Nehemiah’s Leadership Playbook: Reparation

Reparation

On that day they read from the Book of Moses in the hearing of the people, and in it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the assembly of God, because they had not met the children of Israel with bread and water, but hired Balaam against them to curse them. However, our God turned the curse into a blessing. So it was, when they had heard the Law, that they separated all the mixed multitude from Israel. – Nehemiah 13:1-3

Nehemiah’s leadership playbook also teaches us a lesson in reparation. The Oxford Dictionary defines reparation as “the making of amends for a wrong one has done.” From our reference scripture today, we can see that ignorance was bliss for the Israelites until they discovered from the book of the law that they had been gathering as an assembly at variance with God’s command.

Having intermarried with other nationals for many years, and perhaps generations, contrary to the dictate of God; you can imagine the shock of the people when they discovered that God did not favor an assembly of mixed nationals. Instructively, however, immediately they saw that, they took steps to redress the anomaly by separating all the people of mixed origin in their midst. As easy as this is to read, it must have been a very tough thing to do for the following reasons.

Firstly, some of the people affected would be blood relatives and close friends. So having to excuse these people from the congregation must have been a very uncomfortable experience. But because they had a leader who was forthright in Nehemiah, it was done.

Secondly, only God knows how many people were affected by this policy of separation. They must have been in hundreds of thousands. However, Nehemiah led the people in doing the due diligence of identifying them one by one and separating them from the rest of the people. Of course, he must have also been the person heading the responsibility of communicating with the people affected so they would not have to take the decision too badly, or rue their mixed origin as it now affected their ability to congregate with the rest of the people before God.

Nehemiah and his lieutenants accomplished this difficult assignment remarkably, as we do not read any account of the exercise degenerating into chaos in the Bible. By so doing, he also left us with a lesson that whenever we discover that we have been out of synch with God, no matter how late or how far we might have gone, we should not hesitate to retrace our steps and make difficult decisions even to restore our impaired fellowship with God, or relationship with fellow humans.

As a leader, we should not shy away from leading from the front in pursuing reparation when we and the people we are leading have caused great offense to God or others.

You Will Succeed in Jesus Name!

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