Nehemiah Institutes Biblical Separation
March 19, 2019
Commentary
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.
Nehemiah 13:23– 31 (NET)
23 Also in those days I saw the men of Judah who had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab. 24 Half their children spoke the language of Ashdod (or the language of one of the other peoples mentioned) and were unable to speak the language of Judah. 25 So I entered a complaint with them. I called down a curse on them, and I struck some of the men and pulled out their hair. I had them swear by God saying, “You will not marry off your daughters to their sons, and you will not take any of their daughters as wives for your sons or for yourselves. 26 Was it not because of things like these that King Solomon of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel. But the foreign wives made even him sin! 27 Should we then in your case hear that you do all this great evil, thereby being unfaithful to our God by marrying foreign wives?”
28 Now one of the sons of Joiada son of Eliashib the high priest was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. So I banished him from my sight.
29 Please remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood, the covenant of the priesthood, and the Levites.
30 So I purified them of everything foreign, and I assigned specific duties to the priests and the Levites. 31 I also provided for the wood offering at the appointed times and also for the firstfruits. Please remember me for good, O my God.
Illustration: Havner Not to be Isolated But Insulated
We are not to be isolated but insulated, moving in the midst of evil but untouched by it. Separation is contact without contamination. Jesus was “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinful practices” (Heb. 7:26), yet He was a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Luke 7:34). (Vance Havner).