In 'Rooting Out Oppression, Restoring Love,' Scott Brown discusses Nehemiah 5, where the people of Jerusalem face severe economic hardships, including famine and oppressive usury from their own brethren. Nehemiah addresses these injustices by rebuking the nobles and rulers, urging them to restore what they have taken and cease their usurious practices. The sermon highlights the internal challenges faced by the community during the rebuilding of Jerusalem's walls, emphasizing the importance of compassion and generosity. Brown connects the historical narrative to the broader theme of progressive sanctification, illustrating how God continues to work within His people despite ongoing sin. The sermon encourages listeners to examine their own lives for similar root sins and to foster a spirit of empathy and support for those facing hardships.

Nehemiah 5. And there was a great outcry of the people and their wives against their Jewish brethren, for there were those who said, We our sons and our daughters are many, therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live. There were also some who said, We have mortgaged our lands and vineyards and houses, that we might buy grain because of the famine. There were also those who said, We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our lands and vineyards, yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children. And indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been brought into slavery.

It is not in our power to redeem them, for other men have our lands and vineyards. And I became very angry when I heard their outcry in these words. After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and the rulers and said to them, each of you is exacting usury from his brother. So I called a great assembly against them and I said to them, according to our ability, we have redeemed our Jewish brethren who were sold to the nations. Now indeed, will you even sell your brethren, or should they be sold to us?' Then they were silenced and found nothing to say.

Then I said, what you are doing is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God, because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies. I also with my brethren and my servants, and lending them money and grain, please let us stop this usury. Restore now to them, even this day, their lands, their vineyards, their olive groves, and their houses, also a hundredth of the money and the grain, the new wine and the oil that you have charged them. So they said, we will restore it and will require nothing from them.

We will do as you say. Then I called the priests and required an oath from them that they would do according to this promise. Then I shook out the fold of my garment and said, so may God shake out each man from his house and from his property who does not perform this promise. Even thus may he be shaken out and emptied. And all the assembly said, Amen, and praise the Lord.

Then the people did according to this promise. Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year until the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the governor's provisions. But the former governors who were before me laid burdens on the people and took from them bread and wine besides forty shekels of silver. Yes, even their servants bore rule over the people, but I did not do so, because of the fear of God. Indeed, I also continued in the work of this wall, and we did not buy any land.

All my servants were gathered there for the work, and at my table were one hundred and fifty Jews and rulers, besides those who came to us from the nations around us. And that which was prepared daily was one ox and six choice sheep. Also fowl were prepared for me, and once every ten days an abundance of all kinds of wine. Yet in spite of this, I did not demand the governor's provisions because the bondage was heavy on this people. Remember me, my God, for good according to all that I have done for this people.

Lord, I thank you for giving us another day to set aside to worship you, Lord, to consider your words. I pray that you would be with Mr. Brown as he gives this message, that you'd give us soft hearts and you'd give us humility and you'd help us to see our own sin and to turn from it and that you'd give us a closer walk with you this day. In Christ's name, Amen. We're getting toward the end of what was a long season of sanctification of God's people.

We're studying Ezra and Nehemiah where you have a 117 year snapshot of how God restores His people and how he roots out remaining sin. He brings the captives back and now it's over a hundred years later since they've gone, they've returned back to Jerusalem to rebuild the worship of God and to rebuild the the walls of protection around the city. And now, we catch the people about halfway point of rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem. And in The previous couple of chapters, you think everything is just going so fantastic. They're rolling along, they're dealing rightly with the opposition, they're not fearing man, they're doing what God has really called them to do, but there are things going on under the surface that get revealed right here in chapter 5.

And there's an enormous attack of the devil at this part of rebuilding the wall. And this is often when the devil attacks, isn't it? When you're about halfway through. You start off and you're so thankful to be walking with Jesus Christ, you can't believe what he's done for you. And then as the years pass, you know, you see there's still so much remaining sin in your life.

And this whole picture is a parable of your life, of rebuilding your life from ruin. And it's a long rebuild, isn't it? And it really never ends until we're finally completely reclaimed in heaven. But the devil is attacking, and in the previous chapter we're reading about how the opposition and the attack was coming from the outside. And there were enemies that returned in chapter 6.

We'll get to that next week. But now Nehemiah is facing internal forces of opposition to the work. And these forces, they're just ripping and shredding at the fabric of love in the fellowship there in Jerusalem. And what happens in chapter five is a picture of how love just got drained right out of the whole effort. But it's also a picture of how love got re-infused into the effort as well.

And it was a time of rooting out oppression and restoring the love of God in the work that he was about. Men were using their privileges and their advantages to oppress others. They thought more highly of themselves than they ought, and they neglected to put on a heart of compassion. They neglected to be kindly affectionate toward one another in the midst of the troubles and the trials that they faced while they were rebuilding these walls. And it's a picture of how people use their resources or their privileges in the station of life that they've been given or the resources that they have in life or the gifts that they have in life and they see themselves as greater and higher than those around them and they lose compassion.

This is a picture of a loss of generosity in a church because people thought more highly of themselves. And so while this picture here is of the rich taking advantage of the poor, it happens all the time on various levels in our lives. You know, you were a child once. You remember how, you know how this works. Children do this all the time.

The older child goes to the younger child and he says, I have this big nickel. Could I trade it for that little dime that you have?" He uses his knowledge and his gifts and his discernment to take advantage of someone else. This is a little bit of what we see here. There's a selfish spirit of oppression. And it never leaves you and it always forsakes you.

And we tend to use our gifts and our talents and our resources as an excuse to think more highly of ourselves and we take advantage of our brothers. And so while maybe you're not doing exactly what these were doing here, you're not lending at high interest rates to your brethren and then oppressing them by taking away their property. Maybe you're not doing that. But that's actually not the point of this text. Because sin always runs deeper than the outward manifestation that you read about in the Bible.

So when we read this, let's think about ourselves. I'm not really aware of anybody who's lent money for interest and is oppressing their brother around here. But my guess is that that root sin exists in us, and so we should examine ourselves. So you have this internal dissatisfaction that's going on in the hearts of these people. And disunity raises its ugly head.

So if you could get in a helicopter above Jerusalem, it's only a 95 acre piece of ground. And if you could fly around that city, what you'd see is the people who are rebuilding. They're rebuilding the worship of God and the protection of God in that city, but there is enormous difficulty that you'll see as you look down upon Jerusalem. And what you find is that people are continuing to work under pressure. You know, pressure, difficulty, lack of love, it always tests your character.

And that's what was happening here. And you would see a people that are continuing to work even though they're hurting. A lot of times you just have to keep on working even while you're hurting. Even while things just seem so dark, You just must keep on working. That's what you see that happened here.

And it doesn't seem, there's no evidence that the work really stopped. They dealt with the remaining sin and they kept on working. They kept on working while they were hurting. They did have to deal with that sin. But often we pamper ourselves and we find ourselves we're hurting and then we quit working.

You don't see any evidence of that. They started this wall and 52 days later they finished it. And often we give ourselves a pass because we're hurting when actually we need to deal with the sin that is actually at the root of it all. The other thing I want us to see about this is just the love of God, the patience of God and how he preserves His people. He continues to sanctify His people.

This is a 117 year picture and it's a story of how God continues to restore His church even though there's remaining sin in His church. He doesn't give up on his people and he keeps working. Also, I think it's a great opportunity for us to build our own sympathy and affection and tender-heartedness toward one another and the problems that different people go through in this life to have sympathy for the heartaches of people. This is a time of enormous pressure, famine, debt, oppression. And I think at some point we have to sympathize with the hardships that the rebuilders were experiencing.

They were making really great progress on the wall, but behind the scenes, under the surface, there were pressures against them. And you know what that's like. You're about a good work that you know God has called you to, but there are pressures, there are difficulties. Maybe they come from family members, maybe they come from financial issues, maybe they come from your own sins and your own mistakes, but there's pressure on you. What do you do with that?

What do you do when you see your brother in a situation like that? I think what we learn from here is you have compassion on them and you lay up in your heart, tender hearted mercies, toward your brethren. Because behind the scenes in everybody's life there's something going on. Everybody here has a story that nobody knows about. And how do you treat those people who have those stories rolling?

Here you've got people that are rebuilding this wall and their children had been sold into slavery to survive because they borrowed money to pay their taxes. And so how do you feel about people who are going through enormous economic and even personal difficulty? Difficulty. You know the good news is that while they had so much pressure exerted against them you know from the inside they kept on building but not only did they keep on building, there's a real victory here and you see it as we get toward the end of the chapter. They dealt with their sin and the joy rushed in.

That's what happened. They dealt with their sin And God brought about a great Outpouring of praise and that's what happens when you deal with your sin keep on working keep on building deal with your sin And don't stop but recognize that God is sanctifying you All those pressures that nobody knows about in your life, all those things that are happening behind the scenes, all those stories really God knows, He sees. And So that's what you have here. You know, there were just so many reasons to stop building. But what they did is they rooted out the oppression and they restored the love of God while they were building and they put on a heart of compassion.

Now, the outline is in front of you. I hope you have one. I'm gonna move through this passage under five headings. First, the outcry where sin is exposed. That's the first five verses.

And secondly, the response where the word of God is invoked by Nehemiah, that's verses six through 11. And thirdly, the result where there really was a repentance, And I mean the oppressors turned around and peace entered into the fellowship again. And then the fourth is the example, the ruler who serves. And here you see the generosity of Nehemiah. He refused, even though he had such a high position, he refused to oppress his people.

He didn't use his gifts or his resources or his station in life to oppress. He used it to bless. And I think that's the heart of the matter. So let's start going through this now. First of all, there's the outcry.

The sin is exposed in verses one through five. The first words just bear witness to the pressure and the difficulty. And there was a great outcry of the people and their wives against their Jewish brethren. For there were those who said, we are sons and our daughters are many, therefore let us get grain that we may eat and live." So the pressure came right down to the most fundamental part of your life, food. The pressure went that deep.

Most of us don't experience that in America, one of the richest places in the world you can live. Most people don't deal with hunger here. But they were dealing with a difficulty that went right down to the very base level of life. Now notice in these first five verses, there are different groups of people. First of all, there were those who owned land, but they were famished.

And then secondly, there were those who'd mortgage their property to get food and who lost their property or they were about ready to lose it. And then thirdly, there were those who borrowed money against their property to pay their taxes to artisertsies. And some of their children were sold into slavery as a result of the financial pressure. They realized, we're either going to starve or my children are going to have to go become indentured servants. So that was the level.

Now, note that there's an interesting phrase in here. There was a great outcry of the people and their wives. I think that's interesting. The wives were feeling the pain. Usually it's the wife that feels the pain first and worst, isn't that true?

But what you have in verses three and four that they had debt on their lands and their vineyards and their houses because of taxes. We have mortgaged our lands and vineyards and houses that we might buy grain because of the famine. There were also those who said we borrowed money for the king's tax on our lands and vineyards. Property taxes and various things were the culprit, the bottom culprits, and then these rich Jewish brethren came in and started lending money and then taking their land from them. And then in verse five, there's this, you know, you can see just the depths of the difficulty in verse 5.

Indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves and some of our daughters have been brought into slavery and they had no power, they had no resources, there was no way out. You ever been like that? There's just no way out. And brothers were exploiting brothers, there were these love killing influences within the fellowship there in Jerusalem. And so I want to bring five lessons out of these first five verses.

And the first lesson is this, while the work of rebuilding is going on, there may be times of severe economic pressure on us. That may happen. In this case, it's poverty, it's debt, it's they're at the bottom of the economic cycle. You know how that works. There are troughs and there are peaks in the economic cycle.

The rebuilding happened to take place at the bottom of an economic cycle. But the work continued to go on. There were high taxes. There was famine. You know, When Alexander the Great went into the capital of Babylon into Shushan or Susa, he found 540,000 pounds of gold and 2.4 million pounds of silver in the treasury in Babylon.

They were exacting taxes from their provinces, and there were over a hundred provinces that the king of Babylon was, or the King of Persia was ruling over. And so you had these local Jewish loan sharks that were harming the people, and there was such a sense of hopelessness. You know, these kinds of problems exist at some level. Today, I read last week that 66 million Americans have $0 saved in their emergency expense, zero. And Forbes Magazine said that 63% of Americans don't have $500 in their savings for unplanned emergencies, like for whatever.

66, 66, 63%. So these kinds of pressures are pressures that people feel at different levels even today. You know, take note of the sacrifice that these people were giving while rebuilding the wall. They had so many pressures on them, and they continued to sacrifice. You know, Nehemiah and the Rebuilders, they were hardly taking their clothes off just in order to just continue to rebuild that wall.

And even in the midst of such great pressure, economic pressure, they didn't stop the work. So that the first lesson is while the work of rebuilding is going on there may be times of severe economic pressure. The second lesson is that sin often raises its head while you're rebuilding. Maybe I should change that and say sin always raises its head While you're rebuilding and the church has to face her sin, in this case it was the sin of mistreatment in hard economic times. When times get hard, often people make compromises and they take advantage of their brethren and it causes offenses as it did here.

Some of the most difficult matters in church life come from offenses. Most problems in churches actually come from personal offenses And those things bring division. But the work must go on even in those hard times. But sometimes those hard times are just self-inflicted by the sin, the remaining sin that exists among us. Here's another lesson.

Don't despise the progressive sanctification that takes place while rebuilding. You know, they were restoring worship. Remember they rebuilt the altar first and they rebuilt the temple, and then they're now rebuilding the walls. And there was a long timeframe, and there are various sins. We've seen much sin revealed during this 117-year period.

There was materialism right at the beginning. There was fear. There's been fear all throughout that's been exposed. There's narcissism. There are problems, really severe problems in marriage and compromises in marriage.

And now we face lack of love here in this passage of scripture. But don't despise progressive sanctification that takes place in the church. You know, don't think too highly of your church that somehow there's not remaining sin left. You know, while really good things are going on, don't forget we're sinners. And I think, I think over the years