“Being Faithful To The God Who Is Faithful To Us”
Nehemiah 9-10
Sermon Series: “Change Your World In 52 Days”
Introduction: The beginning of Nehemiah 9 tells us that the children of Israel were assembled on the 24th day of the month “with fasting, in sackcloth, and with dust on their heads.” They were obviously humbled, broken, and repentant. They spent 3 hours reading God’s Word and then 3 hours confessing their sins and worshipping. James Hamilton Jr. gives the background of this in his commentary on Ezra and Nehemiah. He writes, “The long list of names in Nehemiah 7 accounted for all the people who belonged to the covenant they were renewing. Then in chapter 8, on the first day of the seventh month, they read the Torah[God’s Law]…and in 8:9-10 they began to mourn and weep about the way that they had fallen short of the Torah, fallen short of the stipulations of the covenant. Because of the time of year, because the first day of the seventh month was a holy day (8:2), they are told not to weep that day. They postponed the weeping and went forward with the Festivals of the seventh month:
-The first day of the seventh month is a holy convocation, the Festival of Trumpets (Lev. 23:24).
-The tenth day of the seventh month is the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:26-28).
-Beginning on the fifteenth day of the seventh month they celebrate the Festival of Booths for seven days (Leviticus 23:33-36). The events of the Festival of Booths continue to the twenty-second day of the seventh month. Then the eighth day of the Festival of Booths is another holy convocation-that would be the twenty-third day of the month-and now in Nehemiah 9:1 we arrive at the twentyfourth day of the month. So they have completed the Festivals, and now they are here on the twenty-fourth day to finish what they started when the law was read on the first day and they began to weep and mourn in response to it (8:2, 9-10).”
*Main Idea: God is mercifully faithful to us even though we are consistently unfaithful to Him.*
The first four verses set this up, and then verse 5 through the end of the chapter is a transcript of the Levites leading them in praising God, prayer, and renewing their covenant with the Lord through a theological recounting of the major points of the Old Testament. Then, the first 27 verses of chapter 10 name people who placed their seal on the covenant, and the rest of the chapter elaborates on the covenant, which was basically a commitment to obey God’s Word, particularly by not marrying idolaters, keeping the Sabbath, and giving financially to take care of God’s house. They walked them through creation (9:6), God’s covenant with Abraham (9:7-8), the Exodus and wilderness wandering (9:9-21), the conquest of and blessing in the Promised Land (9:22-25), the repeating pattern of rebellion, deliverance, rest, rebellion in Judges (9:26-28), the Prophets to the Exile (9:29-31) in order to show them (and us) God’s faithfulness and His people’s unfaithfulness, and then they confessed their sin, repented, and asked for restoration (9:32-38).
We need to remember that as merciful and faithful that God was to them that we have a new and better covenant through Jesus Christ (Hebrews 7:20-28, 8:1-13, 9:11-28).
Our Response To God’s Faithfulness:
1. Faith (9:8). Trust Jesus for salvation, and then trust Him every day of our lives. We cannot be faithful without faith.
2. Confess our sins (9:2-3, 33). 1 John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
3. Continually repent of sin and renew our covenant with the Lord Jesus (9:38). Luke 9:23 says, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny
