Nehemiah 5:15 But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable to the people, and had taken of them bread and wine… I. Let me put the main principle that lies here in these words: NOTHING WILL GO RIGHT UNLESS YOU DARE TO BE SINGULAR. "So did not I." How soever common the practice, howsoever innocent and recognised the source of gain, the multitude that approved it, and adopted it, was nothing to me. Everything will be wrong where a man has not learnt the great art of saying, "No." Resolute non-compliance with common practice should be exercised — 1. In the field of opinion. If we are building on traditional opinion, we have really no foundation at all. Unless the word received from others has been verified by ourselves and changed, as it were, into part of our own being, we may befool ourselves with creeds and professions to which we fancy that we adhere, but we have no belief whatsoever. 2. In the daily conduct of life. There are many beckoning hands and enticing voices that seek to draw us away. Sturdy resistance is necessary — (1) From the very make of our own natures. There is a host of inclinations and desires in every man which will hurry him to destruction unless he has a strong hand on the brake. "God gave them to thee under lock and key," and it is at our peril that we let them have sway. (2) From the order of things in which we dwell. We are set in the midst of a world full of things which are both attractive and bad, and which are sternly prohibited and lovingly forbidden by God. And if you go careering among the flowers and fruits that grow around you in the life that is opening to you, like town children turned loose for a day in the woods, picking whatever is bright, and tasting whatever looks as if it would be sweet, you will poison your selves with nightshade and hemlock. (3) From the fact that every one of us is thrown more or less closely into contact with people who themselves are living as they should not, and who would fain drag us after them. For us all, then, in every period of life, the necessity is the same. We must learn to say, "No." Like Joseph, like Daniel, like the three Hebrew youths, like Nehemiah, we must dare, if need be, to be singular. (4) Non-resistance or compliance is in itself weak and unworthy. What a shame it is that a man possessed of that awful power which, within limits and subject to conditions, God has given him, of shaping and deter mining his character, should let himself be shaped and determined by the mere pressure of circumstances and accidental associations! What a shame it is that a man should have no more volition in what he does and in what he refrains from than one of those gelatinous creatures that float about in the ocean, which have to move wherever the current takes them, though it be to cast them on the rocky shore with an ebbing tide. That "circumstances make character" should have its vindication in the actual lives of the great bulk of men is only another proof of the weakness and depravity of humanity, in which the will is paralysed, and the conscious choice is so seldom exercised, and a man lets the world do what it likes with him. (5) Vigorous non-compliance with the temptations that are around us is enforced by the remembrance of what a poor excuse for wrong-doing they will be found to be at last. II. CONSIDER THAT YOU CANNOT RESIST THE EVIL AROUND YOU UNLESS YOU GIVE YOURSELVES TO GOD. No man will ever for a lifetime resist and repel the domination of evil unless he is girded about with the purity of Jesus Christ, as an atmosphere in which all poisonous things fade and die, and through which no temptation can force its way. The only means for steadfast resistance is a steadfast faith in Jesus as our Saviour. 1. In Christ we have an all-sufficient pattern. The one command which contains the whole of Christian duty, the whole law of moral perfectness attainable by man, is — "Be ye imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk as Christ walked." 2. That fear of God which is all transfused and mingled with the love of Him, gives us next an all-powerful motive. Love delights to please; fear dreads to disobey. 3. The fear of God strengthens us for resistance, because it gives us an omnipotent power within ourselves whereby we resist. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: But the former governors that had been before me were chargeable unto the people, and had taken of them bread and wine, beside forty shekels of silver; yea, even their servants bare rule over the people: but so did not I, because of the fear of God. |
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