“You Have Dealt Faithfully” • 2.17.19 • Calvary
Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service
Intro.
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We are at the midpoint of the longest recorded prayer in the Bible. It is a
prayer of lament and confession which came out of a time in which the people of
God reviewed their own history biblically.
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They have witnessed the record of their ancestor's rebellious actions while at
the same time, noted their God's enduring faithfulness. We pick up where we
left off in verse 22.
Text
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Nehemiah 9:22-25 : "Moreover You gave them kingdoms and
nations, and divided them into districts. So they took possession of the land of Sihon, the land of the king of Heshbon, and the land of Og king of Bashan. You also multiplied their children as the stars of heaven,
and brought them into the land which You had told their fathers to go in and possess. So the
people went in and possessed the land; You subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave
them into their hands, with their kings and the people of the land, that
they might do with them as they wished. And
they took strong cities and a rich land, and
possessed houses full of all goods, cisterns
already dug, vineyards, olive groves, and fruit
trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled
and grew fat, and delighted themselves in Your
great goodness." : God had promised the land
of Canaan to the Jews, but as a bonus, also delivered hostile nations on the
East side of the Jordan.
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The "districts" or "corners" represented the entirety of
those lands that were subsequently divided among the tribes of Reuben, Gad and
Manasseh. These had been the cities of Sihon and Og.
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God never called His people to dispossess any other nations. Israel was not a
marauding nation. These two Kings were aggressors against the people of Israel.
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The conflict that arose between the Israelites and these two Kings could have
easily been avoided. Israel had merely sought permission to pass through Sihon's
territory.
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Sihon answered with a military response and Og never even let them ask! He sent
his troops out immediately! That turned out to be his final battle, as Numbers 21:24-26 details Israel's
victory!
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These battles didn't deplete the people of God at all! In fact, they learned to
fight and were multiplied by Lord,
who eventually used them to subjugate Kings and the people of Canaan.
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The book of Joshua tells the story
of God bringing His people into a ready made land. There were houses that were
already built, water supplies and agriculture that was already in harvest!
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Israel walked in and bore the fruit of other men's labors!
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Verse 25 is reminiscent of a typical
fairy tale ending: "So they ate and were filled and grew fat and delighted
themselves in Your great goodness!"
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The author here is not concerned with the national waist size, but the attitude
of laxity that is represented here.
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They became satisfied with and delighted themselves in the good things that God
had given them! They became worshippers of the side effect of a relationship
with God, not God Himself!
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What happens when you value what comes from God over God Himself? Verse 26.
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Nehemiah 9:26 : "Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against You, cast Your law behind their backs and killed Your prophets, who testified against them to turn them to Yourself; And
they worked great provocations." : The
people that came into the land lived well while Joshua and his elders served
them.
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After that group of people died, the people turned from the Lord, putting His
law behind their backs, walking on from it, discarding it as if it were trash!
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Even in the midst of that decided attitude, God kept sending His prophets to
call them back to Himself. What did they do? They killed them and showed
incredible contempt for the Lord.
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No matter what they did, God would not be turned away from His purpose to
discipline and turn them back to Himself. Some of you will recognize His
methods beginning in verse 27.
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Nehemiah 9:27-31 : "Therefore You delivered them into
the hand of their enemies, who oppressed them; and in
the time of their trouble, when they cried to
You, You heard from heaven; and according to Your abundant mercies You gave them deliverers who saved them From the hand of their enemies. But after they had rest, they
again did evil before You. Therefore You left
them in the hand of their enemies, so that they
had dominion over them; Yet when they returned
and cried out to You, You heard from heaven;
and many times You delivered them according to Your
mercies, and testified against them, that You might bring them back to Your law. Yet they acted proudly, and
did not heed Your commandments, but sinned
against Your judgments, ‘Which if a man does,
he shall live by them.’ And they shrugged their
shoulders, stiffened their necks, and would not hear. Yet for
many years You had patience with them, and
testified against them by Your Spirit in Your prophets. Yet they would not listen; Therefore
You gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; For You are God, gracious and merciful." : For all of the times that Israel fell into trouble, it was
never because of their enemy's power. It was because God kept allowing their
enemy's success!
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God "delivered" them into or "left" them in the hand of
their enemies! They oppressed them and claimed dominion over them. When it
became too much for them, the people cried out to God.
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Each time, God in His mercy sent relief, either through "deliverers"
or "saviors" that led the effort to deliver Israel from her enemies.
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God's grace had relieved them of their distress that had been caused by their
own sin, for the purpose of freeing them to rediscover and return to a proper
relationship with Him!
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They didn't understand this purpose! Once they had their deliverance, once they
were at ease, their hearts drifted right back to the sin that had put them in
danger before!
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They would not set their hearts or settle their affections upon the Lord, so
they naturally drifted toward their own desires! This is the entirety of the
book of Judges!
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The sin cycle that is exposed there goes on throughout the entire book without
interruption. Sin, judgment, repentance, deliverer, rest and repeat! I pray
that isn't what happens in your life!
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In every instance, God was giving the people the opportunity to return. "Come
back to the law!" Remember how our author praised the law last week?
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These were good and righteous laws that the Lord had given and if a man does
them, he will live! You and I have seen this over and over again today!
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If a person lives by the law or governing principle of loving the Lord with all
their heart, mind and soul, they will live a healthy life on the whole. Israel
knew this to be the case but refused to obey!
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"After they had rest, they did evil again." Are you simply happy to
be relieved of your difficulty? Do you obey God to avoid negative
circumstances? Be careful!
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"They acted proudly." They refused to obey the law, preferring their
own wisdom to that of the Lord. They though they knew better. They would be the
exception to the rule. Don't ever believe that!
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Verse 29 tells us that they
"shrugged" or "withdrew" their shoulder. The NASB says that
they turned a "stubborn" shoulder.
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The picture is of a disobedient teen who is moving their body to avoid being
led away from something. They were "dismissive" toward the leading of
the Lord, not wanting to submit to discipline.
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Of course, we have looked at stiff necks and refusing to hear before. How many
have closed their ears to wise, godly counsel or have just stiffened their
resolve when they were corrected?
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None of these should ever define your response to the Lord's law! Understand
the lesson!
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Even though these physical characteristics exemplified Israel's response, God still produced warning
after warning. The major and minor prophets were each God's early warning
system.
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The Spirit of God communicated through these men and when they didn't listen,
there was only one possible outcome!
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Israel went into captivity to Assyria and Judah went into captivity a little
over a hundred years later to the Babylonians! With most nations that would
have been the end of the story.
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If you remove a nation from their land for 70 years, you can certainly expect
that nation to cease to exist. Not so with Israel!
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Israel not only continued to exist, but here they were standing before their
God in their own land yet again! God's mercy did not allow them to be
thoroughly consumed.
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He continued to preserve a remnant that was faithful to Him, who walked
according to faith even as they lived in foreign places. God's mercy would not
allow Him to turn His back upon them!
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This is an especially important point. Nothing that they could have done could
have reversed what they deserved to receive from the Lord. They would not have
even asked for it at a certain point!
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God's mercy alone demanded that He respond to their plight! It is His natural
response to respond with grace and mercy. Don't take that for granted friends!
Verse 32.
• Nehemiah
9:32-35 : "Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy: Do not let all the trouble seem small before You that has come upon us, our
kings and our princes, our priests and our
prophets, our fathers and on all Your people,
from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day.
However You are just in all that has befallen us;
For You have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly. Neither
our kings nor our princes, our priests nor our
fathers, have kept Your law, nor heeded Your commandments and Your testimonies, with which You testified against them. For they have not served You in their kingdom, or in the many good things that You gave them, or in the large and rich land which You set before them;
Nor did they turn from their wicked works." : When they reviewed their unfaithfulness and saw the
faithfulness of their God, it led them to an outburst of praise!
- It will be no different when you go through
the same exercise! God is already all of these things, but we will not have the
privilege to perceive that reality until we take inventory!
- When you do, you will say that He is our God,
the great, the mighty and awesome God!
- He embodies these characteristics in and of
Himself. That is what He is alone, by Himself!
- The fact that He keeps covenant and mercy
relates to how He relates to His people! God keeps His promises when we are
faithless and continues to be merciful when we deserve wrath!
- His punishment of the people of God from the
days of the Assyrian captivity to this very day had been significant, but it
was right of God to put it upon them and they admitted that!
- He did what He said He would do! He dealt
faithfully and they had dealt wickedly! The record is clear for all that would
read.
- They were given a wonderful law and they
refused to obey it. They were granted a marvelous Kingdom and they served their
own interests.
- They had many good things and they used them
for their own pleasure. They had an expansive land that was laid out for them
and they never lived thankfully for it!
- All of this goodness of the Lord was wasted
as all those previous generations continued in their wicked works! Our author is not belaboring the point.
- He is acknowledging that they have received a
lighter sentence than they deserved. He is recording the essence of their
repentance!
- When a person recognizes that God has been
faithful and they have been unfaithful and thus deserving of worse than they
received, you know a repentant heart has been born! Verse 36.
• Nehemiah
9:36-38 : "Here we are, servants
today!
And the land that You gave to our fathers, to eat its fruit and its bounty, here we are, servants in it! And it yields much increase to the kings You have set over us, because
of our sins; Also they have dominion over our
bodies and our cattle at their pleasure;
And we are in great distress. And because of all this, we
make a sure covenant and write it; Our leaders,
our Levites, and our priests seal it.'" :
They had been forgiven and restored, but the consequences of Israel's
infidelity lived on!
- They were back in the land, but they were
servants in it. Their production was as bountiful as ever, but it was prepared
for other nation's Kings, namely Persia.
- They exercised their rightful dominion over
Israel, which was the source of Israel's national distress. Ultimately, even
this was a consequence to their disobedience.
- God had promised that if they obeyed, they
would be the lenders, not the borrowers, the head, not the tail. They were
living with the decisions that their predecessors had made.
- This is why they wanted, as a present day
group, to make an updated agreement with their God! Their repentant hearts
sought out righteous actions.
- They knew that they had to live differently
if they expected a different result!
- True repentance confesses God's
righteousness, accepts God's punishment and will to live in God's way!
- As we move into chapter 10, the first twenty-seven verses reveal the eighty-two people that
signed this covenant, from government officials to priests, to leaders of the
community.
- They are men that are willing to be
accountable, to be publically held responsible for the agreement that Israel
was making on this day. What did they view as proper to commit to? Verse 28.
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Nehemiah 10:28-30 : "Now the rest of the people—the
priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the Nethinim, and all those
who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God,
their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and
understanding— these
joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath
to walk in God’s Law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to
observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and His ordinances and
His statutes: We
would not give our daughters as wives to the peoples of the land, nor take
their daughters for our sons;" : Everyone
that could understand agreed to obey all of God's revealed law. In doing so,
they entered into a curse and an oath.
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They committed first to separation from the world. These had already agreed to
separate from foreign wives in Ezra 10.
They agree not to pursue this for their children!
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They would give their daughters for the sons of foreigners, nor would they take
daughters for their own sons! There would be no unequal yoke, in spite of how
tempting it might be.
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An arranged marriage to a more successful family would be hard to say
"no" to. They understood that holiness meant more than worldly gain.
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For the Jews, it meant preserving a blood line that would bring about their
Messiah!
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For you and I, it would issue in tearing us away from our faith in the Lord!
It's never worth the price of admission to disobey the Lord! Verse 31.
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Nehemiah 10:31 : "if the peoples of the land brought
wares or any grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we would not buy it from them on
the Sabbath, or on a holy day; and we would forego the seventh year’s produce
and the exacting of every debt." : Their
second commitment would center around the Sabbath.
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There was a weekly Sabbath that they would refuse to do business on. They would
not buy or sell on that day, but would rest from their labors to focus upon
their relationship to the Lord.
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The people also planned to honor Sabbath years. Every 50th year, there was to
be a release of debts from those that had been paying them off.
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Both of these were business related. They were proclaiming to honor God more
than the riches that they could receive by doing business on an extra day of
the week!
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In doing so, they were declaring to the world that their relationship to God
took precedence over business practice! Verse 32.
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Nehemiah 10:32-34 : "Also we made ordinances for
ourselves, to exact from ourselves yearly one-third of a shekel for the service
of the house of our God: for the showbread, for the regular grain offering, for the
regular burnt offering of the Sabbaths, the New Moons, and the set feasts; for
the holy things, for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and all
the work of the house of our God. We cast lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people, for
bringing the wood offering into the house of our God, according to our fathers’
houses, at the appointed times year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God as it is written in the
Law." : Their third commitment centered
around financial support for the work of the house of God.
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Their self-imposed tax would provide the materials needed for the various
feasts and sacrifices. This covered everything from the offerings themselves to
the wood that they burned.
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The heart here is that their lives would center around the gathering of God's
people! They would choose to invest physically, materially, into what grew them
spiritually! Verse 35.
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Nehemiah 10:35-39 : "And we made ordinances to bring the
firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of all trees, year
by year, to the house of the Lord; to bring the firstborn of our sons and our cattle, as it is
written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks, to the house
of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God; to bring the firstfruits of our
dough, our offerings, the fruit from all kinds of trees, the new wine and oil,
to the priests, to the storerooms of the house of our God; and to bring the
tithes of our land to the Levites, for the Levites should receive the tithes in
all our farming communities. And the priest, the descendant of Aaron, shall be with the
Levites when the Levites receive tithes; and the Levites shall bring up a tenth
of the tithes to the house of our God, to the rooms of the storehouse. For the children of Israel and the
children of Levi shall bring the offering of the grain, of the new wine and the
oil, to the storerooms where the articles of the sanctuary are, where the
priests who minister and the gatekeepers and the singers are; and we will not neglect
the house of our God." : Did you notice the
repetition of the phrase "to the house of our God?" This is repeated
six times in these four verses!
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They would bring in their firstfruits, the very best of their harvest, to the
house of the Lord.
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They would bring the firstborn of their cattle, the strongest to the Lord. They
would bring the most fresh portions of their dough, wine and oil to be stored
in the house of God.
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They would bring their tithes for the Levites and their offerings for the
benefit of the men that ministered in the house of the Lord! They would not let
the house of the Lord be neglected.
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They would center themselves around the community of God's faithful people and
recognize their worship services as a gathering at God's house!
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If they were going to be there, they were going to make sure that it received
their first and their best, not their last and their least!
Conclusion
- What an
amazing section of scripture! A nation has read it's Bible and understood it's
past. Israel had been unfaithful, but God had been merciful!
- Israel
deserved to be wiped out of existence, but God preserved them alive to that
very day! This is our story as well! God is a God of mercy and grace!
- Their
repentant hearts led them to desire commitment. They would separate from the
world, choose relationship with God over financial benefit and would invest in
spiritual things.
- They would be
sure that their treasures would be found in the house of God because where
their treasure were, their hearts would be also! How much of this record will
be yours?
- Jesus Christ
embodied God's mercy and grace, but He died taking on our unfaithfulness upon
Himself. He rose to give us life and He lives to pray us home!
- How can we
not desire to respond as Israel did here, given the greater love that we have
been shown! May the Lord give us grace to see it so!
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