Prone To Wander

As a Christian, a husband, a father, a pastor, a missionary, and a leader, I find the Book of Nehemiah invaluable.  Its jam-packed with everything from principles of biblical leadership to the precepts for spiritual revival to dealing with conflict and everything inbetween.  Within it pages you'll also see how a godly man deals with ungodly opposition, corruption within government, fear, and my favorite--our proneness as God's people to wander from His truth so as to slowly but surely find ourselves in spiritual struggles and sometimes cesspools of our own making.  Its my favorite because I find in myself this same proneness.  Reading Nehemiah reminds me of this so as to encourage me to be much more dilligent in guarding my own heart from this incessant wandering.

In this fast-moving book in the Old Testament, Nehemiah basically gives us a “play by play” analysis of everything that took place when he returned to Jerusalem to lead in the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem as well as lead the people in a spiritual revival.  The climax of this revival is seen in chapters 8-9 where the people, upon hearing the Word of God read and taught, respond by confessing and repenting of their sins.   Then in chapter 10, they signed a covenant in which they promised to obey and honor the Lord from here on out.  What a tremendous response to the preaching of the Word of God.  I’m sure Nehemiah was ecstatic.  How could he not be thrilled to have his whole nation respond to the Word of God in such a passionate expression of love and loyalty to the Lord? 

Well after twelve years of successful spiritual leadership that led to national and personal reform Nehemiah needed to return to his day job as the cupbearer to King Artexerxes back in Babylonia.  So, he did what any good leader would do under the same circumstances and made sure his leadership would be carried on by qualified men.  Once theses arrangements were made, he then left to resume his service to the king.

Much later Nehemiah returned to Jerusalem, only to find that in the approximately twenty years that he had been gone, the people had drifted back into many of the same sinful practices they were involved in before he had come the first time.  I’m sure he was shocked to hear about and actually see for himself that the mountaintop experience of twenty years ago had become a distant memory in the people’s hearts and that the spiritual revival he saw and experienced with his own eyes had very little if any effect upon anyone any longer.  And I’m certain that he must have been greatly saddened to find that the people’s zeal for God’s glory, two decades ago, was no longer the driving force of and in their lives.

Nehemiah 13 is the record of how quickly God’s people can move from a spiritual high to spiritual pit.  It is also a good reminder to all of us that even in our strongest and most passionate moments with God, we are still very “prone to wander from God.   

It appears, from reading chapter 13, that the people began their departure from Nehemiah’s reforms in very small and seemingly insignificant steps that amounted to not giving full attention to all of God’s Word and thus, not to God Himself.  Some of these included: a careless attitude toward the Temple (13:4-9), a failure to take seriously the corporate worship of God (13:10-14), a disregard for the Lord’s Day (13:15-21), a nonchalant attitude on the part of the spiritual leaders in regard to being prepared to lead the people in worship (13:22), utter disobedience in marrying unbelievers (13:23-27), and religious leaders who followed rather than led the people (13:28-30).

Spiritual and Biblical revival and reform must always be an ongoing experience in our lives.  If not we very quickly find ourselves in a state of “dis-reform” which, if not quickly and thoroughly repented of, leads us into spiritual wastelands that have the potential to shipwreck our faith.  We must never forget that we have an enemy within us, an enemy within the gates, if you will, and this enemy is our flesh.  And our flesh knows how to eat an elephant--one small nibble at a time!  Regardless of our spiritual stature, strength, stamina, and stability our sinful flesh knows how to wear down our love for God and turn our devotion to Him into desertion of Him.

Whatever progress we have made in Christ, whatever growth and maturity we are enjoying, however far we have come spiritually—we cannot afford to forget—it is the small foxes that spoil the vine.  Until Heaven, when our enemy within is finally dead and sin is no more, our hearts are still and always prone to wander from the God we love.  Therefore, as Proverbs 4:23 commands:  “Watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life.”