Rebuild: Corporate Confession

Notes:

Introduction to reading the passage!

6 hours of listening! Thus, we can stand and hear this word from Nehemiah

It’s a story: Hear the story!

Creation, Abraham, the exodus, Sinia, the wilderness, the conquest, the judges and kings.

Pronouncement goes all the way to the end of the chapter 10.

Verse 2 sets the Agenda for the Day:

2 And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.

Two Types of Confession:

Confessing God’s glory

Confessing ingratitude

Confession of Sin

Retelling on Redemptive History:

Creation Story

Election of Abraham

Exodus

Wilderness Wanderings

Living in the Promised Land

vv. 16-17:  “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. 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.

v. 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.

v. 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.”

v. 29: “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.”

Quite the List!

Confession of Murder, Rebellion, Selfishness, Evil, Disobedience, Stiff-Necked, Refusal…

Seeing Salvation-History through Impressive Self-Awareness:

This stuff is pretty bad…

Pretty exhaustive and brutal list.

Like, God sent prophets, and they killed them… It’s like, “Lord, we’re just going to put a muzzle on those your sending to help us out here, we’re just going to kill them…”

Like, it’s a story of dramatic rebellion!

Started and ended with Slavery:

v. 9: “And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the Red Sea

v. 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.”

Look at where we put ourselves!

See the depravity of our hearts!

Addiction to Slavery.

Back where we started!

After all this time, we’re not better off!

Bit of a bummer!

We got this whole story, and we’re not better now than we were before, except for the fact that we got to experience God’s grace each step of the way!

Confession of God’s Grace

Filled with Confessions about our God!

v. 6: God is the ONLY God!

v. 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.

Hallmark Old Testament prooftext for monotheism.

v. 7: God the Elector

One of many Old Testament proof texts for Election.

v. 7 You are the LORD, the God who chose Abram and brought him out

God of Mercy

v. 17: But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

v.19: You in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness.

God the Spirit Giver

v. 20: You gave your good Spirit to instruct them…

God the Provider

v. 21: Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

v. 25: “So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness.”

God of Many Graces

v. 28: “and many times you delivered them according to your mercies.”

v.30 For many years you were patient with them.

vv. 31-32: Nevertheless, in your great [ie. Many] mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God. Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love…”

v. 28-31: “Many times… many years… many mercies.”

v. 28: Many times you delivered…

v. 30: Many yours you bore them.

v. 31: Many mercies you you did not make an end…”

Summary Verse between the Confessions of Ingratitude and Grace

v. 33: Summary Verse: “Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.”

Davis: “God’s gifts are no signs of our righteousness.” 166

Confession for Something (Someone) More

Ending that has stuck with me so much this week…

v. 37b-38: “We are in great distress. \  “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.

  “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.

v. 37: “We are in great distress.”

They see their need and they worry! We need to make this right this time!

v. 38: “We make a firm covenant in writing…”

YoYo pattern:

But this time it’s going to be different!

Sneak peek into Next Week:

Nehemiah 10: Oaths:

Intermarriage:

vs. 30: “We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take daughters for our sons.”

Sabbath Keeping:

v. 31: “We will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day.”

Temple Tithes:

v. 32-39: Commitments to Tithe so the Temple can function properly to perform all offerings.

We’re going to do it this time! We’re going to put it in writing! We’re going to pull up our sleeves and do it this time…

Ralph Klein: “In short, the prayers asks for the cycle of deliverance to resume.”

Have you ever committed this?

You know… We’re really going to do it this time?

We’re going to commit… Like, really, really this time!

“According to chap. 9, the history of sinning is our history; we did wrong—despite God’s faithful actions. The leaders and representatives did not serve God, and therefore, with punishment to fit the crime, the people are now servants, real slaves.” Ralph Klein

Another Sneak Peek:

YOYO Continues:

Reverse Order:

Nehemiah 10=20th Reign of Artexerxes

Nehemiah 13: 32nd Reign of Artexerxes

12 years later:

Temple Tithe:

Nehemiah 13:11 “So I confronted the officials and said, “Why is the house of God forsaken?”

Sabbath Keeping

Nehemiah 13:15 “In those days I saw in Judah people treading winepresses on the Sabbath, and bringing in heaps of grain and loading them on donkeys, and also wine, grapes, figs, and all kinds of loads, which they brought into Jerusalem on the Sabbath day. And I warned them on the day when they sold food.”

Intermarriage:

Nehemiah 13:23 “In those days also I saw the Jews who had married women of Ashdod, Ammon, and Moab.”

Last thing they committed to was the first thing they’d break!

Enough with the sneak peaks and back to chapter 10:

Chapter 10 ends open ended:

v. 37: “We are in great distress.”

v. 38: “We make a firm covenant in writing…”

We’re not where we want to be, so we’re going to fix it!

YOYO Effect: We find ourselves steering towards death, and the Lord restoring us!

Whenever we try to fight on our own strength, we will fail!

Great Story serves as an illustration of this:

Story I read from Dale Davis’s commentary on Nehemiah. A story he read from a book called “Best Little Stories from World War II” by Brian Kelly

Story about Bill Miller from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, February 1940.

Bill Miller purchased a brand new car. He foolishly pushed the limits on his new ride to 110 miles/hour.

In February, with significant amount of snow on the ground.

When he rounded a curve, the car breaks locked, hit a ditch, and went flying out of the windshield.

He slipped into a 4-day coma, and miraculously survived due to the heroic saving efforts a man named Warren Felty.

5 years later, Miller was a B-17 pilot. Once again, he survived another crash.

His plane was shot down over Germany and found himself, once again, in the snow. This time he was trudging through a 75 mile march with fellow allied prisoners.

In his exhaustion, he collapsed into a snow bank left to die.

He was brought back to his senses with someone shaking him, even kicking him. He was pulled out of the snow and forced him to keep walking.

It was a fellow prisoner who was making the same march. His name? None other than Warren Felty.

Same savior, 5 years later, 4,000 miles away.

After the War, Miller moved back to Pennsylvania.

Once again, finds himself in a desperate situation. He’s about to lose his job because he failed at finding a distributor who would buy his products.

A man drove up to the restaurant for the very first time. He stumbled upon Miller again, and after a brief conversation, solidified a business deal which would save Miller’s job.

That man was Warren Felty.

Unbelievable story!

Been thinking about this story all week. How remarkable of a story!

He was lost left to die and found.

He fought his battle, only to be left exhausted ready to die.

He couldn’t pay the price, but then the price was paid.

But this remarkable story compares in comparison to the remarkable story of the Gospel!

Great comfort here… Because God saw His people in destress, and he also saw their inability to keep firm in the covenant:

God’s addresses this anxiety.

God addresses their failure of keeping covenant.

We celebrate Christmas for passages like this:

Jesus Christ came in our distress.

Jesus Christ came to firm the covenant.

He didn’t do so in literal writing, but he did so with his blood!

He is the one that stops the spiritual YOYO!