- Then the merchants and sellers of all kinds of wares lodged outside Jerusalem once or twice. But I warned them and said to them, “Why do you lodge outside the wall? If you do so again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on they did not come on the Sabbath. Nehemiah 13:20-21 – In our chapter Nehemiah returns and sees many things happening that aren’t honoring to God that had started to take place while he was gone. One was trading and selling of goods on the Sabbath. Nehemiah kicked out the merchants and told them to not even camp outside the city wall during the Sabbath so as to not be a temptation to the people. We see here that temptations just don’t stop coming. What we can do is be active in each other’s life in trying to keep things away that would cause another brother or sister to stumble. That takes us learning about each other’s struggles and being willing to watch out for each other. Let’s not tackle our temptations on our own or let our brothers and sisters try to do the same either. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 1295
- And I confronted them and cursed them and beat some of them and pulled out their hair. And I made them take an oath in the name of God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons or for yourselves. Nehemiah 13:25 – I selected this verse out of the passage because it shocked me the most when I read it this morning, but throughout this whole chapter Nehemiah is seeing different sins and correcting them. Here he sees people marrying foreign women and having children with them, like God commanded not to do. He proceeds to curse, beat, and pull out their hair to help them see their wrong. Now my gut reaction to this is probably like yours, he went too far here. He didn’t need to take it to this extreme to confront their sinful actions, right? While we don’t get anywhere God blessing such actions, we also don’t see God condemning them either. What we do see in other scriptures is God displeased when His followers do the full opposite of Nehemiah and just let sin remain in their brother’s life without addressing it. Maybe we don’t need to be pulling out each other’s hair, but we also can’t just let a brother or sister in Christ continue walking in sin without at least saying something to them. What I know is God would rather us be bald because we’ve pulled each other’s hair out yet walking faithfully together after Him than having luscious locks yet silent about each other’s sin. My point is we ought to see the dangers of remaining silent when we see sin in a fellow follower’s life. Grace and truth must carry our conversation to our brother about his sin, but we must also be willing to first have a conversation with him about his sin. Silence over sin is more hurtful to your brother than confronting him about it. I love you, but Jesus loves you more – Mac – Daily DEVO 2516
Daily DEVO 