So, in case you don’t know the story all ready, Nehemiah has just finished building the walls of his home city of Jerusalem. They had fallen down because they had not been repaired for many years, and it had taken a fair bit of time and persuasion to get the people to build them back up again. But here we go, the walls were up and repaired, and the city was looking good. Nehemiah had to pop off back to his place of work in Shushan, in Syria and left the city in the hands of the priest Eliashib.

However, Elishabib was a bit of weak man, and was easily led by evil men, such as Tobijah (a man who had had tried repeatedly to sabotage the attempts to rebuild the walls earlier in the book) We pick the story up here, when Nehemiah has just returned as come back to a scene of disarray. It was looking pretty bad, compromises had been made and God had almost been completely forgotten in the time Nehemiah had been away. Tobijah had made many subtle changes and had complete turned the people away from serving God. It’s up to Nehemiah to sort out the mess and get the minds of the people back to God.

 

So, chapter 13.  

 

Verse 1 begins by saying they read the book of the Law of Moses. This was basically the Jews’ equivalent of our Bible. They probably hadn’t read the book very often while Nehemiah had been away. If they had, they probably wouldn’t have turned so far away, or have been led by the subtle wiles of Tobijah. It’s the same in our life, as soon as we don’t read God’s word, we can excuse anything. You let things slip. You do or say things that you normally wouldn’t. You go along much more with sinful things. 

 

Here they read it, they reminded themselves of God’s standard, and as they read it, they realised they needed to change. When we read our Bible, it should challenge us. If we read the scriptures, and it’s always a nice easy, pleasant reading then we are not reading them properly! The Bible is sharper than any two edged sword, and it should challenge us and shock us into constantly taking account of our Christian lives!

 

After reading their ‘Bible’ they realised that the Temple was not in the right order. It says that Tobijah had taken out many of the things that were in there, such as the offerings, the cups and saucers and the spices that were used in the various sacrifices to God. It can get very complicated looking at all these different things, but simply put all the things in verse 5 and 6 speak of Christ. What Tobijah had done, in effect was take Christ out of the Temple. Have a good look at yourself. Is Christ in your life? Or has the enemy subtle taken him out, piece by piece, and replaced Chris with other things. Maybe you used to read and pray twice a day, but over time that has reduced and reduced as the enemy has found up more things to fill your life up with. 

 

It says later on as well that Eliashib became allied with Tobijah. Tobijah was an enemy of God and the High Priest of God became friends with him. What happened? God’s service suffered. 

Is it the same with you? When you become friends with the world, there is always a price to be paid. You will always make a compromise. 

 

So what’s the answer?

 

Well we can’t be serviceable to God, unless we have Christ in our hearts. So that’s what Nehemiah did, he put all things of God back in the temple, washed and cleaned them, removed the enemy and got the Temple back to proper working conditions. The Holy Spirit can do the same in your life as well. Maybe you’ve stayed off the path, you’ve let things slip into your life and Christ has been pushed off centre. But by God’s Spirit, Christ can take centre stage in your life again and you can live as being serviceable to the great calling by which you were called!