Sermon Tone Analysis

*Intro*

Raise your hand if you have a really bad memory?

Raise your hand if you have been guilty of forgetting any of the following:

1. Letting a hot cup of coffee~/tea go cold

2.

Where you left your keys…wallet~/purse

3. What you went to shop for

4. Washing in the washing machine

5. Taking food out of the freezer

6. Charging your phone or Ipod

7.

Where you parked the car

8.

Your age (my mom has two birthdays and forgets both of them)

9. Loved one’s birthdays

10.

Burning toast

11.

Someone’s name ten seconds after he~/she told you

12. Pray for someone after you told him~/her you would 

It is good to know that I am not alone because I have been guilty of all of them.

The worst for me is forgetting someone’s name right after they told you, especially if afterwards you want to pray for them and you resort to “brother…or sister…!”

But I think there is a severe memory loss that often happens to God’s people.

It’s called spiritual amnesia.

For example, the people of Israel saw miracle after miracle with the plagues in Egypt and even saw the Red Sea parted right before their eyes.

But what happens as soon as they get to Mt. Sinai?

Moses goes up to talk with God and being gone six weeks, the people immediately start building their own god and rebelling.

When you get to Numbers, you find the people really irritating.

Why were they always doubting?! We wonder.

I think Judges is another classic book that details the cycle of God’s people forgetting the Lord, sinning, crying for deliverance and forgetting the Lord all over again.

But it doesn’t take long before we start to see that they are actually reflective of us.

The disciples in the New Testament are the same way.

Soon after Jesus multiplies the loaves and fish, they would find themselves in a similar predicament again and they are still questioning how to feed the people!

How many times did Jesus have to calm the winds and the waves for them?

Yes, we know it all too well.

We are forgetful people.

We need to pray for better memories.

We have always been forgetful and so if you ever noticed in the Old Testament, they have psalms and books repeating the stories over and over again.

Why did they do that?

They knew the importance of remembering, because we all easily forget.

Samuel Johnson said it best that, “People need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”[1]

Today we are going to look at Nehemiah 9, where the people of God remember.

Their remembrance is going to be in a form of confession of sin.

They are going to serve as an example to us, especially when we have spiritual amnesia.

So we are back again in the book of Nehemiah.

The theme of the book is “Building God’s People for God’s Work.”

We spent the first seven chapters looking into doing God’s work, but now learning in Neh.

8-13, what it means for God to build us as His people.

Nehemiah, after building the wall, brings in Ezra the priest in Neh. 8 to bring the people back to the Word of God and the God of the Word.

Revival is the first step in building God’s people!

If you remember last week, the people celebrated the Feast of Booths.

It was a week-long festival where the Jews would live in tents for a week, remembering their ancestors who also lived in tents between Egypt and the Promised Land.

It was celebrated on the 15th day of every New Year.

The Jews celebrated this to 1) Look back and thank God for His faithfulness in the past 2) Look around at His blessings in the present and to 3) Look ahead, remembering that they were not put their trust in walls and anything they cannot take with them after they die, but in the Lord and the city He has prepared for them.

Today they are going to elaborate on those three items in more detail here in Neh. 9, focusing more on looking back than the other two.

Let’s start with this:

*I.

Make time to intentionally and purposefully remember (Neh.

9:1-5) *

We pick up the story in Neh.

9:1.

It is still the first month of their year, which would be our September-October time (right about now!).

Day one of the month was dedicated to celebrating the New Year and it was called the Feast of Trumpets.

Day 10 was the Day of Atonement (not mentioned in Neh.

8) and Days 15-22 was the Feast of Booths.

Now we are in Day 24.

They just had a joyous festival, but all the feasting has suddenly turned into fasting.

Look at Neh. 9:1.

“Wearing sackcloth” symbolizes mourning and humility.[2] Sackcloth was a poor quality material or a garment of goat hair, usually dark in color, though the shape of the garment is disputed.[3]

This is accompanied by throwing dust over their heads.

This was a ritual symbolizing repentance (cf.

Matt.

11:21).

Stephen Davey says, “The dirt was a way of exposing and admitting their soiled hearts before God and each other.”[4]

What I found interesting was that everything seems to be “out of order” since Neh.

8.

The order was supposed to be: celebration (Day 1, Feast of Trumpets)—repentance (Day 10, Day of Atonement) --- celebration (Day 15, Feast of Booths).

We kind of do that with our holidays.

We have Christmas, a time of celebration.

But Good Friday is supposed to be a time of mourning, but then Resurrection Sunday, a time of celebration.

We do the same thing when we partake of the Lord’s Communion.

However, here, on day one itself if you recall, people were weeping over their sin (Neh.

8:9).

Now after the Feast of Booths, they are again grieving over their sin.

It made me realize this: that when God gets a hold of people, it is not always neat and orderly.

It is rather messy.

God does not fit in our nice boxes.

Here we have a special movement of God among His people and sometimes that messes up everything.

Who says you can only think about your sin on the Day of Atonement?

This is really a special move of God.

I remember some of my professors saying at Wheaton that when the revival broke out in 1995, some of the other professors were not too excited about it.

Kids were confessing sin until the wee hours of the morning and some of the professors were angry because they were supposed to be in class the next day.

I wonder what those professors would do and say if Jesus came at the Rapture?

Hold on Jesus, I need to give this test today!

But notice how intentional they are here.

They are wearing the appropriate attire, setting time apart to come together in solidarity with their ancestors in Neh.

9:2.

The reason they separated from all non-Jews was because they were going to confess the sins of their own people.

Notice again the connection between reading the Word of God and conviction of sin.

The Word is a mirror that shows you how dirty you are (James 1:23).

They read for a while, they confessed and worshipped in Neh.

9:3.

This may have included reading from the Pentateuch and singing some of the Psalms.

Then in Neh.

9:4-5, the leaders take the lead in demonstrating humility, unity, confession and praise.

Here two lists of Levites are given, probably because they had different roles, and five names are repeated, but they are leading the congregation in this confession.

This is a good word for the Servant Team here.

We must take the lead in these things for Living Hope!

But what I see here is that they took time to remember.

Nehemiah 8 focused on God’s Word to them; now the people respond with their words to him, words of genuine sorrow about their sins and of grateful remembrance of God’s grace.[5]

After the Feast of Booths, they should have gone back to their day-to-day routines, but being moved by God’s Word, they wanted more.

So they set time apart to seek the Lord.