GIVE US NEHEMIAHS

Sermon Notes, October 27, 2013

Pastor Jan Sinozich

Pastor Jan’s message, fourth in the series “Living Life On Purpose,” was titled “Give Us Nehemiahs,” and was based on Nehemiah 5:1-19.  The Necessity of Leadership is evident in our time, as it was in Nehemiah’s time.   We need leaders whose walk matches their talk personally, politically, and professionally at every level. 

Nehemiah was such a leader.  The Jews had been in captivity in Babylon.  Then Babylon was conquered by Persia, and King Cyrus sent 50,000 Jews back to Israel, including Ezra, who rebuilt the temple.  Then King Artaxerxes sent more waves of Jews back to Jerusalem, and that’s where the story of Nehemiah, the king’s cupbearer, begins.  God gave him a vision to rebuild Jerusalem’s wall.  At every step, when Nehemiah prayed: when he asked for the king’s permission to go to Jerusalem, when he surveyed the ruins, when surrounding neighbors tried to stop the work. 

Now there’s a problem within—the nobles who lend money are charging so much interest, the people are about to lose their land and their families sold into slavery.  This makes Nehemiah angry!  He calls a meeting, accusing the nobles of wrongdoing, telling them to give back the land and crops and the interest they’ve charged on loans.  They agree, and take oaths before the priests to seal their promise not to charge interest to their brothers. 

By his own example, Nehemiah shamed the nobles into doing the right thing.  He didn’t take all he was entitled to as governor; he and his men had redeemed some whose families and property had been taken.  His words matched his actions: he had moral authority.  There was no duplicity.

We need leaders today whose private lives match their public proclamations; not only in politics, but in business, in the church, and in the home.  We need people who understand that moral authority matters.  As Solomon said in Proverbs 11:3, “The integrity of the upright guides them, but the unfaithful are destroyed by their duplicity.”