Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation–Nehemiah 5:15

Posted by Seth on Aug 14, 2009 in Daily Devotions |

Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation–Nehemiah 5:15

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Welcome to Daily Scripture Reading and Meditation covering Nehemiah 5:15 wherein we are reminded of how a fear of the Lord is foundational to righteous living.

The former governors who were before me laid heavy burdens on the people and took from them for their daily ration forty shekels of silver. Even their servants lorded it over the people. But I did not do so, because of the fear of God.

Whom do you fear? Nehemiah, the governor over his fellow Jewish people, had every reason to be shaking in his sandals. He didn’t seem to fit in well with any company, had to confront people on all sides, and risked continually being accused of treason against the king. He had been given a tremendous task of overseeing the rebuilding of the demolished walls of Jerusalem, a project the surrounding peoples were on a mission to destroy. But whom did Nehemiah fear? He feared the Lord his God. Given the information from this verse in particular, we cannot help but think just how easy it would have been for Nehemiah to side with his brothers in making his life comfortable at the expense of the laborers. We could even say that it might have been a good business strategy, an aid to keeping people on task knowing that their future livelihood depended on it. But Nehemiah said, “No, this isn’t the way God would have His people operate.” He knew that giving in to social pressures would be giving up on his faith in God and His plan. He was honest enough to face the fact that you can’t have it both ways. Oh, how we can learn from Nehemiah!

I wonder if we take seriously what Jesus said to His disciples. …Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear Him who can destroy both soul and body in hell (Matthew 10:28). Take pause here. We are very into security and safety, but of what kind? Just how far ahead do we look when we think about securing our future? Five minutes, five days, five years, five millennia? And what about doing what is right…right now? Nehemiah undoubtedly had continual decisions to make, many of great consequence where the easy way out was just a word away. He needed wisdom, and he knew that the fear of the Lord was the beginning of that wisdom (Job 28:28, Psalm 111:10, Proverbs 9:10).

There is a great casualness today when it comes to fearing the Lord, and our lives reflect such attitudes. Integrity is harder and harder to find and when we do see it, so often it is exercised merely for pragmatic reasons. This is the result of taking God lightly, dismissing the resulting disorder of life to some disconnected, way out there view of “life in a fallen world.” We take God’s patience and grace for granted, banking on them not in humble gratitude that leads us to repentance, but in a foolish relief that we can simply continue our current course another day. We love those divine attributes but don’t understand them; we may even love God but often not according to truth and not with a reverent, trembling fear of Him that in turn directs our steps. Do our lives evidence that we have received the righteousness of Christ, or are we gambling with our very souls? If we are afraid to ask and answer this question, we very well might not fear the Lord.

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