Nehemiah 9-We've Failed......But God...
Notes
Transcript
Handout
This morning we will be moving forward in the Book of Nehemiah to Nehemiah 9. If you are using one of the Pew Bibles, you will find it on page 511. Go ahead and turn there and we will read some from the chapter a little later.
In last weeks message titled “Where Real Transformation Begins” we looked at how the people that were a part of the large gathering by the Water Gate were:
Marked by three characteristics:
I. They Were Hungry for the Word of God.
The people of God were hungry for the Word of God, and that hunger was seen in how they:
A. Asked for God’s Word to be read out loud to them. And then they
B. Listened intently to God’s Word. Additionally they
C. Responded to what they were hearing.
The 2nd characteristic we saw in them was:
II. They Had a Seriousness with The Word. So much so that they had:
A. The Leaders Explained the Word to them. It wasn’t enough to just hear, they wanted to understand what they were hearing. And after receiving the instruction:
B. The People Celebrated Their New Understanding.
The last characteristic we saw in the people last week was that:
III. They Were Obedient to The Word. And this obedience led the fathers to
A. Diligently seek out more answers from the Levites and then their:
B. Discoveries in The Word were Shared with their families and other people around them. Finally:
C. The Word Was Obeyed with Joy.
We closed out our time noting that:
As God’s Word becomes central to the gathering of God’s people, the Lord’s joy strengthens His people.
This morning as we look at chapter 9 We will see where the beginning of transformation led them to next.
One of the verses we looked at last Sunday morning was Hebrews 4:12 where we read: Next Slide
12 For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.
In this mornings passage we see the reality of this verse.
Would you please stand in honor of the reading of God’s Word? We will be reading Nehemiah 9:1-6 this morning.
“9 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. 2 And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. 4 On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani; and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. 5 Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be Your glorious Name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.
6“You are the Lord, You alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and You preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.”
Please be seated.
You know one of the things that has become increasingly clear to me as I study God’s Word is that to a very large degree: Next Slide
God’s Word is a record of God’s Faithfulness Despite Our Failures.
That is abundantly clear in this mornings text. The title of this mornings message is: “We’ve Failed....But God” and while this chapter is a record of the failures of the Nation of Israel, it could just as easily be written of the life of the modern day believer as well. Though failure is certainly a part of what we will be looking at this morning, much more so we will be focusing on the graciousness of God to forgive us over and over again and where His graciousness should lead us.
Let’s start by looking at the first few verses. Vs. 1-3
“Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. 2 And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.”
This takes place about 2 days after the end of chapter 8. In chapter 8 the Nation of Judah had just returned to celebration of the Feasts of the Booths also known as the Feast of the Tabernacles. It was a time of great celebration as they as a Nation recalled how God had saved their forefathers from their slavery in Egypt. It was a time of great celebration, but as you may recall one of the things they did was to have God’s Word read out loud to them. As they were listening their eyes were opened to their own sinfulness, so much so that they began to weep and mourn. However, since the Feast of Tabernacle was to be a feast of celebration for God’s graciousness, they were instructed to stop their weeping and spend a few days of celebrating the faithfulness of God, the fact that God was a God of 2nd chances was abundantly clear to them.
That celebration feast had now been over a couple days, so here we see them in verse 1 “assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads.” As we look at this phrase, we need to understand that they are treating their understanding of their sin in the same way they would treat the loss of a loved one. Sackcloth and earth on their heads was the type of behavior you would see from them as a part of a funeral procession. That is how serious they were taking the sin in their lives, these things were the external markings of deep mourning and heaviness of heart.
In verse 2 we see “And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners”. Simply put, this was family business, kind of like a family meeting we might have. Next we see a quick declaration of what they were about to do as the family of God “and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God.”
One of the things that stands out to me right from the start was, these people could not get enough of God’s Word. Remember, just last week as we looked at chapter 8, we saw them devote a serious amount of time having Ezra read to them from God’s Word, taking breaks for the Levites to explain to them anything they didn’t understand and they listened intently. Then the fathers went aside with the Levites and received even more instructions, returning to teach what they had learned to their families and others who lived around them.
They then moved into the celebration of the Feast of the Tabernacle, took a brief 2 day break, only to gather once again to hear more from God’s Word. They understood the living power of God’s Word and just couldn’t get enough. Oh that we would have the same love for God’s Word!
Keep in mind they are standing for 3 straight hours here! And as soon as that three hours of Scripture reading ends, they move into 3 hours of confession and worship to God. What follows, starting in verse 4, is the longest recorded prayer in the Bible.
This prayer illustrates a truth recorded in 2 Corinthians 7:10 which says
2 Corinthians 7:10
“10 For godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation”
We learn a valuable lesson from this prayer in Nehemiah 9, that we are going to examine this morning, and that main lesson is that :
Failure doesn’t have to be the end of your story.
This prayer shows us that we can have a bright future in spite of a dark failure.
God meets our failures with His forgiveness and His faithfulness.
There are 4 words that I see from the study of this prayer that I would like to share with you this morning, and those words are Failure, Forgiveness, Faithfulness & Following. These words take us through the stages of the human condition and the divine solution.
We will start by looking at the first one which is a recurring theme throughout the entire prayer and that is:
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Failure Is Our Problem. 9:16, 17a, 18, 26, 28, 33
If we were t take the time to go through all of the details of the prayer, we would see that the prayer is very much a recollection of the history of the failures of the Nation of Israel. It starts in the Book of Exodus, flows through it into Joshua, then into the Book of Judges and beyond into the prophets who had lived up to that point in time.
Looking at the verses we read;
“16 But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments.17 They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt....18 Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies”
This is out of the Book of Exodus. At this point in the Biblical narrative, Moses is on Mt. Sinai receiving The Law. For 40 days he had been up there and the mountain had been covered in a cloud and shook much if the time. The people got tired of waiting for Moses and asked his brother Aaron to make an idol for them. He asked them to bring him their gold and with it he would fashion a golden calf. Now I want you to notice 2 important things that are happening here.
The first is this, any ideas where this people, who had just been freed from 400 years of slavery got their gold? The Bible tells us that God softened the hearts of the Egyptians towards the Nation of Israel and they gave them gold and silver to take with them. So what we are seeing taking place here is that these people were taking the very gold God Himself had given them to form an idol that they could worship instead of the God of Heaven.
The next thing is, this calf was a replica of one of the many gods of Egypt. They were turning their back on the God Who had rescued them from 400 years of slavery and worshiping one of the gods of the people who had treated them brutally.
Verse 26 takes us to another part of their history; “Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.”
Then in verse 28 we read “But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them.”
Over and over again in this prayer we see the same theme, we see Ezra saying “There is one thing we have been really good at God, and that is sinning!”
Well, what Ezra mentions here was not unique to the Nation of Israel. It is the pattern all of us fall in, we are all really good at sinning! Throughout all of history sin jumps to the fore-front over and over again. With that thought in mind, for the point of clarification, let me explain to you a simple definition for sin. The word in the Greek language Scripture uses for sin is the word “hamartanō” and it literally means to miss the mark. In non-biblical literature it is often used in the context of shooting an arrow, particularly of shooting for the bullseye of a target and missing the mark-missing the bullseye. Now I know I am in a church full of hunters. If we used this in terms of target practice with a rifle, I could go to a shooting range with the Hull twins, we could each be given 100 rounds of ammo and targets and they may hit the bullseye 99 times each, while I may, by a move of God Himself, hit it once and do you know what that means? It means we are all 3 sinners, i just happen to be a better sinner than they are, because i missed the mark more! But the fact remains, you only have to miss the mark one time to be a sinner. And the Bible tells us in Romans 3:23: Next Slide
Romans 3:23
23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
Did you pick up what Paul writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? He writes “all have sinned”. Not some, not most, not a few, he makes it clear that this is a problem for all of us. Sin is the history of all humanity, from the time of Adam and Eve and it will continue to be that way until the end of time.
Simply put, Failure-Sin- is Our Problem.
Thankfully for us, the historical record in Nehemiah does not stop with the verses in Nehemiah 9 that highlight the sin of the Nation, it goes on to highlight the next of the 4 words we are looking at this morning, and that word is Forgiveness, you see:
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Forgiveness Is Our Provision. 9:17
Look at what Ezra says in verse 17:
“They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.”
Did you pick up the pivot point of the verse? If you have no issues with making a mark in your Bible, I would like to recommend you highlight 1 key phrase, this phase is the pivot point of the verse. The phrase “But You are a God”. This one small phrase has huge significance, not just for the individuals present that day, but for you and me also. You see: Next Slide
Here, our failure meets God’s forgiveness…Our penchant for sin meets God’s pardon for sin.
We are failures…but You are God!
We have sinned....but You are God!
We have blown it over and over again…but You are God!
Now perhaps you may be thinking right now; “Pastor Jim, I wish I could believe all of this, but you don’t know all that I have done. If you knew me, really knew me, knew my deep dark secrets. You would change your tune. You would know that God could never forgive me.”
You know what, you’re right. There are things about you, things you have done that are pretty bad. But can I tell you what I do know? I know that nothing you have done has escaped the eyes of God and there is no place in His Word where He says “My forgiveness is available to everyone except those who do_________.” In fact, I’d like to share with you one particular individual from the historical narrative of Scripture. This guys name was Manasseh, and he was one of the kings of Judah before King Nebuchadnezzar overthrew the Nation. Parts of his story are recorded in different places in Scripture, but I want to start by looking at what is recorded in 2 Kings 21:1-7 and verse 16.
2 Kings 21:1-7 & 16. King Manasseh
“21 Manasseh was twelve years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem fifty-five years. His mother’s name was Hephzibah. 2 He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, following the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites. 3 He rebuilt the high places his father Hezekiah had destroyed; he also erected altars to Baal and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of Israel had done. He bowed down to all the starry hosts and worshiped them. 4 He built altars in the temple of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem I will put my Name.” 5 In the two courts of the temple of the Lord, he built altars to all the starry hosts. 6 He sacrificed his own son in the fire, practiced divination, sought omens, and consulted mediums and spiritists. He did much evil in the eyes of the Lord, arousing his anger.
7 He took the carved Asherah pole he had made and put it in the temple, of which the Lord had said to David and to his son Solomon, “In this temple and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my Name forever....16 Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end..”
We learn in the book of 2 Chronicles that he didn’t just sacrifice one of his children but all of them.
Now, for anyone here who thinks that what they have done exceeds God’s ability to forgive, can I ask you a question? How do you stack up with Manasseh? How many children have you sacrificed to idols.
I’d like to pause here for a moment, because we are in a different era now, and while sacrificing to idols isn’t something we see in this era, but abortion takes place a lot. Maybe you are all to familiar with abortion. It could be you have had one, or paid for someone to have one. So, in your eyes you have sacrificed an innocent child. Perhaps you struggle sleeping at night because of an abortion or abortions you have been a part of, and while abortion is a terrible thing, it does not move beyond the power of God’s forgiveness.
The last verse I read on Manasseh stated the “Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end..” Historians tell us how this took place. One of the gods Manasseh worshipped was a god named Moloch. I am pretty sure I have talked about him in the past. But what would happen with Moloch is, people would bring their children to be sacrificed to this false god. This was a god who had a head like a bull with outstretched arms. His arms were carved out so they could cradle a small child or baby. Beneath the surface, where the people could not see, there were coals that were so hot that Moloch’s arms and hands became white hot. Parents would bring their children and place them into his hands. This is what Manasseh was doing. On top of that, how many of you have heard of Isaiah the prophet? Well some historians tell us that Manasseh had Isaiah the prophet sawn in 2 with a wood saw because Isaiah prophesied against him.
So, Yes, maybe you have done some pretty bad things, but something tells me you still compare favorably to Manasseh. Yet despite the wickedness of Manasseh, we read in
2 Chronicles 33:12-13
“12 And when he was in distress, he entreated the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. 13 He prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea and brought him again to Jerusalem into his kingdom. Then Manasseh knew that the Lord was God.”
If God can forgive Manasseh, he can forgive you as well, but you have to do what Manasseh did, you have to humble yourself before Him and seek His forgiveness.
We learn in God’s Word to us that:
Forgiveness is our greatest need.
We also learn that: God is ready to pardon your sin! The next question is, are you ready to confess it?
The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 5:20 Next Slide
Romans 5:20b
Romans 5:20, “Where sin abounds, grace abounds much more.”
Simply put,
We can’t out-sin the power of God’s love.
So, Failure is Our Problem and Forgiveness Is Our Provision, the next thing we learn in this mornings passage is:
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Faithfulness Is Our Promise. 9:18-21, 30-31
Look at verses 18-21 with me; “18 Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, 19 You in Your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. 20 You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold Your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. 21 Forty years You sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.”
Reading further in verses 30-31; “30 Many years You bore with them and warned them by Your Spirit through your prophets. Yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. 31 Nevertheless (by the way, this word ‘nevertheless’ is the ‘but You are God’ pivotable moment of these verses), Nevertheless in Your great mercies You did not make an end of them or forsake them, for You are a gracious and merciful God.”
Here is the truth of these verses:
God’s love is unstoppable, God’s love is unrelenting, unending, unconditional. It keeps going and keeps pursuing.
I’ve got to be honest with you, had I been God, my mercy would have ended with the golden calf, and so would the nation of Israel. I mean I gave them manna to eat day after day. I led them with a pillar of cloud by day, which not only led them but provided a break from the scorching sun. I led them with a pillar of fire by night, which not only led them but gave them warmth during the harsh cold night. I gave them water to drink and clothes that didn’t wear out. I gave them the very gold they used to make the golden calf, I would have done with them at that moment. But You are God.
This reminds me of a verse of Scripture from 1 John. In 1 John 3:1 we read: Next Slide
1 John 3:1
Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God!
You see God does not do things the way we do things. His unrelenting love pursues is, while we may give up, He doesn’t give up.
Here is what we need to understand when it comes to the love of God. God does not love you because of how awesome you are. If that was the case we’d all be in trouble. Adversely, God does not withdraw His love from us because of our wickedness, which is a good thing because if He did we would all be in trouble.
God loves us because He is love.
So our Failure is met by God’s Forgiveness and His Faithfulness, which demands a response from us, and that brings us to the 4th word this morning. That 4th word is Following.
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Following Is Our Priority. 9:36-38
As I read these verses this morning, I am going to start with the first 2 words of verse 32, because that is the lead in to verses 36-38;
“32 Now, therefore, ....36 Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that You gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. 37 And its rich yield goes to the kings whom You have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress. 38 because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.”
Do you see what is taking place here? The Nation of Judah is admitting that even though they had just completed the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem, they were still slaves in their own land. But they are not complaining to God here. They are not asking God to now give them their freedom. They are saying that we are slaves in our own land because we as a nation have sinned against you, and now we want to make things right with You.
You know it would be easy for us to look at a chapter like chapter 9 and come away with the impression that it was written specifically for those who do not know God, for those who do not have a relationship with God. That this passage is geared to bring them into a relationship with God. And while it can certainly be applicable to people that have not trusted in Jesus, that is not the target audience.
The target audience is the people of God. The target audience is us, you here today that come to church Sunday after Sunday, maybe you were raised in the church, but in all truthfulness, you would have to admit that you are very much like the Israelites, you have an understanding of God’s Word, you call yourself and Christian, but yo could hardly call what you do “Following After God”.
This mornings passage is for you, and now is the time for you to make things right. To turn away from the pattern of life that you have been living and to turn to that God Who has unrelentingly pursued you.
We are going to close out our time this morning with a video. The video is a song written by John Mark McMillan, but made popular by The David Crowder Band. The song is “How He Loves”. As you listen, I want you to prayerfully consider how you need to respond this morning. I will then close our message in prayer.