Sermon
title: More than a Nod
Scripture text: Nehemiah
13: 7 – 25
Before
we know it, Christmas is over and lunar New Year is round the corner.
First it was Christmas carols, now it’s the mandarin songs
that we hear in all shopping malls. It’s a lively tune; one
that puts most in a cheerful mood. But feeling happy and forgetting
my sins in the mall are only temporal…
Dealing
with SIN
Very
often, in our Christian walk, we feel discouraged because we seem
to be falling into our sinful ways again and again. Many of us seem
to go on a roller-coaster ride of falling into temptation, sinning,
feeling guilty, being remorseful and sinking once again into sin.
Nehemiah
13 tells us how to leave sin and walk towards Holiness in our lives.
1)
Purging Evil and Cleansing Its Stain
When
Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem, he found Tobiah the Ammonite living
in the Temple of God, even though only the Levites were decreed
by God to be true occupants of the Temple. What did Nehemiah do?
He got rid of Tobiah and purified the Temple.
Likewise,
in our spiritual lives, we too must purge the sin from our hearts,
have nothing to do with it and clean the stain upon our soul with
Jesus’ blood. Someone once said, “To master
temptation, we have to look to the Master.”
2)
Filling ourselves with the Holiness and Goodness of God’s
Ways
Having
emptied the Temple by kicking Tobiah out, Nehemiah realised a vacuum
has been left behind. He then reinstated the Levites to their rightful
place (ie. Back to the Temple) as it was decreed by God, that only
the Levites could perform priestly duties.
Likewise,
in our spiritual walk with God, having purged the sin in our lives,
we have to fill our lives with the Holiness and goodness of God’s
ways.
3)
Shutting the Gates from Future Attacks of Evil
The
third incident that Nehemiah came across was the breaking of the
Sabbath Day law. The men were either selling their ware or treading
winepresses. Nehemiah kicked out the peddlers and shut the gates
of Jerusalem to prevent the merchants from entering Jerusalem to
profane the Sabbath.
In
the same measure, for us to overcome sins in our lives, we have
to shut the gates to anything that seeks to draw us away from that
temptation.
4)
Making Plans for the Future
Nehemiah’s
final problem came when he discovered that the men of Judah had
inter-married with the women outside of their tribe, which was against
the Law of God. To rectify this, Nehemiah decided that the men of
Judah had to promise, in future, never to allow their offspring
to intermarry again, in order to safeguard the future of the nation
and the faithfulness to God.
Our
battle against sin also necessitates that we make plans for the
future, to move on towards the way to Holiness.
Prayer
Response
Dear
God
Help
me realise that instead of living in the shadows of yesterday, make
me walk in the light of today and the hope of tomorrow. Give me
an insight of how much you hate sin and help me the sinner, whom
you love, to constantly work towards eliminating it out of my life.
~
Devotional based on message by Rev Joel Yong