The distance between man and God is great. This is partly based on the greatness of God, but the distance is magnified even more by the lowliness of man.
In our day we have reduced lies to bad lies and white lies. We justify reasons for not telling the truth and it is so much a part of us that our conscience doesn’t even bother us any more.
Certainly, the Lord enabled Nehemiah and the Jews to complete the walls of Jerusalem. However, the leadership of Nehemiah was critical from the human viewpoint. The enemies of the wall threw everything imaginable at him, but he would not turn from the cause at hand. How much we should learn from Nehemiah’s example!
The amazing story of Jonah and the whale has been a favorite of children and a target of Bible-deniers. We hold that God’s word is true in all its details and have no problem believing that God prepared a great fish that could swallow a man and spit him up still alive three days later. The messages of this story are many. God holds his man responsible for the commands he has received. We also see God as the God of mercy.
The children of Israel were to keep themselves separated from the other nations but, by intermarrying with the different nations around them, they had compromised and taken on their abominations. The answer for them, though it might seem harsh, was to separate from their heathen marriages.
