The sermon 'An Ethic of Openhanded Love' by Jason Dohm explores the theme of love as a foundational ethic in Christian life, drawing on the story from Nehemiah 5. The text describes a great outcry among the Jewish people, highlighting issues of exploitation, usury, and the selling of brethren into slavery due to financial hardships and famine. Nehemiah addresses these internal threats by rebuking the nobles and rulers for charging excessive interest and exploiting their fellow Jews. He calls for the restoration of lands and properties and emphasizes the need for open-handed love, as prescribed by God's laws in the Old Testament. The sermon references various scriptures, including Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, and Proverbs, to illustrate God's ethic of love and the importance of fulfilling the law through love, as taught by Paul and Jesus. Nehemiah's actions result in a God-honoring outcome, with the nobles pledging to restore what they had taken, highlighting the Christian ethic of freely giving, grounded in the recognition of God's open-handedness towards humanity. The sermon concludes with a call for repentance and alignment with God's kingdom ethics, emphasizing that love should be the hallmark of the Christian community.

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 and these words. After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and 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, am lending them money and grain. Please, let us stop this usury. We store 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 priest 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, and the people did according to this promise." The title of the sermon this morning is An Ethic of Open-Handed Love. That's really what the text is about.

An ethic is a system of good and bad, of right and wrong. So the ethic spells out what is good and right. Then the flip side of that too, what's bad and what's wrong. In this text we see the Christian ethic. We see God's ethic.

We see what God says is good and right. And that is open-handed love. It's a love that expresses itself like this. Open hands. Not like this.

Grabbing onto your stuff with your knuckles white, because you're clenching so hard. We've been seeing Nehemiah deal with external threats. They've really been coming in waves. And they're all around the Lord's people. They're threats to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west.

They're surrounded by external enemies. This week there is none of that. This week, Nehemiah is facing an internal threat. There are a number of issues in the text, But this is a text about love, even though the text never says the word love. It is only and always about love.

This is a sermon about love because it's a text about love. Paul says that love is the fulfillment of the law. That's Romans 13 verse 10. Meaning, when you fulfill the law, you're not just doing some external outward duty. You're loving.

If you really fulfill it, you are loving. There are ways to look like you are fulfilling the law without love. That is not fulfilling the law. Love is the fulfillment of the Law, says Paul. Where did he get that from?

He got that from Jesus in Matthew 22. Jesus says, There are two great commandments that stand above all the others, to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor. And then he says this, On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. So that's where Paul gets his theology of love being the fulfillment of the law. He gets it from Jesus.

All the Law and the Prophets hang on the two great laws of love. So listen to the sermon, absolutely, and understand what the Old Testament says about charging usury, charging excessive interest. Understand what the Old Testament law says about governing servitude, having servants and slaves. But understand that there's something behind all that. This is not fundamentally about the charging of excessive interest or laws governing servitude.

This is about love. In this case, the loss of love and how it must be restored. Here's what Matthew Henry says about this text. Matthew Henry says, Hard times and hard hearts made the poor miserable. That's it.

That's a great summary of the text. It's hard times, there's a famine, there's scarcity, and there are hard hearts. There's an exploitation of the situation. And it's making the poor miserable. It's making the poor cry out to God for justice.

Love killers have been at work in the text. And the truth of the matter is, love killers are always at work. They're at work here today in my heart, and in your heart. And If we're not vigilant every minute of every day, the love killers will make progress. We'll find ourselves in difficult circumstances like this.

We're always finding ourselves in need of repenting, of turning around and going the other direction, because the love killers have gained a little ground. And we have to go back and repent. This text teaches us when we find the love killers at work, that we drop everything to confess our sins and to make it right. As we go to the text, let's go to the text in prayer. God, I pray that you would use these words in Nehemiah 5, use our text, to make us more a people who are full of love.

Full of love. So that an onlooking world would see that we're yours. We're not our own. We don't live according to our own ethic, which grabs hold of things. And we'll let them go that we're yours.

We're trying to be like you in your open-handedness. How open-handed have you been with us, God? Make us a people like that. Use this text in our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name, Amen. I'll be dividing the text today into three sections.

The first section is verses 1-5. So let's look again together at Nehemiah 5, verses 1-5. 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." This section is the cry of the oppressed. If you're filling in blanks on the handouts, it's cry and oppressed.

The cry of the oppressed. The text says that there is a great outcry, Those are the words of the text from the people and their wives. I think the wives are specifically mentioned because the issues are provision for households and the status of their children. You want to rile up a wife, then you mess with the provision for the household and the status of the children. Then you have a mama grizzly on your hands.

In this text, I think the Mama Grizzlies have had enough. None of the people, especially the Mama Grizzlies, are going to sit still quietly for another minute. There are three different groups crying out over their distress. It's a distress that has been imposed by their brethren. So the text is very explicit.

We are not talking about opposition of a foreign nation here. We are talking about among the family of God. This is not Sanballat and Tobiah. This is not a Horonite in Samaria and an Ammonite. This is brethren.

This is all in-house among the family of God. The first group are large families that can't obtain enough food. It takes more food to feed your family when you have many sons and daughters. This is exactly what the first group is saying. We have many sons and daughters.

We need to buy food. It says this, let us get grain that we may eat and live. This isn't, we can't afford steak this week. We need food to live. Look at all the mouths at this table.

Look at all these sons and daughters that God has given us. We need grain to live. The second group have had to pledge lands and vineyards and houses to buy food. They've had to put it up as collateral in order to get grain because of the famine. So here with what this second group is saying, we see the source of the scarcity.

It's scarcity. It's famine. The crops have not yielded like they normally would yield, and so the food supply is constrained. So people have had to say, give me grain, and I'll put against the loan of that grain, my lands and my vineyards and my houses, and as we're going to see in the third group, sometimes they've not been able to repay. And so their lands and vineyards and houses have been confiscated because of that.

That's what happens When you put up your property against a loan that you're taking. If you can't pay the loan, you forfeit what you've put up. And this is happening. There are aggravating factors here. So you have the source of the scarcity, which is famine.

And so here are at least three aggravating factors that we know of from our study of Nehemiah. First, prices are up. You know that. This is supply and demand. There's no getting around this.

When there's less of something, then the price goes up. This always hurts the poor the most. Times of scarcity doesn't hurt the rich. In fact, Sometimes it becomes an opportunity for the rich, because they are the ones who have the money. This is clearly what is happening here.

The prices have gone up, the poor can't afford that, the rich can, and so they seize it as an opportunity. Here is another aggravating factor. Everybody's working on the wall. There's going to be 52 days of ceasing what you normally do for a living. It's a ceasing of your income.

There's probably lots of farmers working on this wall. But nobody's working at what they normally would be working at. As we saw from the text last week, as soon as the sun is up, they're working on the wall. And it's until the stars come out, until the last ray of light is gone, and you just couldn't do any more work. There's no time for your normal occupation that would normally provide for your needs.

So that's an aggravating factor. Here's another aggravating factor. Do you think they're dealing with their neighbors? There's Samaria to the north. They're an enemy.

They're mobilizing against you. They're plotting to attack you. Do you think they're going to Samaria for food? How about to the Ammonites to the east? No, they are enemies.

How about to the Arabs to the south? No, they are enemies. How about the Ashtadites to the west? Know they are enemies. The trade that might have been there to relieve you in a time of famine isn't there now.

You can believe that. They are not trading with these people now. The third group have had to borrow money to pay the king's taxes. Governments are very unsympathetic to your financial situation. The taxes come due and they don't want to hear it.

There's a famine, there's scarcity, and the government doesn't want to hear it. The government has its own expenses and they're going to extract what you owe. So you don't have it because the crops haven't been what they normally are. And so you've got to borrow from your brethren just to pay your taxes. To the point where people are having to give their children over to servitude because they are out of money.

And they have to have money to pay the king's taxes or else. That's how it even works in a free democratic nation, how much more in the Persian Empire. If you're out of money, and you're out of property, You have nothing left except for the labor of your children, with which to raise the money that you have to have to pay the king's taxes. So this is the situation. There are three groups.

One with large families. They have to have food to live. One who has pledged their lands and their vineyards and their houses to buy food because of the family and then the last group has had to borrow money to pay the king's taxes. They're out of money, they're out of property, and they're just down to their children's labor. Now what is happening in the light of what God has said?

Here is a summary of it and then we are going to take a tour of the Old Testament. The summary is exploitation of the needy. This is what God says is happening here. Brothers are exploiting brothers because they are needy. They are not in any position to make any demands, so they can charge whatever they want to charge.

And you're out of luck. You have to have the money, you have to pay the going rate, whatever it is. And it's exploitation of the needy by those who have an abundance. The first place I want to go is Exodus chapter 22. So please turn there.

Exodus chapter 22. There's going to be three places in succession that we're going to go. It will really help you to be with us in the text. Some of them are somewhat lengthy, and there's a big risk you'll just get lost in the jumble of words unless you're looking at it. Exodus chapter 22, I'd like to read verses 25 through 27.

Exodus 20, you'll recall, is the giving of the Ten Commandments and then there's sort of an expansion on those commandments following it. That's what this is in Exodus twenty-two beginning in verse twenty-five. If you lend money to any of my people who are poor among you, you shall not be like a money lender to him. You shall not charge him interest. If you ever take your neighbor's garment as a pledge you shall return it to him before the sun goes down for that is his only covering it is his garment for his skin what will he sleep in and it will be that when he cries to me I will hear for I am gracious." This absolutely has a bearing on what's happening in Nehemiah chapter 5.

It's about brothers. This is about within the family of God. If there's someone poor within the family of God, and he has a need and he comes to you for something, you don't act like a loan shark. You don't even charge him interest. Now Usury is almost always used of excessive interest.

So far from charging excessive interest, when a brother comes in need, with legitimate need, you can't even charge him interest. That is the Bible ethic. Open-handed love. This is case law. Case law means it's not ever intended to be exhaustive.

It doesn't address every situation. It gives you a principle to extract. So it gives us a principle here. If for the loan you take in pledge his coat, You don't keep it and make him sleep cold at night. You give it back at night.

Applying that principle that we extract from the case law, the value is in the principle, not that very often it will be a coat given in pledge. The beauty and the value of case law is that it gives you principles to extract and apply. If you take lands and vineyards and houses in pledge, and it is their means of production, You can't confiscate and keep that. It's their means of production. That would be a direct violation of Exodus 22.

Now let's turn to Leviticus chapter 25. If Exodus 22 casts a bad light of what's happening in our text in Nehemiah, then Leviticus 25 is completely devastating. Devastating. This is a long section. Bear with the reading.

Leviticus chapter 25, beginning in 35, reading through 43. The uninspired heading in my Bible is, Lending to the Poor. If one of your brethren becomes poor and falls into poverty among you, then you shall help him like a stranger or a sojourner, so that he may live with you. Take no usury or interest from him, but fear your God that your brother may live with you." So, I mean, just to stop and comment here, We're pulling words right out of our Nehemiah text. You can't take usury in Nehemiah.

They've taken usury. Or interest, it says in Leviticus. And you should fear God. In our next section of the text, Nehemiah is going to charge the rulers and the nobles with not fearing God. That comes from here.

Now picking up again in verse 37. You shall not lend him your money for usury, nor lend him your food at a profit. I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. And if one of your brethren who dwells by you becomes poor and sells himself to you, you shall not compel him to serve as a slave. As a hired servant and a sojourner, he shall be with you, and shall serve you until the year of Jubilee.

And then He shall depart from you, he and his children with him, and shall return to his own family. He shall return to the possession of his fathers. For they are my servants whom I brought out of the land of Egypt. They shall not be sold as slaves. You shall not rule over him with vigor, but you shall fear the Lord your God." So here it says you can't be sold into slavery to your brother.

You can be as a hired servant, but you can't be sold into slavery. Why? The basis for this is, I brought you out of slavery. The Lord brought His people out of Egypt, how much more so out of Babylon. They've been double redeemed by God, You don't take them into slavery.

You can take them into servitude, profit from their labor, for the loan that you're giving to them. But they cannot become your slaves because, I'm God, I delivered them from slavery. Now Deuteronomy 15. Deuteronomy 15. Verses 7 through 11.

Deuteronomy 15 verses 7-11. Deuteronomy 15, beginning in verse 7, If there is among you a poor man of your brethren, within any of the gates in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart nor shut your hand from your poor brother. But you shall open your hand wide to him, and willingly lend Him sufficient for His need, whatever He needs. Beware lest there be a wicked thought in your heart, saying, The seventh year, the year of release, is at hand. In your eye be evil against your poor brother, and you give him nothing, and he cry out to the Lord against you, and it becomes sin among you.

You shall surely give to him, and your heart should not be grieved when you give it to him. Because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you and all your works and in all to which you put your hand for the poor will never cease from the land therefore I command you saying you shall open your hand wide to your brother to your poor and your needy in your land. What Deuteronomy 15 is addressing is the cycle of years for Israel. There is not only a Sabbath day, one Day in seven, when you rest, there is a Sabbath year where all the debts are released. God is warning the people not to let this wicked thought come into their minds.

The poor man is asking me to lend him for his needs, but we are almost to the Sabbath year, and I am going to have to forgive the debt. I will never see this again if I lend it to him now. So you withhold from your brother. God says, that is a wicked thought. Don't have that thought.

God says, if that happens, give, knowing that you'll never see those nickels again. They didn't have nickels, But you're never going to see that money again. But God can repay it. That's the whole argument of Deuteronomy 15. You don't have to worry about being defrauded.

You don't have to worry about being diminished financially because of this. Because God can just give it back to you in a hundred different ways. So just trust God with your lending. You open your hands. Don't clench those hands and have white knuckles clenching things because the year of the forgiving debts is right around the corner and you know you're never going to see this again.

God can make that right. You just trust God. Open your hands and trust God and it will work out. That's what Deuteronomy 15 is saying. If we went to Psalm 15, here is what we would see in Psalm 15.

In verse 1, David asks the question, Who may abide in the Lord's tabernacle? And then the next verse is, answer it. And one of the answers to the question who can abide in the Lord's tabernacle is in verse 5. He who does not put out his money at usury. So in Psalm 15 David is saying putting out your money at usury, charging excessive interest, is a sin that separates you from God.

It will keep you out of God's tabernacle. Or If we went to Proverbs, we would see this in Proverbs 28, 8. One who increases his possessions by usury and extortion, gathers it for him who will pity the poor. Let me read that again. Proverbs 28, 8.

He who increases his possessions by usury and extortion gathers it for him who will pity the poor. What does that say? That's God saying, I'm not putting up with that. If you increase your possessions by charging excessive interest to your poor brother, I'm going to take that money back for you, and I'll give it to someone who will pity the poor. So your gain will be short term, because I'm not going to allow you to keep it.

My kingdom doesn't work that way. My ethic is open handed love. And if you won't love with an open hand, then I'll pry your fingers open and take it from you and give it to someone who will pity the poor. That's Proverbs. If we go to the prophets, here's what we see in Isaiah chapter 5 verses 1 through 7.

There's a parable of a vineyard. God says, I've made a vineyard. I did everything for the success of this vineyard. I put a wall around it, I dug it, I planted it with the best plants, and I expected good fruit from it, but all I got was wild grapes. Here's what he says at the end of the parable in verse 7.

God looked for justice, but behold oppression, for righteousness, but behold a cry for help." So Nehemiah sees this parable from Isaiah 5 unfolding before his eyes. God has been so good to his people. He's brought them back from captivity. They deserve the captivity, but God has reversed it in His mercy. He has brought them back into the promised land.

He knows God from this, from cultivating His vineyard, so graciously He is going to expect good grapes. If he comes and he expects justice and finds oppression, and he expects righteousness, but behold all he gets is a cry for help, that they're in trouble. He can look back 200 years to Isaiah and how this prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled and say we are right back on the same track again. Or how about in Jeremiah 34 verses 8 through 22. This is in the time of King Zedekiah.

They were rebuked for taking their brethren as slaves. They said, okay, they released them, and then they thought better of it, and they re-enslaved their brethren. And here is how this ends in Jeremiah 34 verses 17. Therefore, thus says the Lord, You have not obeyed me in proclaiming liberty, every one to his brother and every one to his neighbor. Behold, I proclaim liberty to you, says the Lord, to the sword, to pestilence, and to famine, and I will deliver you to trouble among the kingdoms of the earth." So they obeyed for a minute, for a very few days.

They were confronted in their sin and they set their brothers at liberty. But then they thought it was financially stupid to do that and they re-enslaved them. God says, you won't proclaim liberty, I proclaim liberty to the sword. Sword, have at them. Pestilence, have at them.

Nations, have at them. I set the sword and the pestilence and the nations at liberty to have at these people who will not love each other with an open hand. Or how about Ezekiel? Ezekiel chapter 22 verse 12 says this, it's speaking against Jerusalem, the holy city. Ezekiel 22 verse 12, In you, in Jerusalem, they take bribes to shed blood.

You take usury and increase. You have made profit from your neighbors by extortion and have forgotten me, says the Lord God. The prophets, Isaiah 5, Jeremiah 34, Ezekiel 22, make it clear that what is happening in Nehemiah chapter 5 is a national security risk. Nothing could be worse for the security of Jerusalem than what is happening among the people of God. So there you have it.

The law, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Psalms, Proverbs, the prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. Could it be more well established what God's ethic is? God's ethic is an ethic of open-handed love and he insists on it among his people. We're not at liberty to choose our own ethic. Your God has chosen our ethic and He says, I'll have it among my people.

That's why Nehemiah is willing to deal with this now, when he's sleeping in his clothes. You remember that's where we left off in last week's text? Nehemiah and all those who are serving close to him are only out of their clothes, out of their work clothes, out of their fighting clothes to wash. So they are sleeping in their clothes because they have to be ready at dawn. And they're going to work till dusk, and then they have to be ready and take shifts to watch against the enemy all night long.

This is not the time to deal with internal matters. They're on a 52-day, all hands on deck push to rebuild and repair this wall and now they have this internal matter. You might think Nehemiah would push it off and say, when we get the wall done we'll deal with this. No. Many of the commentators can't believe he deals with it now.

They say, there must be something wrong with the chronology here. No, no, a thousand times no. It is now because Nehemiah understands The risks associated from us acting like this with each other are greater than the risks of an enemy army at the gates. Even if our wall is not fixed yet. Loss of love among the Lord's people is a bigger risk than enemy armies at the gates.

For the people of God, for us, this is bigger than anything that's happening out there. So much of our energy and time goes to thinking about and planning and contradicting and pushing back on the things that are happening out there. No, there's something much bigger than that in here. And the love killers are on the move in my heart and yours every day. And we'd be unwise not to be vigilant every day about that, just thinking about the things that could happen from out there.

Back to Nehemiah. Back to Nehemiah. The second section is verses 6 through 11. Read with me. Nehemiah chapter 5 verse 6, And I became very angry when I heard their outcry, And these words, After serious thought, I rebuked the nobles and 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 am 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. In this section we see Nehemiah's reactions and actions.

If you're filling in the blank on the handout, it's reactions and actions. First we see his reactions. There are two of them. One, anger. He is angry when he hears these words.

In Ephesians 4.26, Paul quotes Psalm 44. Be angry and do not sin. There is such a thing as a sinless anger, a righteous anger. So that is his first reaction. Then his second reaction is very surprising.

Serious thought. Hooray! Who would have ever thought that was possible? To have anger be followed, not with a tirade, but with serious thought. This is how we know that it is righteous anger.

You can tell because Nehemiah doesn't fly into a rage and say things you shouldn't say, and that he'll have to backtrack on later. The result, what comes out of Nehemiah's anger at God being dishonored through how the Lord's people are interacting with each other, is not a tirade, it's serious thought. Imagine reaching a point of Christian maturity where anger, your anger, leads to serious thought. That is a pleasant thought indeed. How can that happen?

How can we reach that point where a righteous indignation towards things that dishonor God lead not to a tirade or inappropriate response, but lead to serious thought? Here's how. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control. I might have missed one. Galatians 5, 22 and 23 are the fruit of the Spirit.

This is how. This is what the Spirit yields in our lives over time, if we are really born again. It seems like the progress is so slow sometimes, and yet, if You are the Lord's and the Spirit indwells you. He is producing fruit. Be more like this.

That leads to a conclusion from this. We have unbroken access. We have the indwelling of the Spirit, so we have a greater capacity for what we see in the text of Nehemiah than Nehemiah had by definition. Because we are indwelt by the Spirit of God, because we live among the Lord's people after Pentecost and the sending of the Spirit. You have a greater capacity for righteous indignation, for your indignation to be righteous, and to lead to serious thought, not to an inappropriate response.

This should humble us, and this should give us hope. So those are the reactions. Anger, then serious thought. Here are his actions. First in verse 7, he rebukes the nobles and the rulers.

Head on, not a hint of timidity, no timidness about Nehemiah. Right to them, right to their face, nose to nose, he rebukes them. He burns all the bridges behind him, and he goes and says, You're wrong. He charges them with breaking a very specific law, exacting usury, charging excessive interest to brothers. And then having rebuked them, we see his second action, which is, he calls a great assembly, now get the words, against them.

This is not an open time of group think. How do you feel about what's going on? I don't know, How do you feel about what's going on? I don't know. How do you feel about what's going on?

No. He's calling a great assembly, all to the assembly, against them. It is for the purpose of public confrontation. Nehemiah just gets manlier in every text, doesn't he? My guess is he had trepidation in all of this, but he did it anyway because he thought it would honor God.

That's my guess. He calls a great assembly against them for confrontation to deal with this in an immediate and in a public way. Personal offenses should be addressed privately, as quietly as possible, whenever you can. That's how you, when there's a personal offense, you're trying to win them over. This is Matthew 18.

Win them! Go to them in private where it is easy to repent. When the matter is small and it hasn't been made public, This is not what Nehemiah is dealing with. It's not just a private offense between two people. Nehemiah is the governor and the law of God has been broken.

There has to be immediate public confrontation. So Nehemiah swallows hard, as afraid as he might be, he forces the public confrontation. And in verse 8 he begins by saying how backwards this is. The idea is to get out of slavery. All of us, we are brothers and sisters.

All of us out of slavery is the goal. And yet you are enslaving one another. We just came back from that. We just came back from Babylon and being enslaved for some of these very same things. God didn't bring us back for this is the argument.

God hasn't set us free so we can enslave each other. No, no. Going back to Leviticus 25, The basis of not bringing any of your brothers and sisters into slavery was Egypt. God brought you out of slavery, so you're not at liberty to put each other into slavery. This is met with silence.

Crickets chirping. No response. Sometimes you know when there's no defense. So you just make the wise move and you just clap your hand over your mouth and you just know that it would be wrong to try to justify the unjustifiable. And they do that here.

That's a blessing actually from the text. Now Nehemiah does something interesting. In verse 9, he asserts that it's wrong. What you've done is not good. And Then he says this, my paraphrase, Think of the reproach of the nations.

Think of the reproach that us enslaving each other brings upon the name of our God. It brings our faith into derision, into reproach. In other words, if you feared God, you would be able to see how it looks out there. How what's happening in here looks out there. When they look in and see the people who have taken God's name on themselves.

And now we treat each other this way. The rich exploiting the poor. Here's what Jesus says in John 13 verse 35, By this all will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another. That's how they'll know you're following me. You're my pupils.

You'll love each other. So if that's the statement of loving each other, we follow Jesus, then what is the testimony of the opposite? What does that say? When love is lost among the Lord's people. It brings God into derision.

Oh, they must be following Him. He must be like that. This isn't something new. Jesus isn't teaching something new in the New Testament. Listen to Deuteronomy 4 verses 5-8.

Surely I have taught you statutes and judgments, just as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should act according to them in the land which you go to possess. Therefore Be careful to observe them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear all these statutes and say, surely this is a great nation and a wise and understanding people. For what great nation is there that has God so near as the Lord our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him? And what great nation is there that has such statutes and righteous judgments as are in this law which I set before you this day. These laws, these laws of love, remember on these two laws, loving God and loving your neighbor, hang all the law and the prophets.

These laws of love are to draw the admiration of the onlooking nations. They are supposed to look at the people of God who are obeying God's laws of love and they say, such wisdom, such a God is this. Here is what Matthew Henry says, Nothing exposes religion more to the reproach of its enemies than the worldliness and the hard-heartedness of the professors of it. In other words, the people who say, I belong to that religion. Nothing brings more reproach than worldliness among professors, than hard-heartedness among professors.

So this must be a grid for us in life. How we treat each other, how we treat our neighbors, how we treat our co-workers. The Gospel should be adorned by our lives. In other words, beautified by our lives. People see that God transforms.

He makes you not like everybody else who holds on to their stuff with white knuckles. God transforms us from that. He brings us into an ethic, a system of right and wrong, where the right and the good is a love that expresses itself in open handedness. Then Nehemiah sets himself, his brethren, and his servants forth as an example. Some commentators look at the same portion of the text and say, Nehemiah is implicating himself because he says, please let us cease this usury.

There's No way the text bears that in my mind. I think Nehemiah is just identifying with the Lord's people. It is a corporate sin. There is corporate guilt because of how the Lord's people are acting here. So he says us.

But I believe that Nehemiah is clearly based on the rest of the text, putting himself and his servants and his brethren forth as an example. So Matthew Poole paraphrases it this way, and I think he nails it. He gets it just right. Therefore you also ought to do, meaning lending without interest. Therefore you also ought to do, seeing I lay no burden upon you but what I am willing to bear a part of upon my own shoulders.

That's what Nehemiah is doing here. Do like I do. Me and my brethren and my servants, we're lending with no interest to our brothers because they're in need. And This is what the law requires of us. This is God's ethic.

We love each other in an open-handed way. Follow me in this. Finally, Nehemiah makes an appeal for love. In the second half of verse 10 he says, Please let us stop this usury. Restore now to them, even today.

And then there's the list of things that needs to be restored to them. Whatever you've exacted, restore is the point. And we see this phrase, a hundredth of the money, the grain, the wine, the oil. The commentators say that almost certainly, the general practice at the time was a percent a month. And so the hundredth that's mentioned here matches up with the common practice of the day, which is you lend and the interest is a percent a month back.

Return all that. That's probably what that represents. Now the last two verses. We're back in Nehemiah chapter 5 verses 12 and 13. So they said, we will restore it, and we 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 praised the Lord.

Then the people did according to this promise." In this section we have the God-honoring outcome. If you're filling in blanks, it's God honoring. Here's an outcome that honors the Lord. It could have been a mass self justification at this point. They've been publicly confronted and really the shame of that is sinking in and they could have said, I have a contract.

We agreed together to break the law of God and it's my right and they can't have it back, but this is not what has happened. God has given them such a better outcome. The nobles and the rulers, they do what's right. They pledge to restore everything and require nothing. They are starting to love again.

They are starting to open their hands to their brethren. Nehemiah wants to lock this in. He wants to make it unchangeable. So he calls the priests to administer an oath. It reads like the priests are the one taking the oath, but I think the proper understanding of this text is that the priests are called to administer the oath.

An Oath is a binding agreement between two human parties, and you call God to witness and to judge. So we are going to agree on something, I am one party and you are the other, and we call God. God, hear the terms that we are agreeing today. And you see it. And you judge.

If I don't fulfill what I am committing to, if you don't fulfill what you are committing to, then God, you come make that right. This is terrifying to any God-fearing person. The thought that you would call God to witness the terms of the agreement, and to have him make it right. Even if the long arm of the human law isn't long enough to get the other party and make things right, God's arm is always long enough. He's a great witness.

He's a great one to judge these agreements. In Numbers 5, we see an example of the priest doing that exact thing. In Numbers 5, God is telling them how to deal with a case when a husband thinks his wife is in adultery but there is no proof. So they come to the priest and the priest has her take an oath that she is telling the truth, there has been no adultery, and to call God witness and to call God to give her a withering disease if she's lying. And then at the end of this oath she says Amen.

It's almost exactly like what we see in Nehemiah 5. So I think what Nehemiah is calling for, we see the pattern for that in Numbers 5. You bring the two parties together, the priest administers the oath, and you call God as witness and to judge, and then everybody says, Amen, in unified agreement. That's exactly what we have in our text. This oath is complete with sanctions for breaking it.

Nehemiah does this dramatic thing. He takes the hem of his robe and he shakes it. I envision here a blanket that has been out on the grass. You know what you do. As soon as you are done with the blanket on the grass, you pick it up And then what?

As violently as you can. And when you shake that blanket violently, what happens to the grass that's been clinging to it? It just goes in every direction. And your blanket is free of grass. That's the point.

May God do that to you and your property. May you fly in one direction and your property fly in the other if you don't keep this oath. Finally, all the assembly says, Amen. All the assembly. The nobles, the rulers, the people who have been oppressed, everyone says Amen to this.

There is unanimous agreement. And then, there is praising of the Lord. Everyone is filled with relief and gratitude. I think that is what it is. I think it is a welling up of relief.

You know what it is like, don't you? The relief that comes when you've had a sense for a long time, something's not right about this. Something's not right. I'm not being reproached by anybody for it, but I just don't feel good about it. This is not right.

And then you get free of it. And you just want to praise God. And all you can think of is, how come it took so long? Why would it take me this long to get free? The freedom of repenting and making it right brings joy and makes you want to praise the Lord.

This is what happens among the Lord's people. Open-handed love is back. Unity is back among the Lord's people. They can work on the wall again. This is the wisdom of Nehemiah to address this now.

You think this is not having a drag on the work? People crying out over oppression? Here is the conclusion. Here is the conclusion of the matter. What Jesus says in Matthew 10 verse 8, Freely you have received, freely give.

Freely you have received. Freely give is the Christian ethic. It's what God says is good and right is that we freely give, but the basis for the Christian ethic is freely you have received. Not I've given you nothing, now go give away everything with an open hand, but in light of all I've given you, God has been the most open-handed. Now out of that, open your hands.

Isn't that true? Who in the room has a desire to deny that? That it's God who's been the most open-handed. You could give away everything that you have today, and God would be more open-handed than you. And so the Christian ethic, freely give, is grounded in the Gospel.

God has freely given and you have freely received. Once you realize that you stand rightly condemned by a holy and a righteous God, but He hasn't held you to the standard. He's made a way by giving His own Son. He hasn't even withheld His own Son whom He loved from you. He sent His Son to pay the debt that you could never pay if you had a thousand lifetimes you couldn't pay that debt.

And really, if you had that thousand lifetimes, you would just spend it increasing the debt. You'd have no way to pay. God hasn't left us in that state. He sent Jesus to shed his blood, to pay the debt we could never pay. We've received freely.

He hasn't taken anything from us for that. We have nothing to give him. Out of that, give. One last scripture, turn to Luke chapter 6. Luke chapter 6 and then we're done.

Verses 34 and 35, Jesus says this, and if you lend to those from whom you hope to receive back, what credit is that to you? Or even sinners lend to sinners to receive as much back. But love your enemies, do good, and lend hoping for nothing in return. And your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High. For He is kind to the unthankful and the evil." This is saying the same thing.

The Christian ethic, freely giving, is grounded in the basis for it, which we freely received. God is kind to unthankful and evil people. If you are in Christ, He was kind to you, not when you were good, but when you were evil and unthankful. He reached into that and had mercy on you, now freely give. This is exactly what we see in Acts chapter 2.

The new church is born on the day of Pentecost. And what are they doing? They are sharing as anyone has need. They are loving a certain kind of way, an open-handed kind of way. This is the ethic of open-handed love.

God, I thank you for a glorious text, and I thank you for the ethics of your kingdom. That your system of right and wrong, of good and bad, is like nothing else we see anywhere else in this world. It confounds the wise. But you're wiser still. You are all wise.

God, all your ways are right. I Thank you God that you've not just sent us to give freely, but you've given us such a kind basis for it. You've not even withheld your Son from us. Thank you God for the riches of our position in your son Jesus. He'll help us to live that way.

In Jesus' name, Amen.