Please turn with me in your Bible to Nehemiah chapter 9. It begins on page 404 in the church Bible in front of you; Nehemiah chapter 9. As we continue our Sunday night series in the Old Testament book of Nehemiah this evening, we come to Nehemiah chapter 9. We’ll read verses 1 through 6. Let me pray for us before we read. Let’s pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, we pray that You would help Your Word to come and give it success, that You would work through my lisping and stammering tongue to drive the hope of Jesus Christ into us. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. We pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.
Nehemiah chapter 9, beginning in verse 1. This is God’s Word:
“Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and 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 a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chenani; and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, ‘Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.
‘You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.’”
Amen. This is God’s Word.
I love sports comeback stories, and this past year the National Football League’s player of the year was the quarterback, Alex Smith. And back in November of 2018, Smith suffered a spiral and compound fracture to his right tibia and fibula, and in the days after the surgery, Smith found himself battling for his life as a result of a bacterial infection. At one point, Smith’s doctors considered amputation of his leg before finally getting it under control. But over the next 9 months – and some of you will know this story – Smith had 17 surgeries on that leg. And then in June of 2019, Smith announced his intention to play football again. And then 15 months later, in August of 2020, Alex Smith was cleared to play; he was cleared for the team’s activities. And he started at quarterback and led the Washington football team to the NFC East championship this past season. It’s an amazing story of recovery and renewal. He came back new. He returned rebuilt in many ways and refreshed, really from the deepest of pits. It’s an amazing story of recovery and renewal.
We love stories of comeback. Another one close to home is the Ole Miss baseball player and team captain, Tim Elko. If you keep up with college baseball you know that he became a national story after he tore his ACL in early April. And it seemed like when he came back, every time I turned on a game he hit another home run, just kind of limping along with a torn ACL. It was an amazing story of recovery and renewal. We love these stories.
And I think part of why we love stories like that is because of the longing we have, so many of us, for a spiritual renewal and recovery. And in the Gospel, we have God’s way of recovery, God’s way of renewal. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from, whatever mess you bring into this room, you can begin again. And if you feel stuck, if you feel stuck even tonight in the same patterns and addictions, the same behaviors, you’re stuck – you can begin again. I love a quote from a church father who said, “Always we begin again. Always we begin again.” And so if you are here tonight and you do need real renewal, heart renewal, Gospel renewal, you think about it all the time – “I’ve got to change. I’ve got to be different.” It’s one of the deepest longings that you have, but you have no idea how to make that happen in a real or lasting way. The good news is that Nehemiah is a book about renewal.
And remember where we are in the story. Nehemiah is Jewish but he lives in Persia. This is after the exile, after Babylon, after the Persian Empire has laid waste to the city of Jerusalem, to God’s city, and to God’s people. And Nehemiah has been commissioned and called to go and to restore the ruins of God’s city. And we’ve seen that amazingly in less than two months, under great stress, they rebuilt the wall. And that was at the end of chapter 6, at the beginning of chapter 7, and you think that the book is over; you think that the book of Nehemiah can end at that point, that there has been a physical renewal. But then as we’ve seen the last few weeks, it doesn’t stop there. And that’s because Nehemiah is not just a book about the restoration of the city but about the restoration of God’s people. And so tonight I want to look at three things in this text. I want to look first at the centrality of God’s Word, the centrality of God’s Word. And then second, to this renewed contrition and this confession of sin. And then third, this new commitment to God.
The Centrality of God’s Word
And so first, the centrality of God’s Word. If you were with us last week in Nehemiah chapter 8 when there was the celebration of the walls being completed that was met with this large gathering of thousands of people to hear God’s Word read, and the focus is not on the walls themselves but on the renewal, on the restoration, the redemption and the rebuilding of God’s people, on the people. And how are they renewed? Central to their renewal and central to our renewal as God’s people, is chapter 8 verse 1 – “God’s people gathered under God’s Word.” And then chapter 8 verse 3 – “their ears were attentive to it.” And so the ministry of the Word is the backbone of all spiritual renewal. And as the Word was read, the people in chapter 8, you remember they dissolve into sadness; they weep, they’re sorrowful, they’re convicted of their sin that they have ruined and rebelled and lost the privileges of being God’s people. But chapter 8 didn’t end there because Ezra and Nehemiah, they came and they said in chapter 8 verse 11, “Do not be grieved,” because Israel was in a season of celebration. This was the festival month, the seventh month. And they celebrated the Feast of Trumpets, the Feast of Tabernacles. And the text says that they stood rejoicing.
And so now we get to chapter 9. You see chapter 9 verse 1 says that it was the “twenty-fourth day of the seventh month,” meaning that weeks have passed since that famous six hour reading and preaching from Ezra from the Book of the Law. The festival season is over and now the people, they gather again under the Word of God and they read the account of God’s mercy and His faithfulness again and they’re again broken up. We see here this renewed contrition which leads them to this prayer. Nehemiah chapter 9 is the longest recorded prayer in the Bible. This corporate confession of sin. And so how can you be renewed? Where does renewal begin? Over and over again, this is the story of God’s people. These are people just like us. And Nehemiah 9 reminds us that renewal begins by going back to the basics, by gathering under God’s Word, which gives us this fresh vision of who we are and who God is.
And so you see verse 2, verse 2 tells us that they separated from the foreign voices, the influences that would have assimilated them and taken away their identity. They’ve stepped away from that as they go back into the Promised Land to make sure that they stay the course, which is God’s design. They’re different from the nations around them; this region is filled with people groups worshiping idols. And God is saying, “I want you to take an oath. I want you to swear that in the midst of all the idol worshiping nations, you will be set apart as My people.” And so Nehemiah chapters 9 and 10 – this is a covenant. With the names that you see listed in chapter 10 verses 1 to 27, this is the history of God’s people. And these names – they signed their names as part of this.
And they’re gathering, you see, under God’s Word. I want you to look at verse 3. They stood up in their place, they read from the Book of the Law, the Law of the Lord their God, for a quarter of the day. For another quarter they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. And so for a quarter of the day, the Word of God is read and a quarter of the day there is worship and confession. And so did you notice, every action, every single action of the chapter – so their confession and their worship, they’re crying out with a loud voice in verse 4, their praise to God in verse 5 – “blessed be your glorious name” – and then their confession, verses 6 to 38, everything, it flows from, it’s produced by, it is a direct consequence of gathering under God’s Word. This is a renewal built upon the treasures of God’s Word. And so you see the pattern. There is the reading and the preaching of the Word of God and there is renewal, there is worship, there is confession, there is prayer. And so Word and then confession, worship, renewal.
I’m not sure if you knew this or not, there is a renowned strength and conditioning coach on our pastoral staff named Cory Brock. And people ask Cory, I ask Cory all the time, “What’s the secret? What’s the secret of getting stronger and fitter? How many reps should you do? Should you add weight and do less reps? Should you do less weight and more reps? How should I do it? What’s the secret?” And Cory will say, at some point, “If you’re going to get stronger, you have to put more weight on the bar.” That’s the secret. You have to increase the weight. And if you’re here tonight and you’re stuck and you want renewal, you want heart renewal, Gospel renewal, if you really want to change, then there must be a sustained attending to the Word of God.
David preached this morning, and it was a rich sermon, and at the 11 o’clock service in the last ten minutes, the implications, that third point, you could hear a pin drop. And it was piercing. I think those questions – “Has it been a long time for you since you have attended, sustained attending to the Word of God? Has it been a long time for you? Have you drifted? Have you drifted away from God’s Word? Have you taken the summer off? Have you taken a long time off? Has it been a long time?” Well always, we begin again. Do you have a hunger for God’s Word? Do you taste the sweetness of God’s Word? It’s sweeter than honey. Is it valuable and rich to you? Is it richer than gold? Is it better, as the psalmist says to you, “than thousands of gold and silver?” And so do you go after the Bible more than you go after riches? Do you go after the Bible more than you go after wealth? Do you go after it more than you go after pleasure? If not, always, we begin again. Are you being nourished and strengthened and built up by the Word of God? Where does renewal begin? Where does it begin? It begins by the reading of God’s Word and putting ourselves under the ministry of God’s Word. That’s the first thing.
Renewed Contrition and Confession of Sin
Second, there is a renewed contrition and confession of sin. And maybe you’re asking, “What was it about the reading of the Book of the Law that caused this confession and worship and renewal and heartfelt prayer?” Well think about the content of the Book of the Law, the Torah – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Think about those books. As the people read the Book of the Law, the people here would have been confronted; they would have had a fresh vision of two things. They would have had a fresh vision of “who we are” and “who God is.” Of who we are – they would have heard the history of God’s people. It was a dark and messy history and they would have heard about who God is, about His mercy and His faithfulness. One author said, “The story of the Old Testament or the story of the Torah is grace pursues those who aren’t looking for it, who don’t deserve it, who continually resist it, and who don’t even appreciate it after they have been changed by it.” That’s the story. That’s what they would have heard.
I wonder if any of you have heard of the program, “StoryWorth.” StoryWorth is a wonderful program to stimulate memory of older loved ones and for them to put stories and reflections on paper for their family. And so in our family, my uncle put this together and our family sends questions to my grandmother, to my dad’s mother. So questions like, “What was your dad like when you were a child?” And so she answered that in the last few weeks. “What was your dad like when you were a child?” I never met her dad; that’s my great-grandfather. And his name was Marshall Lanier. So that’s my son’s namesake – Marshall Lanier. And she’s talking about him – about his character, about his marriage, about his work. Other questions like, “What are your memories of your grandparents? What was it like as a child during WWII? How did you choose to be a teacher?” StoryWorth. And it’s been this wonderful project and a kindness to all of us because you get to hear the history. You get to hear the stories, the narrative. And that’s what I want to know about my family. I want to know them. I want to know what they were like, where they lived, where they worshiped, how they loved one another. I want to know that stuff.
Well Nehemiah chapter 9, this gives you a narrative of our spiritual history as God’s people. And you’re not only in union with Jesus, you’re in union with His people and so you’re tied and linked, Christian, you are tied and linked to the people of God in the Old Testament. And we know that their story was not always a pretty story. They had misadventures. They had plenty of messes. But God never gave up on them. He loved His people with all of her warts and with all of her blemishes and with all of her stumblings and fallings. The Lord kept steadfast love to His people.
And we can’t get into all of the contents of this prayer closely. I want you to look with me for a moment at the prayer in verses 6 to 38. This is really a history lesson. This is a rehearsal in the prayer of covenantal history. This is a part of their covenant renewal – to put their history on paper. And so verse 6, which we read, covers creation. Verses 7 and 8 cover the covenant with Abraham. And then verses 9 to 12 covers God’s faithfulness at the time of the exodus. Verses 13 and 14 covers Mount Sinai. Verses 15 to 21 covers the wilderness years – so the water from the rock; the bread from heaven. And verse 21 is a summary of the wilderness years that for forty years God’s people were sustained by the Lord. Verse 22 and following cover the conquest. Verses 26 and following covers the judges. And verse 30 is the exile to Assyria and Babylon and the return to the Promised Land under Ezra and Nehemiah. And so there is a rich chronicled history of creation, provision, mercy, blessing, longsuffering.
It’s a history, also, of contrast between who God is and who we are. And you can see that in the pronouns of the prayer. The “you” versus “they.” And that’s all over the prayer. And so verse 6 begins, “You are the Lord, You alone.” And that carries on through the prayer. Verse 6, “You preserve the earth and the seas.” Verse 8, “You have kept Your promise.” Verse 17, “You are a God ready to forgive.” And so on and so forth. It would be a good exercise just to go through the prayer and highlight every time they pray, “God, You were faithful. You were merciful. God, You kept Your promise.” Just over and over again.
And then in contrast, we see how often the word “they” is used, talking about the people of God. And so verse 16, “They and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks. They refused to obey. They were disobedient and rebelled.” As the prayer goes on, “They acted presumptuously and did not obey Your commands.” And all throughout this prayer, this back and forth and back and forth between the faithfulness of God and the failure of God’s people.
And back and forth. And so as you surveyed this vast landscape in this prayer of Old Testament history, you get this true sense of the mercy of God. And then you also get this true sense, at the same time you get this true sense of your own mediocrity. It introduces you once again, in other words, to yourself. And we are all chronically prone to trust in our own strength, our own currency, our own attractiveness, our faithfulness. And we need to be weaned of that. One author said, “Saints burn grace like jets burn fuel.” Do you need grace? Because this is us, this prayer. Ingratitude, inconsistent, fickle, failures. This is us. And much of the Christian life is learning to actually believe the language in this prayer. That God comes after us. You and they. You and they. Much of the Christian life is learning to believe that, to actually let these words be words that lead us home. “You have made heaven and earth. You have kept your promise. You are a God ready to forgive” – to get those words be words that lead us out of hiding. Is this language familiar to your heart? God, You have been faithful. I have been unfaithful. You have been loving. I have been lukewarm in my love. You have been committed to me. I have been fickle with you. Is this language familiar? Is this the story of your life? Is this language familiar?
And so where are you tonight? Do you see in this prayer, your life? Do you see that here? I am inconsistent. I am lukewarm. I am fickle. And most tragic of all, I am blind. And I can’t even see it. This is us. And so there is a way, there is a road to renewal, but you have to own it. The road is to break the silence, to bring your failure into the open, into the light, and to no longer hide. How do you do that? What does that outlook like? How do you start? One commentator – I think this was helpful – he said, “We can note that their confession of sin was sincere, specific, and realistic.” This was J.A. Motyer. And he said that this confession was sincere. So verse 1 says that they were fasting, they were wearing sackcloth, and having dust on their heads. And the commentator said, “This was not an affected acknowledgement of occasional mistakes, but they behaved and dressed as grief stricken mourners.” So this was a sincere confession.
And then he goes on and he says that this was a specific confession. He says, “There are no vague phrases but they itemized their sin, spelling them out in ugly detail. Their confession does not mechanically lump together their sin in some ritualistic phrase at the beginning of a formal sin.” And so they didn’t describe themselves as sinners; they spelled out how they sinned. And so this is a sincere confession. It’s a specific confession.
And third, he says that it was a realistic confession because the prayer doesn’t simply reference what happened with their fathers just in the past. They’re not sidestepping this. There’s no blame shifting. There’s no defensiveness. They took responsibility for what they had done. You see, you notice this shift in the pronouns from the past, “they,” to the present in verse 33. So from the fathers rebelling, then to an owning of it in verse 33. There is a shift. And the great summary line of the prayer, they say, “For You have dealt faithfully and we,” not they, but “we have acted wickedly.” And so it was sincere, it was specific, it was realistic.
What about you? Has it been a long time since you went to the Lord with empty hands, with a sincere, specific, realistic confession of sin? Has it been a long time? I heard a pastor once say if you are in a coma and you start to wiggle your pinky finger that is a big deal. If you are in a coma and you start to wiggle your finger, that’s a big deal. And so do you at least tonight have the desire to be different, that longing for renewal that we talked about at the beginning, for change? Well the road to renewal is not only gathering under the Word but it is a contrition and confession of sin. The road to renewal is godly sorrow. It’s sorrow because there is remorse, there is regret, but it’s godly because it goes to God. And so if there is an absence of renewal, if there is an absence of change in your life, do you pray? Do you confess sin? Well tonight, always, we begin again.
New Commitment to God
And that leads to the third point – this new commitment to God. Third and last and brief. Look at verse 38 – “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.” And this is, like we’ve said, a covenant renewal. This is what happened in the Old Testament multiple times as they received Saul as king in 1 Samuel chapter 12. And so this here in Nehemiah chapter 9, this is a new chapter in their history. This is a new work. This is a new mission. Because of all that God has done, they are returning to Jerusalem from exile and they commit themselves anew to God. There is a sense here of a new beginning, something new. And so you see this pattern. There is the Word, and then confession and renewal. All that they have been doing for the last few weeks and months, they were nourished and strengthened and built up by the Word of God and it’s brought them to this point. They want to start afresh with their faithful God. Is that a longing that you have tonight? Is that a longing that you have? Do you sense the need to start new? To start fresh? To begin again?
Well let me end with this. A few years ago there was a video on the internet of a young boy on a soccer field. And this video made its way across multiple platforms and he couldn’t have been older than 2 years old. And I looked it up and he was actually a professional soccer player’s son. And this was at a professional game, a European league game, that Chelsea was in. And his dad played for Chelsea. And I don’t know if it was before the game or if it was at halftime, but this little boy had a soccer ball and he was maybe at midfield and the stands are packed and the camera man found this boy as he started to make his way towards the goal. And there’s this energy and excitement in the stands and as he makes his way towards the goal, he probably trips on the ball three times. He is stumbling along on his way, but the fans are getting more and more excited. And as you’re watching it, your smile gets wider and wider. It’s so much fun as this 2 year old is making his way to the goal. And eventually he gets to the goal and he kicks the ball in and the stadium goes nuts. It’s pandemonium. It’s bedlam in the stadium.
And I remember that video because someone posted it on Twitter and they posted it with the comment, “How the angels in heaven react when a sinner comes to Jesus.” And I think for our purposes tonight, I would tweak that and say, “How the angels in heaven react when a Christian is renewed, when a backslider returns home.” And you may feel like tonight you’re not a pretty story. Maybe you’ve had your misadventures and your messes and your backsliding and a broken past, you have warts and blemishes, your life has been filled like that boy with kind of stumbling and falling along the way. But don’t assume it’s too dark, it’s too messy, it’s too late or it’s too much for your faithful God. Always, we begin again. And so you don’t have to be good enough. You have to trust that He is good enough. And so if you’re in a coma and you start to wiggle your pinky finger, that’s a big deal. And so if you are grasping tonight, it’s possible only because of being grasped. And you see, you do that again and again and again and again. “While he was still a far way off, his father saw him and he ran and embraced and kissed him.” You see, that’s renewal. Sinking into the deep love of the Father. Turning back into the Father’s arms. Don’t you want that tonight? Always, we begin again. “Come ye weary, heavy laden, lost and ruined by the fall. If you tarry till you’re better, you will never come at all.” That’s an invitation for all of us.
Let me pray.
Our great God and heavenly Father, I pray that You would come after us tonight, that You would confront us and convict us and give us contrition and confession and then comfort us and change us and restore us back to You. I pray this in Jesus’ name, amen.