The Language of Ashdod | Ep35

Transcript

God’s people in the Old Testament were not faithful. Because they were disobedient to God, God finally took them away into Babylonian captivity where they stayed for 70 years. After that 70-year period of time, God brought them back to the homeland, and they were supposed to rebuild the wall and rebuild the temple, rebuild Jerusalem.

Nehemiah was the cupbearer for the Persian king Artaxerxes.

It doesn’t sound like a very good, important job, but it was very important. When he, Nehemiah, had learned that the wall had not been built, he asked the king if he could return to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall. He was given permission to return, and he became the governor of Jerusalem.

The wall was built, and reforms took place, and he went back to his job. After about 12 years, he returned and then came back to Jerusalem later on. When he returned, sometime later, he found that the people were not following the law, that they had begun to make changes, were not living according to the way God wanted them to live.

All of that is the background for our text for today, which is Nehemiah 13, 23-31. Let me read those verses. In those days, I also saw that the Jews had married women from Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.

As for their children, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but the language of his own people. So I contended with them, and cursed them, and struck some of them, and pulled out their hair, and made their swear by God, You shall not give your daughters to their sons, nor take their daughters for your sons, or for yourselves. Did not Solomon, king of Israel, sin regarding these things? Yet among the many nations there was no king like him, and he was loved by his God, and God made him king over all Israel.

Nevertheless, the foreign women caused even him to sin. Do we then hear about you, that you have committed this great evil by acting unfaithfully against our God by marrying foreign women? Even one of your sons of Jehoedah, the son of Elisha, the high priest, was son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. So I drove him away from me.

Remember them, O my God, because they have defiled the priesthood and the covenant of the priesthood, and the Levites. Thus I purified them from everything foreign and appointed duties for the priests and the Levites, each in his task. And I arranged for the supply of wood at appointed times, and for the first fruits.

Remember me, O my God, for good.” That’s a long reading, putting it in our own words. When Nehemiah got back over to Jerusalem, he found that his people were not following God’s law, that the root of the problem was they had intermarried with foreign people, and these foreign people had led them away from God. It was a brutal scene.

You know, it’s uncharacteristically, seemingly, of how God’s person would act. But notice what he did. So I confronted, contended with him, cursed them, struck some of them, pulled out their hair, made them swear by God, you shall not give your daughters to those sons, nor take their daughters for your sons or yourself.

That is really a strong action, isn’t it? But that’s how serious it was. When these people of God intermarried with people who were not God’s people, those people led them away from God, and that upset Nehemiah. Even the priests, the people who were supposed to be spiritual leaders, had intermarried with these foreigners, and they weren’t even doing the work of the priests and the Levites.

And so Nehemiah had to straighten all of this out, and that had to correct those things, even if it took violence to correct it. That’s how entrenched these people were in sin. They had to give that sin up.

And what I want us to think about is a little thing I call the language of Ashdod. You know, he mentioned it in verse 24. As for their children, these children that had come from these foreign marriages, half spoke in the language of Ashdod, and none of them was able to speak the language of Judah, but the language of their own people.

I like that thought with regard to these people were God’s people. He gave them a special language, but these people, because they had intermarried, could not speak their own kind of language, but they spoke the language of Ashdod. They spoke the language of these foreign people.

They could not even speak God’s language. I want to make some application of that. You know, Jesus established one church, Matthew 16, 16 to 18.

He promised to build that church. When Jesus asked, who do men say that I am in Matthew 16, 13, 14, they said, well, some people say your Isaiah or Jeremiah, one of the prophets. He said, but who do you say that I am? Peter, being the spokesman and man that was, spoke up and said, thou art the Christ, the son of the living God.

And he said, bless for you, Simon Barjona. Bless your blood hasn’t revealed this to you, but my father’s in heaven. And I said to you that thou art Peter, and upon this rock I’ll build my church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.

Jesus said, I’m going to build my church. Now, it wasn’t going to be on Peter. That means a little bitty rock, but it means the statement that you made, that Jesus Christ was the son of the living God.

That’s the rock upon which he built. And he was going to build the church. He did not establish many different churches.

Yet we look around us today, and there literally are thousands of churches. Jesus said he was going to build one church. In Ephesians 1, 22 and 23, it speaks of what the father did.

He said, gave him to be, that is Jesus, to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him that filleth all in all. The church and the body are the same thing. The church is a Greek word, meaning that they were called out into an assembly to be God’s people.

The word body conveys how they would operate as a body that obeys the head. But then also in Ephesians 4, 4, he said there is one body, just like he said, there’s one God and one spirit. One church? Well, why do we have so many today? And as we look at churches around us today, we hear language that is not Bible language.

Figuratively speaking, what they’re speaking is the language of Ask God. It’s not God’s language. It’s that foreign language.

And yet they’re using it supposedly in his church. I want us to think about that as we stop and think about the language we ought to use. That church that Jesus built was scattered all over the world, and they all spoke the same thing.

They all talked the same thing. But today, there are churches everywhere speaking different kinds of language, not speaking in biblical terms. And we need to understand some of that.

I want to point out simply some words, some biblical words, some modern day words used in churches that are not biblical words. Figuratively speaking, they’re speaking the language of Ask God. It’s not the language that God gave them.

Let’s think, for instance, some of those terms. One of the most common words used today is pastor. I think nearly everybody would understand what I mean when I say that churches today speak about pastors.

To them, the pastor is the preacher. He’s the man in charge of the church. Did you know that is not the way the Bible uses the word pastor? It is a biblical word, but it’s not used in a biblical sense.

A pastor, the word pastor, it comes from the Greek word poimain. And when we look at Acts 20, verses 17 and 28, we find that there are three terms used, elders, overseers, and shepherds. And that word shepherds is the Greek word poimain.

That word poimain can be translated pastors. And he is translated that way in Ephesians 4, 11. But here’s the difference.

You see, God ordained a group of men to be over the church. And he called those men elders, or overseers, or pastors. God never called the preacher the pastor.

Unless he meets the qualifications that are laid down for an elder. Now those qualifications are given in 1 Timothy 3, 1 through 8, and in Titus 1. And here’s the point that we’re making. A pastor was not a man over the church.

God never ordained one man to be over a congregation. God ordained and established a group of men to be over the church. And that group of men could be called elders, or could be called pastors.

But you could not have one man over the church. God knew that was dangerous. When you have one man over the church, he could go bad, and the whole church goes bad.

Hopefully, if there’s a plurality of pastors, a plurality of men, that will protect that church from following some one man in the era he might teach. Now the qualifications are given for pastors in 1 Timothy 3. One of those qualifications is he must be married and have children. Do you know any preachers who are called pastors, who are single men? Yeah, a lot of them.

Well, they don’t meet the qualifications laid down in 1 Timothy 3. So they’re speaking the language of Ashdod, figuratively speaking, when they call that man a pastor, when he has not met the qualifications of a pastor. We also have people referred to as reverend, or the right reverend, or father. Well, again, that’s not biblical language.

God, in his revealed will, never refers to a preacher as the reverend, or the right reverend, or even as the father. These are terms that man has devised, and when they devise it, figuratively speaking, they’re speaking the language of Ashdod. They’re not speaking the language of God.

Several days ago, I walked into a hospital room and saw a man that I did not know was in the hospital. I had known him from other places, and when I walked in, he said, well, there’s the reverend. Well, I’m not insulted by him calling me that.

He doesn’t know. He’s not a member of the church, and to me, to him, the preacher is the reverend. Somebody has to be exalted above others.

That’s not Bible. The preacher is not exalted above anybody else in the congregation, and so we should not use the language of Ashdod and refer to preachers as a reverend, or a holy father, or anything like that. The same thing can be seen when ministers are called the clergy, and everyone else is called the laity.

Those terms are not found in the Bible. Now, in the language of the Ashdod that’s spoken today, a clergy are those people who are ordained. They are officially the preacher.

The laity are simply those people in the pew. The Bible never makes that distinction. The man in the pulpit and the man in the pew are all the same.

The word clergy is not found in the Bible used in that way. In Galatians 3:26-29, he says that we’re sons of God by faith, for as many viewers have been baptized into Christ, have been baptized, have put on Christ. And then he says, and if we’re in Christ, we’re all one.

We’re all one. When we’re baptized into Christ, we’re united. We are equal.

There’s no superiority. There are different roles. The preacher has a role of preaching.

The elders have a role of overseeing, but we’re all one in terms of equality. No one is exalted above another. We’re not a reverend.

We’re not a clergy. We’re not a laity. Now, it is interesting that the Greek word clergy is not, the English word clergy is not found in the Bible, but the word from which it comes is a Greek word that stands for a lot.

And that term is used for all Christians in 1 Peter 5.3. That’s the Greek word. But again, the point is, not just a select few are the clergy, but all of God’s people, as long as that Greek word means a selected group. And God has selected that group, not through the Calvinistic way of saying you’re saved and you’re not saved, but he selected us as we obey the plan that he has laid out.

When we have obeyed the plan that he’s laid out, then we are the elected. That is conveyed in that Greek word, this clergy word that’s for clients to all Christians. And so the words clergy and laity are the language of Ashdod.

That is not biblical language. It is not what God authorized us to use. Rather, we ought to simply be Christians.

You know, there’s not any hyphenated Christians, not any certain kinds of Christians. We’re either a Christian or we’re not a Christian. Paul says in Acts 11, 26, actually Luke in Acts 11, 26, that the disciples were called Christians first at Antioch.

That’s all we are. We’re simply Christians. We’re not a hyphenated Christian.

Well, I’m a Baptist-Christian. I’m a Catholic-Christian. I’m a Mormon-Christian. No, that’s the language of Ashdod. We’re either a New Testament Christian or we’re not a Christian. We are not this language of Ashdod, language that God has not given us.

And so we need to have our language be the language of the Bible. Peter said in 1 Peter 4, 11, if any man speak, let him speak is the office of God. We ought to make sure that our language is Bible language, that we do not misuse the biblical terms, that we do not devise our own terms, but rather let’s speak as the Bible speak and let’s speak as God wants us to speak.

As we stop and close out these thoughts, let me close with a great warning. Jesus said in Matthew 7, 21 through 23, not everyone who says unto me, Lord, Lord, till enter the kingdom of heaven, and he that does the will of the Father. For many will say unto me in that day, Lord, Lord, it will not prophesy unto thy name, and thy name cast out demons, and thy name done many wonderful works.

And I will say unto them, depart from me, you that work iniquity. I never knew you. Does God know you? God can only know you if you’ve obeyed his will and speak his language.

Thanks for joining us this week and spending time in God’s Word. Special thanks to Mac Graham, John Kachelman, and LightWay Media for recording, producing, and making this podcast possible. If you’re ever in the Littleton, New Hampshire area, we’d love to have you join us for worship and Bible study on Sunday afternoons at 4 at the Senior Center.

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