Question of the day: During this time of being home bound, are you reading a good book you could share with us, or a show or movie you would recommend?
Good morning,
Class I am so thankful for each and everyone of you! This opportunity to continue with our class, to connect, to study together I really look forward to! I know it isn't the same as sitting around the table but it is still such a blessing! Just seeing your faces on my computer screen is such a blessing!
Today we are in chapter 9 of Nehemiah, but before we get into that it is so review last weeks passage. Last weeks passage was movie scene worthy. I can just imagine the wooden pedestal or platform being built, Ezra the religious leader stand up above everyone and starts to read the Bible. As he starts to read every stands. The word literally brings them to their feet. As they listen, it hits them to the core how much they and their ancestors have failed God and they weep. Then they are told to stop weeping and mourning, because this is a holy day, a time for rejoicing and celebration, and "they joy of the Lord will be your strength."
We spoke a lot about that. What the joy of the Lord is and how that gives us strength. It is one of my favorite passages in the bible. I love the principle that joy is not frivolous and week, but what brings us strength.
What we didn't talk about and why it is so important to review, is the why... why were they needing strength?
If you remember Ezra started reading the Word of God on the first day of the seventh month. After being told that this was not a day to be mourning and weeping, they did as they were told and ate choice foods and drank sweets, and shared with all! They had a party. Then on the second day of the month, they realized that this was supposed to be a festival that included the tents, and so they built tents and continued to have a huge festival where daily Ezra read the word. You could say a month long camp meeting!
So why was strength needed?
Here in chapter 9 we see why.
Let's read together.
Nehemiah 9:1-5
9 On the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting and wearing sackcloth and putting dust on their heads. 2 Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. 3 They stood where they were and read from the Book of the Law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day, and spent another quarter in confession and in worshiping the Lord their God. 4 Standing on the stairs of the Levites were Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani and Kenani. They cried out with loud voices to the Lord their God. 5 And the Levites—Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah and Pethahiah—said: “Stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting.[a]”
On that first day, twenty four days earlier, when they first began to realize their sin, when they realized how far they had gone from God, it broke them. They started wailing. Nehemiah and Ezra knew, if they only saw what they had done or not done, before understanding "the joy of the Lord" or what God had done for them, that it would break them. They NEEDED the STRENGTH that the knowledge of what God had done for them would bring!
Confession and the understanding of our failure, outside of the knowledge of who God is and what he has already done for us, is soul crushing and leaves us in a place of brokenness.
If we only see our short comings without the HOPE that comes from what our God has done for us, how our God loves us, and how faithful our God is, it will crush us. The shame of our sin is too much for any of us to bear without the saving, strength giving, GRACE of God. The Israelites needed to know how God had lead them. They needed to hear how much he loved them. They needed to hear and celebrate who He was before they could have the strength needed to come to God and confess their sin.
How important must it be for us then as we share with those who don't know Christ, FIRST what HE has done for us?
KNOW LOVE. is so important!
LIVE LOVE. is also vitally important and what chapter 9 is all about.
Yes to KNOW what God has done and to understand His joy of JOINING with us, of filling the gap between us, is life changing and vitally important but so is confession! So is understanding our sin, and confessing that sin. That is to LIVE LOVE!
Now we have this beautiful narrative confession. As we read this, I want each of us to think about what God has done for us, for you. How he has lead, how he has been faithful, even when we have not. Also notice how it starts, with praising God for how great he is.
“Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. 6 You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their starry host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything, and the multitudes of heaven worship you.
7 “You are the Lord God, who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and named him Abraham. 8 You found his heart faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him to give to his descendants the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Jebusites and Girgashites. You have kept your promise because you are righteous.
9 “You saw the suffering of our ancestors in Egypt; you heard their cry at the Red Sea.[b] 10 You sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his officials and all the people of his land, for you knew how arrogantly the Egyptians treated them. You made a name for yourself, which remains to this day. 11 You divided the sea before them, so that they passed through it on dry ground, but you hurled their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters. 12 By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take.
13 “You came down on Mount Sinai; you spoke to them from heaven. You gave them regulations and laws that are just and right, and decrees and commands that are good. 14 You made known to them your holy Sabbath and gave them commands, decrees and laws through your servant Moses. 15 In their hunger you gave them bread from heaven and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock; you told them to go in and take possession of the land you had sworn with uplifted hand to give them.
16 “But they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and they did not obey your commands. 17 They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, 18 even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, ‘This is your god, who brought you up out of Egypt,’ or when they committed awful blasphemies.
19 “Because of your great compassion you did not abandon them in the wilderness. By day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. 20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. 21 For forty years you sustained them in the wilderness; they lacked nothing, their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.
22 “You gave them kingdoms and nations, allotting to them even the remotest frontiers. They took over the country of Sihon[c] king of Heshbon and the country of Og king of Bashan. 23 You made their children as numerous as the stars in the sky, and you brought them into the land that you told their parents to enter and possess. 24 Their children went in and took possession of the land. You subdued before them the Canaanites, who lived in the land; you gave the Canaanites into their hands, along with their kings and the peoples of the land, to deal with them as they pleased. 25 They captured fortified cities and fertile land; they took possession of houses filled with all kinds of good things, wells already dug, vineyards, olive groves and fruit trees in abundance. They ate to the full and were well-nourished; they reveled in your great goodness.
26 “But they were disobedient and rebelled against you; they turned their backs on your law. They killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies. 27 So you delivered them into the hands of their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies.
28 “But as soon as they were at rest, they again did what was evil in your sight. Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they ruled over them. And when they cried out to you again, you heard from heaven, and in your compassion you delivered them time after time.
29 “You warned them in order to turn them back to your law, but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands. They sinned against your ordinances, of which you said, ‘The person who obeys them will live by them.’ Stubbornly they turned their backs on you, became stiff-necked and refused to listen. 30 For many years you were patient with them. By your Spirit you warned them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so you gave them into the hands of the neighboring peoples. 31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.
32 “Now therefore, our God, the great God, mighty and awesome, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes—the hardship that has come on us, on our kings and leaders, on our priests and prophets, on our ancestors and all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until today. 33 In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous; you have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly. 34 Our kings, our leaders, our priests and our ancestors did not follow your law; they did not pay attention to your commands or the statutes you warned them to keep. 35 Even while they were in their kingdom, enjoying your great goodness to them in the spacious and fertile land you gave them, they did not serve you or turn from their evil ways.
36 “But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land you gave our ancestors so they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces. 37 Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress.
38 “In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it.”
What a beautiful accounting of who God is and His faithfulness. This confession, this is very different from the original mourning that was taking place on day 1.
We are all in this extremely crazy time right now! I can safely say none of us have ever been through anything like it. We don't know when it will end and when it does end what the new normal will look like. Will life ever been the same again... probably not.
I have really struggled this past week.
I don't need to list my struggles, I am sure you have had some too.
One thing I know for sure is I need to stop thinking about all the things I need to be doing, all the things I could be doing, all the things I wish I was doing and stop and soak up what God has done, is doing and will do!
How do we navigate this time in a healthy way. Are we in Babylon, and after this time we need some feasting and celebrating, with festivals and recounting what God has done for us, and then confess?
Or is this a time for a month of just reading God's word and recounting where he has lead us in the past, and His faithfulness?
Or do I need to take this time for confession?
Or am I trying to make a passage relevant for today, that just isn't?
Today, I feel like we are in captivity!
Is it more than just physically captive in your home?
Regardless if this is Babylon for us right now, or not, it is never a bad time to recount what the Lord has done for us. The whole point of the Festival of Tabernacles was for the Israelites to be reminded of how God had lead them out of Egypt. It was to remember.
I want to challenge myself, to REMEMBER! Not just the good old days, but to daily spend time remembering how faithful God has always been and is!
I know this has been a very one sided preachy class and I don't like that at all, so I would like to take the remainder of our time and just share with one another how FAITHFUL and awesome our God is! How have you seen His faithfulness, this week, or at any point in your life?
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