Sunday Morning Service (Nehemiah 9:1-21)

Nehemiah 9:1-21  

“But You Are God!” • 2.10.19 • Calvary Christian Fellowship, Sunday Morning Service

Intro.

Text

• Nehemiah 9:1-3 : "Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust on their heads. Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners; and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for one-fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God." : Only a few days have passed since the close of chapter 8 and you can see that the Lord's work through His Word has left Israel in a spiritually humbled state.

- During the feast, they were expected to celebrate, to express their joy in being rightly related to the God of Israel. Once the feast was concluded though, the fast began!

- We noted last week that the people had been exposed to a concentrated dose of the Mosaic law, perhaps for many, for the first time in their lives.

- It had been read and explained to them thoroughly, and while their weeping was postponed, it wasn't put off entirely. As we see here, they are bearing the signs of great grief before the Lord.

- They were gathered to fast, to mourn their own spiritual condition before the Lord.

- Sackcloth, a material similar to burlap and dust, allowed their outer appearance to match what they were experiencing internally.

- The sense is that they couldn't move without feeling affected and if they could, they would simply remain at dirt level! God's Word had penetrated deeply.

- As they approached to worship, they separated themselves from the proselyte foreigners.

- Those that had come to worship the Lord from other nations were not culpable for many of the laws that had governed the people of Israel. They had sinned, but apart from the Mosaic law.

- Romans 2:14 declares that Gentiles, the nations, had a law unto themselves. The people of Israel however, saw their own depravity now in the clear light of what had been written for them.

- What are you supposed to do when you encounter a difference between your practice and His ideal? Their example answers the question: They stood and confessed their sins!

- The Hebrew appears to picture a person with their hand extended, pointing out something as the cause of a reaction. It's much like a child pointing at another child to place blame.

- When you put the picture next to the idea of sin, it might be akin to saying this: "This is the sin that has caused you pain. I cast it from me and identify it as the source of our disagreement."

- Our new Testament word conveys the idea of agreement. When we sin, we are agreeing with, saying the same thing about our sin as God does. We are not justifying or renaming it.

- They confessed their own sins and took ownership of the perversity of their ancestors.

- This took place as they repeatedly read from the law and responded to it. We're looking at a 6 hour period of time.

- When you are heavily vested in something, there is really no sense of time. These people could have remained all day before the Lord, if it meant their cleansing from sin. Verse 4.

• Nehemiah 9:4-8 : "Then Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani stood on the stairs of the Levites and cried out with a loud voice to the Lord their God. And the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hodijah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said: 'Stand up and bless the Lord your God Forever and ever! 'Blessed be Your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise! You alone are the Lord; You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, and You preserve them all. The host of heaven worships You. 'You are the Lord God, who chose Abram, and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham; You found his heart faithful before You, and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites—To give it to his descendants. You have performed Your words, For You are righteous." : The men that had accompanied Ezra on the first day of the feast were responsible for leading the people of God in this praise service.

- What we are about to read is the longest prayer, praise and confession offering in the entire Bible! It begins with the call to the assembled saints to rise and bless the Lord continually!

- Bless His glory filled Name that is above every blessing or praise that can be given!

- Our highest praise on earth as redeemed saints or in heaven as eternally changed children of God, will never suffice to reach the level of praise that He deserves! Why?

- Because the Lord is the Creator of all things! He alone is the Creator of the Highest heavens and all that inhabit that realm!

- You and I can look into the heavens with a telescope and survey many of the wonders of God's visible creation, but there are whole hosts of invisible entities that dwell there as well.

- There are angels of differing ranks that make up His holy host. Alternately, there are demons that oppose God's people! All of these beings were fashioned by God!

- As your eyes return to the Earth, everything upon it owes it existence to His creative power. The variations of plant and animal life are constant reminders of His creative hand!

- Whether it lives on the highest mountain or in the depth of the sea, God alone is responsible for it's being and it's preservation. The word refers to the Lord sustaining their being!

- Colossians 1:17 tells us that it is in Christ that all things are held together! The host of heaven knows this and gratefully acknowledges that the Lord is worthy of their worship!

- The Levites give praise for God's creatitvity and for their own rich history. The God that created the Universe and filled it with wonderful life, also chose Abram to be His nation's founder!

- This is incredibly important to understand. Abraham was the first person of the people of God. He is the Father of the Jewish nation and the Father of all that come to God by faith.

- Abraham did not live under the Mosaic law. God looked upon His heart and discovered it to be faithful to Him! He did not find His actions to be perfect, as they were not.

- His heart however, was found to be reliably His! It was to this faithful man that God made a promise to, based not on performance or obedience to the law, but based upon trust and belief!

- God promised Him a land and He had lived up to His side of the bargain! Look at those words and remember them: You have performed Your words!

- When Israel initially settled in the land, after all the dust settled and after nearly every battle was accounted for, this was the report from the author.

• Joshua 21:43-45 : "So the Lord gave to Israel all the land of which He had sworn to give to their fathers, and they took possession of it and dwelt in it. The Lord gave them rest all around, according to all that He had sworn to their fathers. And not a man of all their enemies stood against them; the Lord delivered all their enemies into their hand.Not a word failed of any good thing which the Lord had spoken to the house of Israel. All came to pass." : The post exilic community is able to repeat this same sentiment as they, as national descendants, re-enter the Land of Promise!

- How wonderful will it be for you and I to say the same thing when we cross the shores between death and eternal life! Why? We will say with our author here, "Because He is righteous!

- Israel's favor in being chosen was all because of God's righteousness and their life in the land was from the same source! This is a beautiful and power admission to make and understand!

- What we are is a result of the amazing and wonderful grace of our righteous God and nothing else! From justification to glorification, the work is entirely by His grace! Verse 9.

• Nehemiah 9:9,10 : "You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heard their cry by the Red Sea. You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants, and against all the people of his land. For You knew that they acted proudly against them. So You made a name for Yourself, as it is this day." : Our author moves to Israel's first captivity in Egypt and their first deliverance from captivity at the Red sea, where God miraculously came against the army and people of Pharaoh.

- This had to mean a great deal to this generation of Jewish people, as they had also just been delivered from captivity. They must be seeing the connection.

- God saw Israel's affliction under the arrogance of Egyptian oppression and decided to even out the odds! His confrontation of Egypt though, was strictly for the purposes of revelation.

- Do you remember Pharoah's first question to Moses? "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.'" (Exodus 5:2)

- Fast forward a few plagues and listen to the Lord's speech to Pharoah before the hail fell.

• Exodus 9:13-16 : "Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Rise early in the morning and stand before Pharaoh, and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord God of the Hebrews: 'Let My people go, that they may serve Me, for at this time I will send all My plagues to your very heart, and on your servants and on your people, that you may know that there is none like Me in all the earth. Now if I had stretched out My hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, then you would have been cut off from the earth. But indeed for this purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth." Can you see the grace of God in these interactions? God wanted Pharaoh's people to know that there was not another God like Him in all the Earth!

- Every plague was an advertisement of His superiority to every one of Egypt's gods. Those plagues though were merely the beginning! God saved His best act for the end! Verse 11.

• Nehemiah 9:11-15 : "And You divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land; And their persecutors You threw into the deep, as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover You led them by day with a cloudy pillar, and by night with a pillar of fire, to give them light on the road which they should travel. You came down also on Mount Sinai, and spoke with them from heaven, and gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments. You made known to them Your holy Sabbath, and commanded them precepts, statutes and laws, by the hand of Moses Your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger, and brought them water out of the rock for their thirst, and told them to go in to possess the land which You had sworn to give them." : When Egypt realized how much more they were going to have to work now that their workforce was gone, the army was sent to trap them at the Red Sea.

- God allowed the enemy to believe it had the upper hand which issued in them enthusiastically running into His trap!

- Israel walked across on dry land, but the Egyptian army was caught between the two walls of water, drowned under the weight of the receding water!

- There are scholars that refuse to believe that Israel was ever at the Red Sea, choosing instead to believe that the Egyptian army were destroyed in the REED Sea.

- That body of water is only about 3 feet deep! That would have been a notable miracle. However, our text tells us here that they were under deep and mighty waters!

- Because many of them were tied to their chariots, they literally were unable to float to the surface! What a picture of their doom, as the mighty army is crushed under the weight of the sea!

- God completed His campaign against His enemy and began His campaign to Shepherd the people of Israel through the wilderness.

- Psalm 105:39 tells us that God gave the people the cloud for covering from the blistering heat. We discover here that the pillar of fire lit their way for night travel.

- The Israelites had a visible sign denoting the Lord's presence. There was no guesswork or need to doubt. He led them by day and night and taught them what He expected of them.

- Notice that God gave them "just" or righteous ordinances, true laws and good statues and commandments. The author is praising the law, noting it's reasonable goodness.

- You and I read the law and believe that there was such stringency that nobody could keep them and truly nobody could keep them for salvation. There is no other righteousness beside Christ!

- However, as a law code for a traveling nation, these laws met the need of a growing nation! The food laws alone likely kept them from extinction! Other nations ate themselves to death!

- God's laws kept them alive and put them in a position to live peacefully together! He led them, taught them and fed them by miraculous means.

- God allowed manna to fall from heaven in such a quantity that nearly 3 million people were nourished with it daily for 40 years, until they began eating of the produce of Canaan!

- The amount of manna necessary to feed a group of 3 million for that long is staggering!

- Then think about the water! When they came to places without water, rocks became the tap sources and the people drank. This is the God that fought for, taught, led and fed them.

- This same God called upon them to believe in His ability to deliver on His promise of a land that they would possess.

- Our author is saying that their entire past was meant to build an enduring trust in the Lord's ability to perform their future good. Sadly, that didn't do the trick! Verse 16.

• Nehemiah 9:16-17a : "But they and our fathers acted proudly, hardened their necks, and did not heed Your commandments. They refused to obey, and they were not mindful of Your wonders that You did among them. But they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage." : What an indictment! God had done everything to set the people of Israel up for success and they cut themselves off at the knees!

- "They, the Wilderness community, and our Fathers, the Pre-Exilic community, acted proudly." The generation before Nehemiah's repeated the very same mistakes!

- What did they have to be proud of? What had either generation accomplished without the Lord's assistance? What did they know about surviving in a wilderness or keeping a Kingdom going?

- Yet, the wilderness community complained against God and the Pre-Exilic community abandoned the Lord for worthless idols!

- When Moses spoke to the Jews as God's spokesmen, the people stiffened their necks, stubbornly refusing the Lord's wisdom. The end of the Kingdom age was no better.

• II Chronicles 36:15,16 : "And the Lord God of their fathers sent warnings to them by His messengers, rising up early and sending them, because He had compassion on His people and on His dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His words, and scoffed at His prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against His people, till there was no remedy." : God's people were unwilling to obey the God that had worked so powerfully on their behalf!

- They did not do what the people were doing now. They did not recall their history! Our author refers to a point when they actually began to organize leadership to return to Egypt!

- After refusing to believe God would deliver the Canaanites, the people sought to select a leader that would take them back to Egypt! (Numbers 14:4)

- Incredibly, that was thought to be the same solution at the end of the Kingdom age!

- 600 years after the fact, Jeremiah sought to dissuade the remnant of Israel not to seek to save themselves by going back to Egypt! (Jeremiah 43, 44) What an interesting picture?

- How many of God's people, despite His goodness toward them, long to return to the old life, to Egypt, where they were once in bondage? How tragic! There is no life behind you!

- These are the redeemed of the Lord and but for grace, there go I and you and every other Christian that has ever walked this planet! How did God respond? Verse 17b.

• Nehemiah 9:17b-21 : "But You are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them. Even when they made a molded calf for themselves, and said, ‘This is your god that brought you up out of Egypt,’ and worked great provocations, yet in Your manifold mercies you did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of the cloud did not depart from them by day, to lead them on the road; Nor the pillar of fire by night, to show them light, and the way they should go. You also gave Your good Spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold Your manna from their mouth, and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years You sustained them in the wilderness; They lacked nothing; Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell." : There are moments in God's history when He certainly came close to dropping His people.

- Not a person in the world with knowledge of what they had done would have blamed Him! The people were unfaithful, but He never let their unfaithfulness dictate His response! He is God!

- They were deeply committed to their sin and He stood ready to pardon! Other translations render more directly: "You are a God of forgiveness!"

- Think about this: God was willing to forgive them based solely on the sacrifice of an animal! How much more is God ready to forgive now that His Son's blood has been shed for His people!?

- There is no sinner on this planet that can out sin the power of His grace for their forgiveness! They were foolish and impetuous just like us, but He is gracious and merciful.

- God is a God of grace, giving to us the good that we don't deserve, while at the same time not giving us the bad that we do deserve, which is His mercy!

- They were unworthy of any kind of generous response, but the Lord is abundant in kindness! When they would have turned their backs upon Him, He chose not to turn His back upon them! 

- Our author brings us to the famous "Golden Calf" incident, which rivals any story for incredible gall meeting unfathomable insult!

- This is the community that has witnessed 10 plagues and powerful miracles! It's their statue!

- Right in the valley below the meeting place of God and Moses, while Moses is collecting God's law, the people of Israel are bowing down to this false idol, identifying it as the Living God!

- That might have been the low point, but it was not the last insult! They kept finding new ways to provoke the Lord throughout the wilderness years, but that didn't change God's actions.

- He still led them. He still instructed them. He still fed and watered them. He did that for forty years and they could not claim that they missed a single thing!

- In fact, the clothes they were wearing and the feet that carried them testified against them! Our author includes this information intending us to see the extent of God's care!

- He had saved their lives from slavery and took care of the most minute details of their lives!

Conclusion  

- As you look back upon your own story, can you see the hand of God, graciously and mercifully dealing with you? Do you see who He is in light of all that you have been?

- He stands ever ready to forgive, never at a lack for mercy or grace. Will you come to Him for that? Will you avail yourself to the grace and truth that comes through Jesus Christ!

- Jesus, our Lord and Savior, took on the debt that we incurred and paid for every insult, every sin, every blasphemy that committed upon Himself!

- When He rose, He left His people His righteous life in place of their rags and those clothes never wear out and the feet that walk in them never swell under the weight!

- May God give us the grace to respond to our history the way that His people did in our passage today.