a long, deep breath and says, we need somebody better. We need someone better than Nehemiah, someone stronger than Nehemiah to come, someone more faithful than what we can provide. And we feel that ache most closely as we read the prayers of Nehemiah through this passage. As we read it, you probably noticed a pattern that throughout this chapter, Nehemiah has offers these prayers in the middle of his reforms. In verse 14, he says, Remember me, O my God, concerning this, and do not wipe out my good deeds that I have done for the house of my God and for his service. And verse 22, remember this also in my favor, O my God, and spare me according to the greatness of your steadfast love. And verse 29, remember them, O my God, because they have disecrated the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood and the Levites. And finally, in verse 31, the last words of Nehemiah, the last words of recorded Old Testament history. Remember me, O my God, for good. This is not a victory lap. These are not shouts of triumph. These are the groans of a faithful leader who has reached the end of his strength. It's as if Nehemiah is saying, Lord, I have done all that I can, and it's still not enough. Lord, if you are not merciful to me, then I have no hope. And it's exactly where the Old Testament would want us to arrive at the end. Not in self-confidence, but in a holy longing. A longing for a redeemer to come. The season of Advent, which we celebrate and anticipate the coming of Christ, technically begins next Sunday. But Nehemiah 13 actually won't let us wait that long. There is a sense in which Advent begins today. Because this passage in a unique way is crying out for a redeemer to come to us. Because we know that in the fullness of time, the 400-year silence would break, that the word becomes flesh and makes his dwelling among us. Jesus does what Nehemiah could never do. Where Nehemiah says, Lord, remember me for the good that I have done. Jesus says, I will remember you for the good that I have done. Where Nehemiah fears the next generation drifting, the next generation falling away from the Lord, Jesus says, I will lose none that the Father gives to me. That I will be a God to you and to your seed after you for a thousand generations. Where Nehemiah confronts sins with reforms, Jesus removes the sins of his people as far as the east is from the west. Where Nehemiah sighs, Lord, I've tried. Jesus from the cross declares to us it is finished. This is where Nehemiah 13 comes home to us. Because the need that is exposed in this chapter is the same need, the same longing that is in our hearts. One of the things that is somewhat depressing and somewhat assuring to us is that the sins that Israel was committing in Nehemiah 13, these are the exact same sins they've been struggling with for hundreds, if not thousands of years. They have uh been struggling with these same sins all along. And you might be in the same place and you think, Lord, you must be getting tired of me. Here I am, I'm coming back to you with the same sin that I've struggled with for so long. And here I am needing your mercy again. Some of you hear a passage like this and you feel discouraged because you say, That's me. That I make promises to God that I never keep. I drift away from God, I forget who I am, I forget who God is. I can't keep myself faithful unto my God. And the good news of Nehemiah 13, the good news of Advent, the good news of the gospel is that God already knows that about you. He knows that you can't keep yourself faithful, he knows your weakness, he knows your failings, and he does not grow weary of you. God loves you anyway, he longs to show mercy to you. We think that God, that God's gonna love us to the extent and to the degree that we love and obey Him. Nehemiah 13 and the rest. Of the Old Testament tell us that that can't be true. Because God did not give up on his wayward people. He did not give up on his wayward people in the Old Testament. And He's not going to give up on you and me. The foundation of your life as one who follows Jesus cannot be your resolve. The foundation of our life as followers of Jesus must be our Redeemer. This chapter is, Nehemiah 13 is not in the Bible to condemn you and to make you feel worse about yourself. This chapter actually does an incredible job of diagnosing us, of telling us why it is that we can't keep ourselves spiritually faithful, why we feel so spiritually inconsistent. It does a great job of showing us why self-help actually isn't enough. To show us why every time we say, this time I'm going to do better. I'm never going to do that again, why that always runs out of steam. But more than just explaining our behavior, Nehemiah 13 points us to our Savior. A Savior whose mercy, Savior whose love for you will never run out. A Savior who keeps covenant even when you and I break covenant. Some of you are here this morning and you're not a follower of Jesus. You're not a Christian. And you listen to a passage like this, and something feels uncomfortably familiar to you in your life because you feel the inconsistency in your life. You feel the drift. You say, Well, life is not the way that I think it should be. No matter how hard I try, I can't keep my life together. And what you're tempted to believe is that you've got to get your life together in order to come to God. But what I want you to hear is this that awareness of your need, that feeling of your need is not a barrier for you to come to God. It actually is the doorway for you to come to God. Christianity does not begin with strength, it begins with need, begins with weakness. You were never created, you were never meant to be your own foundation. And Jesus came for people who can't hold themselves together. And that includes everyone in this room around you. And if you entrust yourself to him, give him your past, your present weakness, your future, Jesus promises to give to you what you've been looking for all along. When we started this series in Nehemiah and Ezra, we did it in conjunction with a campaign. We did it in conjunction with a new building that was going up before our eyes. And it was easy to think that this series was going to be all about what we were building as a church, building physical things like buildings and classrooms, spiritual things, like building up faithfulness and habits and spiritual practices. But the more we have walked through these books, what we have found is that the foundation is not about what we build for God. It is about what God is building in us. And this passage reminds us why that left to ourselves, that even in our best moments we drift away from God. That you and I need rescue at the beginning of our journeys, and we will need rescue all along the way. Which means that the goal of this whole series was never self-improvement. It was never self-praise. We looked at this to show us our need of a Savior and to point us back to Jesus. Jesus is the foundation that we stand on now and forever. A foundation of our ongoing need met by his unfailing love. Let's pray. Father, we confess that we see ourselves in this passage much more than we would like, that we are quick to drift from you, slow to remember your goodness, and we are unable to keep ourselves safe. Thank you that you have not left us to our own resolve, but you have given us your Son. And so, Lord Jesus, you are the true and better Nehemiah, and we pray that you would cleanse our hearts, that you would rebuild our love, and you would hold us fast when we wonder. Holy Spirit, keep your word open before us. We pray that you would expose our sin, but that you would not leave us there, that you would lead us unto Christ, and that you would deepen our longing and our confidence that in Him we are remembered and forgiven, and that we are kept forever. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.