I invite you to take your Bible and turn with me to Nehemiah chapter 10. If you’re using the Bible in the rack in front of you it’s on page 406.
And as you’re turning there, let me make a quick reference to Michael Gregory and his report. Our mission committee, or at least part of it, met with him this afternoon and got a much more detailed report. And it really is thrilling, even exhilarating, to hear what God is doing in extending His kingdom through church planting. And I want to say that we are able to invest in a church plant like this, in a family who is leaving the Deep South – Michael is from Chattanooga; his wife is from Sylacauga, Alabama – and here they are in the southern parts of Los Angeles – Alhambra. “You ain’t from around here, is you?” Right? And yet it’s your generosity and your commitment to giving to mission that allows us to be generous in investing in those kinds of projects. I say all that to say if you have not made a mission pledge for this year’s mission giving, I would encourage you to take one of the cards out of the rack, or you can use your phone and use the app and make a pledge to “Mission” which will allow us to be even more far-reaching in church planting applications we’re looking at, even at this present time.
That brings us to Nehemiah chapter 10. Just to give you a little background, the last several weeks we’ve heard from Wiley Lowry talking about – wow, I guess I didn’t need those glasses! Nehemiah chapter 8 – thank you! You want to read God’s Word carefully, and these help! Nehemiah chapter 8, Wiley talked about the importance of preaching as Ezra read God’s Law to God’s people. And then chapter 9, David Felker talked about God’s people praying. And Nehemiah chapter 9 is the longest prayer recorded in the Bible. He talked about repentance and how God works through prayer and through the reading of God’s Word. And that brings us to chapter 10 where we’re going to read and talk about commitment. This is a hardcore look at commitment, and failure, because so often the two go together. So here’s the question – “What keeps us going when we are committed to doing the right thing and yet we fail miserably?” – because that’s what lies ahead of us in this passage. Let’s talk to the Lord and ask His blessing on the reading and the study of His Word.
Father, we ask for special grace by the power of Your Holy Spirit to enable us to see what would otherwise remain hidden to our eyes and to our hearts. Would You please shape within us a deeper hunger and thirst for the presence of Jesus in our lives. Teach us the freedom of dependence. Free us from the determined desire to do it on our own, to be independent, and to say, “I’ve got this. I can do this,” when ultimately You are inviting us to depend upon You. Remind us afresh that apart from You we can do nothing. So teach us, would You, for the sake of Your call on our lives, for the spread of Your kingdom, and for the celebration of Your glory. We ask in Jesus’ name, amen.
Nehemiah chapter 10, verses 28 through 39:
“The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, join with their brothers, their nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law that was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt.
We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God: for the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the Law. We obligate ourselves to bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the Lord; also to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks; and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all our towns where we labor. And the priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes. And the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers, where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.”
Wow. That’s a lot of commitment, isn’t it? They’ve just read the Law, they’ve stood hours on end hearing the Word of God read and then explained and applied, and after praying and confessing, “Okay, we’re going to do this. We really are going to do this” – how quickly things turn. What I’d like you to see this evening first of all is their commitment to obedience, and secondly we’re going to see their failure, and then third we’re going to draw some lessons from what we discover as you pull the lens way back and look at the big picture of where Nehemiah sits.
Next Sunday we’re going to celebrate the 245th anniversary of a significant event in the life of our nation – the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six men pledged themselves to this declaration, which, the outgrowth was this nation was birthed and became one of the greatest nations that has ever existed. And yet in making that declaration of independence, they, at the same time, declared their dependence on Almighty God. The two are inseparably connected. In fact, the last sentence in that declaration is this – “With a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” The obedience to which they pledged themselves, the obedience to which God’s people pledged themselves, they discovered was absolutely impossible without an even greater dependence on the One who had called them to Himself. That’s the biggest lesson we’re going to take away this evening. But let’s unpack that.
Their Commitment to Obedience
First of all, their commitment to obedience. You can find eight specific commitments, pledges, bound with an oath and a curse against themselves if they fail to uphold these commitments. And they were commitments that bound every aspect of their personal lives and their spiritual life. It dealt with their time, their space, their possessions, and their relationships. All of it. As a matter of fact, there really wasn’t much of anything covered in their lives, both personally and spiritually, that wasn’t covered in these commitments, the first of which in verse 28 said that, “We will live lives distinct from the surrounding peoples around us. We will be distinct.” That goes back to chapter 9 verse 2 where they began where it says, “And the Israelites separated themselves from all the foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.” There was an absolute commitment to be distinct among all the peoples around whom or among whom they lived. “We will be purposefully distinct.”
The second commitment was a complete obedience to God’s Word. In verse 29 it said, “We will observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God, the Lord our Lord, and His rules and His statutes. We’re not going to let anything slide.” It’s an absolute commitment to all of God’s Word.
Third commitment, verse 30 – no mixed marriages. This is not a racial separation. This is a religious separation that goes all the way back to Exodus 34 where God said, “Don’t give your children to be married to the people around you lest their idols will draw your kids astray.” This was a religious separation, not a racial separation.
Fourth commitment, verse 31 – the Sabbath will be kept holy. Both the Sabbath day – there will be no commerce on the Lord’s Day, the Sabbath Day; and the Sabbath year – “We will not plant nor reap our lands on the seventh year.” And, “We’re going to forgive all debts on the seventh year,” meaning that both agriculturally and economically they were taking huge risks. It would take a lot in an agrarian culture to say, “This year we’re not going to plant anything and just hope for the best,” and for twelve months live on what you had stored up from the previous year or whatever grew up on its own.
Fifth commitment, verse 32 – the promise to pay the one-third shekel annual tax for the support of the temple. This was the budget of all the life and activity of the temple. This goes back to Exodus chapter 30 in the declaration of Moses as to what the peoples’ commitment had to be so that the temple worship could be sustained.
Even beyond that, separately, the sixth commitment in verse 34 was that they committed to bring in the firewood for the temple service. Now you think, “Firewood? What’s that about?” Well go back to the description of the temple that Solomon built – it’s in 2 Chronicles chapter 4 – and he describes the dimensions of the altar. Do you realize that altar was 20 cubits square, which would be 30 feet. That altar would not fit in our choir loft. It would be too big to fit behind me. And the fire beneath it had to burn continually – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, nonstop, year after year. How much firewood do you think that would take? And in the days before chainsaws and pickup trucks, how hard would you have to work to keep that fire burning? And yet they committed. “We will make sure that the firewood is stacked and ready; dry firewood for the fire beneath the altar to keep on burning.”
The next commitment, verses 35 through 39, was the tithe and the firstfruits. In those verses, five times you find the word “tithe;” five times you find the word “firstfruits.” They’re saying, “We’re not going to let anything slide. Everything that God requires, the tenth and the firstfruits – our children, our livestock, our agricultural produce, everything, we’re going to give the first and the best to God to say, ‘We recognize it all belongs to You.’”
And then they went even further. The eighth commitment, verse 39 – they said, “We will not neglect the house of God.” That’s a negative statement. Positively they were saying, “We will make this place, the place where God meets with His people, this will be our priority. We will give highest priority to this place where we meet with, commune with, attune to, hear from, and are reunited with this God who calls us to Himself.” That’s a lot of commitment. And yet they did it enthusiastically, calling down curses upon themselves if they failed to uphold this.
Their Failure to Keep Their Commitment
And that takes us to failure. It really didn’t take long, actually. This isn’t specifically detailed in the text, but what you discover from chapter 13 is that after Nehemiah was governor in Jerusalem – the wall is built, the renewal has taken place, the Law has been read, the people are committed to it, everything is dedicated – after twelve years of serving as governor, he goes back to Susa, the capital of the Persian Empire. And we’re not sure exactly how long he was back in Susa but it could not have been more than eight years, because we know that King Artaxerxes died in 424 BC, and it was King Artaxerxes who gave Nehemiah permission to go back to Jerusalem, a second trip back, because Nehemiah had gotten news that once again back in Jerusalem things were not going well. As a matter of fact, things had gone really, really badly, so much so that every one of these eight commitments had been set aside. They had violated their oaths dealing with space and time and their possessions and their relationships. And Nehemiah had to go back and start it all over again. It’s really a sobering picture of how quickly the things that we think are so solid, that we are committed to, can go south.
Practical Lessons
Which takes us to the practical side of this. What do we learn? What do we take away from this? Most of the books I’ve read about Nehemiah are books on leadership or they’re books on renewal, books about how you get things done. Right? But those sermons can be preached in a synagogue just as effectively because there’s no Jesus in them. Right? So what puts Jesus back at the center of what we’re reading? Well several things. Number one – I’ll give you three practical takeaways.
Good Intentions and Firm Commitments Are Never Enough
One – good intentions, firm commitments, are never enough. They’re never enough. Nehemiah and the people among whom he lived proved that. What we need is a new power and a new freedom to make good on the commitments we’ve made. And that comes from outside of us. Paul himself talked about it in Romans 7 when he said in verse 18, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry out. For I do not do the good I want to do. No, the evil that I don’t want to do, that’s what I keep on doing. Who will rescue me from this body of death?” And aren’t you glad he didn’t leave the question unanswered? Aren’t you glad he pointed right back to the cross and said, “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. There is rescue, and only there is there rescue.” Jesus Himself says, John 15, “I am the Vine, you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for” – these are the words that have to resonate in our ears, right? – “for apart from Me you can do nothing.” None of the commitments that we make, not one of them, can we follow through on apart from Jesus. And yet it’s Paul who goes on to say in Philippians 4:13, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
Last week, David Felker, really beautifully, talked about what one of our church fathers, Saint Benedict, wrote – “Always, we begin again.” Those are words that have fun through my thinking all week. “Always, we begin again.” But you know where they derail in my mind? I love the idea of a fresh start, but for me, I wake up every morning and I think, “Okay, today I’m going to do better. Today I’m going to try harder. Today I’m really, really, really going to be patient with everybody. Today I’m really going to show kindness. Today…” Well you know how that works out, right? It’s not very long before I realize I’ve not been patient or compassionate or empathetic to the people around me. What I desperately need, what I desperately need is a fresh start in dependence upon the Lord Jesus. To have a fresh start that begins with, “Lord Jesus, if You leave me to myself today I will fail miserably. I will ruin it all. I desperately need You. Would You please live Your life through me today? Don’t let me stray one inch from whom You’ve called me to be and how You have empowered me to live.”
It’s really counterintuitive, this life of dependence. From the time we were toddlers, remember the first word, “No”? And then when we could articulate a phrase, “I do it by myself!” Think every one of our four kids practiced that phrase over and over! “I can do this by myself! I don’t want to be dependent upon you! I want to be independent!” It follows as we get older and we say, “Can I have the car keys? I want to drive to this thing myself.” And then when we get older, we say, “I want to be independently wealthy,” or, “I want to live in independent living,” or as we get even older we say, “I don’t want to be dependent on my children.” Right? There is this gravitational pull toward independence in all of us. We don’t want to be dependent on anyone. And yet the life to which we are called is one of absolute and unswerving dependence on the One who, by His Spirit, lives His life through us; the One who says, “Apart from Me you really can do nothing.” There’s a new power and a new freedom that comes only in ever deeper dependence upon Christ, celebrating our union with Him, delighting in that union; not running from it and saying, “I just don’t want to feel all that dependent. I want to feel like I can do this effortlessly.” But it will never happen, and if it does, you’re on the wrong path. Right? That’s why we’re called back to repentance over and over again.
Really the, “Always, we begin again,” goes hand in hand with the four Cs – constant, conscious communion with Christ. And every time I drift away from that, “Always, I begin again – constant, conscious communion with Christ.” Good intentions aren’t enough. We desperately need a new power and a new freedom that only comes through dependence on the Lord Jesus.
We Must Never Neglect the House of Our God
Secondly, the last verse, “We will not neglect the house of our God,” I would say it this way – “You and I must never neglect the house of our God.” I don’t know if you noticed it, but if you took a highlighter and highlighted in verses 32 through 39, the phrase, “house of our God,” you would find that phrase is repeated nine times. When I highlighted it, it just stood out. It’s almost overly redundant. The author of this book wanted to, with a megaphone, highlight, “house of our God, house of our God, house of our God,” over and over again. And he comes to the very end and he says, “We will not neglect it.” Why? Because this is where we commune with this God.
Now on one level we could go straight to the book of Hebrews which says, “Do not forsake the assembling of yourselves together,” and that would be true. I quoted this earlier this afternoon in one of our minister’s meetings. I said we need to be careful that we don’t do our online, virtual services too well because people won’t come back. There’s something about going to worship in your pajamas with your cup of coffee that feels really good. And yet the writer of Hebrews says, “Don’t forsake, do not neglect the assembling of yourselves together,” because the gathering of God’s people, the church, the house of our God – not the building, but God’s people in assembly together – is vital for our spiritual health, for our nurture.
But you know, we can go even deeper because throughout the New Testament you get glimpses of what actually is the house of God today. It’s not the building. On one level, you read what Peter says. Peter says, “You yourselves like living stones are built up as a spiritual house to be a Holy Spirit.” We together are the house of the Lord, the house of our God. And then Hebrews 3:6, “Christ is faithful over God’s house as a Son and we are His house if indeed we hold fast our confidence and our boasting and our hope.” So on one level, yes, we must not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, but even on a deeper level, I am the temple of the Holy Spirit; you are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Paul says so. You have been bought with a price. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You must not neglect the house of the Holy Spirit, meaning your own soul care, your tending to your life in Christ, your spending time in the Word, your reading, your praying, your repenting, your pursuing the spiritual disciplines is vital. You cannot neglect that.
It’s interesting. I’ve talked to different people and for some, the pandemic has been a season of really deep connection in their spiritual disciplines; they’ve been renewed. Other people have drifted farther than they ever could have imagined because something about the pandemic lulled them into a sense of complacency. It was just kind of a long, push the “pause” button, and not a lot happened spiritually. And I’ve talked to people who have said, “I never imagined drifting this far.” The beauty of it is this – “Always, we begin again.” Even here, caring for our own souls, begins with coming back to Jesus – constant, conscious communion with Christ. It really comes back to pursuing a life of prayer. The whole book of Nehemiah, 11 different prayers, not just the longest prayer in the Bible but some of the shortest prayers in the Bible are recorded. Multiple times he says, “Remember me, O Lord. Remember me for good, O Lord.”
Tim Keller made a comment about prayer that really stood out to me. He said, “Most of us will find that we will much more quickly set aside prayer than we will the reading of God’s Word.” And one of the things that I have seen even in my own life is I’ll pay attention to reading God’s Word but if I’m not careful, I will let a steady life of seeking God’s face in prayer become secondary to the Word. Of course, we need to hear God’s voice through reading His Word, but there’s something about relating with Him, that constant, conscious communion with Christ that requires us to seek His face in conscious, in words, prayer. It’s absolutely vital.
Take Courage – The Eternal Plan of God Will Be Accomplished
And that brings me to the last takeaway lesson for today. One, is good intentions, firm commitments, are never enough. Secondly, we must not neglect the house of God – not just the gathering of believers but also our being the house, the temple in which the Holy Spirit dwells. Third, I would say take courage. The eternal plan of God will be accomplished. No matter how long the pause, no matter how long it feels like God isn’t saying or doing anything. I talked with someone on the phone last week who said, “I have never before been in a place where God has felt this absolutely distant. Absolutely invisible. I don’t see Him. I don’t feel Him. I don’t hear His voice. I don’t experience anything from Him at present.” And what the book of Nehemiah tells me is just that – take courage. The eternal plan of God will be accomplished, no matter how long it feels or seems like He’s been silent.
Where do I get that? Well if you look at where Nehemiah fits in the Bible, it’s somewhere close to the middle of the book, it’s before the Psalms, which gives us the illusion that it’s earlier in Biblical history. But actually, you do understand that Nehemiah is the end of Old Testament history. There’s nothing after Nehemiah. Malachi, the last book in the Old Testament, was a contemporary of Nehemiah. He wrote about the same time that Nehemiah lived. Esther took place sometime in the ministry of Ezra. And so from the time of Nehemiah to the birth of Christ, you have nothing recorded – 400 years of what we call the intertestamental period. You know what happened 400 years ago today? Just about 400 years ago, the Mayflower landed on Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. Imagine, the Mayflower lands, you get news that they’ve set up a colony, and then nothing until today! That’s a long blank, isn’t it?
That’s exactly what you have here. From the time Nehemiah finished his season of building the walls, pursing renewal, going back and forth to the capital of Persia, after Nehemiah there is nothing until you get to the gospels. There must have been a lot of waiting among God’s people. There must have been a lot of – “thought the Messiah was coming.” “I thought, I thought God was going to make all things new? I thought He was going to fix this. I thought He was going to deliver us.” Four hundred years! You may have been waiting a long time. You may have been praying a long time for something in your life. You’ve not been waiting 400 years. And yet God’s people did.
And here’s what strikes me. As I was thinking about this passage, I went to the book of Hebrews where in chapter 13, verse 12, it says, “Jesus also suffered outside the city gate to make the people holy through His own blood. Let us then go to Him outside the camp bearing the disgrace He bore, for here we do not have an enduring city but we are looking for the city that is yet to come.” Why would I read that passage? Think about this. Nehemiah built the walls and hung the gates, outside of which the Messiah had to be killed. Every year, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, they brought that bull that was to be sacrificed and the blood was sprinkled on the altar, but the bull had to be taken outside the camp, outside the city walls to be burned up. And the writer of Hebrews says it’s the same thing with the ultimate Day of Atonement. Our sacrifice had to be killed outside the walls, outside the gates that Nehemiah built. Standing on those walls you could see the hill on which the Messiah would be crucified. Our Messiah was sacrificed outside the city walls so that you and I could be welcomed into the city that has foundations whose architect and builder is God, an eternal city that will never crumble and will never fall into the hands of enemy invaders.
Take courage. The plan of God will be accomplished. He will finish what He started. We’ve waited a long time for a lot of things in our lives. You may have been praying for decades for people, for family members, for issues in your own life. You’ve not been praying 400 years. Some of God’s people did, for decades, for centuries, for generations. Take courage. God will fulfill His promises. We are confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in us and in His kingdom will perfect that work and gather us in so that even in the silence, even if the silence is long, we can say what the writer of Proverbs said, “We will trust in the Lord with all our heart. We won’t lean on our own understanding. In all our ways we will acknowledge Him and He will direct our paths.” And what we’ve sung for generations, “God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform” – I love the verses which say, “Ye fearful saints fresh courage take the clouds you so much dread, are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head. His purposes will ripen fast unfolding every hour; the bud may have a bitter taste but sweet will be the flower.”
Let’s pray.
Our Father, we trust You to bring sweetness out of the bitterness that some of us have known so deeply and have experienced so long. Would You lift up our gaze, fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfecter of our faith who right now sits upon the throne, presently interceding on our behalf at Your right hand. May we take courage, may we learn what it is to walk in the freedom of dependence upon You. Forgive our predisposition to independence, to living as if we thought we could do it on our own. Draw us back. Give us grace to begin again by casting ourselves upon You like children saying, “We cannot do anything without You.” Keep us close, in constant, conscious communion with Christ. We pray in Jesus’ name, amen.