Is the Bible "Out-Dated"? (originally published September 16)
When the New Testament was completed almost 2000 years ago, God finished His revelatory work (cf. Jude 3). Sound, faithful Gospel preachers search from Genesis through Revelation to find “time-less” lessons. However, many people claim that a 2000-year-old book written in another culture on the other side of the world could not possibly be relevant to our fast-paced 21st century American lifestyle.
However, God is the Author of this volume, and He knows best what man’s needs are. If the truth is known, man’s most basic needs never really change. Needs such as salvation, love and acceptance are universal and do not have time constraints. Every person in every culture has those needs.
But are there places in the Bible that can help with more “localized” needs? Did people in Bible times have the same problems as we do today? The answer is “yes,” and Nehemiah 5 is one example of that.
In Nehemiah 1-4, we have seen the great leader go back to Jerusalem and motivate the people to work. They have already, in a brief period of time, rebuilt the wall to half its original height. The workers had also had to deal with attacks from their enemies. Sanballat, Tobiah and others had attacked them both verbally and they had also formulated an army to literally attack them.
However, in Nehemiah 5, the complaints begin to come from the “inside.” Notice the first five verses of this chapter:
And there was a great outcry of the people and their wives against the Jewish brethren. For there were those who said, “We, our sons, and our daughters are many; therefore let us get grain, that we may eat and live.” There were also some who said, “We have mortgaged our lands and vineyards and houses, that we might buy grain because of the famine.” There were also those who said, “We have borrowed money for the king’s tax on our lands and vineyards. Yet now our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren, our children as their children; and indeed we are forcing our sons and our daughters to be slaves, and some of our daughters have been brought into slavery. It is not in our power to redeem them, for other man have our lands and vineyards. [NKJV]
How do those five verses apply to our society today? Notice three problems facing the residents of Jerusalem:
1. There was a natural disaster (famine). While famine may not be number one of the list of natural disasters facing the USA, we are still swept often off our feet by the fury of nature. Most recently, of course, Huricane Katrina (and, now, Ophelia) brought havoc to the Gulf Coast region of our nation.
2. There were too many taxes (verse 4). King Artexerxes had made those residents pay far more taxes than they could afford. How many in our nation today have trouble making ends meet partially because of the heavy tax burden of our nation, states and municipalities? It is nothing new! Artexerxes lived about 800 miles away from these workers, but he ruled them and exacted these taxes.
3. The interest rate was spiriling out of control. These people had even gone so far as to sell themselves and their children into slavery to pay off debts. To say that debt is a major problem in our nation is a gross understatement. It is one of the leading causes of divorce and it causes many other strains. Hundreds of thousands of American households spend their way into debt each month and the future looks more bleak with each credit card bill.
Still think the Bible is out of date? These three real-life difficulties facing Nehemiah and the people of Jerusalem still face millions today. We need to show people that the Bible deals with every man’s problems–even in our society.
