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Skip Heitzig: I'll have you turn in your Bibles today to the book of Nehemiah. We're in that series currently, Nehemiah Chapter 13. I have a sort of an odd title for this message. It's called "How to Backslide." So if you want to backslide, this is your ticket on how to do it. And of course, I know you don't. And I want to show you how not to as well.

William Booth, who was the founder of the Salvation Army, had a group of young men that he was training, new officers for the Salvation Army. He said to them this little quote. He said, "I want you young men to always bear in mind that it is the nature of a fire to go out. You must keep it stirred up and fed and the ashes removed."

This is a message today to those whose fires of devotion have gone out, or are going out, and you realize you are at critical mass. You need to do something, or you're tending in the wrong direction. There is in science in what is called the second law of thermodynamics, a little law called entropy. Entropy basically says that, in simple terms, over time in a closed system, energy is lost. Things move from order to disorder and things will tend toward decay.

For example, you put ice on the sidewalk and what's it going to do? It's going to melt. Energy will be lost. The only way to overcome—and they say you really can't overcome entropy, it's a law—but the only way you could alter it or slow it down or deal with it is to add more energy into the system. If ice is melting, you want to apply cooling to the environment. You expend energy to cool the environment around it down to slow down the melting of the ice.

Or to decrease entropy in a messy room, for example. That's a closed system and when you walk by the door you're glad sometimes it's closed. But in a closed system, the only way to mitigate against a messy room is to clean it up. Expend a little energy, add a little energy to the closed system, and clean it up.

Have you noticed during this entire series—I've been waiting for this message for a long time because in the background there's a motorcycle that I want to talk to you about. I noticed this when we first put this out and this is just all for backdrop. But I know about this bike because this is a bike I had when I was in high school. Not this particular one.

But this is a Honda 450, CB 450 double overhead cam, awesome bike. I thought it was a mid-70s until I ran the VIN number. This is a 1968 Black Bomber CB 450 Honda. So it's sort of a cool collector's edition, very, very vintage. But I can tell you this motorcycle does not look the same as it did when it was new. There's a lot of parts missing. You know what happened to it? Entropy happened to it.

Pretty rapidly, not only did things deteriorate and rust and fall off, but I'm guessing it's been salvaged and parts have been taken from it. Obviously, it needs a lot of energy put into the system for that to ever be viable once again. All of that example brings me to this point. There is something I'm going to call spiritual entropy.

Just like in the second law of thermodynamics you have the law of entropy, I think you have the law of spiritual entropy. It is the nature of a Christian to tend toward disorder. If you just leave a Christian alone and no energy gets expended into the system, naturally things will tend toward disorder. Unless spiritual energy is applied. That's not to say that you are not saved.

But it is to say that if you don't do anything to the system, you will stagnate. You will stagnate. That's why Peter says in 2 Peter Chapter 1, "Therefore add to your faith virtue, and to virtue knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control perseverance, and to perseverance brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. Add to your faith."

In the same book Peter says, "Grow in the grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." Jesus put it this way in John 15, "Abide in me and I in you." In the words of Paul the apostle, Philippians Chapter 2, "Work out your own salvation, for it is God who works in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure."

In the same book in the next chapter, "I press toward the goal for the prize of the high calling in Jesus." Every one of those verses is about putting energy back into the system to fight against spiritual entropy. Now there's a Bible term for this. It's not entropy and it's not spiritual entropy. The Bible term for this is backsliding.

Backsliding is a word that shows up in the Old Testament 13 times. Chiefly in the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Hosea. The New Testament calls it falling away. James refers to it as wandering from the truth. What basically happens is a person comes to Jesus, says, "I believe in Christ, I give my life to Christ. I'm so excited, I'm so on fire."

And then over time, the fire never gets tended. Energy doesn't get put back into the system. Paul wrote to the Galatians and said, "Do you remember this verse? I marvel that you are turning away so soon from Him who called you." Or how about when Jesus wrote to the church of Ephesus and said, "I've got something against you. You have left your first love."

Backsliding is almost never a blowout, almost always a slow leak. It's gradual over time. I'm going to show you in Chapter 13 four areas where God's people were backsliding. Now let me catch you up to speed here. Let me give you the flow of this book up till this point. The wall of Jerusalem has just been dedicated. We looked at that last week.

After the wall of Jerusalem was dedicated, it was 12 years since Nehemiah came to Jerusalem and dedicated the wall. He was governor of Jerusalem for 12 years. And then something happened. What happened is he left Jerusalem and went back to Persia. Remember he was the cupbearer for King Artaxerxes.

So there must have been some kind of notion of when you're done you come back. The wall's dedicated, he goes all the way back to Persia. We don't know for how long. I'm guessing at least a year. Some scholars say up to two years. And then he comes back to Jerusalem to find it a very different place than the Jerusalem that he left.

Something has happened over time and it wasn't good. I'm going to just take you down to Verse 6 without reading all these verses. Verse 6: "But during all this I was not in Jerusalem. For in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes King of Babylon I returned to the king and then after certain days, after certain days I obtained leave from the king."

When the cat is away, the mice will play. And that happened in this city. Old evils have returned, old habits have revived, and a sense of permissiveness in the city among God's people is prevailing. This shouldn't really surprise you because this is human nature. Moses went up to the mountain to receive God's law. When he was gone, you remember what happened? Exodus 32.

What did they build? A golden calf. Didn't take long for that to happen. Moses is gone, comes back, finds it a very different congregation. Paul would establish a church, build up that church, then leave that church, turn it over to other people. Things would go wrong. He would have to write a letter to that church or visit it a second time.

All of that speaks to this issue of backsliding. When we discover it, it surprises us. It's like, "How did I get here?" Because it's subtle, it's gradual, it's incremental. But it ends up where we are thinking things that a person close to God would not think. We are saying things that a person close to God would never say.

We are doing things that a person close to God would never do. Peter swore he would never do what Jesus predicted they would do. Said, "Though all forsake you, I never will." And then cock-a-doodle-doo, right? And he ends up doing what he said he would never do.

Guest (Female): You’re listening to Connect with Skip Heitzig. Every day, friends like you help bring clear verse-by-verse Bible teaching to people searching for truth in a world that often feels confused, divided, and uncertain. And this month we want to thank you with a powerful resource designed for times like these.

When you give, you’ll receive *City in Shambles*, Pastor Skip’s complete 18-message study through Nehemiah on CD plus digital download. In these messages, you’ll discover how God works in seasons of spiritual and cultural collapse, how prayer and obedience become the starting point for renewal, and how ordinary believers can respond with faith instead of fear.

We’ll send this resource as our thanks when you give $50 or more to support Connect with Skip Heitzig. Call 800-922-1888 or visit connectwithskip.com/offer. Now, let’s return to today’s teaching.

Skip Heitzig: This is how to backslide. Number one: Misplace your Bible. You want to backslide? Do that. Chuck your Bible out the door. Don't read the text of Scripture. Just let it rot for weeks or months. Never pick it up maybe except on Sunday. Misplace your Bible. Verse 1: "On that day they read from the Book of Moses in the hearing of the people and it was found written that no Ammonite or Moabite should ever come into the congregation 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. And so it was when they had heard the law that they separated all the mixed multitude from Israel." Now they had read the Bible before. Back in Chapter 8 there was a huge revival that happened. When Ezra read the law, they were cut to the heart, they were convicted.

They realized that all of their pain as a nation was because they'd turned from God. So they vowed never to do that again. That's why the captivity happened. So they had read and they were convicted but then when Nehemiah left, evidently they hadn't read the Scriptures for a long time. At least a year if not more.

But on one day, somebody opened the Bible, read from the Book of the Law, and once again the Word of God did the work of God in the hearts of the people of God. One time the Word of God was front and center. That was then, this is now. Time has elapsed, their Bibles have been misplaced. They've either forgotten or simply neglected the Scripture and because of that a permissiveness has set in until now.

When Christians neglect the Scriptures, they are neglecting the only source of pure, undiluted truth. It's one thing to hear a sermon like this, but when you read the Scriptures for yourself, it's the only source of pure, undiluted truth. And when you neglect it, it leads to confusion, apathy, emptiness, dryness, joylessness, indifference. It makes you vulnerable to temptation.

It makes you lukewarm and it makes you fruitless. Who wants to sign up for that? I don't. When the Bible is sidelined, you become gullible. When the Bible is sidelined, you become easily swayed by false ideologies. Because you're no longer mainlining the truth. The truth has been sidelined and now you're just open to everything and everyone's ideas. Remember what Jesus said in the New Testament to the leaders? He said, "Neglecting the commandment of God you hold to your tradition."

I'm going to put this up on the screen. This is the admission of one author who said, "When I look back on the periods of my life when I neglected the Bible, I can see a clear pattern. A growing disconnect from God. In those moments it was as if I had put up a wall between God and myself."

"Psalm 119:105 reminds us, 'Your word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path.' Without that light, I stumbled in the dark of worldly concerns, gradually drifting away from the source of all wisdom and guidance. One of the most striking consequences of not reading the Bible was the gradual erosion of my moral compass."

"The Bible provides clear guidance on right and wrong, but without regular exposure to its teachings, I found myself susceptible to the moral relativism of the world." So if you want to backslide, just get rid of your Bible. Just neglect it, sideline it. But if the first step to backsliding is to neglect Scripture, then the first line of defense is to not neglect it. Read it. Get back to it.

When I was first saved, I remember quite clearly I was drawn to the person of Jesus. Jesus was described in a way that was fresh and very winsome and compelling to me. But the Bible was a different issue. I knew I needed to have one so I got one. But it was difficult. It was hard to figure out. And I had like the easiest version of the Bible you can get.

It was called *Good News for Modern Man*. I don't know if any of you have ever seen that but *Good News for Modern Man* makes the New Living Translation seem difficult. I mean it was just like my dog could understand this. But though it's easy language, I'm asking questions like, "Why are they telling the same story four times?" beginning in the New Testament: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

It's the same stuff. And so I had a little difficult time reading it but I kept reading it. Then I decided I needed to buy a real Bible because this was just a paperback New Testament with a funky drawing on the front. I thought I've got to get serious. So I wanted a leather Bible. I remember going to the Bible bookstore and I bought an old King James leather-bound Bible.

Things went from bad to worse at that point in terms of my understanding. But it happens to be a Bible I still cherish to this day. A version I still read, by the way. As I kept reading it, I noticed a change. I noticed a change in me. I noticed a change in appetites, desires, values, activities. Not only did I notice it, my parents noticed it. They weren't too excited about it but they noticed it. My friends really noticed it.

Let me give you three words when it comes to not neglecting the Bible and getting back to it and placing it front and center: discipline, desire, delight. At first, it's a discipline. It's like, "I don't understand, I don't get it, I have so many questions when I go through it." That's the discipline part.

It'll never become your desire until it is first your discipline. But once you stick with the discipline, you will discover it becomes a desire. You have a voracious appetite for truth. And then eventually it becomes a delight, where you can't live without it. Like David who said, "Oh how I love thy law, it is my meditation all the day." So that's number one. If you're going to backslide, get rid of your Bible.

Number two: Misalign your companions. Get really bad friends around you. If you want to backslide, get a crowd of people around you that will hold you back spiritually and you will be sure to backslide. Go down to Verse 4. Watch this: "Now before this, Eliashib the priest, having authority over the storerooms of the house of our God, was allied with Tobiah."

"And he had prepared for him a large room where previously they had stored the grain offerings, the frankincense, the articles, the tithes of grain, the new wine, oil which were commanded to be given to the Levites and singers and gatekeepers and the offerings for the priests. But during all this, I was not in Jerusalem, for in the 32nd year of Artaxerxes King of Babylon I had returned to the king, then after certain days I obtained leave from the king."

"And I came to Jerusalem and I discovered the evil that Eliashib had done for Tobiah in preparing a room for him in the courts of the house of God. And it grieved me bitterly. Therefore I threw all the household goods of Tobiah out of the room." Don't you love Nehemiah? He just starts chucking it out the door.

There's two main characters in these verses that we just read. There's Eliashib the priest and Tobiah the Ammonite. You remember Tobiah from Chapter 2? He was one of the two enemies of the Jews. There was Sanballat the Horonite. Then there was Tobiah the Ammonite. And those guys were buddies with each other and they hated the Jews and they did not want the city to be rebuilt.

Now he's living in the temple. One of the enemies of God is living in a storeroom in the temple. Imagine letting him set up headquarters in the house of God. And it's being promoted by the high priest. Eliashib is the high priest. Eliashib you may remember, he's been mentioned several times in this book. In the list of workers who built the wall in Chapter 3, he was number one on the list. But now he's hanging out with the enemy.

It would be like if you came to church or I came to church and discovered that one of the pastors on staff let the Ayatollah from Iran have a room in the church. "Wait, what? He's living here?" I mean, he's the guy who said "death to Israel" and "death to America." He's living here? That's what Nehemiah discovered.

Why would the high priest do this? Go down to Verse 28. It says, "And one of the sons of Joiada, the son of Eliashib the high priest was a son-in-law of Sanballat the Horonite. Therefore I drove him from me." One of Eliashib the high priest's relatives is married to Sanballat's daughter. Sanballat and Tobiah are buddies. Tobiah figures this is a way, by hanging out with the high priest, that they can get into the city to destroy it and to overturn it.

Guest (Female): Thanks for joining us today on Connect with Skip Heitzig. Before we go, remember your generosity helps share God's word with people around the world, offering biblical truth and hope in a time when many feel discouraged or overwhelmed. And this month, we'd love to thank you for your gift of $50 or more by sending you *City in Shambles*, Pastor Skip's complete 18-message study through Nehemiah on CD plus digital download.

These messages will encourage you to respond to brokenness with prayer, repentance, and courageous faith, and remind you that God still rebuilds what's been torn down. Give today at connectwithskip.com/offer or call 800-922-1888. See you next time on Connect with Skip Heitzig.

Guest (Male): Ready to go deeper in your faith and discover your calling? The School of Ministry at Calvary Church in Albuquerque is designed to equip you with practical Bible teaching, hands-on ministry training, and real-world experience. Whether you're called to lead, serve, or grow, this is your next step. Classes are forming now. Visit calvarysom.org to learn more and apply today. That's calvarysom.org. The School of Ministry at Calvary Church. Your calling starts here.