Sin makes you Stupid.

Sin makes you stupid.

Grace makes you smart.

Guest preacher, Doug Groothius, said this when he preached at my church a few months ago, and it has stuck with me. I could think of no better way to illustrate this than to talk about Nehemiah 13:23-31.

Nehemiah was the cupbearer to the King of Persia when we received word about the state of the city of Jerusalem. The walls and city gates were torn down (Nehemiah 1:3) making the city and all those within it vulnerable to attack from anyone. Furthermore, the people were in great distress due to the high taxes imposed on them by the local leaders, causing them to become in debt to their richer countrymen (Nehemiah 1:3, 5:1-19). Nehemiah then receives permission from his King to return to Jerusalem to oversee the reconstruction of the walls (Nehemiah 2:2-8). While there he not only rebuilds the walls and gates of the city, but brings about religious and moral reform by abolishing the unfair interest rates the rich were demanding of the poor (Nehemiah 5), having the people repent and confess their sins (Nehemiah 8, 9), and by cleaning out the temple (Nehemiah 12) Then, Nehemiah returned to Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. When he returns he sees that every reform he had made, had fallen apart.

Nehemiah was a man of action. He wasn’t afraid to speak the truth, no matter how harsh, and to step on people’s toes when they were out of line. Chapter 13 begins be telling about the scene Nehemiah came back to in Jerusalem, and what he did about it. Then we come to verse 23. The Jews had married foreign women. This is something that has plagued the Jews living in the land since the time of Solomon. Ezra, who returned to Jerusalem before Nehemiah, also dealt with this issue, but apparently the people are not taking it to heart. In Ezra 9-10, Ezra deals with the people’s sins of not keeping themselves pure by taking foreign wives. Ezra, together with the elders and heads of households begin the process of having the people put away their foreign wives (What they meant by “put away” I will deal with in another blog post sometime). Now here, in Nehemiah’s time, probably less than thirty years later, the people are still sinning in the same way.

A deliberate sin opens you up to other sins. When you say that you are knowingly sinning against God you are in the worst kind of rebellion against Him. This specific sin, marrying foreigners and not keeping themselves pure, started with the great king Solomon. Recall that in 1 Kings 11:1-3, we are told that Solomon had 700 wives, 300 concubines, and most of them were foreigners. Nehemiah tells the people that just because Solomon did it, and God still loved him, it doesn’t make it ok to sin against God (Nehemiah 13:26). The lack of apparent consequences means that the people don’t feel moved to change or repent.

So Nehemiah gives them a reason to. Read what he did in 13:25, “So I contended with them and cursed them and struck some of them and pulled out their hair.” Today, if you rebel against specific rules and regulations of a country, kingdom, or organization, there are physical consequences. You may lose your membership or citizenship, be imprisoned, or, depending on the country, be tortured. Why do we think it is any different with the kingdom of God? Nehemiah inflicts physical pain upon the people as a reminder of the consequences of disobedience to God. The Exile had just ended for crying out loud, and there were already falling back into old habits. Nehemiah didn’t want to just give them a pill to numb the pain, he wanted to dig it out whole, so that they would remember and never want to endure that sort of thing again.

Today, in western countries and first world countries, we don’t really think about the physical harm of our sin; that is, until our doctors are stumped and tell us they can only help us manage the disease or the pain. We have separated the physical and the spiritual. Our hearts desire God, but we open up our bodies to all kinds of evil because we feel justified by our once a week faith. Sin makes us stupid. As we sin, we get pulled further and further away from God so we don’t remember to look to Him for our strength and sustenance.

The root of many of our problems is rebellion against God. We are unhappy with our lifestyles and always want more, so we whine about it, work harder, and pray that God would give us more money so we could have more. But God says, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. But as for you…pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness, and gentleness (1 Timothy 6:10-11).” We watch movies that glorify immoral and unrighteous lifestyles and behavior, play video games that glorify death, and idolize celebrities for their hair, fashion style, and fit bodies. But we wonder why it is hard to make Godly decisions, why we are not content with what we have, and why we don’t sleep well and are plagued with fears. God says, “If then, you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is…Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth…Put to death, therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry (Colossians 3:1, 2, 5).” We hate our bodies, our minds, and woe our lack of glamor. Then we wonder why our bodies turn against us and we get sick. God says, “I formed your inward parts, I knit you together in your mother’s womb…I made you fearfully and wonderfully (Psalm 139:13-14 emphasis and pronoun change mine).”

We have learned to love and hate the wrong things. Is it any wonder then that God doesn’t heal us of our problems? Please believe that I have said all those things and more. I do not stand here to accuse anyone, but to tell the truth I have seen. Sin makes you stupid. It makes you run from the very One that can and will heal you. God says, “If my people who are called by my name (Christians) humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.”

Nehemiah isn’t going to come out and smack us around every time we sin. God has given us grace which empowers us to chose righteousness, and act upon it. As we turn towards Him, and seek Him out, he heals us, and we find many of our so called problems melting away because we have the right perspective. As we learn to love God, and the things of God (including yourself!), we find that the grace we are given is sufficient, and makes us lovers of truth and God. Grace makes us smart.