210829 Nehemiah: The Providence of Christ's Spirit

|INTRODUCTION

What is the role of the Holy Spirit? 1 2 3

The Holy Spirit is the third member of the Triune God, composed of Father, Son and Spirit. 1 2 3

What is His role, what does He do? |SLIDE John 16 tells us He was sent by the Son, He was sent by Jesus Christ to convict the world about its sin. He was sent to help us understand what true righteousness is - |SLIDE that is Christ’s perfection, and the coming judgement that Christ will bring about.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ and before the beginning of time He was at work and He is working now, impacting every human life on the planet. |SLIDE Telling them about sin, that they are unrighteous and that they will be judged.

Why does the Holy Spirit do this work? Why does He warn? Why does He work in people’s lives to convict them about sin and righteousness and judgement? Why does He do that? 1 2 3

Its a great question… and the answer is actually wrapped up in the very name of God. Way back in Exodus, Moses pleaded with God to show him His glory, His worth, His weightiness, His character and the Lord descended on the mountain and told Moses who He was.

Exodus 34:5–7 | 5 The Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with him as he called upon the name of the Lord. 6 Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth; 7 who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin; yet He will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of fathers on the children and on the grandchildren to the third and fourth generations.”

Why does the Holy Spirit do this work? Well the answer is that is who He is and He has always been doing it. He is compassionately, graciously pleading with Humanity to agree with Him, to forsake sin and avoid judgment.

This is a message that repeats over and over in the Bible.

The Bible, which was authored by Christ’s Spirit tells us that Prophets, empowered by the Spirit sought to draw Jews and Gentiles alike back to righteousness, to forsake wickedness and worship God as He desires.

That is what He does, that is His character and it is the main point of the message.

|MAIN POINT

This is what you need to take home today.

The Lord endured the faithlessness of Israel and repeatedly warned them through the prophets - yet they would not listen and became greatly distressed (Ne 9:30)

The main point of this message is to get us to understand that Christ’s work on our behalf has always been taking place. He has always been working through His Spirit to bring about repentance and righteousness in people’s lives. Those that reject Him, those that blaspheme His Holy Spirit, by failing to believe Him are culpable, they are guilty and will suffer punishment. 1 2 3

The people of Israel, failed to believe the Holy Spirit, which resulted in the loss of their homeland, sovereignty, dignity. 1 2 3

They had been judged, they had been expelled from their homes and forced to live in Babylon. Three contingents of Judeans left Judea as captives under the Babylonians and now 150 years later the last of three waves is going to return to Jerusalem. They are going to come home and rebuild the wall around the city.

Once the wall is complete they will focus all their attention back on the Lord and repent of their sin.

|SLIDE

Let’s go to prayer

PRAYER

God, You are so gracious to tell us of the righteousness of Christ,

1 2 which can be ours if we will but believe Your Holy Spirit.

Help us Holy Spirit… Help us to believe You to the utmost end. To obey You and what You have revealed through Your Scriptures.

You have been doing this work for millennia so please do it today and we will give You, God, all the credit for the change in our lives, amen.

Today we are going to be in the book of Nehemiah. The year is 444BC, 150 years after the first exiles were deported out of Judea. One of the Israelites still residing in exile in Persia is a man named Nehemiah. |VERSE SLIDE

Nehemiah received a visit from one of his brothers that had just come from Judea, and what he told Nehemiah was horrifying. He told him, that the Jews that returned, the remnant, were greatly distressed and were defenseless against the nations that surround them. Nehemiah’s reaction helps understand his character.

After hearing the news he sits down, weeps, begins fasting and repenting of his people’s sins. Nehemiah is a fascinating man, one who truly believed God and was positioned by God to exercise his faith in extraordinary ways. Nehemiah is a case study of leadership, He is an example of prayer and courageous devotion to God. |CONTEXT SLIDE

We are going to be in Nehemiah 9 today. The immediate preceding context is that Nehemiah and the exiles have rebuilt the wall around Jerusalem in an amazing 52 days.

Having reformed the walls, Nehemiah sets out to reform the spiritual lives of Jerusalem’s inhabitants. In the previous chapter the people assemble, much like we are doing right now, for the reading of God’s word, for explanation, for worship of the Lord. That’s what we are doing right now. Ezra the scribe read out of the Law and the Levites explained what it meant. Now in chapter 9, 23 days later, the people assemble again.

They come to worship YHWH, verse 1

|SLIDE

I. The Israelites’ Worship YHWH (Ne 9:1–15)

1. The remnant assembles to confess their sin* (Ne 9:1-3)

Nehemiah 9:1–3 | 1 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in sackcloth and with dirt upon them. 2 The descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 While they stood in their place, they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God.

As I mentioned during our time of communion this morning, the people gather, much like we are doing but there are some major differences. We are not exiles, we are not under tyrannical foreign rule, but we are like them in that we are sinners. Sinners greatly in need of confession and true worship of YHWH. |APPLICATION SLIDE

I don’t want to miss one thing here though. These people physically came to worship. They arrived, bodily, physically to worship together. They didn’t read the highlights in the Jerusalem News… They did not watch the replay on Channel 8, they didn’t catch the highlights on Youtube, they themselves came to worship...

Now, I know that it has become common to blame everything on COVID but in some circumstances COVID has just become an excuse to legitimize a kind of absenteeism in the Church. I find it very common, today, that many Christians are fully content to occasionally watch messages online, occasionally participate in communion but fail to engage the body of believers on a regular, weekly basis. They legitimize this disobedience by blaming COVID. |SLIDE

We are told in Scripture not to forsake...

Hebrews 10:25 | 25 not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

Church attendance has been seen as optional because it is not understood. The church, this gathering of believers, is not just here to worship together, but it is here to exercise its spiritual gifts, to build up the body for the work of ministry.

Over the last 3 months or so I highlighted almost everyone in here today. Your gifts, things that you bring to the table. That was not me just blowing smoke at you making you feel good. I wanted to explain to the body what you are good at so that you know, and I know, and we know that you are accountable for exercising this gift.

We are not just takers, passively absorbing - but we are engaging, encouraging each other, to remember together the great salvation purchased by Christ. We are gathering so that we can bear up under increasingly difficult days. They need each other, we need each other and coming together to worship is not optional.

Let’s go to verse 4 |SLIDE

2. The leadership remembers God's salvation (Ne 9:4-12)

Nehemiah 9:4–12 | 4 Now on the Levites’ platform 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, “Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever! O may Your glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! 6 “You alone are the Lord. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down before You. 7 “You are the Lord God, Who chose Abram And brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, And gave him the name Abraham. 8 “You found his heart faithful before You, And made a covenant with him To give him the land of the Canaanite, Of the Hittite and the Amorite, Of the Perizzite, the Jebusite and the Girgashite— To give it to his descendants. And You have fulfilled Your promise, For You are righteous. 9 “You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, And heard their cry by the Red Sea. 10 “Then You performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, Against all his servants and all the people of his land; For You knew that they acted arrogantly toward them, And made a name for Yourself as it is this day. 11 “You divided the sea before them, So they passed through the midst of the sea on dry ground; And their pursuers You hurled into the depths, Like a stone into raging waters. 12 “And with a pillar of cloud You led them by day, And with a pillar of fire by night To light for them the way In which they were to go.

In these verses, the leadership of the remnant remembers God’s salvation. They are very much aware that their return from exile is an Exodus 2.0. They, intend to corporately make a very compelling case to YHWH that they are His people and that their situation is so similar to the stories from ancient times. It is very important to note that in all these illustrations that they are going to list that they are identifying with them, they are associating themselves with them in order to request grace from the Lord.

They declare that they descended from Abram, whom the Lord took from Ur of the Chaldees, which is Babylon, which is where they came from.

They identify themselves with the Israelites 800 years earlier that had been saved out of bondage in Egypt by the hand of God. They know that God alone is the One responsible for returning them to the promised land and they want to see Him restore them and they know He can do it. He is their great Provider - verse 13 |SLIDE

3. The people remember God's provision (Ne 9:13-15)

a. Spiritual needs prioritized (Ne 9:13-14)

Nehemiah 9:13–14 | 13 “Then You came down on Mount Sinai, And spoke with them from heaven; You gave them just ordinances and true laws, Good statutes and commandments. 14 “So You made known to them Your holy sabbath, And laid down for them commandments, statutes and law, Through Your servant Moses.

The prayer in chapter 9 is a great manual for how to approach God. |APPLICATION SLIDE When you pray, don’t just start listing off your wants and needs when you come before the Throne. That’s not what they did and we shouldn’t either. Remember, that you are approaching the Maker of the Universe - the One responsible for every good gift in your life. First, recognize His character and His past gifts. Recognize His past provision and then ask for your physical and spiritual needs - but put them in the right order…

That’s what the people are doing here now. They spent verses 4-12 recognizing God’s goodness and now in 13-14 they list their dependence upon Him for their spiritual needs. They understand, they know that they need just ordinances and true laws, good statutes. They need the Scriptures. That’s the same thing we need. Man shall not live on bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Our greatest needs, the ones that we ought to bring first, are our spiritual ones but the people do not neglect the physical, they just put it in the right priority order and recognize it was God all along who provided, verse 15. |SLIDE

b. Physical needs acknowledged (Ne 9:15)

Nehemiah 9:15 | 15 “You provided bread from heaven for them for their hunger, You brought forth water from a rock for them for their thirst, And You told them to enter in order to possess The land which You swore to give them.

The Lord provides for all of His creation but in large measure, most of those made in His image don’t recognize Him or give Him credit at all for what He has done - for meeting even the most basic of needs.

We are entirely dependent on Him to make our hearts pump and our minds work and He graciously provides. |VERSE SLIDE The Bible says that, “He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”

Humanity does not recognize the goodness of God, do they? They are not interested in Him in the least. He graciously provides for both physical and spiritual needs, He provides the rain and sunshine and He also provides His Holy Spirit to convict regarding sin and righteousness and judgment.

The Holy Spirit is at work here in the Israelite’s lives. That is why they have spent all this time laying the groundwork, positioning themselves to implore God for grace, for forgiveness. This was not an ad hoc gathering. They came for the purpose of asking something from God, for forgiveness and it is His Spirit that is creating within them a desire for it.

Verse 16

|SLIDE

II. The Israelites’ Confession (Ne 9:16–31)

1. The Israelites' wickedness remembered Pt1(Ne 9:16-25)

Nehemiah 9:16–25 | 16 “But they, our fathers, acted arrogantly; They became stubborn and would not listen to Your commandments. 17 “They refused to listen, And did not remember Your wondrous deeds which You had performed among them; So they became stubborn and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God of forgiveness, Gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness; And You did not forsake them.

In their confession, the Israelites associate themselves with their rebellious forefathers. They know that they are laden with guilt and God is righteous. They know it was God alone that met their spiritual and physical needs. They know that it was God who saved them. They know God is good, even referencing our text from the introduction in Exodus 34. They know that God is good and that they are not.

God is good and we are not, do we know this? 1 2 3 We are not so different from this assembly. They knew of their need, their dependence upon the Lord. We need to recognize it as well… We are reliant upon Him for everything and I mean that in the absolute sense of the word. They knew it and we ought to know it too… 1 2 3

Over the next ten verses the people recount God’s goodness and their faithlessness. They remember His provision and keeping of promises and constant recurring rescue missions.

Let’s drop down to verse 28 |SLIDE

2. The Israelites' wickedness remembered Pt2(Ne 9:26-29)

Nehemiah 9:26–29 |28 “But as soon as they had rest, they did evil again before You; Therefore You abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they ruled over them. When they cried again to You, You heard from heaven, And many times You rescued them according to Your compassion, 29 And admonished them in order to turn them back to Your law. Yet they acted arrogantly and did not listen to Your commandments but sinned against Your ordinances, By which if a man observes them he shall live. And they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck, and would not listen.

The people of Israel are wicked and they know it. They are undeserving and they know it because they are rebellious children of rebellious people. They are helpless, hapless and unable to save themselves. They are stuck again. They need a savior and it is at this point our text meets Christ. Verse 30 |SLIDE

3. The ministry of the Spirit of Christ (Ne 9:30-31)

Nehemiah 9:30–31 | 30 “However, You bore with them for many years, And admonished 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 compassion You did not make an end of them or forsake them, For You are a gracious and compassionate God.

1 2 3

For You are a gracious and compassionate God, bearing with them for many years, reproving, admonishing correcting them through the prophets… Correction, reproving, admonishing, teaching these are all roles of the parent. Parents love their kids. They love them if they are good and if they are rebellious.

It is the good parent that warns, that corrects, that disciplines their children. It is the good father, that teaches his children about the good right way. It is the good mother, that trains her children to be wise.

Even we, as heathen a society as we have today, do not think highly of negligent parents. When we see children running wild, what do we say? “Where are your parents?” |VERSE SLIDE

It is precisely because Israel has been disciplined over millennia that I believe that the Lord loves the people of Israel passionately. He cares for them. He is concerned over them. Like a mother and father care for their kids, He watches over them with great diligence. Even though they have repeatedly rejected the warnings of His Holy Spirit He still loves them...

He loves them so much that He is going become man on their behalf. For the first time in eternity, God will become something more than God. He will become GodMan, He will become Immanuel, God with us.

He took on flesh to live righteously, because if this review of Israel’s history proves anything to us it proves that the people of Israel have a sin problem. They cannot keep from sinning. So God is going to deal with the problem and the immortal is going to take on mortal flesh and die for the sins of this wicked people and all peoples.

After three days Jesus rose from the dead and proved that sin and death are conquered enemies. He is going to send His Spirit to continue the work that He already started, convicting the world regarding sin and righteousness and judgment but this time He indwells the lives of believers.

|CONCLUSION

In this message we heard the prayer of the remnant of Israel. They read God's word and were convicted to the point of repentance. Through it all they recognized God's goodness and their faithlessness. This is the work of Christ's Spirit.

He is the only One that can bring about repentance, we cannot manufacture true repentance in ourselves. We need Him to do it.

Please stand with me and we will go to prayer

Even after the first two groups of exiles returned home to rebuild the Temple, the city is in ruins. Their defense against the nations that hate them, the wall is broken down and the gates have been torched.

As

|CONTEXT

As

|SLIDE

As

|MAP

As

SERMON

PRAYER

The Concern (Nehemiah 1:1-4)

The Confession (1:5-11)

The Request (2:1-8)

The Nations (2:9-10)

The Inspection (2:11-16)

The Call (2:17-18)

The Mocking (2:19)

The Rejection (2:20)

The Work (3:1-32)

The Resistance (4:1-23)

The Resistance (4:1-3)

The Imprecation (4:4-5)

The Construction (4:6)

The Conspiracy (4:7-8)

The Wall (4:9-23)

The Vow (5:1-13)

The Example (5:14-19)

The Plot (6:1-19)

The Census (7:1-73)

The Law (8:1-8)

The Feast (8:9-18)

The Confession (9:1-4)