In those days I saw men in Judah treading winepresses on the Sabbath and bringing in grain and loading it on donkeys, together with wine, grapes, figs and all other kinds of loads. And they were bringing all this into Jerusalem on the Sabbath. Therefore I warned them against selling food on that day. Men from Tyre who lived in Jerusalem were bringing in fish and all kinds of merchandise and selling them in Jerusalem on the Sabbath to the people of Judah. I rebuked the nobles of Judah and said to them, “What is this wicked thing you are doing—desecrating the Sabbath day? Didn’t your forefathers do the same things, so that our God brought all this calamity upon us and upon this city? Now you are stirring up more wrath against Israel by desecrating the Sabbath.”
When evening shadows fell on the gates of Jerusalem before the Sabbath, I ordered the doors to be shut and not opened until the Sabbath was over. I stationed some of my own men at the gates so that no load could be brought in on the Sabbath day. Once or twice the merchants and sellers of all kinds of goods spent the night outside Jerusalem. But I warned them and said, “Why do you spend the night by the wall? If you do this again, I will lay hands on you.” From that time on they no longer came on the Sabbath. Then I commanded the Levites to purify themselves and go and guard the gates in order to keep the Sabbath day holy.
Remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love. (Nehemiah 13:15-22)
Would you believe it? The people broke the fourth and final commitment they made in Chapter 10, because they didn’t honor the Sabbath. That’s serious stuff, because it is a large part of the reason why they got to take a 70-year field trip to Babylon. God instructed the Hebrews to take a weekly Sabbath starting Friday evening. He also told them to give their land a Sabbath rest every seven years. When they didn’t do it, He gave the land its rest by allowing Nebuchadnezzar to conquer them and take them away.
Nehemiah gave the merchants both barrels, even threatening to lay hands on them (not for prayer this time). He was either big enough or wild-eyed enough to make the threat credible, because he didn’t have to warn them twice.
Whenever the Holy Spirit points out sinfulness of any type in your heart, follow Nehemiah’s example. Kick it out of your city. Psalm 101 makes a good pledge for keeping your heart and mind pure. I encourage you to make it part of your memorized Scripture arsenal.
I will sing of your love and justice.
I will praise you, LORD, with songs.
I will be careful to live a blameless life–when will you come to my aid?
I will lead a life of integrity in my own home.
I will refuse to look at anything vile and vulgar.
I hate all crooked dealings; I will have nothing to do with them.
I will reject perverse ideas and stay away from every evil.
I will not tolerate people who slander their neighbors.
I will not endure conceit and pride.
I will keep a protective eye on the godly, so they may dwell with me in safety. Only those who are above reproach will be allowed to serve me.
I will not allow deceivers to serve me, and liars will not be allowed to enter my presence.
My daily task will be to ferret out criminals and free the city of the LORD from their grip.
I use this psalm to remind me of my responsibility to God as His steward over my body, my mind and my heart. As a child of the King, I am not allowed to sin without consequence. I commit to protect my eyes from the vile and vulgar. I reject perversity, which is the distortion of what God has made beautiful. I will not play with sin. I’ll be careful about who I associate with. I will join together with other believers and hold them accountable for their walk with God. I will protect my heart from those (including Satan and his demons) who lie to me, and everyday, I will take every thought captive before Christ until my heart and my mind are pure.
The criminals for us are the sexual thoughts and images that hide in the deepest recesses of our minds. Satan enjoys having these emissaries on the inside, because he can call them up whenever it suits him. They readily join him in the battle to get within our walls, and they are usually the ones holding the gates open for him.
Each time you allow a perverse image, thought or sound into your head, it sets up permanent residence. I can vividly remember images of nude women from when I was in 2nd grade. I can remember an old, discarded filmstrip of a woman taking a bath that I found on the street when I was about ten. I can remember the text from just about any sexually explicit storyline that I’ve ever read. I can remember all the sexual scenes in the movies I’ve watched, the audio clips I’ve heard and the magazines I’ve looked at.
Those thoughts don’t go away. They might go into hiding as you work to become sexually pure, but as soon as Satan senses that you’re susceptible, he’ll call them up. They weaken our resolve like nothing else.
At this point, it’s important to say that there are things we can change and things we can’t change. In response to your petitions, God may purge your mind of all the filth you’ve allowed to enter, but I’ve never met a man who could say that this happened. It has to be very rare. More often, though God forgives us and delights in our commitment to become sexually pure, He allows us to suffer the consequences of our sin (e.g. David after the Bathsheba incident). What’s in there is in there. This is what you can’t change.
Instead, focus on what you can change. Work on diluting what is in your brain by adding in “whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things.” (Philippians 4:8 )
