Nehemiah 8–10

0:00 A few years ago, ESPN produced a documentary called "Downhill" about an American downhill Olympic skier named Bill Johnson. In 1984, Bill Johnson became the first American downhill skier to ever win the gold Olympic medal in a series of events, in fact, that had been dominated for centuries by the Europeans. So in 1984, Sarajevo, Bill Johnson won the gold medal in a particular downhill race and the ESPN documentary Downfall just traced sort of the rest of his life about what happened not only leading up to that gold medal but what came after it. The story tells how once Bill Johnson won the gold medal he became an instant celebrity in the United States. There were endorsements and commercials and money and fame and accolades from everyone you could imagine throughout the United States for a little while. And then like it does often for Olympic athletes it just kind of dried up unless there's a way for you to take your Olympic medal and go pro with it, which is a

1:01 difficult thing to do in a sport like downhill. But Bill Johnson was so captured by the fame and the glory that came to him in the few months after his gold medal win that his entire life became a drive and an addiction to regain that glory and fame. He wanted another gold medal. And so for the next few years, he threw everything that he had into regaining the gold medal. He failed to qualify in the 1988 Winter Olympics and the 1992 Winter Olympics.

1:32 In the process of pursuing that gold medal and doing all the things that he thought were required of him to go after it, he managed to alienate his wife. He managed to alienate his family, essentially destroyed himself in pursuit of the gold medal. Well, just before the Winter Olympics in 2002, Bill Johnson decided that he was going to make his most important and most fervent run for a comeback that he had made in his entire life, 18 years after the original gold medal was won. In 2001, in a training run, Bill Johnson slipped and fell and hit the barricades and suffered a catastrophic brain injury that left him paralyzed and susceptible for the short rest of his life to infection after infection after infection.

2:20 He was eventually confined to a hospice home. where he was fed and clothed and cleaned without any of the ability to do any of that for himself. When he talked, it wasn't much above a whisper, raspy throat, because his brain couldn't quite make his throat work the way it was supposed to. At the end of the documentary, the ESPN producer sat down with Bill Johnson near the end of his life at this point.

2:53 He died of an infection not long after the documentary was made. The producer sat down with him in his hospice room, all decorated with all of his things, and did an interview with Bill Johnson, asked him a few questions about things. And as Bill Johnson was telling the story about what had happened and some of his feelings about the whole thing, the camera kept panning over again and again and again to the mantle where there was a small little wooden box with a glass front on it, And there in the wooden box was the Sarajevo 1984 gold medal sitting on the mantle.

3:24 Again and again, the camera panned over there as the producer asked questions, drawing your attention from Bill to the medal, from Bill to the medal. And at the very end of it, the very last thing that happened in the documentary, before the credits rolled, is that the producer asked Bill Johnson, he leaned forward in his chair to the paralyzed Bill Johnson, And he said, was it all worth it? And the camera slowly panned again over to the gold medal.

3:56 And you heard Bill Johnson say, yes. And then it ended. The tragedy of that story, the reason ESPN decided to name the documentary Downhill, is that when all was said and done, it turned out that Bill Johnson was clinging with everything he had to a past that could no longer deliver what it promised.

4:30 He was clinging to a past that could no longer deliver what it promised. That's the same kind of thing we're going to be looking at as we continue our study of the book of Nehemiah today. So if you've got a Bible, turn over to Nehemiah chapter 8. That's where we're going to be. 8, 9, and 10 this morning. If you're using one of these red pew Bibles like this one that I've got, you can find those sort of under the pew, well, in the pews, under the chairs, upstairs. They're going to be somewhere else. But if you want to use one of these, you can find Nehemiah 8 on page 403. We're going to be looking today at chapters 8 through 10. Nehemiah, this book was written in the middle of the 5th century BC, something like 445, 440 BC. So you're looking at 2,500 years ago, something like that. It was written mostly by a high official in the court of King Artaxerxes of the Persian Empire. He was an official who also happened to be Jewish by birth and was appointed by Artaxerxes to go back to this broken, ruined city of Jerusalem and rebuild its walls. And so that's mostly what the story of Nehemiah tells. That's the story of the book.

5:34 Nehemiah, this high official in the court of Artaxerxes, goes across the desert to Jerusalem and he rallies the people, overcomes opposition, and through many dangers, toils, and snares, he manages to rebuild the walls of the city. That's more or less where we left off the story last time. And you know that you have that somewhat understated declaration in chapter 6, verse 15. So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul in 52 days. It's just sort of stated that through all this difficulty, we got it done. The wall was finished. But the story of Nehemiah is about a lot more than just rebuilding the walls. It's actually, along with Ezra, which is kind of its companion book, they both go together, it's like volume one, volume two. But this whole thing is the story, not just of an attempt to rebuild some walls, which ends up being successful, It's the story of an attempt to reestablish a nation.

6:26 To sort of re-found the great kingdom of David with its capital in Jerusalem. An attempt to recapture the glory of everything Israel stood for. And it symbolized the patriarchs, the covenants, the temple worship, the Davidic crown. All of it. If you take Ezra and Nehemiah together, that's what you see. An attempt to reestablish that nation. So Zerubbabel comes first at the beginning of Ezra and rebuilds the temple. and Ezra shows up at the end of Nehemiah and Ezra, and he comes not so much to rebuild some building, but to reform the people.

7:00 He calls them back to obedience to God's law. And then Nehemiah comes, not even so much to rebuild the walls, as to make Jerusalem defensible again. In other words, let's reestablish the city as the great capital city of David that armies cannot capture. Well, now in chapter 8 that we've come to today, The timelines of Ezra and Nehemiah dovetail together. The story sort of merges together from Ezra and Nehemiah. And what we see here is one final push by Ezra and Nehemiah to call the people of Israel back to faithfulness to the Lord.

7:32 In other words, back to the glories of their golden age. Now the question that comes up through this whole thing as we watch the temple being rebuilt and the walls being rebuilt and the people being called to faithfulness to God and to the law of God, the question is, does it work? do they actually manage to re-establish the nation of israel in covenant with god now if you've read it you know that at the end of chapter 9 you actually do get this moment where the people make a covenant with god and in most of the commentaries you'll read most of the sermons i think you're going to hear on this book the straightforward way for people most of the time to talk about this story is, okay, good on them, right?

8:16 They submit to God's word in chapter eight. They repent of their sins in chapter nine. It all seems very genuine and very sincere when they do it. And then at the end of chapter nine, they manage to reestablish the covenant they'd broken. They're having a revival. So now, Christians, what we ought to do is the same stuff they did. And maybe God will bring revival to us as well. So here are three things the Israelites did that are also three things that you should do.

8:50 That's the way it usually gets preached. But is that really the message that the book of Nehemiah is saying to us? Is that really what it's trying to get across to us? Is that really where the storyline of the book goes? that this is just a sort of straightforward, if not really all that interesting, honestly, hero story about some religious people who did some religious things and therefore we ought to do the same thing? Well, let's look at it and see what happens. If you look down at the text 8, 9, and 10, it's pretty long, but we can go through it and you can sort of see what's going on with the story.

9:27 Basically, in chapter 8, you've got Ezra the priest coming and reading the law of the Lord to the people. They all gather together at a particular place in the city. Ezra reads them the law. And that leads to a celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. Because as they read the law, lo and behold, they realize we've been doing the Feast of Tabernacles all wrong for 700 years. We haven't been doing it right. And so they read the law of God carefully and they carry out the Feast of Tabernacles for the first time since Joshua, like 700 years earlier. First time they do that correctly. In chapter 9, you've got a really long recounting of the history of Israel in which the people are recounting what God had done for their fathers and for their forefathers.

10:10 But in the midst of it, they're also confessing their sins and basically begging God not to forsake them, but to show them the same kind of mercy that he showed to their fathers over and over and over again. And then in chapter 10, you've got the actual words of this covenant that they offered a god out of the splinters of the old one that was broken and then that's pretty much it so so what do you what do you think in this program of renewal of rebuilding the nation the temple the capital city calling the people back to the law making a new covenant what do you think do you think it worked well that's what we're going to explore today and i think the answer is actually more complicated and more interesting than maybe you're used to hearing from this book See, I think the Israelites certainly do some admirable things here.

11:00 They do some things that we ought, as the people of God, to emulate. Their hearts, in so many ways, through chapter 8, chapter 9, even chapter 10, their hearts really do seem to be in the right place. But for all that, they very much do also seem to misunderstand God's purposes, and they wind up doing something kind of pitifully misguided. Instead of seeing and embracing what God had in mind for next, after the exile, they just try to hold on to the past.

11:32 They try to fix something that can't be unbroken. They try to offer God a new covenant rather than waiting on God to offer them one. And that's the main idea. Being right with God requires more than a sincere resolve, more than a sincere heart. It requires a redeemer. That's the main idea. Being right with God requires more than a sincere resolve. More than a sincere heart. It requires a redeemer.

12:04 That's what I want to try to get across to you today. Just like I think that's part of what Nehemiah is trying to get across. See, I think we as modern humans can actually turn out to be more like the Israelites than we want to let on most of the time. Again and again, we try to come to God and make things right with him. And we really mean it. We have sincere hearts. We have a sincere resolve to obey him. And yet we try to come to him to make things right on our own terms. God, I'll come to you. I'll start going to church. Here's the part of my life that I'll give you, but not this.

12:38 This is mine. Or God, here's how I intend to contribute to my salvation. Instead of just humbling myself to take it purely by grace. Or, God, I believe that part of the Bible because that part of the Bible resonates with me. But that part is a bridge too far. I'm not going to believe that. I think we try to do that to him all the time. So there's a lot to learn here. If we're going to be right with God, it's got to be on his terms, not ours. No matter how sincere we are. So three points to this sermon looking roughly at these three chapters, 8, 9, and 10.

13:12 Number one, what we see there is a people who make a sincere turn to God's Word. They really do. They make a sincere, heartfelt turn to God's Word. Number two, they have a sincerely repentant heart. They really do feel bad for the way their nation has acted toward God. And they really are calling out to God for mercy. They have a sincerely repentant heart. But number three, they make a sincerely misguided offer to God.

13:46 A sincerely misguided offer to God. All right, let's jump into the story. So number one, looking at chapter eight, these people make actually a sincere turn to God's word. And there's no irony in that. I mean, I know sometimes I can throw things in that are ironic and you're kind of, you know, looking at me like, does he really mean that? Or is he going to twist the knife later and say it wasn't sincere? No, it is. It's very sincere. You're going to read chapter 8 from start to finish, and they make a turn to God's Word. Let's look at it, chapter 8. So we're leading up to chapter 8 through all of chapter 7 last week.

14:18 We got this long list of all the Israelites who a century earlier had made the trek from Babylon across the desert back to Jerusalem to rebuild it. That was important, that list in chapter 7, because who was a Jew and who wasn't a Jew? Who was of the priestly pedigree and who wasn't of the priestly pedigree? These were critical questions to the Jews. I mean, just of the utmost importance. And why? Why was it so important? Because they weren't just interested in rebuilding the temple and the walls. They were interested in reestablishing the nation.

14:51 And so who fit where into what categories and what they were therefore able to do according to the law of God was of the utmost importance. They wanted to reform the people, not just rebuild the city. So Nehemiah 8 tells of the first step in that program. Look with me at chapter 8. I'm just going to read it, starting in verse 1. All the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel.

15:22 So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard, on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate, from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose, and beside him stood Madatiah, Shema, Aniah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseah on his right hand, and Padaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashum, Hashbadanah, Zechariah, and Meshulam on his left hand.

15:56 And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it, all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also, all of those people, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sins so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, all the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God.

16:33 Do not mourn or weep. For all the people wept as they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, go your way. Eat the fat, drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved. For the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, be quiet. For this day is holy. Do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing. Because they had understood the words that were declared to them. On the second day, the heads of the fathers, houses of all the people, with the priests and the Levites, came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the law.

17:10 And they found it written in the law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem. Go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths as it is written. So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his own roof and in their courts and in the courts of the house of God and in the square at the water gate and in the square at the gate of Ephraim. And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths.

17:40 For from the days of Jeshua, Joshua, the son of Nun, to that day, the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. And day by day, from the first day to the last, he read from the book of the law of God. They kept the feast seven days. And on the eighth day, there was a solemn assembly according to the rule. So the story, at least at first glance, is pretty straightforward. The people call on Ezra to pull out the book of the law, and they want it read to them, and so that's what Ezra does. They're cut to the quick by it and immediately decide to start obeying it.

18:12 And really, it's a beautiful and fast example of how we, as God's people, should always respond to God's word. We ought to respond to it with eagerness and with reverence and with attentiveness and with obedience. So look with me at some of the details here that come out of this story. I mean, first of all, look back at verse 1. Chapter 8, verse 1. Who makes the decision and the call to pull out the book of the law? Who does it? You see that? It turns out, if you look at it carefully, it's not the leadership that makes the call to pull out the book of the law.

18:47 It's not Ezra or Nehemiah who goes to the people and says, Listen up! Today I'm declaring that this is a day of reading the word of the law, so y'all be quiet. There's nothing like that. No, it's the people. Who gathered as one man into the square and told Ezra the scribe to bring the book and read it to them. Now friends, I don't know if you know it or not, but that is every pastor's dream. To have a congregation of people who are that eager to hear God's word read and explained to them.

19:25 That is part of why this church right here, Third Avenue Baptist Church, is such a joy to pastor. It's because you guys come here to hear the Word of God preached, and you come here eagerly and ready to hear it. You've got your Bible open in front of you, you've got your notes on one knee, and you listen and you engage with what's being said. Not only that, but you really do understand as a congregation how important it is to hear the Word of God read and preached. And you make space for that.

19:56 You've called me aside and set me aside to be the guy to stand up here most of the time and preach the word to you. And you give me time to prepare for that. You give me time to go into the study or as it were the living room couch and do the work of studying the scriptures. You expect that of me and you don't try to swamp that with other things. That is not always the case for every church in the world or even in the United States of America. It's just not. I mean, I know a whole lot of pastors. I talk to a whole lot of pastors, and there are a lot of pastors out there who struggle to get their congregations to see the importance of the preaching of the Word of God at all.

20:32 But you don't struggle with that, and praise God. So thank you for that. Thank you for, you know, like the Jews basically telling me week in and week out, go get the Word and bring it back to us on Sunday morning. They approach the Word of God with eagerness. Here's another thing. Look down at verses 5 and 6. Look down at verses 5 and 6. They approached the word of God with reverence. Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people. For he was above all the people. And as he opened it all, the people stood.

21:05 And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. You see that? They approached the word of God with reverence. They stood. They showed reverence. They stood for the preaching of the word. Now, just to address it quickly, I don't think this is a mandate for us to stand during the preaching of the word. That would be a particularly long time for you to be standing there. I don't even think it's a mandate for us to stand when the word of God is read in our services. Any more than verse 6 is a mandate that after the word of God is read, we have to get on our faces and lower our faces to the ground. None of that seems to have been the practice of the early churches.

21:45 So this doesn't seem to have been prescriptive for all gatherings of the people of God, just descriptive of what these people did at this particular time. But the heart behind all of that is exactly right. The hands in the air, the faces to the ground, even the standing for the reading of the word of God on that day is an outward display of a heart that reveres God and loves his word. And friends, that's exactly what I hope marks and characterizes us as a church. I hope it marks and characterizes us as an institution, right?

22:18 As a body, as a church. I hope it marks and characterizes you as an individual Christian. A reverence for and a gratitude for the very special thing it is that we get to come here week after week after week to hear God's very word taught to us. I hope you approach that with the reverence that it deserves. You know there are things that you can do to show that kind of reverence and even to create that kind of reverence in your heart? I mean, you can read the text in advance.

22:50 And I promise if you read the text in advance that's going to be preached on that Sunday morning, read it on Thursday, Friday, Saturday, even Sunday morning, I promise you, you will approach this sermon differently than if you're coming into it as a cold call. Your mind and your heart will be prepped. You'll have the categories in place. You'll at least kind of know the story of what's going to be talked about. Even if you have a lot of questions about it, it will prepare your heart to listen to the Word of God. Pray in your car with your family on the way to church. Just a prayer for what's going to happen in the morning service.

23:21 It will create in you and even in your children the kind of reverence that this is not just like a ball game that we're going to. This is not just like going to a movie or some other entertainment thing. This is something special that we prepare for. Use the offertory before the sermon as a time to pray and prepare your heart to hear God's word. Friends, don't just use that as a time of intermission. It's not an intermission in the service. It's a time to prepare your heart. It's an element of Christian worship that is part of our gathering together as Christians.

23:54 Use that to create reverence. And yeah, you know, it might surprise you to hear me say this, but if during our service, during a song or anything else, you want to raise your hands like these Jews raised their hands in praise to God, please, by all means, do it. I mean, you know, despite the reputation that our church may have built up over the last 20 years, we are not Third Avenue the Frozen Chosen. we're not the reformed and refrigerated nor are we the amen whisperers no we want to be a church we want we want to be a church that's not cold but that has warm hearts to the lord and we want to be free to show that so look if you're the kind of person that wants to raise your hands during a song please do not look around and see that most people are not doing that and decide that you need to put your hands in your pockets.

24:46 Please feel free to raise your hands and show outwardly the reverence and celebration that you have for the Lord. Now, you're not gonna see me doing that. You're just not because that's not who I am. And you know how you feel, you know, if you're a hand raiser, right? You know how you feel kind of fake and sort of, you know, forced and straight jacketed if you have to keep your hands down when you really wanna raise them? I promise you, if I stick my hands up in the air, I'm gonna be feeling exactly like that because it would be forced, not out of my heart. it's just not who I am but friend if that is who you are then by all means do it it shows a love for him and a celebration for what he's done for us approach the word of God with reverence look down through here too this whole just sort of the whole section at how the people of God interacted with God's word they were again and again and again attentive to it and they worked to understand what it said and what it meant.

25:44 If you look at verse 3, you can see that just really straightforwardly. He read from it, facing the square before the water gate, from early morning until midday in the presence of the men and women and all those who could understand. And look at that last sentence. The ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Attentive. They paid attention. And if you look down through here four different times, it says that they understood it. I mean, even the setup, the way the whole thing was done with Ezra and his, you know, fellow scribes standing in this kind of tower, maybe even a pulpit.

26:18 Another team of scribes apparently out among the people taking time to have conversations with them and talk to them about what was being read. All of that, even the setup, shows that the goal wasn't just for the book to be read and the words to sort of wash over them like a ritual. It was to understand what it means. My friends, the power of the Word of God comes in you understanding what it means. It's not just that you're here and letting it wash over you like so much water. What matters is hearing it, listening attentively, and understanding it.

26:53 I remember 25 years ago, I went to a conference. It ended up having like 100,000 people at it. It was in a field out in, like just outside of Memphis. It was in the year 2000, I think. But anyway, one of the things that they did is everybody was kind of gathering around. Everybody was intense. It was like Christian Woodstock, right? everyone was camping out in tents and on the day before the thing was supposed to start as everyone was getting there they had this thing going on out in the field where the people were eventually going to gather they had the whole thing roped off huge gigantic field but it was all roped off and nobody could set foot on that ground and then in the you know where the stage was eventually going to be erected they had a crane that was was up must have been a hundred feet up in the air and they had you know it was it was sort of leaning out over this field and they had somebody for 24 straight hours up on top of that crane reading the scriptures over the field and the word that went out among the people is that we are seeding this field with the word of god well the problem with that was that they didn't even have it miked and so literally no

27:57 one but the grass and the person who was reading it was understanding what the word of god said it was a symbolic but useless gesture and friends there are a lot of people who show up to church hoping that the seed of the word of God will just infect them like the grass and they're fiddling with their phone or they're flipping through the hymn book you know counting the e's in a particular you're doing whatever it is that you do to distract yourself right and you're just hoping that the word of God will get into you by osmosis friends it does not work that way the way these people responded to the word of God was with attentiveness and an attempt to understand it's no good for the word of God to just be preached over you you got to struggle with it you got to ask questions of it if you run across something in a text that we're studying that you don't understand ask after the service ask a friend come find me back at the door if I if I'm there on that particular day and open it up to me and say I don't understand that sentence

28:58 How does that fit? Shoot me an email later on in the week. What does this mean? I don't see how this fits with Romans whatever, or I don't see how it fits with that. How does it go with that? Friends, it is not irreverent to ask questions of the Word of God. It's not irreverent to say, I don't understand it. You want to know what's irreverent? You don't know what's irreverent to the Word of God? It's to treat the Word as something that is magical, That can't be understood or is fundamentally uninteresting to you.

29:31 That's what it is to be irreverent to the word of God. Don't do that. Strive to listen to it with attentiveness. Look at the rest of the chapter too. The people respond with obedience. In 9 to 12 there, Nehemiah declares a day of rejoicing. And then in the rest of the chapter, the people discover this feast of tabernacles or booths. And what do they do? I mean, immediately when they discover, well, my goodness, we've been doing this wrong for 700 years. We've had the feast, but we haven't been doing the booths. What do they do? They move immediately to obey the word and celebrate it.

30:05 I don't think we have to go into too much detail about it. It's a lot of Old Testament stuff about, you know, building the booths and what it all means. It was a feast of God, a feast of gratitude to God for sustaining them, especially through the days of wandering in the wilderness. So hence the booths, right? They had to live in tents when they were wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, And so therefore, that's a commemoration of that event. But the point here is that people want to obey the word, not just hear it. They want to be doers of the word, not just hearers of it.

30:36 And so that's what they do in the rest of that chapter. So what do we take from all this? Well, one thing we take is that the preaching of the word, which is what this was, right? it's the reading of the word of God, and then the explaining of it, and the applying of it to life, the preaching of the word among these Jews was a big deal in the life of the nation. And Nehemiah, even as he's writing this story, he makes a big deal of it. I mean, did you notice how many times through this, even those first few verses of chapter 8, verses like 1 through, what, 8 or something, did you notice how many times Nehemiah kind of repeats what he's already said about Ezra opening up. He'll say, Ezra opened it, and then he opened it, and then he got into the tower, and then he opened the book. It opened the book. I mean, it's almost like a, I don't know, highlight reel of an NCAA March Madness dunk or something, where they go, you know, and back it up, and then wham, at the very end, the ball goes through the hoop. I mean, that's kind of what happens. I mean, listen to how he writes this. He says this, Ezra brought the book of the law, and he brought the book of

31:39 the law, and he read from it, and he stood on a wooden platform, and he opened the book, and he opened it, and he opened it, and he read from the book, and he stood, and he read, and so the people understood the reading. Bam! Do you see what he's doing there? He's saying this is a serious, serious moment that you need to pay some attention to, and that's why we as a church take it seriously too. And frankly, this is one of the main places in the Bible that teaches us the importance of what we do here every week, which is expository preaching. Every week, somebody stands up in this pulpit and opens the book and reads it and explains it and applies it to life in the hope that the people will understand the reading. That's what we do. And we do that, friends, not just because we see that modeled here in Nehemiah chapter 8. It's also commanded in the New Testament. But that whole thing, the fact that we gather here at the first part of every single week is based on a conviction that God, when he gives life to people, always gives life through his word.

32:41 That's how it happens. If you want to have spiritual life, whether it's for the first time or just what you're going to need to live this week, if you want spiritual life, you get it through the word of God. And so we preach. It's always been like that. When God wanted to give existence to the universe, how does he do it? Through his word. Let there be light. Let there be stuff. And there was stuff. How does he bring life to Adam, this body that's made out of the dirt? He breathes into it, and the breath of God is always equivalent in the Bible to his word.

33:15 How does he give life to Israel, the nation? How does he bring it into existence? He speaks to them his law from the top of Sinai. How does he bring life to the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel's vision? He gives those bones life through the preaching of his word and his breath, again, his word blowing over them. How does Jesus bring life to Lazarus? He didn't roll the stone away and go in and do chest compressions on the dead body of Lazarus and bring him to life. He just says it, Lazarus, come out.

33:46 And Lazarus comes out. How does he give life to your dead, sinful soul? With a word. By speaking your name into life. That's how it happens. God always gives life through his word. And so we gather here at the beginning of every single week to listen to it, read and preached. So these people made a genuinely sincere turn to God's word here in chapter 8. And also when you get into chapter 9.2, they had a sincerely repentant heart.

34:21 And again, I don't mean to be throwing any shade on that. There's no irony in it. They were genuinely, sincerely repentant in their hearts. That's what we see in chapter 9. If you look back into 8 just a little bit, the main effect of the reading of the book of the law. seems to, excuse me, seems to have been conviction of sin. The law is read and it seems mainly to bring to mind to all of these people how they and their fathers for generation after generation had forsaken God. So in that little middle section of chapter 8, the people are weeping and Nehemiah actually has to step in and say, look, this isn't the time for that. This isn't the time for dealing with the sin just yet. We can get to that later, but first we're going to rejoice that we have God's word at all. Now that's interesting, isn't it? There is, in the Christian life, under the conviction of the word of God, there is a time for weeping, but there is also a time for rejoicing.

35:13 I know that there are a lot of Christians out there who kind of think that the height of piety, the thing that God wants more than anything, is for us to sort of sit in our guilt and our brokenness over sin for extended periods of time. Now friends, there is a place for brokenness. There is a place for conviction of sin and feeling sorry for sin, but that is not the height of piety and faithfulness in the Christian life. You know what the height of piety and faithfulness in the Christian life is? You know what brings glory to Christ more than you sort of sitting for a long time in the brokenness of your sin? What brings glory to Christ is for you to look up out of the brokenness of your sins and say, that's the guy who can fix my soul. And then rejoicing in the fact that he does so. Repent of your sins, feel sorry for your sins, but there's no reason for you to spend days in it. Your sins are forgiven. So look to Christ, find forgiveness, repent, and then rise

36:13 up to continue the fight. That's what brings glory to Christ. That's what Nehemiah told to them. And so they do, for two weeks, they feast and they celebrate. But as soon as that feast is over in 9-1, they really do get right back to the matter of conviction and repentance. And so that's what you get through the whole of chapter 9. Chapter 9 is a long, long prayer of repentance that is essentially, the form that it takes, is a recounting of the whole history of the nation of Israel, from Abraham to Moses to the judges, finally to the kings and ultimately the exile, where they all got sent off to Babylon.

36:48 And what's striking about this history of Israel is that there is zero sugarcoating of the situation. They do not gold plate this story at all. They look at it with insane straightforwardness. And what it is, as you read it, is one long string of the same pattern playing out again and again and again. God is kind to the Israelites and the Israelites reject God over and over and over and over.

37:21 That's the pattern. I think you can see this most clearly looking at like verse 16. So I'm gonna read just a little bit and you notice the flip-flops. Notice all the flipping and flopping that happens in this recounting. The people there say, but they and our fathers acted presumptuously despite the fact God that you had called them and made them a nation. They acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and didn't obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you, Flip, are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

37:59 Even when they made for themselves a golden cap, flop, and said, this is your God who brought you out of Egypt and had committed great blasphemies, Flip, you and your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart by day, with a pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave them your good, and there's just this flood of good stuff that God does for them. I mean, look down through 21. It's all good. 22 is amazing. 23 is amazing. 24, amazing. 25, amazing. Now look at 26. Nevertheless, despite all that, they were disobedient and rebelled against you.

38:37 I mean, I actually think you can get the story of it by looking at that paragraph from 26 to 31. All you gotta do is look at the first sentence and the last sentence of it. I mean, it's very simple. They were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets. And then look at 31. Nevertheless, in your great mercies, you did not make an end of them. And it just goes like that for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph. They rebel. God is kind. They rebel. God is kind. They rebel. God is kind.

39:08 Again and again and again. Nevertheless, they. Nevertheless, you. It's the whole history of Israel. God did this for them. Nevertheless, they rebelled. Nevertheless, God was kind to them. Nevertheless, they abandoned him and whored after other gods. It's their whole history. In fact, you know that's our history too. That's your history as a human being. for God to be kind to you and yet nevertheless for you to rebel against him.

39:42 I mean, think for a second about all the different ways that God has been kind to you throughout your life. That doesn't mean that bad things haven't happened to you. They have. And for many of you, those things are horrific things that you would never wish on your worst enemy. And yet you're still here. You're still here. You're still breathing. Your heart is still beating. God has kept you alive. And now he's brought you here to hear the gospel of his son, Jesus. He's letting you hear his word and learn about him, the creator of the universe.

40:16 Probably he's let you hear it many, many times during your life. And what are you doing with that? Why is your heart still turning away from him? Now, you might say to me, look, you don't know. You don't know what God has done to me. You don't know what God has allowed to be done to me. You don't understand why I think about God the way that I do. Well, no, I don't. I mean, I'm just up here talking into the wind, right? I have no idea what your stories are. But no matter what your story is, no matter what's happened, I do know one thing.

40:53 I know that whatever it is deep down in your heart that God has allowed to happen to you, I know that whatever it is that has been done to you, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that God has done you a kindness that swamps it all. He's given his son so that you can spend eternity with him in the new heavens and new earth. There is nothing that's been done to you that is worse than that is great. God has given his son so that you and I might not have to die in our sin.

41:33 He wants to say over our lives, just like he did over the Israelites, yes, that's all true, that's all true, that's all true. Nevertheless, I love them, and so I'm going to save them. See, that's their history. But I think another extraordinary thing about chapter 9 here is that they know that. They know that's their history, and they acknowledge it, and they own it. At no point in this whole chapter 9, the whole long prayer, do they ever try to make excuses for it. They don't try to set it in its context. Well, in this particularly difficult time in the life of the nation, we had some weakness and we decided to take a day off or whatever.

42:08 No, they say, no, we've done this. We know that we've done this. Our fathers did this. And we know that their sin and our sin piled on top of it has led us to this disaster. In fact, they explicitly say near the end that God was exactly right to judge them in this way. Look at verse 32. Chapter 9, verse 32. Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardships seem little to you that's come upon us, upon our kings, princes, priests, prophets, fathers, all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria till this day.

42:42 Don't let that be lost on you, God. It's all happened. Yet, 33, you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, For you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. Do you see that? Do you see what's going on there? You, oh God, have been just to punish us for this sin. I think right there you're getting right at the heart of what true repentance is. True repentance is to be able to look at your sin and say, God, you are right to hate that. You are right to judge that and you are right to judge me who has done that.

43:20 Are you able to look at your sin and say that? Because I think for most of us, it's not that. When our sin is laid out before us, our first thing is not to say, yep, you're right to judge that, but to say, God, I don't think you should judge that because of these four points. I was having a bad day. You don't understand the pain that I was in. You don't understand what was going on. And it wasn't that bad compared to that other guy. Our mind is very seldom to look at our sin and say, yeah, you're right, oh God, to hate that and to want to judge it. And yet I think that's what repentance is.

43:52 I love what one old Puritan said. He said, the difference between a non-Christian and a Christian is not that the one sins and the other doesn't. It's that the one, the non-Christian, takes the side of his sin against his God. And the other one, the Christian, takes the side of his beloved God against his hated sin. In other words, repentance is a fundamental change of allegiance. That's what it is.

44:23 And the word means turn. To be going in one direction is to turn and go the other direction. But it's not just a physical thing. It's an allegiance thing. You're saying that I used to worship these gods over here. I used to pursue these things over here. That's what my life was about. But now my allegiance is to Christ. It's a fundamental change of allegiance in your heart. That's what repentance is. And that's what the people of Israel seem to have been doing. They know. They know that they need to repent.

44:54 And yet, at the end of the prayer, they also know that it's all for nothing. It's all for nothing if God doesn't show mercy to them. And so that's where they end the whole thing. Look at 34. Our kings, our princes, our priests, our fathers, they have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom, amid your great goodness that you gave them, in a large and rich land that you set before them, They didn't serve you or turn from their wicked works. And then they get to their own situation. And so behold, we are slaves to this day. In the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves.

45:29 And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please. And we, oh God, are in great distress. And it's interesting, isn't it? They don't even actually, right there, get to the point of asking God to show them mercy. You see that? They don't even ask for it. They just sort of leave it hanging there. It's this kind of breathless hope. We're in great distress.

46:02 What are you going to do about it? Right? They just leave it hanging there. This hope that God's going to see them where they are and show them some mercy. The same mercy, in fact, that he's shown them over and over and over again. look maybe that's maybe that's where you are and maybe the only thing you've gotten as far as saying to God is I I am in great distress what are you going to do about it maybe that's as far as you've gotten but if that is you here's my encouragement to you put some more words to that put some more words to that say oh God I am in great distress and I need you to save me and I can't save myself but I know Jesus can save me so I'm putting my trust in him.

46:47 Put those words to it and I promise you this is a God who will come screaming out of heaven through his spirit into your heart to give you life and salvation. Pray to him and ask for mercy in Jesus Christ. So they made a sincere turn to the word of God. They had a sincerely repentant heart no irony in that but now first not verse 3.3 they made finally a sincerely misguided offer to God a sincerely misguided offer to God so by 937 at the end of the prayer like you know we are in great distress it the whole thing has reached the tipping point the people have heard God's word they've acted to obey it their hearts seem genuinely repentant of their sin they're hopeful somehow for God to show in mercy. And then what? What happens? We'll look at 38, the very next thing that happens. And because of all this, God, we make a firm covenant in writing on the sealed document are the names of

47:48 our princes, our Levites, and our priests. Now, if you're a student of the Bible, if you've read the Bible very much, especially the Old Testament, that ought to strike you as exceedingly strange. What are these people doing offering God a covenant? It doesn't happen. Covenant in the Bible is always initiated by God. God comes to Abraham and makes a covenant with him. God comes to Moses, makes a covenant with the nation.

48:20 God comes to David, makes a covenant. It's always initiated by God. So what is with this strange inversion where the people are initiating and saying, God, we make with you this covenant. It gets even stranger when you realize that what they seem to think they're doing is actually re-upping the Mosaic Covenant. They don't even seem to be putting up a new covenant that's something that's just completely different. They don't seem to have any understanding of what happened to the Mosaic Covenant it because they're trying to re-up it. They're trying to re-establish it. Their eyes keep flashing over to that gold medal sitting on the mantle. I mean, look at 28. Look at verses, look at 28.

49:04 Chapter 10, verse 28. The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands, to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, everybody, 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. That is all just famous language from Exodus and Deuteronomy. They're trying to re-up the Mosaic Covenant. And then the things they promised to do in their covenant for the rest of that chapter. It's about things from the old law. It's about intermarriage with foreign people and the Sabbath and especially the upkeep of the temple and the priesthood. You see what they're doing? They're trying to reestablish the Mosaic covenant. And look what, so they do it in 38. They say we're making this firm covenant, 938. Look at what happens in chapter 9, verse 39. On that day, there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud and a very loud trumpet blast so that all

50:06 the people in the camp trembled. Well, no, that's Exodus, right? In fact, there is no 939. That's when God made the Mosaic Covenant in the first place. And you can look at 10.1 and you can look at 11.1 and you're never actually going to get anything like as soon as they finished their prayer, fire came down from heaven and the glory of the Lord filled the temple. It doesn't happen. That that I just read is 2 Chronicles when God fills the temple that Solomon built that God commanded him to build. But what happens?

50:38 What happens here when the people offer God their covenant? nothing. There's no thunder. There's no lightning. There's no clouds. There's no darkness. Heaven is silent because God does not accept. Why? Why doesn't he accept? I mean, it's a good thing, right, to think that, oh, there's this broken covenant. God, we're going to put it back together, and we're going to offer it to you.

51:12 again why doesn't God accept because that seems like a good thing he doesn't accept because they can't re-establish it because it's broken and it's not coming back it's broken it's not coming back and there's several places in scripture that make this clear Jeremiah chapter 11 verse 10 they have broken my covenant Jeremiah 31 this is my covenant which they broke Ezekiel 16 you have despised the oath by breaking the covenant and the prophets couldn't be clearer in fact the whole structure of the covenant was this to begin with if you obey the word of the lord then these blessings will come if you break the covenant then these curses will fall and once the curses fall once it's broken and the curses happen because it's broken that's it the covenant's done It's broken, lying on the floor, and honored only by a curse against those who broke it.

52:12 There's no going back. So Daniel, when he's sitting in exile in Persia, says this, All Israel, O God, has transgressed your law and turned aside. And so, because of that, the curse and oath that are written in the law of Moses have been poured out upon us. You see the point in the story? You see where it's going? There's no going back from this. There's no picking up the pieces of the Mosaic Covenant and duct taping it all back together and offering it to God. Again, there's no going back.

52:46 But there is a way forward. And what's that? Well, it's God's purpose. It's been God's purpose all along. Jeremiah 31, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and Judah, not like the one that I made with their fathers. on the day I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt? That was my covenant which they broke. But this, this is the covenant that I'm gonna make with Israel in those days. I'll put my law within each of their hearts. I will write it on their hearts.

53:17 I will be their God and they will be my people. No longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother saying, know the Lord, for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest because I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more. See, that's what they needed. That's what they needed. It's what Jeremiah had told them was coming. They didn't need to reestablish and duct tape together this old broken covenant and offer it to God and say, please accept this. No, they needed a brand new covenant, a brand new relationship with God, a covenant that wasn't going to be dependent in the least on their wishy-washy obedience on again, off again, but a covenant that was locked into place by the obedience of the one great Redeemer.

54:01 that's what the author of hebrews says about it all he says look if that first covenant the mosaic one if that had been faultless there wouldn't have been any occasion to look for a second but jeremiah does look for another one and when he speaks of that new covenant he makes the first one obsolete and what's becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away so therefore as it is christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better since it is enacted on better promises. Look, I don't know. I have no idea what your plan is today, tomorrow, whenever it is, of being right with God. And maybe your plan for being right with God, so to speak, is just to kind of declare that none of this is true anyway.

54:50 That there is no God in the first place, and therefore I'm off the hook. I don't need to be right with a non-existent God. I mean, gutsy move. You can go for it. We'll see how it plays out on the last day. Because either you and I are going to land together in a very similar graves and the same thing, nothing is going to happen to us. Or we're both going to stand before the king. Gutsy move. Maybe your plan is to do enough penance to do enough works of charity to go to enough masses to pray enough prayers that all of that will outweigh your sin on the last day.

55:38 Friend, it's never going to work. It's never going to work. The Bible does not say that the wages of sin outweighing the good works is death. It says the wages of sin any sin is death and no matter how many prayers you pray no matter how many masses you attend you're still a sinner and maybe your plan for being right with God is to say look I'm just a good old boy never meaning no harm I mean three of you are giggling But the problem, dear brother, is that you have been in trouble with the law since the day you were born.

56:29 And you will remain that way unless Jesus saves you. Look, you're not going to be right with God on your own terms. You can't offer him a deal any more than the Israelites could offer him a re-upping of the Mosaic Covenant. You have to come to God on his terms. And his terms are these. That you acknowledge yourself to be a sinner and a rebel against the Most High God. That you look at Jesus Christ and acknowledge Him as the King of kings and Lord of lords who saves sinners through His life, death, and resurrection.

57:02 And then that you throw yourself on His mercy and say, Jesus, I cannot save myself, but you have promised to save sinners just like me who call on your name, and so therefore I call. Help me. Friends, there's never been a salvation that has been offered with such easy terms as that. It's a wide open invitation. Why won't you go to him? See, if you look at this whole story, this whole text on the surface, these people, right on the surface, they did everything right.

57:38 They did everything right on the surface. They turned to God's word. They listened. They wept. They repented. They obeyed. and then with all the sincerity and resolve they could muster up in their hearts, they offered themselves to God in a covenant. But they were reaching for something that was already broken. And so there was no cloud, there was no fire, there was no thunder from heaven. God did not renew the Mosaic Covenant precisely because he was planning something better. I mean, the Mosaic Law, the Mosaic Covenant did what it could.

58:10 It awakened their guilt. It showed them that they were guilty before God, But it couldn't change their hearts. And so even in the next couple of chapters, all these promises that they make in chapter 10, they're all going to start to fall short beginning in chapter 11. It doesn't work. And what they needed and what we need is not just a second chance to obey again. If you got a second chance, a clean slate, to obey again, you know what you would do? You would immediately disobey and mess up that slate too.

58:44 Now, you don't need a clean slate. You don't need a second chance. What you need is Jesus' slate submitted in your place. You need a redeemer. You need somebody who keeps the covenant for you. You need somebody who sheds his blood to establish a new and better covenant. You need a savior and a redeemer who doesn't just leave you with some clinch-fisted resolve to obey, but who actually gives you a new heart. Being right with God requires more than your resolve.

59:17 It requires more than your sincerity. It requires Jesus, and he's come. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you and honor you as the King of kings and the Lord of lords, the one who came as the guarantor of a new covenant, the one who shed his blood to establish that covenant and to make it with your people so that they would never be cast out of God's presence. Our Lord Jesus, you are our great mediator.

59:48 You are our great high priest, the one who stands between us and the Father as a propitiation for our sins. Lord Jesus, we thank you for these things and we praise you and we pray, oh Lord, that you would push them deep into our hearts so that our gratitude for you and our reverence and our desire to hear from you and to know you just increases. We pray all of this in the name of Jesus, our Savior, our Redeemer, and our King. Amen.