Restored Relationship

Nehemiah Chapter 9:1-6 Page 475

INTRODUCTION

Asbury Revival February 8-24 2023 -

1904 Welsh Revival -

The country of Wales is one of four that make up the United Kingdom. Geographically, it lies between the Irish Sea and England. Wales is less than one-sixth the size of England.

It is made up of coastal and mountainous regions, but under its landscape lies a wealth of natural resources. The metal ore (copper, gold and iron) provided the raw material that made the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century possible.

It was the coal from Welsh mines that fueled the progression of the British Empire. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wales was the largest exporter of coal in the world.

During this time, the hard-working lifestyle of the Welsh kept the pubs full, the football matches frequent, and weekly attendance at church merely a cultural ritual.

Public drunkenness was almost non-existent. Old debts, many long forgotten, were paid off in full. Traveling theatrical agencies canceled their engagements, as everyone was in church! Profanity disappeared.

During the height of revival, while thousands were coming to Christ, football matches were canceled or scheduled around church revival meetings. Pubs were forced to close because no customers showed up.

Welsh miners bred ponies, strong and squatty, to haul carts of coal. In the dark mines, in these awful working conditions, these pit ponies were motivated through beatings and commanded by profanity-laced language. These miners were now attending the revival meetings, being converted, and their lives were changed. Upon returning to work, the miners—these changed men—tried to command their ponies without swearing or beatings, and confused ponies stood there looking at their masters not knowing what to do.

What sparked this move of God??? - through the regular preaching of the word especially by regular pastors, such as, Evan Roberts and the prayer of the people of Wales.

The powerful revival that concluded in chapter 8 is still having a practical manifestation on the people of God.

In chapter 8, there was a revival.

It was an authentic move of God with Bible preaching, heartfelt praise, and genuine repentance.

We tend to hold 4-5 day services and call them ''revivals.''

However, when the last service is over, things are still the same way they were before the first service started.

Thus, while we may have had a meeting, we did not have revival.

Not so in Nehemiah's day.

Weeks after the revival of Nehemiah 8 ended, you can still see the effects in the lives of God's people.

In Ch. 8 there was feasting. In Ch. 9 there is fasting.

In Ch. 8 there was celebration. In Ch. 9 there is confession.

In Ch. 8 we heard worshipping. In Ch. 9 we see walking.

Nehemiah 9 contains the longest recorded prayer in the Bible.

It is not just a prayer marked by length,

but by lamentation.

It's interesting that 3 of Israel's great 'national' prayers are recorded in Ezra 9, Nehemiah 9, and Daniel 9. [1]

The first part of this prayer finds the people crying out to God for redemption and forgiveness.

The second (and the longest) part of this prayer is about who God is and what He has done despite their rebellion, apathy, and sin.

We will deal with the repentance and forgiveness today and God and His character next week.

Let’s start by looking at the first few verses. Vs. 1-3

Nehemiah 9:1-3 “1 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.”

Restoration is found in God, despite our sin.

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 “10 For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.”

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 :

Sin doesn’t have to be the end of your story.

God meets our failures with His forgiveness and His faithfulness.

. This prayer take us through the stages of the human condition and the divine solution.

We will start by looking at theme which is a recurring theme throughout the entire prayer and that is:

Failure is Our Biggest Problem

If we were to 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,

Nehemiah 9:16-18 “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. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. 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,”

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.

flows through it into Joshua,

then into the Book of Judges

Nehemiah 9:25-28 “25 And they captured fortified cities and a rich land, and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. 26 “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. 27 Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. 28 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. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies.”

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.

Sin is our Biggest Problem.

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 a couple of you guys,

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 “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, -Sin- is Our Greatest 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,

Look at what Ezra says in Nehemiah 9: 17: “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:

Forgiveness is Provided by God Alone

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 Dave, 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, There are things about me that are pretty bad.

But can I tell you what I do know?

I know that nothing you or I 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.

Manasseh - 2 Chronicles 33:1–9 Page 452

Manasseh Reigns in Judah

33 Manasseh was twelve years old when he began to reign, and he reigned fifty-five years in Jerusalem. 2 And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, according to the abominations of the nations whom the Lord drove out before the people of Israel. 3 For he rebuilt the high places that his father Hezekiah had broken down, and he erected altars to the Baals, and made Asheroth, and worshiped all the host of heaven and served them. 4 And he built altars in the house of the Lord, of which the Lord had said, “In Jerusalem shall my name be forever.” 5 And he built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the Lord. 6 And he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger. 7 And the carved image of the idol that he had made he set in the house of God, of which God said to David and to Solomon his son, “In this house, and in Jerusalem, which I have chosen out of all the tribes of Israel, I will put my name forever, 8 and I will no more remove the foot of Israel from the land that I appointed for your fathers, if only they will be careful to do all that I have commanded them, all the law, the statutes, and the rules given through Moses.” 9 Manasseh led Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem astray, to do more evil than the nations whom the Lord destroyed before the people of Israel.

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.

That is the modern day equivalent.

and while abortion is a terrible thing, it does not move beyond the power of God’s forgiveness.

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:

Sin is our Greatest Problem, Forgiveness is our Greatest Need.

Romans 5:6-9 “6 For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. 7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. 9 Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.”

We also learn that: God is ready to pardon your sin! The next question is, are you ready to confess it?

Repentance isn't something we finish after coming to Jesus. It is something that grows as we grow closer to Jesus.

Spurgeon - ''Repentance grows as faith grows. Do not make any mistake about it; repentance is not a thing of days and weeks, a temporary penance to be got over as fast as possible! No, it is the grace of a lifetime, like faith itself. Repentance is the inseparable companion of faith.''

This repentant prayer is offered just 2 days after the Feast of Tabernacles has concluded.

They had spent days in the Word and in worship.

The more they heard the word the more they confessed.

Then they heard the word more and the confessed some more.

Confession of sin is like that.

It always comes when we hear, read, and study God’s Word.

When did you last get broken over your sin?

Nehemiah 9:36-38 “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.”

Following God Is Our Priority.

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.

We want to walk in obedience and follow 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 you could hardly call what you do “Following After God”.

It has often been said that we lack a long obedience in the same direction.

The Jewish people here are about to demonstrate a desire to continue in their walk with the Lord.

Sadly, it will not be extremely long-lived.

But it is much longer than the temporary commitments of our day

that often don't live beyond the benediction of the service in which the commitments were made.

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.