The Village Church
Is there a new golden rule? - Audio
We're going to look at the first five verses this morning near my chapter 5. Now there arose a great outcry of the people and of their wives against their Jewish brothers. But there were those who said, "We without sons and daughters are many, so let us get the grain that we may eat and keep alive." There were also those who said, "We are mortgaging in our fields, our vineyards, and our houses to get grain because of the famine." There were those who also said, "We have borrowed money for the king's tax on our fields and vineyards." Now our flesh is at the flesh of our brothers, and our children as their children. Yet we are forcing our sons and daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have already become slaves. But it is not in our power to help it, but other men have our fields and our vineyards. Let us pray. Father, guys, we come before your holy word. We pray for your spirit. We pray that your spirit will come and take what is preached, and apply it to my heart first, and apply it to the hearts of your people. We need Him to take the scriptures for our brothers so that we may have understanding. I pray that you will be glorified, you will be honored, you will be lifted up. I pray for all this in Christ's name. Amen. The golden rule. What is it? Do you know what the golden rule is? Do unto others, as you will have them do unto you. But is that really the golden rule of our society, of our world, of our churches even? The majority of the people in our society operate off this golden rule, drawing unto others as you will have them do unto you. Some of us do. Some people do, but not all people. There are others in our society, in our schools, in our government, in our churches, in our homes, in our homeowners associations, non-profit organizations, even within our families operate off another golden rule. A new golden rule. You see, the first time I heard about this rule, I was actually living over in Decatur, and I was having lunch at a coffee shop. This guy talking to his daughter on the phone. I wasn't listening on this conversation, but he was just talking real loud. I was on the other side of the coffee shop, but he was talking loud. I assume he wanted me to hear what he was saying. It turned out that his daughter was complaining about her landlord. She was having issues with her landlord, and she was complaining to her dad about it. This is what her dad told her. He said to her, "Here's the golden rule. The one with the gold sets the rule. The one with the gold sets the rule. That's the golden rule." I asked you, which rule operates in our society? The golden rule one, or golden rule two? The one with the gold sets the rule. Which one operates in our churches, our families, our schools, our government, our neighborhoods? Which one? So if you have the gold, and you set the standards, you set the rules for everybody else. Well, I have all the money. I have all the power. I have all the resources. I have all the connections. I have the education. I have the right position. I have the right culture. I have the right tradition. And I have the right theology. Therefore, I set all the rules. And you get on board for what I say. Because I'm the one who has it right. Because the one with the gold sets the rules. Now, which rule do you operate from? In your job, in your family, in your neighborhood? Is it doing unto others, as you will have them do unto you, or the one with the gold sets the rules? Which one? Which one is you? Are you real enough with yourself to be honest about yourself here? Am I real enough with myself, to be honest with myself here? The truth is that we operate on both of them, depending upon the situation and circumstances. You got to know that about yourself. Sometimes you do the first golden rule, and sometimes you do the second. And that's just reality. We just need to be honest about it. And this is what we actually see here in NMI, Chapter 5. There were group of Jews operating up that second golden rule. You see, so far in the book, we've seen the people working together. You get an impression that they had no relational issues. Because in Chapter 2, we saw them passionately joined together. Yeah, NMI, we're going to help you on this wall. We're going to band together. We're going to do it. Then in Chapter 3, we see it. Everybody working together. Everybody taking their load. Everyone's doing their can to rebuild this wall. And in Chapter 3, we saw them actually stand together against the enemy. I know they had their fears and their complaints, but yet they did not run away. They stood their ground. They stood guard. So you get the impression, man, these people are liking each other. They actually love each other. They're banding together. There are no issues here. This is an issue for you to free camp. But then you get to Chapter 5. Then you get to Chapter 5, and you see that was far from the truth. There were those practicing the second golden rule. In Chapter 5, the stuff hits the fan, and we see things were not perfect, relation. There were issues in the camp, relational issues, relational drama because of that second golden rule. So what brought it to the surface? There was a great outcry. Look at Chapter 5. Look at Verse 1. Now, there arose a great outcry of the people of their wives against their Jewish brothers. This chapter is a good contrast to what has been going on. I love that Nehemiah placed it here because he doesn't want to get the false impression that everything was going, everything was just going to be perfect. Everything was just smooth, man. Paved of gold. No issues. We loved each other all the time. There was no things to work through, but that was far from the case. There were issues there. There were financial issues. There were economic issues. There were issues of justice among the people. A great outcry. This was an outcry of distress, a cry of sorrow, a cry of grief, a cry of trouble, a cry of oppression, a cry of adversity. It was a complaint put forth by families within the community against other families against their Jewish brothers. Notice that the outcry isn't against the world. It isn't against Sam Ballon and Tobias, not against the Persians. It's not even against the Persian king. They cried out to Nehemiah about what other Jews are doing to other Jews within the Jewish community. A great outcry arose for the people of their wives against their Jewish brothers. They were all being sinned against by their own people. They were not being treated right. And what's taking place here was going on long before Nehemiah got here. You have to see that. It was going on long before he got there. He's just now getting the wind of it. For the people came to him and cried out to him about it. He's just now seeing, man, these people got issues. They don't like each other. Something's going on. What do you do with other Christians sin against you? What do you do when your spouse sins against you? A Christian brother who's been your brother for years. What do you do when he sins against you? Do you cry out? Do you just look over it and say, "Oh, that's not a big deal. Just suppress it." We know we are to forgive each other. We know that. That's in the Bible. That's clear. That's a non-negotiable. But forgiveness is not always easy. Is it? Is it that easy? It's not. This week I read an article about Christians forgiving each other. It was a good article that made it sound like forgiving other Christians was always so easy. It's just so easy to do. You can just turn it on and off. The article talked about how Joseph forgave his brothers who sold him into slavery. In many of us know those famous words, he's Joseph said to his brothers, right? What was those famous words he said to his brothers? "You've been to evil, but God made it for good." Now let me ask you, did he say that to them the day out that he was sold in the slavery? Was it the day after? How long was it? Years later. I mean years later. It wasn't like they came over to Egypt. They visited him and he said, "You know what brothers? You've meant nothing evil, but God made it for good." No. Years later. What's the point? The point is God brought Joseph to the place where he can forgive him through what Joseph went through while he was in slavery. God brought him to the place where he can see what was down to him was good, for the good. It took time for him to get there, but he got there in a process. Yes, we forgive our brothers and sisters, but it's the spirit that takes us along the process to do that, to get there. Because I'm telling you, you're in business with a brother and he robs you, you ain't going to want to forgive him. It's going to take the broker the spirit to get you to the place to do that. That's what I'm talking about. It's a process and the spirit brings us there. And the first step it takes is that you got to be honest about what's going on. You got to be honest about what's going on, about what has happened to you. If you love the brother who sent against you, then you will pull that brother to the side and say, "When you did this to him, you bring it out in the open. You bring it into the light." Just like these Jews, they brought it to the M.I. He said, "Something's not right here." They cried out. "Something's not right here." What they're doing to us is not right. They made the complaint known, brought it into the surface. So what was the complaint? There were three complaints from three groups of people. So the conditions that right now in Jerusalem, the people were economical issues going on. People are already having economical problems, already having issues of feeding the families. And not only that, they're actually working on the wall but they're actually adding to that. Because if you're a farmer and you haven't built a wall, then obviously you're not going to be able to farm very much because you spend most of your time rebuilding the wall. So nearby's work on the wall added to the stress of what was going on. So one group of people said, "Our families are large and we need food in order to keep alive." So they had to find ways to get the food. Either they were going to labor on someone else's farm or they were going to borrow money by food. The second group were landowners that had fields and vineyards and houses that had to mortgage their property to get grain, to get grain because of the family. Their harvest was bad here, I guess. And people could not produce what they needed. This group was falling into serious debt and unable to pay their way out of it. The third group was falling into serious debt because they had to borrow money to pay the king's tax on their property. Their fields and vineyards. These complaints were coming from the working folks in the community. The poorer folks in the community against their wealth of your brothers, against the wealth of your Jews, who in return were charging interest to their brothers. And this put the debtors into a debt cycle that couldn't get out of. They would fall further and further into debt. And if you ever been in debt, it's like men sticking quicksand, man. You climb in and you try and but you keep sinking, folding for the down. And that's how they were feeling. When this endless, hopeless cycle, and we can't get out, I'm stuck in quicksand. Someone helped me. Someone helped me get out so they cried out to me and my foot helped. And to make things worse, they actually had to sell their own kids into debt slavery to work off the debt. That's what office says, "The children of the debtors were taken into the service of the creditor and they had to work for him until the debts were paid." You see, according to God's law, Jews were not to charge other Jews interests alone, nor were they to treat them like slaves. If you have your Bibles, turn over to Leviticus chapter 25, or I can say, I'm just going to read it too. Leviticus 25 verse 35. "If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and sojourner, and he shall live with you. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money and interest, nor give him food for profit. I am the lawyer God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave. He shall be with you as a hired servant and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you unto the eardrubuli, then he shall go out from you. He and his children with him and go back to his own clan and return to the and return the possessions of his father. But they are my servants from my broad outer land of Egypt. They shall not be so as slaves. You shall not rule over him ruthlessly but fear your God. This was not taking place. The opposite was taking place here in Jerusalem, and they were crying out about it. The wealthy Jews were benefiting. They were a profiting. They were a charge of interest. They were not releasing them. They had the sons of the daughters, the property of their. Oh well. They were not treated in the right. And so they cried out. They were in a hopeless and powerless cycle that they could not work themselves out of. They no longer had the right or the means to do anything about the situation. If they told Nehemiah, it is not in our power to help. Things were not good. And relationally, you could imagine some of the deep resentment that the people had in their hearts toward one another. Those who brought the complaints to Nehemiah said, our flesh is as of their flesh. Our children as their children. And the point here they're making is that we're Jews just like them. Our children are Jews as well. So shouldn't they treat us with more respect and dignity? We're part of the God's people. Shouldn't they treat us with a little more mercy? Show us a little more justice. Have a little more compassion on us. Should they not be doing unto us? That they will have others doing unto them. But they were not. Instead, the second golden rule was in play. The wealthy Jews had all the gold. And so they were sitting in the rules but not following God's word basically. They were sitting in the rules. They were sitting in the standards. What does this mean for us at the Village Church? Now to my knowledge, none of us are exploiting one another. Unless something's going on I don't know about. You know, we're not, you know, charging people interests on loans, not to my knowledge. But one thing is clear from the text is that within the church, within the body of Christ, there is a right way and a wrong way to treat one another. There is a right way and a wrong way to treat other believers. Christian should not explore other Christians or anyone, matter of fact. Christian should not try to selflessly gain from the hardships of other brothers and sisters in the faith. We should not be operating out of that second golden rule. We shouldn't. And gold here is just not referring to money. It's just not referring to material possessions or power. It's whatever you think gives you control of other people. Whatever you think makes you better, more important than other people. It could be anything, anything. Now as a multicultural church for what we're trying to be, this is something we have to take to heart. Because we're going to be multicultural across the board, race, musical taste, economic status, education, and even political views. It's going to be diverse. We're not going to be clones of one another. There are going to be differences. And there are differences already. A while back, Susan Rawls, Karen Crippen and myself went up to Chattanooga to visit with the pastor of New City Fellowship, New City Fellowship, which is a multicultural church in Chattanooga. And we went there to get some ideas from them about how they started and how they planned the church and how they became multicultural and things like that. And from that meeting, there was one thing the pastor said that stayed with me from that meeting. In every new member's class, in every person that joins the church, he always tells them, you give up something, be part of New City Fellowship. Everyone does. Everyone gives up something, be part of a church like this. And he's right. And he's right. In college, I became part of a ministry with only a handful of African-Americans involved. I went to a church there that only had a handful of African-American members. I interned at a church in South Carolina where I was the only African-American male there. And then the church opened the caterer. We were the only African-American family there. You see, when the Lord brought me to be part of this denomination, I knew I was going to be giving up something to be part of it. I knew that going in. Now, I didn't abandon my culture. I abandoned my blackness. I love being black. I didn't abandon that. But what I gave up, I gave up letting my cultural preferences operate out of the second golden rule. That's what I gave up. I gave up letting my cultural preferences operate out of the second golden rule. Basically, my cultural preferences was not the goal that set the rules for everybody else. That's what I gave up. That's what I gave up. That's what we all got to give up to be part of a church like this. Every black person, every white Christian, every Asian, Hispanic Christian that becomes part of this church, you will have your cultural preferences challenged. All of us will. More than challenge, you will be at you are going to have to let them go in terms of being the goal for everybody else. That's the way it has to be. Because think about it. If everyone came to this church believing that their cultural preferences were the goal, what type of church were going to have? What would that do to our church? Well, you got to do things this way, Pastor. No, you got to do it this way. This is what we always should do it. So now we got to continue to do it here. It's going to lead to infighting. It's going to lead to disunity. The same thing that was happening in the MI5. They're going to be great outcries because one group's cultural preferences has been suppressed by another group's. One group's cultural preferences has not been acknowledged enough. There goes on and on and on and on. Then you end up splitting, people end up leaving the church, going to another church. We see this all the time in churches, all the time. Last week, a friend of mine told me you got a pastor in Birmingham who's pastor in the Multicultural Church. And the pastor is having some serious issues with one of his elders. Do you know why? You know why he's having a serious issue with one of his elders? There are a multicultural church. The elder is mad with the pastor because he's bringing in too many black people. Now, what does that sound like? You are a multicultural church. And you are being a thorn in your pastor's side because he's bringing in too many black people. I mean, really. That's what I mean by culture preference. Being the rule. This is what it leads to. Comments like that. Comments like that. Worship wars. You see that in churches all the time, right? I want a contemporary worship style, Alex. No, it has to be traditional. What happens? You make worship preferences the goal. Everyone has a preference, right? That everyone will have to abandon that preference to come here in terms of worship. Everyone gives up something. I do. We all do. We can make our race the goal. We can make our culture the goal. We can make our traditions the goal. Our theology the goal. Our politics the goal. And the mentality is, since you have the goal in the areas, then you set all the rules for everybody else. You sell the rules for everybody else. The question is, do you have the self-awareness to know when this is happening? When you're doing it? Do we? Do we know? We have to abandon our culture preferences to the cross. That's the whole point. You have to. I have to. You have to. Because you can use those cultural preferences to hurt with your brothers in the faith, to hurt other believers. Because you believe you got all that you have it right. And so everyone that doesn't think like you will look like you or operate like you, then they ain't right. They ain't following Jesus, but they ain't following Him the way you follow Him. Every the cross is a great equalizer. You know why? Because that the full cross where we see we all are messed up and have issues. Who has issues? We all got issues. All God's people got issues. And when you forget that, that's an issue. I'm always reminded of that, because we always forget that. And I'm going to keep going back to this thing. Because it's important that we realize that. That we all operate up that second golden move. We all do. That this part of life in the fallen world. But you've got to be able to see it when you do. And when people call you out on it, just admit it. Just admit it. Because here's the thing. There's only one, one, one being in this whole universe that has the true right authority to operate off the second golden one. There's only one. And that's God the Father. You know why? Because He's the Creator. He's the Sustainer. He's the Rock of Ages. He is the Alpha in the Omega, the Lord of Lords, the King of Kings, all sovereign, all knowing, all powerful, in all places and all times. He is holy. He is just, He is merciful. He is loving. And He is gracious. He is God. And we are not. And so He sets the standards and the rules. And we just surrender. That's it. We surrender to what He says. Not to what other people say. Not to what our cultural preferences says to what His word says. And when all cultural preferences come in contact with His word, you know who wins? This wins. When our politics conflict with this, this wins. When our theology conflicts with this, this wins. You got to be able to surrender. That's what I mean by surrender. Whatever God word calls out in your life. You say, Father, I don't like that, but I will surrender to that. I don't understand it, but you know what Spirit gave me the heart to surrender to that. His word trumps everything in our life. His word shapes our worldview basically. Shapes everything about us. And we got to surrender to Him. What did Jesus say as in John? If you do this, the world would know that you are my disciples. If you love one another. What was taking place in the M.I. Father, there was no love. That was not love. Taking advantage of other Christians is not love. If you love one another, the world would know that you are my disciples. That's what we have to value here in our community and what God is building here. That our love for one another is greater than our culture preferences. That has to be it. Because if we just love one another, then we'll forgive one another. We'll keep sort of counsel to one another, and we'll walk like this, ban a brothers and sisters in Christ. I operate off the first golden rule, to join onto others as you will have them do unto you. Let us pray. Father, God, I confess, Lord, I have my issues. I know I always fall that first golden rule. I have things that I'm a stickler about and things that I feel like I won't move on. So continue to show me the ways in which I try to Lord over people based upon my culture preferences. And so I pray that you will reveal those things to me that I may repent and move on. And I pray you do that for all of us. Give us hearts that love one another. Give us hearts that we'll keep sort of counsel to one another. And Father, I pray that as we go out in this world, you will be a shield about us Father. Help us, Lord, to be more in tune with you, more in tune with Christ, more in tune with the Spirit. I pray for our families. I pray for a little Samson that you will work in miracle Lord and continue to bring him away he needs to be. Pray for Cynthia and the mom and dad. You'll be with them. I know they're out of their mind right now in terms of fear. So I pray that you bring the church alongside them and they will love them. Love them well Father. Lord, I pray also for Susan Ross that she prepares to go over on her short-term mission trip next month. This month I pray for her and a team to be with them and you use them to extend your kingdom. Lord, and bring more into your fold. And I pray for officers training tonight that you be with the man that's going to be there. And bless this time Father. This is an important time in our church. And so I pray that Lord, you are blessed that and be with all of us who are there and that you will be glorified in it. And I pray for all these things, your magnificence is His name. Amen. Will you please stand as we hold our service for our last song?