The Daily Walk | 06.19.2026 | Pastor Mike Gibbons | Nehemiah 9:17

Good morning, First Baptist Wimberly.

This is Mike Gibbons.

Welcome to Friday.

We are back in Nehemiah this Sunday.

I would encourage you to prepare yourself for worship in the Word by reading through all of Nehemiah 10 before Sunday.

As I did that this week, I went back to Nehemiah 9 just to review and remind myself of the context and was captured by a phrase in Nehemiah 9:17.

Nehemiah 9:17

Let me read that verse.

They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them.

But they stiffened their neck and appointed the leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.

But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them.

Here is the phrase, but you are a God ready to forgive.

Now I'm recording this at 9 a.m.

on Thursday.

The day has barely started, and I need that forgiveness already.

So this really captured my attention.

I went to the Prince of Preachers, Charles Spurgeon, to see if he had any commentary on that verse.

Now he obviously used the King James Version, and in that translation, this phrase reads as Thou art a God ready to pardon.

But listen to what Spurgeon says.

Quote, we have this book of holy scripture written by the pen of the Holy Spirit, which tells us over and over again that the God whom we have offended is a God ready to pardon, a God whose mercy endureth forever.

I would call your attention to the expression a God ready to pardon.

Not a God who may possibly pardon, neither a God who, upon strong persuasion and earnest pleadings may at length be induced to forgive.

Not one who, perchance, at some remote period, after we have undergone a long purgation, may manifest a mercy which is now in the background, but a God ready to pardon, willing and more than willing, ready, standing prepared, or to use another scriptural expression, waiting to be gracious.

Not only are all things ready, but God Himself is ready, his own heart and hand already to bestow pardon upon the guilty ones who come before him.

There is forgiveness with him that he may be feared.

May the Holy Spirit lead us to feel the power of his mercy.