Nehemiah Institutes Biblical Separation

Nehemiah 13:23–31
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The final problem that Nehemiah faces was the tendency so common in Israel to ignore the prohibitions against intermarriage with pagan peoples. When he returned to Jerusalem, he found the people again disobeying the Law (vv. 23-24). It was true then as it is today that when the fathers fail to practice Biblical separation, it is the children who suffer. When Christians begin to adopt the world’s values and the world’s ways, we invariably turn our children away from the things that make for stability and strength. Nehemiah portrays a commendable zeal in acting. He drives these people away because he was so offended by the fact that the grandson of the high priest had married the daughter of Sanballet the Horonite, the worshiper of the god Horon, who had opposed him.

This is a picture of the foolishness of trying to mix the world’s ways and God’s ways (vv. 25-31). That is what is portrayed by intermarrying with foreign women. When a church tries to run itself, neglecting the teaching of the New Testament but by business processes and by the philosophies of the world it is drifting. If it is seeking honor and prestige and perhaps installing a hierarchy in its leadership, etc., it is doing exactly what this warns us against. God’s work is to be done in God’s way, and to borrow from the world is to introduce confusion into the camp.

Nehemiah was able to accomplish a huge task against incredible odds because he learned that there is no success without risk of failure, no rewards without hard work, no opportunity without criticism and no true leadership without trust in God. This book is about rebuilding the wall of a great city, but it is also about spiritual renewal and the rebuilding of a people’s dependence on God.

Application

Vance Havner had this to say: “Today the world has so infiltrated the church that we are more beset by traitors within than foes without. Satan is not fighting churches; he is joining them!” I need to be friendly with everyone but very careful who my real friends are.