Have you ever done some genuinely good deed only to be accused of having a self-serving motivation? That is, at a minimum, annoying in the extreme!  It is enough to make you ponder if it is worth the effort of attempting to serve someone else or accomplish an honorable task.

Nehemiah was faced with such a problem as he neared the completion of the wall around Jerusalem. In chapter six the old enemies appear again, first of all with a false premise …

6:1 – When word came to Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab and the rest of our enemies that I had rebuilt the wall and not a gap was left in it—though up to that time I had not set the doors in the gates— 2 Sanballat and Geshem sent me this message: “Come, let us meet together in one of the villages on the plain of Ono.”

But they were scheming to harm me; 3 so I sent messengers to them with this reply: “I am carrying on a great project and cannot go down. Why should the work stop while I leave it and go down to you?” 4 Four times they sent me the same message, and each time I gave them the same answer.

Nehemiah was able to see through the pretext of this request as meaning to do harm, not to just have a nice peace-pipe conversation and reconciliation. The place they wanted him to come was about 25 miles to the northwest of Jerusalem. And there was no reason to meet with these men, as the wall was nearing completion with just the gates remaining to be completed. Clearly this was an 11^th-hour attempt to stop the project by stopping the leader of the entire effort.

The deplorable trio next took on a different and more insidious approach and attack …

5 Then, the fifth time, Sanballat sent his aide to me with the same message, and in his hand was an unsealed letter 6 in which was written:

“It is reported among the nations—and Geshem says it is true—that you and the Jews are plotting to revolt, and therefore you are building the wall. Moreover, according to these reports you are about to become their king 7 and have even appointed prophets to make this proclamation about you in Jerusalem: ‘There is a king in Judah!’ Now this report will get back to the king; so come, let us meet together.”

Have we not just lived through such a season of similar political maneuvering? The bag of dirty tricks is old and … well, dirty … because it is old! It is the way of the world that if you can’t beat your political rival by the truth, make up a host of lies that are at least marginally believable. Throw enough mud against the wall and some of it has to stick.

The accusation was that “rumor had it” that Nehemiah was building this wall for the purpose of announcing himself as king. This would have had repercussions miles away in Persia in the palace of Artaxerxes. The unholy trio of enemies reasoned that this innuendo might frighten Nehemiah into abandoning the work to save his own neck. He answered …

8 I sent him this reply: “Nothing like what you are saying is happening; you are just making it up out of your head.”

9 They were all trying to frighten us, thinking, “Their hands will get too weak for the work, and it will not be completed.”

But I prayed, “Now strengthen my hands.”

Nehemiah called out the ruse, simply denying it while turning to God to be strengthened for the work. He sought out the Lord on seven distinct occasions in this book of the written record of his work and life. And there is a lesson in that for all of us.

False accusation is simply a part of life when attempting to do great things for God. We need to remember that the ultimate enemy we have is not flesh and blood, but rather it involves principalities and powers in high places in the spiritual realm. Satan and his horde of demonic helpers are against our seeking to serve God by serving others, and we can expect that lies and false accusations will come against us. It is par for the course.

We would do well also to remember the words of Paul to the Galatians …

6:8 Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction; whoever sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. 9 Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. 10 Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers.

As we work to be #ForOurCity, we can confidently remain steadfast and pray like Nehemiah, “Lord, strengthen our hands and remember our work.”

These are some very scary times in which we live. And I’m not talking about the results of the Presidential Election yesterday. The reason this is true is because I am writing this before Election Day and loading it online to post on Wednesday morning. That said, I suppose the opening statement may well be true either in spite of, or because of, however the results turn out.

Apart from political figures, there is plenty to worry about financially these days, given the record deficits and national debt, along with the overbought stock market and international economic instability. Does anyone TRULY know what to do in terms of investment for the future … for retirement, etc.?  The uncertainty is sufficient to make one believe he should hoard every penny possible.

But then along comes those preacher dudes who tell you that you should be rich toward God, talking about stuff like tithing, stewardship, and generously giving from the abundance given you by the Lord. And those same theological talking heads are now preaching (#ForOurCity) about generosity and supporting the poor and disadvantaged in multiple ways! All of that is very nice, but what about responsibility and wisdom. Hey, what would Dave Ramsey say about this?  (He’d probably say to “eat beans and rice, rice and beans.”)

But seriously, how does one be generous toward church, missions and the poor, while not becoming poor yourself by giving away all your resources?  The details of the answer to this question is more than we can write in this forum, but we can begin by making one overarching and timeless truth about God.

Let’s pick up our Nehemiah story of chapter 5, where it says …

5:14 – Moreover, from the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, until his thirty-second year—twelve years—neither I nor my brothers ate the food allotted to the governor. 15 But the earlier governors—those preceding me—placed a heavy burden on the people and took forty shekels of silver from them in addition to food and wine. Their assistants also lorded it over the people. But out of reverence for God I did not act like that. 16 Instead, I devoted myself to the work on this wall. All my men were assembled there for the work; we did not acquire any land.

17 Furthermore, a hundred and fifty Jews and officials ate at my table, as well as those who came to us from the surrounding nations. 18 Each day one ox, six choice sheep and some poultry were prepared for me, and every ten days an abundant supply of wine of all kinds. In spite of all this, I never demanded the food allotted to the governor, because the demands were heavy on these people.

19 Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people.

These verses today are a sort of summary about Nehemiah’s 12-year administration as governor in Judah, all under the auspices of the Persian king. His central focus was upon the construction of the wall, not upon the at-hand opportunity to be personally enriched and remunerated in the process. Previous governors placed a heavy tax upon the people, doing so with the authority of the government. Nehemiah recognized that his greater employer was God, and his reverence for God and love for his impoverished people caused him to act differently.

Being already a man of some material substance, Nehemiah shared of his abundance in the sustenance of many people. We might say that it is easy to be generous when one is already rich, and surely those with the most have the greatest obligation to share with others. But a complete reading of this passage would seem to indicate that Nehemiah risked pretty much all that he had to get that wall built and to promote the one true God and His people. He ends by praying, “Remember me with favor, my God, for all I have done for these people.”

So can we, even today at this crazy time of our nation’s history, trust God to supply our needs after we have generously risked our resources for the Lord’s work and for the poor?  The answer is a very strong “yes.”  And no, I don’t have a prayer cloth or any such scheme to share that makes such a statement a truth to live by. Let me do better than that and quote some Scripture …

Hebrews 6:10 – God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.

2 Corinthians 9:10 – Now he who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will also supply and increase your store of seed and will enlarge the harvest of your righteousness.

Romans 8:32 – He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?

And here is another exercise for you. Take a moment to make a mental list of all the people you have known who were so generous in giving to the church and supporting missions and causes for the poor that they ended up impoverished themselves.  I’ll pause a moment while you assemble that in your mind…

(pause)

(pause)

What’s the matter? You can’t name anyone? Didn’t think so!  The person is yet to be found who was generous toward God and ended up insufficiently resourced personally. And you won’t be the first. You can risk generosity as a steward of God’s resources. God will remember you.

Probably many of you on your Facebook feed have occasionally seen click-bait pop up for a website that is called “People of Walmart” or something of that nature. It features pictures of oddly-dressed and unusual people who are most often unsuspectingly photographed. Whereas a number of those pictured may be people sadly evidencing some sort of mental illness, the photos just as frequently are displays of gravely impoverished individuals.

For those who succeed sufficiently well in life, it is so simple as to be an almost natural reaction to look down upon people who are poor and struggling. The immediate suspicion is to assume that the condition is derivative from some measure of irresponsibility or laziness. “Just get a job” is an immediate thought, or, “The money you spent on that ugly tattoo on your neck might have bought a few more groceries for your family.”  Beyond this, some people of faith who have been blessed with abundance may even have, at the minimum, some measure of belief that their own success represents God’s blessing, whereas the deprecations of the poor represent His displeasure with them. 

But is poverty this simple to define? Is it always the natural outcome of bad life choices? And what is the background source of the lack of skills that led to whatever bad choices were made?

Is it not also a reality that many impoverished people are actually in that condition through a complicated series of misfortunes from which extrication is not immediately obvious? This was true in the situation described by Nehemiah in the passage that was primary to our Week 3 sermon within the #ForOurCity series.

Nehemiah 5:1 – Now the men and their wives raised a great outcry against their fellow Jews. 2 Some were saying, “We and our sons and daughters are numerous; in order for us to eat and stay alive, we must get grain.”

3 Others were saying, “We are mortgaging our fields, our vineyards and our homes to get grain during the famine.”

4 Still others were saying, “We have had to borrow money to pay the king’s tax on our fields and vineyards. 5 Although we are of the same flesh and blood as our fellow Jews and though our children are as good as theirs, yet we have to subject our sons and daughters to slavery. Some of our daughters have already been enslaved, but we are powerless, because our fields and our vineyards belong to others.”

The arduous process of building the wall had taken people away from their regular lives and abilities to make ends meet. The situation was grave. They were borrowing money to pay taxes. Beyond that, some were having to subject their children to slavery. Their debts were becoming inexorable. And those who were being enriched were from their own Jewish flesh and blood – actually disobeying the Old Testament Law in charging interest …

6 When I heard their outcry and these charges, I was very angry. 7 I pondered them in my mind and then accused the nobles and officials. I told them, “You are charging your own people interest!” So I called together a large meeting to deal with them 8 and said: “As far as possible, we have bought back our fellow Jews who were sold to the Gentiles. Now you are selling your own people, only for them to be sold back to us!” They kept quiet, because they could find nothing to say.

They had nothing to say. Why?  What was the nobles’ (the wealthy land owners class) disposition on this? Perhaps they had some of the same viewpoints we might have today toward impoverished people – that God has blessed our greater faithfulness … that they aren’t making wise choices … that their responsibility quotient in not as refined as our own, etc.

I would add to this that the nobles likely did not “see” the poor. Oh yes – they saw them with their eyes, but not with their hearts. Perhaps we too need to look beyond mere “seeing” that can be easily sloughed off and forgotten, to rather “deeply seeing” with hearts of compassion built upon a profound sense of God’s blessing.

Remember the story in Luke chapter 7 of Jesus dining in the home of Simon the Pharisee? A woman with a troubled history had come into the home and was making quite a scene of weeping, anointing the feet of Jesus and wiping them with her hair. EVERYONE in the room could see it (and smell it and hear it), though none chose to speak to it. And finally Jesus asks Simon, “Do you see this woman?”  Of course he could see her; you couldn’t NOT see her. But he was asking if he could SEE her.

Do you SEE the poor? Does your heart SEE the poor and needy in our community? There is quite a lot to see … I mean, to SEE. And before we can act upon it we have to do more than just see it, but to SEE it.  SEEING is step one.

Poverty Statistics

For those of you who heard the sermon yesterday either at Tri-State Fellowship or in one of the other 23 partnering churches, here in print are some of the statistics shared about the level of poverty in Hagerstown and Washington County …

• Nearly 13% of Washington County’s residents live in poverty, according to a recent report from the Maryland Alliance for the Poor.
• Washington County’s poverty rate was the eighth highest in Maryland for 2014, the report said. The poverty line was defined as annual income of $23,850 for a family of four.
• [According to Lisa Klingenmaier, co-chairwoman of The Maryland Alliance for the Poor], “The cost of living is going up, but wages are not.”… She noted that this year’s report shows a worker in Washington County needs to earn $16.48 per hour to afford the fair market rent and utilities for a two-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30 percent of his income. Two years before, the wage required was $15.98.
• Median income — Washington County ranked 17th in Maryland with a median annual income of $56,477. The median income is not an average; it means the same number of households bring in more than or less than that amount. Washington County also ranked 17th in the last report, but the median income has risen by $2,238 since then.
• Child poverty rate — the county ranked eighth in the number of children living in poverty, 19.7 percent, the group found. This number was slightly better than the last report in which the county ranked seventh with 19.9 percent of its children living in poverty.
• Senior poverty rate — Washington County ranked seventh with 7.8 percent of seniors living below the poverty line, defined as having an annual income of $11,670 or lower for an individual. This number has not changed in the past two years.
• Unemployment — Washington County had the ninth highest unemployment rate in the state with an average rate of 6.5 percent in 2014. That’s an improvement from the last report, when the county ranked fifth highest with an average unemployment rate of 7.9 percent.
• Food Supplement Program — Washington County had the seventh highest number of people participating in the Food Supplement Program with 17 percent of the population involved. The average benefit was $126.83 per person, per month. This number was nearly unchanged.
• Free and reduced-price meals — 50.1 percent of the children in Washington County Public Schools were eligible for the program during the 2014-15 school year, the eighth-highest percentage in Maryland. This number rose from the last report, when Washington County ranked 10th with 47.77 percent eligible.
• African American poverty — the county ranked fifth in number of African Americans living below the poverty line, 30.7 percent.
• Latino poverty — at 22.2 percent, Washington County ranked 10th in the number of Hispanic or Latino Marylanders living below the poverty line.
• Female-headed households — 36.7 percent of female-headed households were below the poverty line, ranking Washington County seventh in the state.
• Deep poverty — nearly half (45.4 percent) of Washington County residents living in poverty had yearly incomes below 50 percent of the poverty line — or $5,835 for individuals — in 2014, ranking the county 17th in the state for deep poverty.
• Income spent for childcare — Families with children paid an average of 19.9 percent of their income on childcare, the 12th highest in the state.
• “Klingenmaier said poverty trends in Washington County actually mirror the state. Maryland’s deep poverty rate, which is 48.3 percent of those living below the poverty line, is the highest in the country.”