Nehemiah 9 & 10

Last week, we saw the people hear from and respond to the law with joy and sadness. And I think, a lot of times, we can relate. In the moment, we also are prone to immediately respond and react.

I know, in my life, I have seen this play out. There are times where I will say something or do something that upsets my wife. I realize it, and I feel guilty. I want to “fix it.” And I do, for a few days. And then, I go back to my old ways, and it happens again.

Now, if I do that thing that upsets her, and I realize it and feel guilty again, but if I am also repentant, I will not just try to fix it. I will work to change my behavior. Repentance can’t be seen in one day, but in a string of days.

So, we see Israel has shown their guilt. Now, we see if they repent.

Nehemiah 9:1–5 ESV

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. 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.

So, right off the bat, we see that the people of Israel are taking steps to right the ship. This isn’t just guilt. This is repentance.

We ended chapter 8 in the seventh month on the 10th day. If we look at Neh 8:13, we see that on day 2 they see that they should observe the feast of booths. They do, for 7 days, and on the 8th day (day 10 of the month), they have a solemn assembly.

We start chapter 9 two weeks later, on the 24th day.

2 weeks in, and they are still at it! That is a testament to the change in heart the people are experiencing.

They gather in sackcloth and ashes, they fast, and they separate themselves from all outsiders to confess their sins. For the first 6 hours, they read from the Law.

The same law that they read 3 weeks ago.

They wanted to hear it again.

Then, after they heard the law, they did two things:

Confessed their sin.

Worshipped the Lord their God.

Notice in verse 2, they confessed their sins and the sins of their fathers.

They didn’t want to just confess their own sin, but also that of their ancestors. Not in w weird ancestor-worship way we see in Eastern religions, but in the sense that they understood that their exile had been because their ancestors had disobeyed God, neglected His law, and failed to keep His statutes.

And that was a mistake that the Jews did not want to repeat.

There is a lot to take from this. They understood that they were only responsible for their own sin, but they felt the weight of their father’s sins, and wanted to own that, in that confessing their own and their ancestor’s sins, they could help clearly articulate their desperate need for God’s mercy on them.

We see that some of the Levites cried out in prayer (v4). We see that some of them called out to the people and praised the Lord (v5).

Look at how this time of confession and repentance leads to worship:

This worship is in two parts:

Prayer (Neh 9:6-37) and Covenant (Neh 9:38-10:39)

Let’s look at the prayer first, because it drives us toward the covenant the people make with God.

Nehemiah 9:6–8 ESV

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. 7 You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. 8 You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous.

Calvin writes this:

Ezra & Nehemiah: Walking in God’s Words God’s People Responded in Prayer

It is a usual thing with the saints to plead before God what he has promised to them … for God will have our prayers to be founded upon … the constancy of his faithfulness and truth.

When we look at the prayer of the people (either offered by Ezra or one of the Levites), we see that it is absolutely full of scripture. One commentary notes:

Ezra & Nehemiah: Walking in God’s Words God’s People Responded in Prayer

In fact every verse is a quotation! They had read the Bible so effectively that they had absorbed its truths and its words. They had received God’s words, and used those words to speak to God. In this they showed their deep dependence on how God had revealed himself, how he had been gracious to his people, and how he wanted his people to live.

We see this as we start working through this prayer. The people are praying God’s words back to Him.

Now, there are a lot of verses in this prayer, and it is helpful to break it down in chunks so that we can see the big picture of the thing.

God is the one and only God, and He blesses the people (v6-15)

Rebellion (v16-31)

God blesses the people despite their rebellion (v16-25)

The people rebelled despite God’s blessing (v26-31)

Lament and appeal for deliverance (v32-37)

So, let’s look quickly at these sections and see how the prayer functions.

Part 1. God is the one and Only

We see the people pray truths about God:

God had blessed from Creation to Sinai (6-15)

We see what God has done, in choosing Abram (7-8)

We see the rescue from Egypt and the guidance through the wilderness (9-12)

We see the giving of the Law and God’s provision. (13-15)

In this first section, the people recount the story of God’s blessing and deliverance, with a focus on God Himself, and how He provided, protected, and blessed Israel.

Part 2. Rebellion

In this section, we see the people owning up to their own and their fathers’ sins.

We see how God had blessed them even though they had rebelled.

Verses 16-17 show us what the people did, while verses 17-25 show us what God did.

We see the transition in these verses between the actions of the people and the actions of God with one of the most fundamental truths in all of scripture:

Nehemiah 9:17 ESV

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.

Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. That is a beautiful picture of God.

So we see that God blesses the people despite their rebellion.

But we’re not done, because we see that, despite God’s blessing, the people rebel.

Again, in each of these verses (v26-31) this back and forth between what the people did and what God did. Let’s just read through these verses, because it is a really good picture of the Old Testament. This is a pretty great summary of what the nation of Israel has done up until this point:

Nehemiah 9:26–31 ESV

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. 29 And you warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them, and they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. 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, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.

We can, I hope, see ourselves in this passage and recognize that we are no better than the Jews here. We are just as stubborn, just as short-sighted, and just as likely to forget God the minute things go right. But when things go wrong, we act like we are the most humble Christian, and we cry out and we demand that God “fix it.”

That sounds just like what we read just now. God, who is gracious and merciful and loving does not owe us anything. His great mercy and grace are what sustains us. Those are not required of Him, and we best not demand them.

God has, because of his great faithfulness, provided for us, just as He provided for Israel.

This is a great picture of God’s longsuffering and grace.

Part 3. Lament and Deliverance

Finally in this prayer, we see the lament and confession. We see the people pray for God’s deliverance.

But, the people are doing so by acknowledging the sins of their past, and seeking God’s help in avoiding those sins in the future.

Nehemiah 9:33 ESV

33 Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.

This is a great reminder that we must agree with God about His thoughts on us. We are sinful, we are despicable, but He does love us.

This is something that sometimes we struggle with. Either we are too quick to love ourselves or we are too quick to hate ourselves. I know personally, I find it really easy to quote Job “I abhor myself,” but in doing that, I forget God’s love for me. And that is wrong too. We must have a healthy balance in our understanding of our own sin, but also in our own salvation.

The Jews here recognized their sin, and also recognized God’s goodness. And they appeal to Him for help, because they are slaves in their own land, to a kingdom that is not their own. They are under the subjection of a pagan king.

They do not say this in rebellion to the earthly authority, but in the knowledge that God had punished them for their iniquity, and they are repenting and praying for deliverance.

And we know from history that God does not free them from this pagan rule. Remember, we are in the 440s BC at this point.

Ezra & Nehemiah: Walking in God’s Words Section 3: Lament and Confession

indeed, the Jews remained under the power of the Persians, then the Greeks, then the Syrians (with some freedom in the time of the Maccabean revolt), and then the Romans, up until the time of Jesus, until the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 AD, and the defeat and dispersal of the Jews in 135 AD.

That is somewhere around 575 years from their prayer to the dispersion of the Jews. If we look to the actual formation of an independent Israel (1948), that is almost 2400 years.

God did not immediately answer their prayer for freedom. God kept them in captivity, for His glory.

But the people still prayed for deliverance.

We have to be willing to voice our prayers, and be content with God’s answers.

Ezra & Nehemiah: Walking in God’s Words Section 3: Lament and Confession

What the people were doing in Nehemiah 9 was pleading for God’s mercy in a time of judgement. This is a good prayer to pray, for the times in which we live are also the times of God’s judgement, which will climax in the return of Jesus Christ as Judge and Saviour. We live in a time when ‘the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven’ (Romans 1:18), as well as a time when ‘in the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed’ (Romans 1:17). And only those who turn to God and his Son will be saved from the coming wrath:

You turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath. (1 Thessalonians 1:9–10)

Of course the long-term solution to the sinfulness of the people of God is the saving work of the Messiah. For it is the same ‘Lamb who was slain’, who ‘loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood’, who can rescue us from ‘the wrath of the Lamb’ (Revelation 5:12; 1:5; 6:16).

That is why our sin does not drive us to despair, and that is why the sin of the Church does not drive us to despair. God’s covenant love is constant, and Jesus’ blood is God’s new covenant blood (Matthew 26:28; Hebrews 8:1–10:18; 13:20–21).

Now, the prayer shifts into a time of covenant with God.

We see in verse 38 that the people make a covenant in writing, and seal the document with names that are recorded in it.

One thing to note is:

The ESV Study Bible Chapter 9

covenant (Hb. ’amanah). The word used is not the usual word for “covenant,” which is berit, but a rarer one that emphasizes faithfulness; the people pledge to keep faithfully what they now undertake.

I liked the heading of one of the commentaries, which talks about this section as:

Ezra & Nehemiah: Walking in God’s Words Their Binding Agreement to Walk in God’s Words (9:38–10:39)

THEIR BINDING AGREEMENT TO WALK IN GOD’S WORDS (9:38–10:39)

The people are writing their names down in the first 27 verses of Chapter 10 to put their money where their mouth is, so to speak.

These people, the leaders, sign their names to bind themselves to the covenant. The whole rest of the people (v28) agree to keep it, but the leaders sign it.

When I was in seminary, the professors had to sign a document (Articles of Religious Belief and Baptist Faith and Message) when they officially begin. This is done in a convocation chapel ceremony in front of students, staff, etc. It is a public decree that they will hold to the doctrinal truths in those documents.

We as students were expected to keep those standards as well, but we were not required to actually sign them.

There is a big difference.

These leaders were expected to not only uphold this covenant, but lead the people to do likewise.

So, we see the people “enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law.”

This means that they intend to keep the whole law, not just the parts that are enumerated here. Because what is called out here in chapter 10 are specific parts of the law that deal with situations currently plaguing the people.

Intermarriage (v30) was a big issue. In Ezra, we see this dealt with in greater detail, but this was a big issue here.

There is also a restoration of the Sabbath (both weekly and annually), and the people resolve to observe it.

The people reinstate the temple tax, the offerings, the sacrifices. These are all practices that have been stopped because of the exile.

Those practices that we are learning about in Leviticus? Those are the things that they have not been doing, and they are reestablishing them here.

I think the biggest key to all of this is the last half of verse 39:

English Standard Version Chapter 10

We will not neglect the house of our God.

Let us not neglect the hose of our God, nor His work.

Let’s pray.