home network security w negear router

[steve at horne.homelinux.net (steve at horne.homelinux.net)]

        Gentlemen -- 

I have been running a home network for too many years now.
I started out with a dual nic firewall connecting between 
the cable modem and the rest of the network,
nursed it through the various media1/attbi/comcast transitions, sendmail
configuration nightmares, etc.  Recently I purchased a Netgear
cable router and am trying to work up my courage to try it out.

In my original config (running now) I have a firewall which is somewhat 
sacrificial, serving a network which has one particular server on it that
holds everything -- eg, financial/tax records.  The firewall got hacked 
once, but I detected the event and although
the firewall was more or less destroyed, the event did no damage to
that particular server.  
It took a day to rebuild the firewall software, and I was back online.

I worry that if I drop that firewall, and connect the server directly 
to the netgear router, am I asking for trouble?

This must be a fairly common setup.  If someone who is running something
similar would describe what they did to secure it, I'd be grateful.

Currently on RH 7.3.

                        Thanks & Merry Christmas -- 
                                        Steve