Nehemiah - Chapter 10-12: The New Committed In Israel
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
I'm so glad to be in here again with you guys today. If you're watching online, welcome, we wish we could see your face, but we are glad you are tuning in. I feel like with a series like Nehemiah where it's so long and we are going chapters by chapters, we need a "previously on Nehemiah." We need a recap video or something. I'm going to give us a little previously on for us today just to catch us up where we've come from so we can know where we're headed. First, we know that Nehemiah was called by God to go rebuild the wall around Jerusalem. We took it to God in prayer. We learned that he was a guy that went to prayer first. That was his first response. And he got the endorsement and the support of the king that he served. So he went back and he faced a lot of opposition. He faced a lot of naysayers, a lot of people who did not want to see this wall rebuilt, but they persevered and they came together and the people really unified despite their differences, despite their different skills and abilities, God used them in order to rebuild this wall. And then after the wall was rebuilt, they brought out the scrolls and they re-read the scriptures. They read the law. They had celebrations and festivals and feasts. The ones that had been originally prescribed by God, they were rejoicing and celebrating. Then they got more somber and they confessed their sins. They mourned with sackcloth and ashes. Then last week, we saw how they recounted their history. They went through what God had done since the beginning of their nation. They looked at the sins of the generations before them and they even confronted their own sins, but they saw the faithfulness of God over and over and over again. Pastor Andre left us a little bit with a cliffhanger last week of now that they had been confronted with these sins, now that they had finished the wall and they had seen God's goodness, what was next? What were they going to do in response to his faithfulness? Well we're going to dive into that today, but first let's pray as we get started.
Heavenly Father, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for this time together. May you open our hearts and our ears to your word. Help us to hear what you have for us. We thank you for your faithfulness, for your goodness and your love. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.
Well we're going to be in chapters 10 through 12. I promise not to read every word of three chapters to you today, but before we do that, we actually have to take a quick step back into chapter 9. The last verse kicks us off. So we're going to look at verse 38 of chapter 9. It says, "In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites and our priests are affixing their seals to it." So Israel was recommitting themselves to this covenant with God. They were literally creating this binding document, this contractual agreement with God. A covenant is serious business. You think about a marriage covenant. You think about this covenant between God and, or between the people and the God of the universe. It was a big deal. The thing is, God never wavered in his covenant. He originally had a covenant with Abraham and it continued through Noah and Moses and David and Jesus. It continued. We see it throughout scripture how time and time again the Israelites fell away. They failed, they messed up, but God was constantly faithful. The thing is, he knew going into this covenant, he knew that the humans would mess up. They were going to fall. They were going to ruin it. But because he is almighty God, because he is Yahweh, he also knew that he could keep up the end of the deal for both parties. He was big enough and powerful enough to keep the covenant intact for both himself and the people. So now we have Nehemiah and the people saying, "Okay, we're going to recommit to this. We are going to do this covenant and live up to the standards again." A covenant typically costs something. Usually in this time it involved a sacrifice or the exchanging of some material possession like a garment or gold or some sort of trade. So it costs the people something. In this case, for God, it costs him having to come down to us. He was God. He could just be in heaven and do his thing and he didn't have to interact with us, but he so badly wanted a relationship with his people that he stooped to our level. For the people, it cost them probably some material things like animals for sacrifices, but it also costed them their way of living, the way they want to live, their fleshly desires in order to follow this covenant and live in line with God. It's going to cost them something, but they're ready to recommit to this covenant.
So now we get to chapter 10 and we're just going to look real quick at verse 1 and 2. It says, "Those who sealed it were Nehemiah the governor, the son of Heculiah, Zedekiah, Zeruiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, and I will not continue reading the rest of these names." There are a lot of names in there. We're going to just, you can just skim over that, all right? But there's a lot of people and it was the leaders. It started with the governor, Nehemiah, the Levites, the civic leaders. It was them that they were going to seal this covenant. As the ones who were called to lead the people and lead them both physically and spiritually, they were the ones to lead into this new covenant, but it didn't stop with them. They needed to get the rest of the people on board. So we're going to jump down to verse 28. It says, "The rest of the people, priests, Levites, gatekeepers, musicians, temple servants, and all who separated themselves from the neighboring peoples for the sake of the law of God, together with their wives and all their sons and daughters who are able to understand, all these now join their fellow Israelites, the nobles, and bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the law of God given through Moses, the servant of God, and to obey carefully all the commands, regulations, and decrees of the Lord our Lord." So it comes from the top down as they seal this covenant, but it had to be fully acted upon by the entire community. The whole community had to be on board. Why was this? Well, there had to be unity. There needed to be an agreement with everyone, this unifying response to this covenant, because they all needed to have a unified purpose in moving forward. It created accountability. It created a corporate vision and purpose as they were walking in this covenant with God. Same with us. As the body of Christ, as the church, the local church, but also as the global church, there's got to be a communal commitment that we are committing as a group of believers to follow God, to follow in His ways, to become a follower of Jesus. That's an individual commitment. That's between you and God, but then as you engage in Christian community, it becomes corporate. We have unity within the body. We work together in moving forward to build the kingdom of God. So with this covenant that they were recommitting to, they were bought in. They were completely committed to being faithful.
Our oldest, Addi, she's 10, and she really, really, really wanted a guitar. She had this kind of cheap out of tune thing that would never hold a tune, and she really wanted to learn. So she asked us if she could buy a guitar. And so we decided that if she was really committed to this, that she should save some of her own money and pay for it. We thought, you know, if she has some skin in this game, if she is bought in, she'll be more likely to stay committed to learning, to taking care of it. So for like over six months, she saved. She had birthday and Christmas and chores and just saved up her money. And then her deal finding dad found a really great deal on a great guitar, and we were able to get it. And that was a lot of money for a kid her age. But she was so excited, and she was so proud of this thing. And she takes care of it, and she practiced it, and we saw that she was being more faithful than if it had just been given to her. Like I said, a covenant requires something of us. The people of Israel were choosing to engage in whatever the cost was going to be in order to be faithful and be bought into this. So in making this covenant, they separated themselves from the surrounding areas. They were agreeing to a standard of holiness that they had not been living up to up until this point. See, to be in a covenant with God requires us to be holy. God can't make himself less holy. That's not how that works. We must become holy as he is holy. So this new standard of holiness meant some changes for the people. They could no longer intermarry with people from the surrounding nations. They no longer bought and sold with other people on the Sabbath. They committed to taking care of God's house and what was needed for the sacrifices and the services. They committed to bringing their firstfruits and their firstborn of their flocks. And they continued in bringing their regular tithes.
So we're going to look at this a little bit more deeper here. In verse 30, talking about the intermarrying, it says, "We promised not to give our daughters in marriage to the peoples around us or take their daughters for our sons." So this is because it was causing them to take their eyes off God. When they were intermarrying with the people from other nations, they were taking on their beliefs. They were taking on their false gods. They were still worshiping Yahweh, but they were also worshiping other gods. And God said, "Do not have any other gods before me." So they needed to cut that off. They needed to stop this idol worship. And part of that was not intermarrying. Now, choosing not to intermarry didn't mean they completely cut themselves off and never interacted with anyone from other nations. Because we see right in the next verse, verse 31, "When the neighboring peoples bring merchandise or grain to sell on the Sabbath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day. Every seventh year, we will forego working the land and will cancel all debts." So they were still going to market with these other people. They were still buying and selling. They were just recommitting to keeping the Sabbath holy as God had originally commanded it.
See, living a holy life, it means choosing to live God's way. It means choosing to look more like Christ every day. But it doesn't mean completely cutting ourselves off from the world. Jesus actually addresses this in his prayer in John 17. He says, "I have given them your word, and the world has hated them. For they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one. They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. Sanctify them by the truth. Your word is truth." We are being made holy or sanctified, as Jesus says here, even while we're still living in the world. Even while we go to work or school or interact with nonbelievers or the grocery store and customer service, whoever you're interacting with, even through that, being in the world, you are being sanctified by the truth. So this covenant that Nehemiah and the people were making was not about isolating them. It was about insulating them. Holiness is not a call to isolation, but to insulation. So think about a coat. You put on a coat to insulate yourself, to keep you warm, to keep you dry, so that when you go out into the weather, the storms and the cold, you'll be protected. You weren't insulating yourself. You don't put on a coat and then sit in the house. You'd overheat. Don't do that. You need to go out into the world, and this coat protects you as you navigate the storms of the world. Same goes for our holiness. As we grow in holiness, we become insulated so that we are ready and protected and prepared as we go out into the world. So the people, they knew they had fallen away from the laws of God, and they were getting back to following His ways. They were doubling down on their commitments to live holy lives, to keep the Sabbath, to take care of God's house. They were ready.
There's this funny tale about a chicken and a pig, and this chicken and a pig, they wanted to open a breakfast restaurant together. And the chicken goes to the pig and he says, "I got it. I got the name of our breakfast restaurant, Bacon and Eggs." And the pig goes, "Absolutely not. We cannot name our breakfast place that." And the chicken goes, "Why not? It's a perfect name. Bacon, Eggs, Chicken and a Pig. Like, it's great." And the pig goes, "No, no, no, no, no, no. If we name it that, you're involved. I'm committed." The pig had to go all in on that name. Right? There was no going back. So the question for us is, are we just involved in our Christian life? Are we just involved in church, or are we committed? Are we committed to walking with Christ, to following His ways? Are we committed to being part of the body, to striving towards unity with each other, to growing in holiness? Because as Christ followers, we should be committed, not just involved. They remembered God's faithfulness by looking back. They saw who He was and how He had maintained His end of the deal. And they recommitted themselves to this covenant relationship. They said, "We are not just going to be involved. We're not going to be half in. We are committed." So then we get to chapter 11, and there's a lot more names that we're not going to read today. But here we see that they are now trying to repopulate the city of Jerusalem. They had been in captivity. They had been living in surrounding villages and areas, and there were some people in Jerusalem, but they needed to repopulate this city. Now that they had a wall to protect, then they needed to bring people to live here. So the list of names here is a record of those who were chosen to go live in this city. And this wasn't just like an easy thing. This was requiring something of them. They were going to have to rebuild. They were going to have to protect themselves because now they were a viable city that other people, as we saw, did not want this city rebuilt. And so they could have threats, military or political threats, come against them. They were really getting an opportunity to live out this covenant. Okay, are you all in? Here's your opportunity to go and live in the city. They saw, they had a chance right away to show their faithfulness.
And then we get to chapter 12. And guess what? There's more names. Lots more names. Here's another name. Here we see the heads of households, the leaders of the people. It's keeping record of who was there and what their roles were. But then we get down to verse 27. And this is where we have the dedication of the wall. So Nehemiah gathers up the Levites from all over because they were still scattered about. He gathers the Levites. The Levites were the priests. They were the ones who ran the services. They were the worship leaders. And he gathered them and they created two choirs. And they literally walked the walls singing and playing their instruments and worshiping God. Verse 43 says, "And on that day, they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced. The sound of rejoicing in Jerusalem could be heard far away." Everyone was involved. Everyone was there. It was a party. And they were worshiping because he had restored their joy. He did restore their city, yes, but he restored their joy. They had been in captivity. They had gone through the struggle of rebuilding, of repopulating, of organizing themselves, and now their joy was restored. We can see here from these people and their experience in this story that when you have confession and repentance and commitment, it always leads to worship. It was only by God's grace and his provision that they could rebuild this wall, that their joy could be restored. It was only by his grace that they could even recommit themselves to this covenant. It is by his grace that we are saved, that we are restored, that our joy is restored. We can't do it on our own.
We can't save ourselves. But because we know that, because we know that it is him and by his grace, we can confess and turn in repentance and commit to him. And out of that, we worship him because he is so worthy of our praise. So just to recap a little bit here, we are called to a holy life and our holiness doesn't mean isolation, but insulation. As Christ followers, we are committed, not just involved. And number three, confession, repentance, and commitment should always lead to worship. Now lastly, I want to address all these names. I know we skipped over a lot of names today in this text, mainly because of time, but I encourage you, go back and look at them. Look over them, read it, even if you're just skimming it with your eyes because you don't want to try to pronounce them, that's okay. But there's a reason God included them in his scriptures. And honestly, as I was preparing for today, I was like, why are there so many names here? And I was, you know, I was researching it and asking God, like, God, why was it important enough to include these records, to include these names? And what I found is it was their heritage. It was their history, their records. They wanted to be able to trace back their heritage to Abraham to prove they were Jewish. They wanted it to be known that they were Jews because their identity as a Jew was so important. I believe it also was a record of what God had done, how he had moved, who he used, and how he used them. In a world where we're always busy, we're always going, and we have social media where there's posts that go, go, go, and Instagram stories that disappear after 24 hours, we should model after them about keeping record, about stopping long enough to take note of what God is doing, about who he says we are.
Pastor Andre and I work with our students, and we just finished up a series called "Who Are You?" And we dove into this idea of our identity in God and how we live out of that truth. See, the Jews, they wanted to keep this record so that they could show their Jewish descent because who they were mattered. And as Christ followers, whose we are matters. In our series with the students, we kept coming back to the passage in Ephesians where Paul talks about how we are God's workmanship. And in chapter 2 it says, "For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared in advance for us to do." God used Nehemiah and the people to rebuild this wall, to do good works. He didn't just use anyone, he used his chosen people. They restored the wall and they wanted to record it. They wanted to keep record of what God had done. And God restored their identity of who they were too. They had been in captivity. They had been scattered. They had been intermarrying, and God restored their identity. And by reinstating this commitment and this covenant, he was saying, "You are mine. You are my people." And they made sure to take note of it. I think that it would be worth our time to stop long enough to take note of who we are and who God says that we are. When we operate out of our identity in Christ, we can do the other things that were already talked about. We can be confident in the covenant we have with him because we are already his. We can live a holy life because we have already been given the righteousness of Christ and the covering of him to go out into the world. We can confess our sins and turn in repentance and stay the way, stay committed to his way because we know whose we are and we operate from that place. And out of all that, we can use our gifts and our abilities to serve others and worship God. So let us take note of this truth. Let us operate from this identity we have in Christ. Let's not forget his goodness and his grace and his forgiveness. And let us always, always give glory to God. Amen.
Let's pray. Jesus, we thank you for this time. We thank you for that you are so big and so good and so holy that you will never fail us. You are always faithful. Help us to keep our end of the deal, to grow in holiness, to seek after you, to become more like you every day. We're so grateful for who you are and for what you've done in our lives. Help us not to forget. Help us to take note of it, to stop long enough, to remember what you have done in and through us, God, who you say we are. We praise you, Father. In Jesus' name, amen.