For what was the oldest sin?  What was the very first sin that entered into this fair earth of ours?  Some say it was pride, or selfishness, or hard thoughts of God.  But surely it was no other sin than this, the keeping of bad company.

There was Eve in the garden.  God had provided her with company; He had given her Adam, the holy angels came in and out of that fair paradise; nay more, God Himself was her friend, in the cool of the day He walked with Eve under the trees of the garden, walked and talked with her as a companion and friend.

But, in spite of this, Eve got into bad company.  She stands, she talks, she entertains Satan, the great enemy of God, against whom she must often have been warned by God and the holy angels.  And the consequence was that Eve lost paradise, became a sinner, and brought sin and all its attendant miseries into the world.  We should never have had our weary battle with sin if Eve had not kept bad company.

Nor was Eve the last of those who have brought trouble on themselves and others by the same sin.

If the descendants of Seth had not kept bad company and made friends of Cain’s wicked race, the flood would never have swept them away.  If Samson had not gone into bad company he would never have lost his strength, and have had to grind blindly and miserably at the mill.  If Solomon had not kept bad company idolatry would never have ruined Jerusalem.  If Rehoboam had not kept bad company the kingdom of Israel would never have been divided; and again, and again, both in the history of the past and in the story of the present, we see men and women led astray by keeping bad company.

We have already seen Nehemiah taking strong measures to put down three of the great glaring evils which he found in Jerusalem on his return.  We have now to see him battling with this dreadful curse and snare—­bad company.  If the other three evils needed strong measures, Nehemiah feels there is a tenfold need to take decided steps in this fourth and all-important matter.

For what does he find as he walks through the streets of Jerusalem?  He discovers that the inhabitants of the holy city are fast becoming foreigners and heathen.  He hears the very children in the street talking a language he cannot understand.

So common has marriage with heathen foreigners become, that Nehemiah sees clearly that unless something is done to put a stop to it the next generation will grow up utterly un-Jewish in language, appearance, and dross, and worse still, heathen in their religion, kneeling down to idols of wood and stone, and carrying on in Jerusalem itself all the vile customs and abominations of the heathen.

’If the girls are pretty and nice, and if the men like them, why should not they please themselves?’ So the Jerusalem folk had talked in Nehemiah’s absence.  They quite forgot to what it was all leading.  They shut their eyes to the danger of keeping bad company, they thought only of what was pleasant and of what they liked, they quite forgot to ask what was right, and what was the will of God.