Covenant Renewal: A Path to Restoration
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Good morning!
Please keep your Bibles open to Nehemiah 10. Last week, we saw the collective repentance of the Nation of Israel, and God welcoming them back into covenant relationship with Him. The biggest part in that passage is arguable verse 33, where they said
33 You are righteous concerning all that has happened to us, because you have acted faithfully, while we have acted wickedly.
They acknowledged they deserved what happened to them and they acknowledged their sin against God. That really is the crux of Nehemiah’s time with the people - they have repented from their sin and railed against the sin of their fathers against the Lord.
This week, we are going to see what that the Lord’s restoration in their lives motivated them to do. This entire passage is best seen as a ceremony of the people signing a covenant agreement with the Lord - not unlike how a bride and groom sign a legal marriage license after the ceremony of a wedding takes place. We see their restoration motivate them to gratitude, which bears itself out in certain commitments and a newfound spirit of obedience to the Lord and His law that hadn’t existed among the people of Israel since the time of King David.
The key here is that they are motivated out of the love and gratitude for the Lord because of the renewal He gave them - He worked in their lives and in the life of the community in such a way that they are expressing their love and gratitude to Him through obedience. Christian brother and sister - is this text relevant to us today, even though we aren’t Jewish like the people in the story are? Yes!!! I want you to think of this question throughout our time together - “What does my love and gratitude to Jesus motivate me to do for Him?”
If you take only one thing away from our time in the Word today, let it be this fundamental principle: Those renewed by God respond with obedience in everyday life.
If you are a note taker and didn’t get a copy of the bulletin insert this morning, here is an outline of what we will be discussing today:
Documenting Resolve (9:38)
Shared Commitment (10:1-27)
Promises Implemented (10:28-28)
Documenting Resolve (9:38)
Documenting Resolve (9:38)
38 In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement in writing on a sealed document containing the names of our leaders, Levites, and priests.
The author says, “In view of all this…” What is he talking about? In the last section, the Israelites are beseeching God to intervene on their behalf. Their tax burdens are so high they simply cannot afford to live - they said in verses…
33 You are righteous concerning all that has happened to us, because you have acted faithfully, while we have acted wickedly.
and
36 Here we are today, slaves in the land you gave our ancestors so that they could enjoy its fruit and its goodness. Here we are—slaves in it!
In Nehemiah 9 the people collectively confess that the exile was not a failure of God’s promises but the result of their own covenant unfaithfulness. They acknowledge that God was righteous in the judgment and merciful in allowing their return. Our entire passage today is about the formal renewal of the covenant between God and the Israelites after the exile. It is only after our passage today that they begin to identify themselves again as God’s chosen people (see use of covenantal language used in 10:29).
But verse 9:38 shows the simple intention of documenting the names and terms of the agreement between the people of Israel and the commands of the Lord passed down from the time of Moses. It shows their true intention to be God’s covenant people again. What were they required to do to meet their end of the covenant? Be obedient to God! Remember, if you look at the book of Deuteronomy, it shows that the principle of the covenant with Israel was blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. After 70 years in exile and another 100 or so trying to come back, do you think they wanted to find out what other curses God could come up with if they chose to continue living in rebellion like their ancestors? Nope! They were ready to pursue obedience with laser-like focus. In fact, it was their drive toward obedience that the enemy would morph into the legalism of the Pharisees we would see in the Gospel accounts - those took place only about 400 to 450 years after the events of Nehemiah. The Pharisees were so afraid of being exiled again that they allowed themselves to believe that outward obedience was so vitally important that they forgot about obedience in the heart - which is what Jesus’ charge against them was.
So they are gathering as a people to formalize this renewed covenant and take their places back as God’s chosen people. In Christianity today, we would do well to take their example. There are times we repent of our sins over and over again, sometimes refusing to recognize the grace God has already exercised over that sin - almost like we are unable to forgive ourselves for our sin. Remember this though - we are not supposed to hold on to the guilt of our sin longer that God. What were His words to the prostitute thrown at His feet?
10 When Jesus stood up, he said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”
11 “No one, Lord,” she answered. “Neither do I condemn you,” said Jesus. “Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”
If you are holding on to the guilt of your sin, but you believe Jesus’ death on the cross was enough to cover your sin, you are in a bit of a pickle my friend! God’s word says not to condemn yourself for the things He’s forgiven you for. I hammer a lot on the seriousness of sin, but sometimes I may neglect the flip-side of that coin - the tremendous grace of Christ over our sin. We don’t want to be licentious in our sin in anyway - we want to take sin seriously. But I think there are a lot of people who hold on to the guilt of their sin as a means of punishing themselves when God has no intention of punishing you in the first place! The punishment that brought us peace was on Jesus Christ - He bore our grief and carried our sorrows so that we could be free from the burden of sin forever!
Christians - confess your sins to the Lord and let Him purify you from them and be done! Don’t carry that dead weight around with you any longer! That was never God’s intention for you - don’t let the psychological need for punishment dictate how you follow Jesus! Accept the free gift of forgiveness He gives you through His shed blood on the cross and get back to your main job - to love and enjoy God, glorifying Him forever.
I want to recommend an exercise for you to do today with your families. Get together and brainstorm ways that God has worked in your lives. It could be through His miraculous provision, through His intervention with health, or harvest, or even through a restored relationship. Write these things down and spend some time thinking about how the Lord’s love for you is represented in that list. Let that list be evidence for you of God’s love and care over you. Remembering these things and thinking about them when you feel overwhelmed will remind you that He is with you and wont forsake you - even when you feel like you may have been forsaken by God. Remember what He’s done in your life and allow the gratitude for that to well up inside you! Allow yourself to sing songs in praise and worship to the Lord - even if the bucket you carry your tune in has a hole in it!
We are going to see more detail of the renewed covenant between God and the Israelites, but what I want you to look at is the effect of renewal on their hearts and the fact that their gratitude lead them to respond to God with obedience to Him and His statutes for them.
Those renewed by God respond with obedience in everyday life.
Shared Commitment (10:1-27)
Shared Commitment (10:1-27)
Nehemiah 10:1-27
This section is honestly just the names of those who were there and signed the agreement in verse 9:38. There are 84 leaders here signing the covenant on behalf of the entire people - but did the renewal stop with them? No! It went on to all the people. This was a communal pledge that signified unity and shared responsibility among God’s people.
If we fast forward, roughly 2,450 years to today, the church is in the position the Jews once enjoyed as God’s people, though we haven’t replaced them forever - Scripture is clear that God still has a plan for ethnic Israel. But in terms of how God deals with and interacts with humanity, the Jews have been temporarily set aside and God’s work is focused on the church until He comes back to establish His reign on earth.
We see the same need for unity and shared responsibility as much - if not more so - in the church today than we saw in the nation of Israel in Nehemiah’s Day. After all, Jesus prayed for the unity of the church:
20 “I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their word.
21 May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me.
22 I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one.
23 I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me.
24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation.
25 Righteous Father, the world has not known you. However, I have known you, and they have known that you sent me.
26 I made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them.”
If we are to press into Jesus and really love Him with our entire heart and soul, unity must become a priority for us as it was obviously a priority for Him. He is praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, waiting for His betrayer and the thugs the Pharisees sent with him to take him to an unjust trial and unjust death, and yet He is taking the time to pray for you and me. In an hour like that - in the moment when life itself is on the line, Jesus remembered to pray for us - that we would glorify the Father by being unified.
Some say it might be a stretch to attach our love to Christ to sharing His desire for unity, but may I remind you of His words earlier in John:
15 “If you love me, you will keep my commands.
14 You are my friends if you do what I command you.
In both verses, Jesus presents our love for Him in a conditional (if/then) statement - we love Jesus - if we keep His commands! Am I espousing the need for legalism? Of course not! I am saying our love for Christ can be determined by our desire to do what He says! Husbands - if you never take your wife’s advice or ignore what she says, will she believe you when you tell her you love her? Of course not! And she shouldn’t either, because you’ve given her every reason to believe the contrary!
When we tell Jesus we love Him and want Him to be the Lord of our lives, there needs to be evidence backing that up - and the evidence He speaks of in John is obedience! Is that to say that we can’t be saved if we’re disobedient? I’m not saying that at all! To say that we are saved by obedience would be the same thing as saying that we are saved by works - making Christ’s death and resurrection useless to us. We know that salvation through works is not possible - it was one of the key points of Martin Luther’s 95 Theses that he nailed to the church doors in Wittenburg that sparked the Protestant Reformation!
Cool fact - a bit of a side note: Coffee was brought to Europe in 1515. Martin Luther started the Protestant Reformation in 1517. Moral of the story - never underestimate the impact of a caffeinated pastor!
We are saved by grace through faith - it is not of works so that no man can boast! We are not saved by obedience, however we show our love to Christ by obeying His commandments. As a church, we must remember that our unity means that each of us are taking responsibility to follow after Jesus individually as much as possible so that as a whole group, we aren’t bringing in our own sin and detracting the group from holiness. Our individual commitment to Christ is a small part of the greater whole of the entire church’s communal commitment to Christ - if we want to be committed to Christ as a church, everyone in the church needs to be committed and submitted to Christ.
I love what Paul says in
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!
18 Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and he has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”
The Jews of Nehemiah’s day were experiencing the renewal of God by being graciously allowed to enter back into covenant relationship with Him. What about the church? We are given a greater ministry! We are to call the lost back to God through the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross for the forgiveness of our sins! We plead with people to be reconciled with God through Christ! There is an old nature that exists in all of us that we fight and put to death over and over again - but Christ has made within us a new person and has done away with the old! When we go home to be in glory, all the effects of the stained sin nature of the old man will be done away with forever, and we will be free from the effect of sin, even though we stand in Christ, free from the burden of sin - there is a distinction there: we still live with the stain of the effects of sin in our body, but we are no longer under the burden of sin - Christ is our master, not sin!
So it is important to realize that our job as members of the church is to seek after th Lord with all we have so that the community as a whole can pursue the Lord communally with all we have together. We don’t want to be the kids in the group project who don’t contribute but get an A because we were simply placed with a good group. Obedience to Christ is important! And if it isn’t important to you, you have a good reason to ask whether or not your salvation is sincere!
Those renewed by God respond with obedience in everyday life.
Promises Implemented (10:28-39)
Promises Implemented (10:28-39)
Read with me again, starting in verse…
28 The rest of the people—the priests, Levites, gatekeepers, singers, and temple servants, along with their wives, sons, and daughters, everyone who is able to understand and who has separated themselves from the surrounding peoples to obey the law of God—
29 join with their noble brothers and commit themselves with a sworn oath to follow the law of God given through God’s servant Moses and to obey carefully all the commands, ordinances, and statutes of the Lord our Lord.
30 We will not give our daughters in marriage to the surrounding peoples and will not take their daughters as wives for our sons.
31 When the surrounding peoples bring merchandise or any kind of grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day. We will also leave the land uncultivated in the seventh year and will cancel every debt.
32 We will impose the following commands on ourselves: To give an eighth of an ounce of silver yearly for the service of the house of our God:
33 the bread displayed before the Lord, the daily grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbath and New Moon offerings, the appointed festivals, the holy things, the sin offerings to atone for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.
34 We have cast lots among the priests, Levites, and people for the donation of wood by our ancestral families at the appointed times each year. They are to bring the wood to our God’s house to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law.
35 We will bring the firstfruits of our land and of every fruit tree to the Lord’s house year by year.
36 We will also bring the firstborn of our sons and our livestock, as prescribed by the law, and will bring the firstborn of our herds and flocks to the house of our God, to the priests who serve in our God’s house.
37 We will bring a loaf from our first batch of dough to the priests at the storerooms of the house of our God. We will also bring the firstfruits of our grain offerings, of every fruit tree, and of the new wine and fresh oil. A tenth of our land’s produce belongs to the Levites, for the Levites are to collect the one-tenth offering in all our agricultural towns.
38 A priest from Aaron’s descendants is to accompany the Levites when they collect the tenth, and the Levites are to take a tenth of this offering to the storerooms of the treasury in the house of our God.
39 For the Israelites and the Levites are to bring the contributions of grain, new wine, and fresh oil to the storerooms where the articles of the sanctuary are kept and where the priests who minister are, along with the gatekeepers and singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.
We see some important commitments coming from the people right out of the gate!
They promise not to intermarry with the surrounding nations - a statute God put in place through Moses to keep the Israelites from being pulled into the idol worship of the surrounding Pagan nations. They commit to obeying the Sabbath as prescribed in the Torah, to obeying the Tithe commands of the covenant of Moses and the sacrifices of firstfruits.
What they were looking for - from the outset - were tangible ways they could demonstrate their commitment to the covenant they were signing with God. The hit the big ones that are essentially what the entire book of Leviticus is about. Perhaps the Jews would have well understood what missionary Oswald Chambers would one day say:
It is only by obedience that we understand the teaching of God.
Oswald Chambers (Lecturer and Missionary)
I love that - we only learn what God means by doing what He says.
They experienced the renewal of the Lord as a community and are reacting to the Lord appropriately - motivated with a renewed sense of obedience to the Lord that they are putting into action by the enactment of the Law in their community.
Christian brothers and sisters - we don’t live under the law. We see the value in it to reveal sin to the world in preparation for the coming of Jesus Christ, but we don’t have this long list of rules to follow the way they did - so how do we practice obedience the way God wants us to? If we were to try and think of examples as closely related to the examples the Jews gave us in Scripture would be, we could say the following:
Living in a way that makes us distinct from the world around us
Steven Curtis Chapman set it best in his song “The Change,”
What about the change
What about the difference
What about the grace
What about forgiveness
What about a life that's showing
I'm undergoing the change
He’s talking about having the ability to show people he’s a Christian through external means, like a cool Christian t-shirt or necklace or Bible refrigerator magnets. He comes to the chorus to say the best way to show people Jesus has entered your life is through a changed life - a different life that is focused on living in the Lord’s holiness rather than fulfilling our own desires.
Becky made a friend in Arizona at the public school she worked at down there, and she still received accolades from that friend for having a difference about her that has helped her in her own journey back to Christ. Never ever underestimate the power of your testimony or the importance of living out your testimony in your everyday life - you never know who is watching and how you may be impacting the Kingdom without even knowing it.
Living with a rhythm of trust and rest
We live in a “Go-Go-Go” culture that values people as much as they are contributing and producing, and that is interwoven into our cultural framework - no matter how hard we try to get away from it, there are aspects of that kind of thinking that are just inherently “American” and part of all of us too. The difference is that Christians value people over production and we trust God as our main source of provision - not ourselves. I’m preaching to myself here just as much as I am to anyone else. In our text, the Jews recommit themselves to observing the Sabbath by resting on the Sabbath day and refraining from work. Christians - are we bound by the Sabbath in the same way? No! However, is there wisdom in the Sabbath? YES - YES - YES! All day long! I believe that a voluntary, non-obligatory observance of Sabbath rest is wise and healthy for people. We get too busy and confuse our work with our identity when our identity is in Christ - not what we do to provide for our families.
When preaching on the Sabbath, Pastor Charles Spurgeon said this:
I am no preacher of the old legal Sabbath. I am a preacher of the gospel. The Sabbath of the Jew is to him a task; the Lord’s day of the Christian, the first day of the week, is to him a joy, a day of rest, of peace, and of thanksgiving.
And if you Christian men can earnestly drive away all distractions, so that you can really rest today, it will be good for your bodies, good for your souls, good mentally, good spiritually, good temporally, and good eternally.
Charles Spurgeon
Intentional financial generosity
In the Old Testament, Irsael was required to give a Tithe - the word Tithe literally means “tenth.” It’s important to remember that as a theocracy, the Tithe was essentially their tax system. It’s how they supported the entire tribe of Levi, it’s where the money for their social programs came from and it’s how the temple received it’s financial needs.
In the New Testament, there is no required Tithe prescribed for us. Rather, we have a principle repeated throughout all the 27 New Testament books that God wants us to be joyful givers. There’s no percentage - many use the Tithe of the Old Testament as a guide and give 10% to the church faithfully, on top of all their other tax obligations and everything else. As the recipient of the single largest budget item for our church, let me personally say thank you to all who do give! If it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I have been doing over the last year, and I greatly appreciate every single one of you for allowing me to do it!
The principle in Scripture - to be a joyful giver - has intentionality at its heart.
7 Each person should do as he has decided in his heart—not reluctantly or out of compulsion, since God loves a cheerful giver.
16 Don’t neglect to do what is good and to share, for God is pleased with such sacrifices.
16 This is how we have come to know love: He laid down his life for us. We should also lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.
17 If anyone has this world’s goods and sees a fellow believer in need but withholds compassion from him—how does God’s love reside in him?
18 Little children, let us not love in word or speech, but in action and in truth.
Intentional financial generosity is a great way to show gratitude and obedience to the Lord - so long as it is from the heart and not from a sense of compulsion or obligation. Now don’t you worry! I’m not passing the plate around for a special donation or anything - I love you and want you to know that financially supporting causes that benefit the Lord and His people are a great means of obedience and worship to the Lord.
Giving God the first and best
This is something I imagine the church has a little mixed up because of the lack of societal and social context - The Jews were commanded to give God the first fruits of their crops and their herds. It had to be the best of the best - a spotless lamb without blemish. The biggest, ripest bushel with no bugs or rotten fruit. It was a thank-offering to the Lord to express gratitude for His provision of the entire harvest, or the entire birthing season of their herds.
Today, we don’t really have any tradition as a society that mirrors that gratitude or humility. I remember a commercial from when I was a kid, where a teenager was getting his first paycheck at a fast food restaurant and the check was for $129.99. The boss handed it to him with a smile and said with hard work and dedication, there’s more where that came from! The teen took it, looked at the amount with a half-tilted smirk and said, “I quit…” dropped his mop and walked away, staring at his paycheck. Then it cut to “The new Nintendo 64 gaming console, now $129.99!” I imagine that anyone who remembers the Nintendo 64 gaming system might remember that commercial too - and there are some of the younger guys thinking to yourself, “The NEW Nintendo 64?! This guy must be really old!”
But we can give our first and best to the Lord. One sacrificial way of doing this is by spending time with the Lord, first thing in the morning, before the hustle and hurry of the day starts - just you, the Lord, your coffee and the Bible. For many people, this is the prime time for them - however, I am especially useless for the first hour or so after I wake up, so I have to adjust my time accordingly. Don’t let yourself get legalistic about this sort of thing either, but allow it to be a blessing to you and an act of worship to the Lord.
Another way of giving God our first and best is through using the spiritual gifts He gave you in service to the church. God intended spiritual gifts to be used in the church for the benefit of the body - so intentionally putting them to use and honing those skill through skilled repetition and practice is a great way to be obedient and express gratitude to the Lord.
Supporting the work of worship
This idea also goes back to how we are involved in the life of the church. We could ask ourselves, “Are we merely attending church, or do we help carry the mission of the church through our involvement in the life of the church?” There are so many ways to volunteer within the church that it becomes a little overwhelming to think about! However, our dedication to the Lord - especially in light of what He has done in us through the power of Christ - should motivate us to practical changes that help us grow individually and as a community centered around the teachings of Christ.
Those renewed by God respond with obedience in everyday life.
Conclusion
Conclusion
What should be at the heart of every believer when we think of ramifications of John 3:16? Gratitude! Did God have to send Jesus to die for our sin? No! He was under no cosmic obligation to do so, but was rather motivated by the obligation of love He has for us and for His son. His desire to glorify Christ set Him at the center-stage of all creation so that at His name, every knee will bow and every tongue will confess His Lordship over the universe.
When we think about the condition we lived in before Christ came into our lives and the difference He has made, do we feel that sense of gratitude? I’ll admit, there are times I forget what my life before Jesus was like. I was 16 when I came to know the Lord and I have been blessed to enjoy almost 24 years with Him as my savior. There are times I forget - which is why it is so important to intentionally remember all that the Lord has done for us. When we come on hard times, we remember who the Lord is, what He has done in our lives individually, and how we have seen Him at work in the corporate life of the church as a whole.
That gratitude that we should be experiencing because of what the Lord has done in our lives should naturally have a means of expression - and that expression that we’ve been talking about today is obedience! Those renewed by God respond with obedience in everyday life. I hope that you are not taking away that we need to have some legalistic bent towards obeying God - or else! My hope and desire for you is that obedience be the natural outflow of your hearts out of the overflow and abundance of the gratitude you have for Him in your hearts.
In his commentary on the book of Luke, Biblical scholar Trent Butler said this:
Our actions show our love and gratitude for Jesus.
Trent C. Butler
Christian brothers and sisters - let us go from here today with a renewed sense of gratitude, remembering all that the Lord has done for us - and let that gratitude bear fruit in action we take for His name’s sake. Don’t think of it as religious duty, but rather an act of love for your Savior that will bless Him. Think of ways the Lord might be directing you to practice crazy obedience this week and watch what He does with it!
Let’s pray.
