Nehemiah 9 You Alone Are the Lord May 6, 2018am www.newhopefwbc.com 1285 Ne w Hope R oad Joelton, TN 37080 6 1 5. 7 4 6. 6 4 0 3 READ Nehemiah 9:1-8,16-17, & 36-38 KIDS Describe God. Three ways from Nehemiah 9 Is the glass half empty or half full? I am sure that everyone here has heard the analogy that is supposed to determine whether or not you are an optimist or a pessimist. An optimist sees the glass as half full. A pessimist sees it as half empty, but I read a few others this week. A physicist sees the glass as half-filled with water and half-filled with air. An engineer sees that the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. A cynic can t get passed who drank the other half of his drink, and a mom just sees a mess that she is going to have to clean up If you do not put a lid on that glass for the thousandth time! The old glass full/empty debate is meant to be a test of perception how we view the world, others, ourselves and our situations. It does not deal with facts or reality, only how a person views that reality. For the first time in a really long time the children of Israel see themselves for who they really are, and it is not a pretty picture. They are definitely not optimistic. Corey M. Minter Page 1 of 10
About 3 weeks prior, they had all joined together at the town square where they listened to Ezra the High Priest read from the Torah for over five hours. They stood and listened, and as they did, they knew that they had sinned against God. They mourned and wept until Nehemiah the governor of Jerusalem had commanded them to go home and celebrate. God s people were finally understanding that they had broken God s heart, and they were sorry for it. This was a day worth celebrating. The next day, the heads of houses joined in the town square to hear Ezra read Scripture again so they could go back home and teach their families. As Ezra read, they found out that Levitical law said that they were supposed to be celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a religious observance where everyone moves out of their home for a week, and they live in tabernacles (or booths really lean-tos) and remember what it was like for their forefathers who wandered in the wilderness trying to get to the Promised Land. Even though they could have come up with a thousand excuses, even though it seemed irresponsible to build shanty lean-tos when their own houses were not yet built, they obeyed and celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. As a result of their obedience, God brought them very great gladness. Now, the Feast is done. The celebrating is over, and they are, once again, faced with how sinful they were to have forsaken God all those years. So they wander back into the town square, desperate to hear from God again Corey M. Minter Page 2 of 10
1 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. A common response to grieving in this era of history was to fast (go without food), wear sackcloth (uncomfortable shirts of goat s hair) and heap dirt or ashes on you (a sign of I m as good as dead ). 2 Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners; and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. This time spent around the Word of God and the people of God, worshiping God had made them acutely aware of their sin against God. I am careful to say it this way, but this really is kind of the morning after syndrome of revival. They have come off of a spiritual high where they are around friends who want to do God s will. They have all lived in tents and remembered the hardships of their fathers, remembering that they are the ones that God has chosen to occupy this land. And then Monday morning hits hard. The celebration is over. The feast is finished. Church is dismissed. They wake up the next morning with a lot of the same impulses to sin as before the revival started. This is true revival. It is not scripted. It is not scheduled. No one is making them meet in the city square. No law is forcing them to be there. 3 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. Corey M. Minter Page 3 of 10
A Jewish day is 12 hours; so the way to read this is that that read for Scripture together for three hours and then they confessed their sins and worshiped God for three hours. Don t you complain about how long I preach. Here is what the worship service looked like. You will see some similarities and some differences to what we have done here this morning thus far. 4 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. 5 And the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hodijah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said: Stand up and bless the Lord your God Forever and ever! FORMAT These men (11 individual listed, but there are possibly more) stand on the steps going up the platform, and in unison, they call for all of Israel to stand. They, then, lead Israel in a corporate prayer. It is the longest recorded prayer in all of the Bible. When I say corporate prayer, you may see this vision of thousands of people standing, heads bowed, eyes closed, and hands folded. There is nothing wrong with that, but I am convinced that this prayer is very different. This prayer is written in Hebrew, poetic verse. It is twelve stanzas long, and since they did not have screens, hymnals or even individual copies of Scripture back then, a line was probably sung by the Levites and then repeated by the congregation. When I say sung, do not think that they Corey M. Minter Page 4 of 10
used modern harmonies. If you have ever heard Jewish prayers or even a Muslim call to prayer, you get the picture. It is more of a sing-song chant rather than four part harmonies on a chromatic scale. Just to put us in that mindset let s try it with just verse 6. Instead of singing or chanting, we will just speak it: 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. That is the first verse of the twelve stanzas. CONFESSION Earlier, in verse three, Nehemiah said that the children of Israel confessed and worshiped the Lord for one-fourth of the day. When we hear confess, we automatically fill in their sin. That is true. They do that, but confession is not always related to sin. To confess (ὁμολογέω) literally means to say the same thing as or to agree. When we confess our sin, we say the same thing about our sin as God does: (1) We acknowledge it as sinful behavior (2) We agree with the consequences for sin. The children of Israel absolutely do that in chapter nine, but they also confess their faith to God. Let s dissect verse six and see what they really just confessed to God: Corey M. Minter Page 5 of 10
6 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. Who He Is Creator - Sustainer - Redeemer What we might glance over and take for granted today in church is a foundational and transformational truth about God. He alone is Lord. The Jews were coming out of years and years of Babylonian and Persian exile where they were expected to live by the laws and traditions of not just a political system but a religious one too. The thought that there was only One God would have been absurd to Babylonians, and the thought that there was One God Who is all-powerful to form and sustain His creation would have been laughable by the Persian. All throughout Hebrew praises to God, you will find a predominant theme. The Israelites celebrate God as the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer. CREATOR. Here, Israel, is setting God apart from all other gods that they had ever been introduced to. This God, Jehovah, is the only God. He created all that we see and even that which we cannot see. Heaven the heaven of heavens, Earth everything on it, Seas everything in it. Spiritual and physical: He is the origin of it all. Corey M. Minter Page 6 of 10
SUSTAINER. And You preserve them all is a confession that God is intricately involved in His creation. He is not as deists believe a grand watchmaker, who created the the world and its systems and is now letting run to disrepair. When we see natural disasters floods, fires, earthquakes, eruptions, super-storms (all of which our world has seen this week) we know that God is not aloof, nor is He indisposed at the moment. He is in control, and though we do not see or understand all of His purposes, it is only by His good grace that the flood does not reach farther, the fire does not burn more, the earthquake be stronger. He sustains. He is intricately involved in His creation, but that is even more seen in the verses that follow. He is not just the God of the cosmos. He is also the Redeemer of mankind. What He Does Forgives The only way God could redeem mankind was to offer Himself as a perfect human sacrifice. So He needed to step into humanity the Author writes Himself into His story. He picks a family one willing to serve His purposes, and He picks a father of that family one who was a willing servant: 7 You are the Lord God, Who chose Abram, And brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans, And gave him the name Abraham; 8 You found his heart faithful before You, And made a covenant with him Corey M. Minter Page 7 of 10
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. While the Israelites only saw God s covenant as a means to obtain land and an identity as a nation, God was doing much more behind the scenes. He was crafting a people who were peculiar from the world because through them He would send His Son Who would be very different from any other who had ever walked the earth. This family the Jews who would host the Perfect Son of God was far from perfect. They like us had Adam s rebellious blood coursing through their veins. Time after time God would deliver us (wait-i mean them): 15 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. But time after time, we (wait-i mean they) would rebel: 16 But they and our fathers acted proudly, Hardened their necks, And did not heed Your commandments. 17 They refused to obey, And they were not mindful of Your wonders Corey M. Minter Page 8 of 10
That You did among them. But they hardened their necks, And in their rebellion They appointed a leader To return to their bondage. In all actuality, the Levites were leading the congregation of Israel through a summarization of the whole Old Testament Genesis right up to one of the last OT books written, Nehemiah. They walk them through Moses and God delivering them from Egypt, Joshua and God leading them into the Promised Land, the Judges and God allowing them to be captives until their hearts returned to Him, the times of the kings (David, Solomon and the rest) and God blessing them for their obedience. After every era, they hardened their hearts; they stiffened their necks; they shrugged their shoulders; they acted proudly; they refused to obey; they rebelled; they cast God s law behind their backs; and they even killed God s prophets. The story of Israel is our story. We are teenagers to our loving Father We harden our hearts, we stiffen our necks, we shrug our shoulders, act proudly, refuse to obey and rebel. Think of the thousands, millions of times you have sinned, just this week. Yet Look at How He Loves Quickly, Graciously, Mercifully, Abundantly 17 But You are God, Ready to pardon, (slow to anger) Gracious and merciful, Corey M. Minter Page 9 of 10
Slow to anger, Abundant in kindness, And did not forsake them. 31 Nevertheless in Your great mercy You did not utterly consume them nor forsake them; For You are God, gracious and merciful. God s desire for you is not one of judgment but of forgiveness. He leaves that choice directly up to you. No one else can make it for you, and He will not coerce you into following Him. 36 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! 37 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. 38 And because of all this, We make a sure covenant and write it; Our leaders, our Levites, and our priests seal it. You can make such a decision today. There is no paper and pen needed. No notary required. A covenant is a contractual promise. You can, among people who love you, today, make that promise to God. Corey M. Minter Page 10 of 10