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Nehemiah
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So good to be with you and to take part in your summer series on this incredible book called Nehemiah. Today I'm going to be talking about a incredible thing called injustice. We're going to try to answer this simple question: What do you do with injustice?
As you can hear by my melodious tones, this is not a SoCal accent — it's Irish. I was born in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, right when the conflict between Protestants and Catholics turned into what was essentially murder and mayhem.
One day I was walking with my family in a beautiful town called Moville, and I saw a man I recognized immediately though he didn't know me. I grabbed my kids and pointed him out — his name is John Hume, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who worked with David Trimble, a Protestant and a Catholic, to bring a peace plan to Northern Ireland.
I told my kids that day, with tears in my eyes: "You owe this man so much. The reason your childhood is so different from mine — without the bombings, without the shootings — comes down to him." He committed his life to bringing justice to everybody.
We've been talking for weeks about Nehemiah building the wall. But suddenly Nehemiah turns around and says, "Stop the building." In chapter 5, he realized he needed to rebuild lives and rebuild justice before they could complete the walls.
Material things are important, but human beings are way more important. It's easier to rebuild physical walls than it is to rebuild and realign human beings. In chapter 5, Nehemiah gives us steps for what we should do with injustice.
Nehemiah 5 describes a great outcry among the people:
"We and our sons and daughters are numerous. In order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain... Although we are the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews... we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery."
This wasn't oppression from an enemy — it was extortion among their own countrymen. The strong and wealthy Jews were exploiting the economically weaker members of their own community, leading to anxiety, fear, desperation, and actual enslavement.
Nehemiah 5:6 says, "When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry." Notice the key word: when I heard. For six verses, he simply listens. If we want to make a change in our family, community, nation, or the world, we need to learn to listen up — and that listening develops empathy.
I'm an immigrant myself — eleven years in the U.S. now. When I get in an Uber, I always say, "Hi, I'm Andrew, I'm from Ireland. Where are you from?" And I ask for their story. The whole world is on our doorstep if we're willing to listen.
My wife Isabelle and I work with a church in Bakersfield called Canyon Hills. They run a food distribution ministry the locals nicknamed "Beans and Rice with Jesus Christ." They also run something called the Canyon Closet, providing household essentials. One pastor's daughter came home in tears because her friends at school were overjoyed just to get Dawn dish soap to bring home to their parents.
Sometimes we think fighting injustice means getting into the corridors of power. But sometimes we don't have to cross the nation — we just need to cross the street.
The same church partnered with police so that instead of jailing people found drunk on the street at 2 a.m., officers could offer them a sober center with a clean room, a change of clothes, breakfast, and conversation. That's what the church should be doing.
Jesus gave us the best social policy in the world: "Love your neighbor as yourself." If everyone looks after the person on their right and their left, everyone gets taken care of.
As Christians we're pro-life, but we should also be committed to caring for life after the womb. America has 5% of the world's population but about 20% of the world's prisoners. About 83% of released prisoners are rearrested within three years, and over 55% end up back in incarceration within ten years — but that number drops to just 8% when a man connects with a faith group or Bible study after release. That's good news the church can act on.
The world population is 8.3 billion — America is just "the .3." Right now, 380 million Christians worldwide live under persecution; one in seven Christians is persecuted for their faith. Hebrews tells us:
"Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering."
There's a difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy feels compassion for someone. Empathy puts you in their shoes and shares their emotional experience — feeling with them, not just for them.
Europe has 600 million people, but less than 2% are connected to an evangelical church. That's 588 million people without that connection. Thank God for leaders with a heart for reaching places like this.
Nehemiah 5:9 says: "What you are doing is not right. Shouldn't you walk in the fear of our God?" After listening for six verses, Nehemiah starts to speak. There's a point where we need to listen, and a point where we need to become a voice for the voiceless.
I was in a store recently and witnessed a cashier verbally abusing an older coworker named Maria with terrible profanity, right in front of customers. After listening for a moment, I gently spoke up: "I don't know what you've been through today, but whatever you've just said is not true, and you should never speak to anybody like that." I didn't shout — I just said, "Enough is enough." Maria's face changed; she looked like someone finally saw her.
The president may never hear your voice. The mayor may never hear your voice. But if you speak up for one individual, your voice becomes the most important voice in their world. God has given you a voice — use it gently and lovingly.
Nehemiah didn't stop at pointing out the problem — he moved to policy:
"Let us stop charging interest. Give back to them immediately their fields and their vineyards, olive groves and houses, and also the interest you are charging them."
The book of Acts records that Jesus "began to do and to teach." Jesus didn't just teach like the old rabbis sitting around — he broke that model and did things. In Luke 4 he declared his kingdom manifesto:
"The Spirit of the Lord is on me because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."
Acts is not the book of ponderings or musings — it's the book of Acts. Are we ready to do the kingdom stuff?
William Wilberforce, an English politician in the 1700s-1800s, became a Christian and wanted to leave politics for ministry. John Newton, author of Amazing Grace, told him to stay and use his influence instead. Wilberforce sought God and identified two great goals:
It took Wilberforce 46 years of tireless work to see slavery abolished. He died just three days after it was finished.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. reflected on the parable of the Good Samaritan:
"On the one hand, we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside, but that will only be an initial act. One day, we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway."
Thank God for the Good Samaritan who helped the beaten man — but let's also put lights on the road, put up cameras, add security. Let's change the whole road so we can help people before the harm happens.
Nehemiah 5:19 says: "Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people." Ultimately, we throw ourselves on God's mercy and favor.
My father was a Royal Marine who left Northern Ireland at 16, served nine years, and became the Navy's middleweight boxing champion. He didn't know God at all — fast fists and a fast mouth — until a naval missionary named Ted Seymour led him to Christ after three visits. My mother knew something had changed because he stopped cussing immediately.
When he returned to Belfast and became a police officer, he became a legitimate target for terrorists. On December 31, 1976, there was a knock at our door — always a fearful moment in our home, since terrorists sometimes murdered police officers in their own homes. That night, moments after my father answered the door, a car bomb exploded on our street. A neighbor's 18-month-old son was killed by the shrapnel.
In May 1977, my father — now a detective — spotted a van involved in a bank robbery. In the chaos of the arrest, a young soldier mistook him for a terrorist and shot him at close range with a high-velocity rifle, nearly severing his arm and blowing a hole in his chest the size of two fists. Somehow he survived, though he lost 300 colleagues during that era and still lives with PTSD at 82 years old.
Yet at his 80th birthday, you'd expect bitterness — instead, he's one of the happiest men you'll ever meet, always cracking jokes. I call him nearly every day because it's a joy to speak with him.
My parents never allowed "them and us" language in our home. There was never a them and an us — because we were part of a kingdom. Even carrying his physical wounds, my father wouldn't let the outside get in on the inside. That's Christianity. We're called to let the inside affect the outside.
When I asked him how he coped, he said:
"Son, I've had police officers die in my arms and I've had terrorists die in my arms, and I have spoken Jesus over both."
We don't get to choose the neighbors we're called to love. Jesus never said, "Judge your neighbor." We make terrible judges — there's only One with a pure heart, and his name is Jesus. He will bring justice to the perpetrator and to the victim. Our job is to leave it with him.
The number one job I need in my life is to guard my heart — that's a full-time job. Paul said, "I die every day." We leave people to the grace of God and the judgment of God, and we ask for that same grace in our own lives.
I don't know what you're going through today, but I know this: God loves you and he is for you. While you may be experiencing injustice, let's also think of others going through it — and in everything, let's trust in the grace of God.
Lord Jesus, I want to thank you for everybody watching this, that they would hear your voice, and even more, that they would feel the hand of mercy upon them today. Lord, where we can speak up and listen up, I pray that will happen. Where we can find it and fix it, help us to be active. But in our own hearts where we need grace and mercy, may we receive it today, all for your glory, in the name of Jesus. Amen.
