Wall Street“What you are doing [lending money at high rates or usury] is not good. Should you not walk in the fear of our God because of the reproach of the nations, our enemies?” (Nehemiah 5:9) Long before Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie Wall Street where Gordon Gekko declared that greed is good, God had His own version of Wall Street where greed is definitely not good. Nehemiah was the trusted cupbearer to King Artaxerxes in Babylon. Jerusalem’s walls and gates had been destroyed around 587 BC and the Jewish remnant in Jerusalem were distressed over the wall. Nehemiah too was sad, and he asked to the king for permission and materials to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and the city gates. When he got to Jerusalem, he found the poor who were dying of hunger; property owners who were forced to mortgage their lands, vineyards and houses to the hilt to buy food because of the famine; and other landowners compelled to borrow money at high rates to pay property taxes to the king and sell their children into slavery. (Nehemiah 5:2-5) Somebody was really mean and greedy and took advantage of the famine because it was unlawful in the Torah for the Jews to charge interest to their own people. Nehemiah was angry and rebuked the nobles and rulers for their action on the basis that not only was it wrong, but God would respond to such sin by making them recipients of His wrath through the Gentile nations. (Nehemiah 5:6-9) Nehemiah was telling us a spiritual principle that whenever we sow the seed of sin, we give God permission to release the enemy into our lives like Job to judge and collect a harvest on that sin. Nehemiah understood this and warned the Jews of what their usury would unleash from God. They quickly repented and returned the money unjustly gained. As God-fearing believers, we must see to it that we are not greedy and selfish like Gordon Gekko but that our actions are loving and righteous in God’s sight. We must learn to master money and use it to tithe and give offerings for God’s purpose and glory and not let money or the love of money master us. If we love money more than we love God, we can expect the enemy of lack, sickness, poverty, oppression and bad fortune to be released to judge us because there is always a payday some day.Copyright © 2002 Eddy Ministries. All rights reserved. Subscribe/Unsubscribe: eddyn@earthlink.net
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