Slippery slope - compromise

Yesterday, we said that to detect spiritual compromise, we must be immersed in the Word of God, and that we will then be able to see the problems as they arise.  We noted that the leaders in Jerusalem while Nehemiah had returned to Persia might not have realized when they were too permissive. They were right there face to face with the issues, but they might not have been as deeply in study as Nehemiah was. And they may not have been prayer warriors like him.
I keep thinking that if they were, perhaps they might have realized what was happening!
I feel that way because over and over, in what we now call the Old Testament, there were calls to God's people to be holy. God's standards of holiness for his people were repeated and explained and repeated again. (Grin)
Before the moral slide had begun, the people had listened to the reading of Scriptures, which made them aware of these standards.
In the first three verses of Nehemiah 13, we are reminded that they would have heard in what we call Deuteronomy, that God declared no Ammonite or Moabite should enter the assembly of Israel.

No Ammonite or Moabite or any of their descendants may enter the assembly of the Lord, not even in the tenth generation. 4 For they did not come to meet you with bread and water on your way when you came out of Egypt, and they hired Balaam son of Beor from Pethor in Aram Naharaim to pronounce a curse on you. 5 However, the Lord your God would not listen to Balaam but turned the curse into a blessing for you, because the Lord your God loves you. (Deuteronomy 23:3-5)

Wow.
We've talked about this before.
Nowadays, that seems a bit harsh. Verse three, I mean.
But then you read verse four, and you see why..... God chose to pour out His love on a distinct people; He poured out His grace on a people that He chose from all others on this earth:

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession.7 The Lord did not set his affection on you and choose you because you were more numerous than other peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples. 8 But it was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath he swore to your ancestors that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the land of slavery, from the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt. 9 Know therefore that the Lord your God is God; he is the faithful God, keeping his covenant of love to a thousand generations of those who love him and keep his commandments.  (Deuteronomy 7:6-9)

The reason He didn't want Israel to accept foreigners into their midst was this: they would corrupt Israel from following only YAHWEH.
Verse four mentions the sly counsel of Balaam. Remember him? (Aside from being the guy that the donkey spoke to, I mean!) The passage in Numbers that tells his story does not reveal all that he told the king of Moab, Balak.  Balak had sent for him because he wanted Balaam to curse the Israelites, so that the Moabites would be able to prevail against them. Long story short, Balaam did NOT curse them (it's quite a story; you might want to go back and re-read it!). In Numbers, we see a clue of what was said, and in other passages, we find out what Balaam DID tell Balak.

From the rocky peaks I see them,    from the heights I view them.
I see a people who live apart    and do not consider themselves one of the nations. (Numbers 23:9)

Now, let's look in the New Testament.
Got your Sherlock Holmes hat and magnifying glass? We are going sleuthing!

But I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. (Revelation 2:14)

They have left the straight way and wandered off to follow the way of Balaam son of Bezer, who loved the wages of wickedness. (II Peter 2:15)

The scholars tell us that Flavius Josephus, the historian in the time of the apostles, recorded their oral tradition of Balaam telling the king of Moab to "put a stumbling block before" the men of Israel. Josephus makes Balaam sound like quite a conniver!  He knew he could not curse the Israelites, but he told Balak just how to corrupt them; if they were to intermarry with the women of Moab, pretty soon Israel would be just like the Moabites and follow their gods -- losing the uniqueness and the strength of their relationship with Jehovah God.
Balaam knew that Israel was blessed if they continued to serve God. He also knew that if they were to sin, by worshiping the gods of Moab, they would be under a curse of sin. So he told the king of Moab how to get them to bring curses upon themselves by sinning! In the text by Josephus, Balaam pretty much tells Balak, "Get your prettiest girls and have them go over to where the men of Israel will see them. Let them flirt with them, and get the men to fall in love with them. Hormones will kick in, and they will give way to their sinful desires -- then they will take the girls home and marry them. Soon they will welcome the Moabite gods and even eat food that's been sacrificed to them. You'll win, for sure, ole buddy Balak!"
Yes, I have not only paraphrased; I have put things into colloquial terms. But you get my drift?

The verse in Revelation is illustrative of the specific sins -- eating foods sacrificed to idols and also sexual sins. The verse in II Peter notes that Balaam loved the wages of unrighteousness; he loved what he received for breaking the commandments of God. The pleasures of sin "for a season," the rich foods and adult beverages, and the physical pleasure of immorality.  He knew that this tool: permissiveness, would bring the desired results. We have yet another example of permissiveness, of compromise, in the life of King Solomon, whose many foreign wives led him into idolatry. Nehemiah rebuked the Israelites with this history:

Was it not because of marriages like these that Solomon king of Israel sinned? Among the many nations there was no king like him. He was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel, but even he was led into sin by foreign women. (v. 26)

Now, let me make it clear as we study, that the instruction we first read in Deuteronomy had a few exceptions . . . repentant Moabites, like Ruth, were not only accepted into Israel, but she was even included in the genealogy of Jesus.  But Nehemiah knew that those who would not give up their gods would only cause Israel to compromise. They had to be excluded.

So, sometime during Nehemiah's absence, Satan had wormed his way in. He had introduced spiritual compromise in several different areas. It was only Nehemiah's knowledge of scripture that enabled him to see these areas where the people had strayed from God's standards of holiness.
I know this has been a lengthy post, but there's so much to see here in Nehemiah! Come back tomorrow, OK? (Grin)