Dying to Selfishness

1 Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. 2 For there were those who said, “With our sons and our daughters, we are many. So let us get grain, that we may eat and keep alive.” 3 There were also those who said, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine.” 4 And there were those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our fields and our vineyards. 5 Now our flesh is as the flesh of our brothers, our children are as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but it is not in our power to help it, for other men have our fields and our vineyards.”

Similar problem in James 2, rich people getting more attention and pull than poor people.

At the heart of James 2 was selfishness, things hadn’t changed in 500 or so years.

Things haven’t changed today either.

Great Outcry: 4 Groups are mentioned in 1-5

The outcry comes from 3 particular groups and a fourth is implicated in the outcry.

Families who are struggling to grow enough food because they are working on the wall and not able to tend to their fields.

Land owners who are being forced to mortgage their fields and homes in order to provide food for their families.

Land owners forced to take loans and mortgages on their property in order to pay the King’s taxes.

The implicated group is revealed in verses 7-11. Wealthy Jews who are behind some of the loans and mortgages given to the other groups.

They are charging interest on the loans and are taking over the lands of their fellow Jews when they are unable to pay.

The children of the oppressed Jews are being forced into servitude partly because of these loans and interest rates.

These wealthy Jews are getting wealthier at the expense of their brothers and sisters in the Jewish community.

Nehemiah is outraged by what he hears.

He remembers the words of Amos as the prophet calls out God’s people before the exile.

Amos 2:6–8 CSB

6 The Lord says: I will not relent from punishing Israel for three crimes, even four, because they sell a righteous person for silver and a needy person for a pair of sandals. 7 They trample the heads of the poor on the dust of the ground and obstruct the path of the needy. A man and his father have sexual relations with the same girl, profaning my holy name. 8 They stretch out beside every altar on garments taken as collateral, and in the house of their God they drink wine obtained through fines.

In Amos’s day, the people of God had neglected and even exploited the poor and needy for their own personal gain.

Amos proclaimed judgement on the people if they didn’t change their ways, ultimately they were stripped of all their prosperity and send into captivity in Babylon.

Nehemiah is outraged that the people would again fall into the selfishness that destroyed the community hundreds of years prior.

But thousands of years later, this message rings true for us today.

Our sinful bent as fallen human beings is to think first, and often foremost, about ourselves.

We are a me-centric culture that celebrates personal preference and freedom over anything else.

Nehemiah understood what we need to understand today:

Selfish destroys our ability to be the People of God as He has choose us and called us to be.

God’s plan has always to have a people for Himself that will live for Him and be His representatives in this world.

In Nehemiah’s time, it was those He brought back to Jerusalem.

In our day it is us, His Church, those He has saved and brought together to into a family that He intends to use to impact, transform, and redeem the place we live through His Story and His power.

But the thing that gets in the way of us being the people God designed us, called us, and sends us out to be is SELFISHNESS.

Let’s talk about four ways SELFISHNESS hinders our ability to be the people God calls us to be.

4 Hindrances of Selfishness

1) Selfishness hinders TRUE COMMUNITY.

It isn’t unlawful in Persia for the wealthy Jews give loans, charge interest, repossess property, or enslave those that can’t pay.

But their selfishness was at the expense of those they were to consider brothers and sisters in the faith.

Nehemiah 5:10 ESV

10 Moreover, I and my brothers and my servants are lending them money and grain. Let us abandon this exacting of interest.

Nehemiah uses “brothers” to refer to the others helping those in need.

But the example Nehemiah is pointing to is also substantial.

It was the responsibility of family members to insure those in need in their own family were taken care of.

Nehemiah and the other “brothers” were treating those in need like they were family, because they were.

You can see how the selfishness of the wealthy would have hindered, even destroyed, the ability to feel truly connected in community.

Community is hard, being family is hard.

It requires that we give up time, energy, and resources that we might not see any profit from.

It requires us to wade into hard, frustrating, tiring, and stress-inducing circumstances with people in our community/family.

It often requires us to be in community with people we don’t have a lot in common with, that may rub us the wrong way.

It puts us in positions to get taken advantage of, hurt physically and emotionally, and in position of vulnerability.

These are the reasons we struggle to find community and the reasons we are quick to run from it when it gets hard.

We talk about our 4Ls here at EHBC, the 4 things that make us who we are as a church family, but are rooted in the very DNA of what it means to be a biblical Christian.

The first L is Living in Community with one another.

We practice this in a variety of ways, but one of the primary avenues in our church family is through our groups.

They have been hard this season, with Covid and zoom meetings.

We love communities like these when things are going good, but when things are hard it is often easy to pull away, when the much more necessary posture is to lean in.

One of my best friends this week said something to that was such a helpful and enlightening word for me this week.

He was talking about what God is teaching him right now and was referencing his quite unsatisfying experience attending church this past Sunday.

He said he is learning that we are called in this season, as well as all season, “to continue doing that which GOD HAS DEEMED GOOD, even when it is not as fulfilling as we would like it to be or doesn’t feel as fruitful as it once did.”

It hit me that that is the opposite attitude from selfishness.

I am not asking the question “what is in this for me?” or “how does this make me feel?”

Rather, I am submitting to the shrewd and all-knowing wisdom of my God and King who has made me for community and calls me to invest in the lives of others around me.

I can’t be selfish and be a good family member.

I am not going to love you well and you are not going to feel loved well.

Selfishness has no place in True Community.

2) Selfishness hinders TRANSFORMATIVE DISCIPLESHIP.

Discipleship is simply the process we are all on in becoming better followers of Jesus by learning about Him, about His WORD, and following them more closely.

Discipleship is bible study, but it is not only bible study. It also is bible application, living what we study.

Once of the essential lessons that we must learn early and be reminded of often in our journey of discipleship is to “DIE TO SELF”.

Matthew 10:38 ESV

38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.

Mark 8:35 ESV

35 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.

Galatians 2:20 ESV

20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Our second L is “LEARNING more about Jesus in order to follow His ways”

That is discipleship, learning more and more and more about Jesus, about His WORD, and then seeking to be transformed through it by the power of the Spirit that lives inside of us.

John the Baptist got what it meant to be a disciple.

John 3:30 ESV

30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

We cannot spend our days trying to get what we want, how we want it, when we want it, if we are going to be growing disciples of Jesus.

One of the signs of a maturing child is when they become less and less fixated entirely on themselves.

It is the same with a believer.

One of the main reason you are not growing as a disciple in Jesus is that you are too concerned about your desires, your comfort, and your personal agenda to listen to what God is teaching through His Word and through His people.

Selfishness has no place in discipleship.

3) Selfishness hinders SACRIFICIAL SERVICE.

Nehemiah shares his own story as an opposite example of the wealthy Jews.

Nehemiah 5:14–16 ESV

14 Moreover, from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of Artaxerxes the king, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor. 15 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. 16 I also persevered in the work on this wall, and we acquired no land, and all my servants were gathered there for the work.

It kind of sounds like he is bragging a bit here, but his intention is training rather than boasting.

He wants those reading to follow his example.

He isn’t focused on his rights as governor; he isn’t trying to make sure everything is fair in how he is being treated; he isn’t looking to be served, he is seeking to sacrificially serve both out us his respect for God (fear of God) and out of his compassion for others.

How are we to serve if we are so obsessed with getting all the things we desire?

Our 3rd L is “LOVING others like Jesus.”

We have had struggles for a long time getting people to serve in a variety of areas throughout the church.

I know there are good reasons that you can’t commit at times, but there are also some bad reason.

Selfishness has no place in sacrificial service.

4) Selfishness hinders COMPASSIONATE MISSION.

Nehemiah scolds the wealthy Jews in vs 9:

Nehemiah 5:9 ESV

9 So I said, “The thing that you are doing is not good. Ought you not to walk in the fear of our God to prevent the taunts of the nations our enemies?

Walking in the fear (worship/reverence/respect) of God will prevent the taunts of the nations.

The purpose of God choosing the Jewish people as His People was so they would represent Him to the Nations and that they would be an attractive people.

The way they were acting, the way they were treating one another was not attractive.

They had become just like the outside world, focusing on their own prosperity at the expense of others.

They were not witness to God’s goodness, and that was a grave and costly sin.

Our 4th L is “Leading others to Jesus”

Each and every person alive today only has the time left on this earth with breath in their lungs to confess Jesus as Lord.

God has places each and every one of us who know Jesus in the work places we are in, in the neighborhoods we live in, in the families we are in, and in all kinds of others places so that we might be witnesses to those around us, and so that we might share of His goodness and grace BOTH with our words and our deeds.

You can see how selfishness would hinder our ability to be the witnesses God saved us and sent us out to be.

Covid has taken the wind out of the sails of evangelism in a lot of ways, but we have allowed it too as well.

It is time that we rise up and build again our heart for those around us who are far from Christ.

I am not calling us to ignore the pandemic, but for each and everyone of us to begin right now (if you haven’t already been) to pray for God to break our hearts for the lost and give us opportunities, even this week, to be a light in the darkness around us.

Selfishness has no place in mission.

Trust in Jesus by humbly receiving Him today.

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