Nehemiah 10
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Good Morning please turn with me in your Bibles I am telling you every week we have gone through this study on the book of Nehemiah something has tugged on my heart and taught me some things about Him, I hope and pray that has been true for you as well.
The topic this morning is all about change, now if you have been a Christian for very long you have probably said something like this: Ok now that I have surrendered my life to Jesus and I have made some changes, how am I different than before?
Now as a Christians there are some areas of your life if you have been truly saved that you can identify very quickly that are different about you, you all of a sudden wanna come to church, you wanna read your Bible, you want to stay away from sin.
Chances are there are some categories of your life where you are still hanging on to the old life, its like the desire is within you and let go of those things whatever they are but it’s just not there. What does it take to bring about complete and totalt change in your life?
is there to help us.
Let’s review chapter 9 We have the longest prayer service in the Bible.
The people are looking back over their past, and examine the lives of their ancestors and what they did or didn’t do and they were asking themselves the question, HOW DID WE END UP IN THIS SPOT AS SLAVES?
Where did we go wrong?
They reflect on the actions of their ancestors and it becomes very apparent that they were disobedient and turned their backs on God and God does not bless disobedience. One of the things that happened is God made a covenant and He said your going to be my people and I am going to be your God but heres the thing heres how this thing is going to go.
You be obedient to me and your going to be blessed, if your disobedient I am not going to bless you. So because the people since they were continually rebelling against Him time and time again, God says this is what needs to happen and if you really love someone this is what needs to happen.... DISCIPLINE
IF you really love someone that is exactly what you need to dois bring corrective discipline into that person life in a way that is helpful. So GOd does that, and he uses first the Assyrians and the Babylonians and then the Persians, and they come down on the Israelites, so now it has been several hundred years after this that God has allowed these foreign people to come in and conquer them.
But then because of God’s mercy they realize that God has never fully turned His back on them and in fact His arm is always out there extended it is the people who turned their back. Now they find themself at this point in History where God has smiled on them and He has moved on the Persian King Artaxerxes heart and he has allowed the Israelites to go back to their homeland and begin rebuilding.
So they rebuilt the wall in 52 days under the Godly leadership of their man Nehemiah the wall is built. People start coming back they begin living in the city once again, the begin worshipping God in the Temple, worshipping God the way He wants to be worshipped.
Now we gotta wall we have more freedom to worship god the way He wants to be worshipped for the first time in hundreds of years! He is blessing us.
They come together, for two top priorities
The worship of God
The learning and applying of the Word of God
But what happens when you read Gods word something happens you become convicted because you see God’s standard and you realize where your not lining up with what God expects and these people are now under conviction because they realize WE DONT WANNA MAKE THE SAME MISTAKES OUR ANCESTORS MADE BECAUSE IF WE DO, HERES HOW ITS GOING TO GO DOWN, THAT WALL AINT GONNA LAST GOD WONT ALLOW IT TO, GOD WILL BRING DISCIPLINE ON US AGAIN!
That Temple as nice as it is now, if we rebel against God its not gonna be there. They look back over their past the see the mistakes their ancestors made, and they said I am not going back there.
In fact they are so serious about making these changes they enter into a covenant. Now we don’t use that word much anymore but essentially this word was a very strict promise, they were very important back in the day.
so its one thing just to say i wanna get right with god i am ready to make the neccesarry changes I wanna read my Bible I see fully I have no excuses I see what God wants from me. I see how I am living my life and now I need to step into that, I need to step into that space, that is in Gods will so that I can be blessed.
They are so serious about making this commitment they say, Heres what were gonna do.
“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.
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.
Now I want to point out a couple of things for you here I am readin from the ESV first of all this is not the normal word for covenant in the Hebrew which is interesting.
This word actually emphasizes faithfulness and I was thinking about that, why use this word?
I think it sets up chapter 10
Because as they look back over their waywardness they also understand that while we have been faithless God has been faithful.
Isn’t that true for us, when we are faithless, God has been faithful
He hasn’t abandoned us, has He had every right to? YEAH
But He hasn’t. So it’s almost as if they are picking up on this faithfulness theme of God and they say God we wanna be faithful to You since you have been so faithful to us.
when they say they wanna make a covenant the word for make is actually the word for “cut” and I actually like that word better. Back in the day covenants were not made they were cut literally.
An animal was cut or slain, why?
It was a persons way of saying i want you to know how serious I am about the promise I am making to you. I will take something that is an asset something that is valuable to me, one of my own animals, and I will sacrifice it.
It was a sign and symbol of saying I am not treating this lightly this is going to cost me something and this is supposed to prove to you I mean this.
“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.
A commitment to God starts with a sincere desire to change.
A commitment to God starts with a sincere desire to change.
You say no kidding, now I want you to take a timeout and apply that to your own life.
If you dont become serious about your desire to change it aint gonna happen.
I love this example because they say were willing to make sacrifices in order to get to that place where the hand of God and His blessing is on our lives.
Heres where it starts
On the seals there are names and your gonna see about 21 names so not only do they say they wanna change but they but their names on a covenant contract if you will.
This is all about accountability.
We don’t use this word enough in the church, but we need accountability.
If at any point in the future the people are to get a little sideways someones gonna come knocking on their door and say um excuse me but your name is written on this document. you swore before God and god’s people that you were going to do the things laid out in this covenant and you are a little sideways right now. So I am here to hold you accountable.
I have men who hold me accountable weekly.
Who is holding you accountable?
Do you have that person in your life who will say hey man I love you and I care about you, and I want whats best for you. But I wanna tell you what concerns me....
“On the seals are the names of Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hacaliah, Zedekiah,
This starts with leadership, godly leaders will absorb the scriptures so they can take people where GOd is taking them. Its veyr difficult to lead people.
It would be wrong for me to sit down to write a sermon and say ok god what do you want to say to your people… wrong… ok God what do you want to say to me.
Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah,
So Nehemiah says give me the pen I’ll be the one who goes first!
and the rest follow
“The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding,
join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes.
:
In other words they say they wanna make a change but they want their change to be BIBLICAL. Change in your life must be rooted in the Scriptures. You say hey wait a minute what does that look like?
You have thousands of voices telling you who to be, what to do, they are constantly preaching at you. The message is change this about yourself, but unless that voice is Godly and unless that voice is in your best interest your not going to be served well.
They say we want this change to be Biblical and now they are reading their Bibles they understand whoa ok I see what my Bible says I hear it now I know what it is..
Now these are the areas of my life that are not in conformity to what Gods Word says.
We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.
Nehemiah
You see change not only has to be Biblical it also has to be specific.
Now they are getting specific with the changes that they need to make. Now back in the day marriages were arranged. They say um were not going to give our daughters to foriegners whats the big deal with that?
Well remember now they spent chapter 9 thinking of where their ancestors went wrong and all theyd have to do is remember “oh we had that king.. King Solomon he really had a struggle with women and he married alot of women and god told him not to do that.
In fact God said if you do that heres whats gonna happen those foreign women are gonna bring their foreign gods into your life. They are gonna lead you away from me.
One of the saddest verses to me in all of the Bible is the verse that makes a comment on Solomons life and it says AND SOLOMON GREW OLD AND HIS WIVES TURNED HIS HEART AWAY FROM GOD
So the people say ok god we get it we get it. That’s part of our rebellion towards you and your hand of blessing not being on us, we wanna make that right.
Listen the reason why marriages do not last as long anymore has alot to do with the fact that people enter into a relationship with someone solely based on the physical. But you never have the type of relationship you desire if you seek someone who solely physically satifies you.
You need someone who loves the Lord and believes in the Lord Jesus Christ. These are the relationships that last because both fear the Lord and seek to please Him in their relationship.
So there is this commitment by the people to relationally live how God wants them to live. They go on
And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.
So this is their way of saying we wanna do business the way God wants us to do business. No work was to be done on the Sabbath. Ever wonder why chik Fila is a multibillion dollar coorperation?
Because everything they do is based off of the Word of God.
The Israelites here clearly understand God’s word says no work on the sabbath and so thats exactly what they are going to do.
But not only that this is a matter of trust. Because now they are saying they are going to give the land a break every 7 years which means they are not going to make crops which means they are not going to get any income for those crops.
Depending on God but not only that they are also going to forgive every debt every 7th year. Which means again they are going to have to trust God but again they are doing what God has asked them to do.
“We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God:
so this is what they are about to say...
We have been stingy, we have been greedy God has blessed us with resources and things we have absorbed them on ourselves and we have not given to God.
Whats interesting about this first phrase in verse 32 there is no law requiring this, this is in addition to what their Bibles tell them. They wanna give it for the service for the house of their God.
for the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God.
We wanna give to what is God’s work, in our world.
We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the Law.
Thats the Bible of their day.
So one of the great lies that we believe is that we shouldn’t care at all about God’s rules. So there are those who say that since Jesus came we don’t have to obey the rules anymore.
That is not what we mean when we say, Christianity is not a set of rules. What we are saying when we say that Christianity is not a set of rules, is keeping rules will NOT SAVE YOUR SOUL.
That doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t care at all about the rules that God gave because there was a reason He gave them.
We obligate ourselves to bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the Lord;
We have cast lots among the priests, Levites, and people for the donation of wood by our ancestral houses 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.
This is the equivalent of them getting paid and writing their first check to take care of Gods business.
also to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks;
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 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.
Nehemiah 10:
Now you say man isn’t this a little excessive this sounds like everything they have they are giving it to God.... EXACTLY!
That is exactly what they are saying, everything they touch its like they are saying HERE GOD ITS ALL YOURS
I’m committing it all to you.
These people say there will be no stone unturned in what we are surrendering.
And the priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes. And the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse.
For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers, where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.”
So heres the thing LETS NOT NEGLECT IT EITHER
Let’s think about things in your life that you need to surrender to the Lord?
Marriage?
Bitterness?
Finances?
Children?
Job?
Health?
We understand what the Bible says about each of those categories and now were gonna get specific, Its not I wanna improve my marriage.
It’s you saying ok tomorrow morning I am finding a babysitter and I am taking my wife out on a date.
It is I know I have hard feelings toward that person but tomorrow morning I am gonna give them a call.
It is I dont just wanna save money this year but I am taking 10 percent of my money and I am going to put it in an account every pay period and give it to the Lord.
It is PUTTING ACTION BEHIND WHAT GOD HAS SPOKEN TO YOU!
What can you obey this week?
How can you bless God with your obedience this week?
It will pay massive dividends.
(Let’s Pray)