"Really, Really, Mean It" Nehemiah 10 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Well, Nehemiah chapter 10, this time, this time, understand, this time, the Israelites really mean it.

Nehemiah 10 · chapter mention

No, they're not messing around anymore.

Those other covenants that you remember from the Old Testament, I mean, those were they were serious then.

You know, you understand that they were serious then.

There was the darkness on Mount Sinai and the sound of the trumpet and everybody panicking and Moses going up there with all sobriety and somberness and coming down with the law.

And yes, granted, by the time Moses came down, they were worshiping idols.

That's true.

But let's set that aside for a second.

They repented of that, and God actually killed all of them, and so they did repent of that, and then brought a new generation to the promised land, and then they did the whole covenant ceremony again, and they were really confident.

Even Joshua warned them.

We'll look at that passage later tonight.

Even Joshua warned them, guys, I don't think you you really mean this.

Like, no, we do mean it.

And of course, that didn't last more than what two chapters by Judges chapter one.

The wheels came off of that car again.

And so they've renewed the covenant various times through their history.

But this time, I'm telling you, this time, they really mean it.

And you can almost hear the pomp and circumstance uh surrounding the covenant that's signed in Nehemiah chapter 10.

Nehemiah 10 · chapter mention

When you go back to the end of chapter 9, uh I mean, just what a beautiful prayer chapter 9 was, wasn't it?

I hope it encouraged you this morning to go through it and to uh see how the Israelites and the Levites prayed.

I hope that was encouraging towards you.

And then it ends with because of all this, and I'm with them there, we make a firm covenant, and it's listen, it's in writing.

On the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites and our priests.

That's how chapter 9 ends.

And chapter 10, they even get you the names.

And, you know, commentators are a bit divided on this.

Is the covenant good?

Is the covenant, you know, a right thing and a noble thing to do?

It certainly has echoes of what God has done with them before, but it's uh unclear to me because it has echoes of what God has done with them before and God commanded them before, that's why this one has a little bit of an of an air to it of folly, I think.

That's how I read this passage.

You're free to disagree or read it differently than me, but as I read this passage, I just marvel.

They're doing the same thing again.

Now, maybe that's all they know how to do.

Uh certainly it's good to want to be in a covenant relationship with God.

Certainly it's good to renew the covenant uh because God has given it to them and they're trying to demonstrate to God that this they're going to, they're gonna abide by the covenant.

They received the covenant given to Moses.

They're they're tying their cart, so to speak, to the ox that God gave Moses to Joshua, to David, even they're saying that the Israelites that were here before, hundreds of years before, we are them.

So the covenant that God gave Moses, we are them.

The covenant that God gave them in the promised land, we are those people.

So we receive that covenant, we receive that charge, we're making it our own.

And certainly that's good and noble, but there is a sense to it that this time they're really going to do it.

And maybe you're skeptical about that, but as we read this, um maybe it'll come out to you as well.

I'm gonna start by reading their their names.

Uh you might prefer that I skip them, but listen, God inspired it.

It's here for us to look at the least we can do.

When you're reading it in your own quiet time, you can skim over the names if you want, but I'm gonna read them out loud right here.

On the seals are the names of Nehemiah the governor.

Promotion Sunday for him.

The son of Hakaliah, Zedekiah, Sariah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Melkaijah, Hatush, Shaboniah, Maluch, Haram, Meremith, Obadiah, Daniel, Jenathan, Baruch, Meshalum, Abijah, Mijemin, Messiah, Bilgaiah, Shemiah, these are the priests.

And the Levites, Joshua Jeshua the son of Azaniah, Binuai, the of the sons of Henadad and Kidmael, and their brothers, Shebaniah, Hodiah, Kalatiah, Pelaniah, Hanan, Micah, Rehob, Hashabiah, Zakur, Sherubiah, Shaboniah, Hodiah, Bani, Beninu, the chiefs of the people, Perosh, Pahat Moab, Elam, Zatu, Bani, Buni, Azgad, Babai, Adonijah, Bagvi, Aden, Atur, Hezekiah, Azur, Hodiah, Hashem, Bezai, Heropiah, Anatoth, Nebi, Meg, Paiash, Meshelin, Hazir, Meshael, Zaduk, Jadua, Pelatiah, Hanan, Ananiah, Hoshea, Hananiah, Hashbab, Helenesh, Peliah, Shobuk, Rehim, Hashbanah, Masiah, Ahaniah, Hanan, Anan, Maluk, Haram, and Banah.

Now I know some of you are that's one of you is expecting a baby in like five days.

Did you find a name in this list?

Did you see?

Okay, thumbs up.

Great.

Chosen.

Uh if it's yeah, Zedekiah would be a cool name.

If it's not Daniel, though, we're in trouble from this list.

Now, these names, they all sign this.

Did you see this?

On the seals are the names of Nehemiah the governor and all these people.

Now, there are 40,000 of them that were gathered before.

So this is not 40,000 names that couldn't fit in that kind of scroll, but this is kind of the representatives of each larger family group.

Remember, Israel was structured in such a way that by their clans and their families and their tribal allotments, and even now as they're repopulating Jerusalem, they had kind of somebody who represented their family.

So this is all of those people.

It's all of those people.

And of course they're all gonna sign this.

I mean, I've been in a Sunday school room before where the Sunday school president says, here's the clipboard for those of you who want to teach, and they start passing it around to table to table, and you know, maybe the first few guys pass it over by the next table, like every husband at the table is signing up, and then it goes to the next table, and every husband's signing up except one guy, and his wife looks at him like, Really?

Every other husband's in here signing up to teach, and you're not signing up to teach?

Okay, I'll sign up to teach.

Uh maybe this was like that.

The half of the families were like, Yes, we're committing this covenant.

There's one family who's like, I don't know if this is a good idea.

I don't know.

And his wife is like, hey, you know, every other, every other, the Levites down the street, they all signed it.

Like, all right, I'm signing up for the covenant.

Here we go.

And maybe that's where these names came from, but they are all serious about this, aren't they?

I mean, they're so serious, they put their name on seals on this new covenant they wrote.

And here's the obligations of the covenant.

A covenant will have obligations to it.

That's the point of a covenant that you agree to this and God does this, and they're claiming all of the God's obligations from the Mosaic covenant, all the things that God told them, that God would bless them and they would be prospered in the land and God would protect them.

That's God's obligation, which he will do, if it's a conditional covenant, if the Israelites do their half of the bargain.

Now, some of this they're not going to be able to do because of the destruction that has been wrought through Israel.

And so they have kind of a rephrased covenant here.

It's the Mosaic covenant light, you could say, and with specific attention drawn to the areas that they themselves have stumbled in before.

So I want to give you an outline before we work our way through the content of this covenant, three realities that link covenants to the gospel.

Because covenants, the concept of covenants is an important component for understanding the gospel.

God relates to his people through covenant.

He relates to his people through through covenant.

Even there's covenants described in the Bible where the word covenant is not particularly used, yet there's this concept that God is telling people, if you, you know, for example, the most obvious one, if you don't eat from the tree, then you will live forever, basically.

God will walk in the garden with them and be in a relationship with them.

They ate from the tree.

So God now brings the curses of the covenant upon them, the curses of the charge to them.

And you see this throughout the Old Testament.

Now, the covenants in the Old Testament I see as distinct from one another.

So there's something called covenantal theology that sees each covenant in the Old Testament as an expansion of the one before it.

And I don't believe in covenantal theology.

I see the different covenants in the Old Testament as distinct from one another.

For example, God's covenant with Abraham, that he would bless them and prosper Abraham's descendants through faith in the in the future Savior, the seed of Abraham.

That's the covenant given to Abraham.

That's different than the covenant given to Moses.

The covenant given to Moses and the Israelites was that if they kept the law, they would be blessed by God and he would protect them.

That's a different covenant.

If they rejected the law, they would be exiled from their land.

And God certainly acted on that covenant.

But the Abrahamic covenant and the Mosaic covenant are distinct, given to two different groups of people, two different purposes.

The Davidic covenant in 2 Samuel 7, also distinct.

A promise that God makes to David, which the Bible refers to as a covenant, that God makes this covenant with David, that David's descendant will be the king.

And it is not a conditional covenant, it's unconditional.

No matter what David does, and David's descendants will rebel, the kings will rebel against God.

They get exiled for that according to the Mosaic covenant.

I mean, they get kicked out of the lands.

Nevertheless, God will make David's descendant the king.

There's the new covenant in the Bible, which we are all recipients of and participants in by virtue of our faith in Christ.

So I see those covenants as distinct.

Yet, nevertheless, the repetition of this covenantal framework as God deals with us is a reminder to us that God interacts or deals with people through covenant.

Even the communion, we celebrate communion.

We're participating in a covenant kind of ceremony.

We do this in it's the blood of the new covenant shed for us, as Jesus says.

It's the cup of the new covenant, which we participate in.

And so God does interact or relate to his people through covenant.

That is very different than covenantal theology, which sees all the covenants as an expansion of each other, and you, by virtue of your participation in the new covenant, become connected to the Davidic and the Mosaic and the Abrahamic covenant.

And I reject that.

I see those covenants as distinct, different groups of people, I see them as fulfilled in Christ.

They all coalesce, they converge in the person of Christ.

And through the new covenant, we receive blessings from those different covenants.

But that's very different than saying we are all participants or partakers in those covenants.

So if that's unclear to you, I we'll we'll do question time later for that.

But I just want to make sure as we talk about covenants tonight, you don't hear me saying that I'm embracing covenantal theology.

Uh I'm not.

I see those covenants as distinct from each other, but it is helpful to think through how God relates to his people through covenants.

And so I've got a little outline as we go through Nehemiah 10, and this is a great place to look at covenants, isn't it?

Because they are, these people are pumped right now, they're excited.

Think of the spiritual Disneyland they've just been part of the past month.

You know, they discovered the word of God, had it read, they were convicted by their sin and they wept.

This is like revival breaking out.

You know, the pastors are telling people, hey, stop repenting.

You know, you're repenting too much.

Tone down the repentant, get back to worshiping.

I mean, that's it's never happened outside of that event right there.

And so they put away their tears and they take out their tents and they celebrate the feast of Sukkot, and we looked at that a few weeks ago, a joyous festive occasion, and then after that, they go back to reading the Word of God again all day, praying all day.

We looked at that this morning.

I mean, they are on a spiritual high right now, and they are so excited about godliness and so excited about Yahweh and His promises, and they've just read the whole Torah like three times in the past two weeks, okay?

They are excited.

You guys haven't read the Torah three times this month, right?

Or this year.

They read it three times just in these last few weeks.

They are stoked about the Lord.

And this is their expression of that.

They're going to sign this covenant with God.

Then they list their names.

I mean, you can picture the trumpets at the temple sounding as each new name is signed.

I mean, this is an insane scene, but I think it's helpful for us to see how covenants are linked to the gospel.

And the first way the covenant is linked to the gospel is that God's people are called to be separate from the world.

Then you see this in verse 28.

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 land to the law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, and all who have knowledge and understanding.

These are the participants in this covenant.

So everybody there is participating in it that has separated themselves from the world, separated themselves from the other nations, but it's separated them from the world, the peoples of all the lands.

We have this similar concept even now.

This is what we mean by holy.

The word holy is to be separate.

A believer is leading a holy life, and they're living a life that is distinct from the lives of those in the world.

We are separated from them.

And of course, that doesn't mean that we don't have any interactions with them, that you'd have to leave the world to avoid having any interactions with ungodly people, but it means as far as fellowship and your own desires and your desire in your heart and how you see your future and what you want out of life, you live life differently than people in the world live it.

And this comes from covenantal constructs.

You know, a covenant is not universal.

That wouldn't make any sense.

You don't make a deal with everybody in the whole world.

A covenant is personal, it's particular.

It's God reaching down and entering into a relationship with this person and not that person.

It's discriminatory because it has blessings to it.

It has blessings to it.

God will bless people who interact with Him through their through this covenant that they have entered into.

The covenant is not for the world, it is for those who have a relationship with God through faith.

And so a covenant by its very nature is discriminatory.

These people are in, these people are out.

The very first covenant you see expressed with that word covenant is the covenant with Abraham.

And remember the language that goes around it is God calls Abraham to separate himself from his nation and from his people.

Because he separated himself, he now enters the covenant.

The Israelites leaving Egypt, same thing.

They leave Egypt, they have the the door closes behind them.

There's the flood, all the Egyptians are drowned.

Now they are separated from the whole world they knew.

For four centuries, they're separated from it, and they enter into a covenant with God.

The covenant was not for the Moabites or the Amalekites, it was for the Israelites.

David, the covenant will be with him and his offspring, his seed after him will be the king of Israel, uh, not the descendant of the king of Israel, of the other ten tribes up in the north, Samaria.

They don't get the covenant, they don't get the Davidic covenant.

The Davidic covenant is not with Samaria, even though that part of Israel had more people, more tribes, they don't get the covenant.

The covenant goes to David and the tribe of Judah.

And the new covenant, this is very obvious when it gets to the new covenant.

Everybody dies in Adam.

Everybody is spiritually dead in Adam because he is the, in that sense, the head of all of the human race, but there is a new covenant made with Christ, and everybody underneath him who has a relationship with Christ through faith is a recipient of the blessings of the new covenant.

And they understand that covenantal construct right here.

They separate themselves in verse 28 from those in the world.

We have a very basic understanding of this.

I don't mind calling marriage a covenant, a covenant of marriage, because it has this element to it.

When you marry your spouse, you're separating yourself from the world.

You're saying, I'm no longer going on dates with other people, at the very least, right?

I'm no longer going on dates with other people.

I'm now reserved for you.

It's a separation from everybody else.

That's an apt illustration for what a covenant is.

As a couple separates themselves from the rest of the world, what happens in that relationship?

Well, they grow closer together.

They grow more in love with each other.

Their relationship deepens through the construct of marriage.

It deepens not just because you're spending more time with that person than everybody else, but it deepens because you have made this covenant, you've made this promise to separate yourself from the world.

God's people and uh Israel in the Old Testament and the church in the New Testament are both compared to a bride.

Ezekiel 16 compares Israelites to a bride, Ephesians chapter 5 compares those in the church to a bride.

Ephesians 5 · chapter mention

It's using that covenantal language that God relates to people through the kind of language of a covenant of separation from the world.

This is why in the Old Testament, idolatry is compared to adultery.

It's like having an affair.

And God tells them that through the prophet Ezekiel, through Hosea, through Malachi, when you are leading a sinful life, when you are practicing idolatry in the Old Testament, you're having an affair on the Lord.

That's why love for the world in the New Testament, 1 John chapter 4, is such a serious sin.

1 John 4 · chapter mention

Jesus says, if you you can't love both the world, you can't love money and God.

You can't serve both.

There's a if you're in a covenantal relationship with God, you're separating yourself from the allurements of the world.

Love of the world is a serious sin.

It's loving not just another woman, but a woman who is the enemy because she's opposed to your spouse.

That's the nature of being in a covenant with God.

You separate yourself from the world.

So this covenant begins with them saying, We are separate from the nations of the world.

This is why the Israelites got thrown into exile before, because Solomon brought in the nations of the world and their gods and their practices, diluting the covenant, breaking the covenant, and so God writes them a certificate of divorce.

And you get to the New Testament time periods.

The one reason that Jesus gives for um believers to have a divorce is adultery, he tells them.

And that's because it is a kind of a severing of that covenant.

And this is what you see here.

The Israelites are going to practice idolatry, and God says, I will write you a certificate of divorce and send you away.

That's what happens to them.

Well, now they're back, though.

They've been reconciled and they're back, and the Israelites are re-entering the covenant.

That's what's happening in verse 28.

You learn from this that God relates to his people through separation.

It's a covenant because it's separate from the world, which is played out again in the gospel.

Number two, the separation is seen in obedience to God.

Verse 29.

The peoples join with their brothers, the nobles, and enter into a curse and an oath.

This is language from the Mosaic covenant, where they receive a curse if they break the covenant and uh blessings if they if they walk in it.

They're repeating that Mosaic language.

It's from Deuteronomy 29, verses uh 12, I think.

Uh Deuteronomy 29 is where this language is drawn from.

You 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 all the commandments of Yahweh, our Lord, and his rules and his statutes.

So that's the promise.

We will do what God tells us to do.

We're going to walk in holiness, and this time we really mean it.

Yeah, we're signing up, God.

We're signing on the dotted line right now.

And this this obedience, that's that's the nature of the covenant.

Remember, not all the covenants were like that.

The Abrahamic covenant was not contingent on obedience.

The Davidic covenant was not contingent upon obedience.

In fact, even in the Davidic covenant, a verse that causes some questions among us, 2 Samuel 7, where God says, when your descendant, when your seed to David sins, he'll be disciplined.

You know, you think, well, I thought Jesus was supposed to be sinless.

Well, I think it's speaking of Solomon and all the recipients of that promise through the ages that get to Jesus.

Nevertheless, that highlights that it's not a conditional covenant, right?

Because God says, You're gonna have some of your offspring are going to break this covenant, and I'm still gonna keep it.

They'll be disciplined, but the covenant's not going anywhere.

Different than the Mosaic covenant, where they sin and they will be exiled, which is what has happened to them.

So they're entering here, they're very clear in Nehemiah chapter 10, they're entering on a conditional covenant.

Nehemiah 10 · chapter mention

It is contingent upon their obedience to God.

On their obedience to God.

And before we go through this list, I just want you to be encouraged by how the new covenant is, in a sense, is like this and in a sense it's different.

The new covenant does produce obedience in your life.

You are called to walk in obedience.

You're separated from the world by your holiness and by your obedience.

You will know the kind of tree you are by the fruit that you bear, Jesus says in Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

You will know the truth about a person by their integrity and their fruit, how they're living their life.

So being in a covenantal relationship with God will produce spiritual fruit in your life.

It will produce obedience as you separate from the world.

But on the other hand, it is not conditional.

That's the conditional element, but it is unconditional, is that God will grow the fruit in your life.

It is fruit.

It's God who's growing it through the Holy Spirit in your life.

So you will see obedience in your life that separates you from the world, but it is also the work of the Lord that does it.

The Israelites, I don't think we're fully aware of that dynamic under the old covenant.

Uh, and you can see that even in their language right now, that they are seriously going to do it this time.

And there's a couple categories of their obedience, and they're all helpful for us to look at.

First is intermarriage.

Uh, you see that in verse 30.

We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

This is exactly what Solomon did that so wrecked Israel before.

This covenantal ceremony in Nehemiah 10 is 12 years since Ezra brought the people out to in the rain and had them divorce their pagan wives.

This is 12 years have gone by since that scene at the end of the book of Ezra.

So they had already after exile remarried these pagan women.

They then had to divorce them.

Twelve years later, they're renewing their commitments.

This is not boding well, right?

You know, they're they're renewing in this covenant something they just did twelve years ago, and it didn't go well.

But again, this time they mean it.

The second category here is Sabbaths in verse 31.

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.

We'll forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every death.

You can tell here by the nature of their uh their commitment, you can tell what sins they're tempted by, right?

They're almost revealing too much here.

They're like, this time, we're definitely not buying from those people lined up right outside our doors right now.

We're not going to them.

We hear them out there, can I go see what the prices are?

No, we're not doing it this time.

You can tell that's where they're tempted.

And they're going to give in to that in the book of Nehemiah, by the way, just so you know where this is going, they will go back and buy.

To those people who are lined up outside their gates, they're going to do it by the end of the book.

But right now they're vowing they will never do that again.

They won't charge each other usury or interest, or they won't put other Jews in the poorhouse for inability to pay their debt, which they were doing back in Nehemiah 4.

Remember, earlier in the book they were doing that?

This is their besetting sin.

Um, and it's not that, you know, it's not like they they hate the Sabbath.

They don't hate the Sabbath.

They love the Sabbath, but they also love money.

And that's the problem.

They love money, which means they love working on the Sabbath so they can make money.

They love buying things with their money on the Sabbath.

And that's why God gave them the Sabbath.

It's such a clear demarker in the Israelites' lives if they love the Lord more than this world.

Are you willing to stop working for a day and just trust the Lord to provide you?

You see this with manna, right?

You gather manna six days a week on the seventh day.

You don't gather manna, and you put your faith that God will give the manna from yesterday and will provide life for it on that seventh day.

You it doesn't work other days.

You grab manna on Monday and you try to eat on Tuesday, it's rotten.

And so the temptation is to grab extra manna on Friday for Saturday, but no, God will sustain you through the manna that He gave you.

You don't have to hoard it.

He will give you enough, and it will not rot for Saturday.

Um, that's the this basic principle here, and the Jews always struggle with that.

They always struggle with this.

They want to keep working, they want to go, they don't want to be at an economical disadvantage with their neighbors.

They don't want to be reliant on God's provision, or they'd rather trust the imports that God has from or that they have from people who don't honor the Sabbath.

And so that's what they're vowing here.

They're not going to do this.

They're not going to cave in.

This leads to legalism.

We'll talk more about that later.

This kind of covenant will lead to legalism as they devise very clever ways to get around this commitment they make right here.

Third category here is tithes and temple support.

And that's verse 32 to the end of the chapter.

I'm going to read it for us now.

We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third 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, the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, all the works of the house of our God.

Remember, the temple is right there in the middle.

They just built a wall around Jerusalem to guard it.

We the priests, the Levites, the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering to bring it into the house of our God, according to our father's houses, at times appointed year by year, to burn on the altar of Yahweh our God, as it was written in the law.

And you remember here that the Levites don't have lands.

Okay, they don't have land.

Every tribe in Israel has lands, but also every tribe in Israel was supposed to dedicate their firstborn to God.

Because of the Passover, remember the the angel of death came, the houses with the blood on it, the angel of death passed by, and the oldest lived.

And the houses without the blood, the oldest died.

So they go into the wilderness, and God has said, You have, I have claimed every firstborn belongs to me, God says.

Every firstborn from every family is mine, God says, because I redeemed them.

That I purchased them, I didn't kill them, so they belong to me.

And that will be an ordinance through all time that the firstborn of every Israelite family belongs to Yahweh.

But that was too much of a burden for them to bear.

They couldn't do that.

You the families weren't going to give their oldest son to temple service or to be a priest or Levite because they wanted their temple, their oldest son at home and serving the families at home.

And so God made a deal with them, so to speak.

He said, Fine, all the families can keep their oldest son.

In exchange, I'm going to take a whole tribe and make it mine.

So the tribe of Levi will belong to me, and he they will serve in my temple.

All the Levites, they won't get land.

They won't get land.

The year of Jubilee comes, all the land reverts to the families that owned it.

Not the Levites.

They do not get any land.

So how are they going to live?

I mean, forget the temple sacrifices for a second.

How are they going to eat food?

They don't have land for livestock.

Well, you have to give them food.

And every time you're giving food to the Levites, you're making the demonstration that I'm giving them food because I get to keep my firstborn son.

So I'm giving the Levites food.

Here's a basic one that it's like it's at such a practical level that our minds don't think of it.

It is described in verse 34.

But what about firewood?

How are the Levites going to keep warm?

They don't have trees.

They don't have property, which means they don't have trees.

And so all the Israelites, they vow to draw lots here and bring them firewood so that they can stay warm.

It'll also be used for sacrifices.

How are you going to burn the sacrifices if you don't have a fire to burn them?

What about food for the Levites?

Well, we obligate ourselves to bring the firstfruits of our grounds, meaning all their crops, and the firstfruit of all the fruit of every tree, every year, by year, to the house of Yahweh.

Also to bring the house of God to the priests who minister in the house of God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as is written in the law of God, the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks, to bring their first of our dough and of our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil to the priests, the chambers to 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 of 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, which is the tenth of all that are given, to the house of our God and to the chambers of the storehouse.

So everybody is giving a tenth of their crops, a tenth of everything to all the priests.

A tenth of that is going to go into the temple, the other nine tenths of it will be used for the Levites around the nation.

So that's their declaration.

They're saying we are going to actually maintain the Levites.

So Levites don't have to go out and sell their worship, which was happening, if you remember.

The Levites were going out and really prostituting themselves, selling their religious services to false gods and to the temples of idols, the Levites were doing that because the idols at least paid.

And that was all before exile.

So now they're saying we won't make the Levites do that.

We will feed them.

Our nation should have a healthy core of priests.

We will equip them.

We will supply them.

It'll be all of us that are doing that.

And that's what they're going to promise to keep on doing.

This is a fancy way of saying that God owns everybody.

They recognize this.

And the firstborn, he owns particularly, and we're ransoming them by giving the temple a tenth of all of our crops.

Some families, if they had an argumentative firstborn son or a difficult firstborn son, might opt out of the soul system.

Levites, you take him.

We get our cow.

But for most families, they prefer giving the cow instead of the Levite.

And so this is how the temple worship was going to work.

So this is the covenantal obligations.

They're laying this out on them.

We will look at 11 and chapters 11 and 12 as we go.

I think in a couple weeks we'll be back for chapters 11 and 12.

But this doesn't go well.

They don't actually do this.

You can hear the sobriety in their voice.

They're not lacking earnestness.

It's not that they failed because they didn't really mean it.

They failed because they're not capable of doing it, which leads to our third point, which is drawn from the rest of the book here, or from the Bible as a whole, more than Nehemiah 10, particularly.

This is impossible to do on your own.

This kind of obedience that the covenant requires is impossible for you to do on your own.

You can't just make a commitment to God to be holy and then expect holiness to come in your life.

That's not how holiness is cultivated.

It's not how holiness is grown.

That would be holiness by effort or holiness by works.

But that's not how we experience holiness.

You cannot vow yourself into holy living.

That's impossible.

Numbers chapter 30 is the whole chapter on vows.

Numbers 30 · chapter mention

And it says that when you make vows, you should keep vows, but it does not tell you to make them.

That's a huge point.

Numbers 30 does not command vows.

It says if you make them, you ought to keep them.

But it doesn't tell you to make them.

In fact, the Bible does have a lot to say about vows.

First of all, it says, Don't make them.

Just opt out of making vows.

That's what Jesus said, or just what James says, James 4.

Let your yes be yes, your no be no.

You don't have to say, I promise.

I promise.

And I I've shared this before a couple of years ago, but it was an epiphany in Deezer's and my parenting when our kids would ask for something and we would say yes, or you know, and then they would say, But do you promise?

And at first you're like, What?

I guess yes, we promise.

And after like the second or third time we heard it, Dee Jer and I just looked at each other and we're like, This is not okay.

Do you promise?

No, I don't promise.

Either my yes to my children is good enough or it's not good enough.

But you don't get to ask me when you say yes, do you promise?

I mean, new information might develop.

I might say, yes, we're gonna go see this movie on this day, but then new information will develop and we might have to change our mind, and that's just the reality.

But don't say, you know, we're gonna go see this movie, do you promise?

Yes.

And now new information develops, and I can't change my mind because I promised.

That's just not good parenting.

That's not a good way to relate to your children.

If your children are reliant upon promises from you to know what you really mean, that's a warning sign.

And I'm not saying it's a it's you're doing something wrong.

That's the natural human inclination, right?

Can we have desserts tonight?

Yes.

Do you promise?

Okay, well, no, then.

Either my yes is gonna be good enough, or it's not.

If you want me to sign a statement saying we're gonna have dessert tonight, then dessert is canceled for the rest of your life.

Either believe me or don't.

And let's get on with it.

If vows had the capacity to bind you to them, you would be commanded to make them.

That would be the missing ingredient to your holiness.

You got a sin going on in your life, well, just make a vow to stop it.

That should do the trick.

But the Bible doesn't tell you to do that.

Jesus never says, Hey, you want to get serious with sin in your life?

Make a vow to stop it.

That's not commanded in the Bible.

Now, if you do make a vow, the Bible says you should keep it because God will judge it.

And there's one huge exception to that I just want to deal with quickly before we move on.

If you make a sinful vow, then you should break it.

Okay?

So I vow if we hit this, you know, I hear a conversation in the back of the van.

I vow if we hit this red light, I'm gonna punch you in the arm.

Oh, we hit the red light.

I have to punch you now.

What?

No, but I promised I would punch her if we hit the red light.

No.

No, you make a sinful vow, you break a sinful vow.

This is Jephthah.

The story of Jephthah in the book of Judges is not designed to teach you the importance of keeping vows, okay?

You know, where Jephthah said, When I get home, I'm gonna sacrifice the first living thing I see at my house from battle.

And he gets home and his daughter comes running out, and he's like, Well, God, I made a vow.

He even tells his daughter, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, sweetie, but I vowed before the Lord.

And the Jejuwites were so perverse and fallen in the days of judges that the daughter was like, Well, you vowed, I guess so.

What?

No, if you make a sinful vow, you break a sinful vow.

You make a sinful vow, you break a sinful vow.

Um, but don't make any kind of vows, other especially sinful vows.

And there are a couple examples in our Christian life.

I understand marriage, baptism.

I get it.

We use Trinitarian language at both of those.

Trinitarian language drawn from Matthew 28, of course.

You're baptized in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

And there's a sense that that's a vow to it.

You're making a commitment to follow Christ in your life, and what a powerful picture that is.

And I understand marriage is that because it's this covenantal construct, you're separating from the world and clinging to one another.

Um, so I I grant that those are those are fine, those are acceptable and they're part of our life.

It is noteworthy that the Bible doesn't contain those kind of vows in it, but I think they're a healthy part of esteeming marriage and esteeming what it means to follow Christ.

So, you know, I when I do a wedding, I use that kind of terminology.

And when I do baptisms, I baptize people in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and with this kind of commitment, they're going to be following Christ.

But that's about the end of those kind of vows right there.

You know, let your yes be yes.

You sign a contract to, you know, then honor the terms of your contract.

You make a commitment to your boss, honor the terms.

You made a commitment to your boss.

Don't break your terms.

You know, and if you need to break your terms because new information develops, talk to your boss.

Have conversations about it.

Live your life with integrity rather than with vows.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.

And we live in a fallen world where things change.

You might make bad decisions, you might make bad commitments.

You know, and then if you made a bad commitment, talk to the person you made it to.

And if you can't come to an understanding, then honor your commitment.

And that's basically how our kinds of yeses and yeses and no's and no's should work.

But know that God is not impressed by vows.

He just isn't.

When he hears this in Nehemiah 10, he doesn't say, Oh, finally, they're getting serious.

If you make a vow, you know you're dealing with a sin of pride in your life, and you're like, I hereby vow I will not be proud anymore.

Angels are not celebrating in heaven because of your vow.

They're not.

If you look at inappropriate things in your phone or your computer and it's a sin you're dealing with, a vow is not the missing ingredient for this.

It's not like you say, I hereby vow, I'm never gonna look at anything sinful on my phone ever again.

Starting right now.

And there's celebration breaks out in heaven.

Finally, somebody's getting serious about sin and sanctification.

No.

No, your vow doesn't help your sanctification.

That's why James and Jesus both, earlier I think I said James 4, 12, but it's actually James 5, 12.

Above all, my brothers, do not swear either by heaven or by earth or by any other oath, but let your yes be yes and your no be no, so you don't fall under condemnation.

Anything beyond that is just sinful.

And that's not just a New Testament idea.

Solomon had that figured out in Ecclesiastes chapter 5.

Ecclesiastes 5 · chapter mention

Solomon said it's better to draw near to God than it is to make vows about obedience.

What do you think the Lord would rather you do?

Draw close to him in your affections or make a vow about not sinning anymore.

Of course, if you draw close to him in your affections, that'll be a more powerful effect on your sanctification than a vow about sin would be.

You want to deal with sin in your life?

Love Jesus more.

Oh, make a vow to love Jesus more.

Well, no, be disciplined to love him more.

Spend time in his word.

Pray to him, fight sin.

See, see, search out your secret motives, expose the secret motives in your heart, deal with the underlying issues in your life, find the things that you are coveting and you're lusting after and you're pursuing with your life and uncover what's actually operating inside of your heart and repent of that which is sinful and commit your yourself to love Christ and follow Christ as you're exposing those motives, that's sanctification, which is fundamentally different than saying, you know what?

I'm gonna make a vow not to do that sin anymore.

Sanctification is not done by vow making.

In fact, if there's a key to sanctification, listen to this.

If there's a key, it's realizing your inability to keep your vows.

It's realizing that you can't be sanctified on your own.

Are you gonna be sanctified by your own effort or by the mercy and grace of Christ working through you?

Well, B, of course.

A vow is all about effort.

You can't keep the law to the point where you're going to be able to vow yourself into keeping the law.

It's a vicious cycle.

If you struggle with, again, let's just say pride, you can't vow, I'll no longer be prideful.

And the reason you can't vow I'll no longer be prideful is because your heart is prideful.

Your heart is proud.

The very temptation to make a vow is the actual sin you're supposed to be dealing with.

Do you follow that?

The very motivation to make a vow is the sin you're trying to fight.

You need to fix your heart, not your pride.

Making a vow to keep from being proud without working on the heart is comical.

Obeying commands cannot sanctify the heart.

If the problem is with the heart, obedience to external commands will not fix the problem.

When I say obeying commands will not sanctify the heart, what I mean by that is the heart, obedience to commands is the result of sanctification.

Sanctification expresses itself that way.

John Owen has kind of a memorable little discourse in this.

Trying to put our sin and lust to death based on our own human strength is the essence and substance of all false religion in the world.

Let's marvel at that for a second.

Trying to put your sin and lust to death because of your own strength, it's not gonna do it.

I mean, that's false religion.

Try harder, do more, give more, be better.

Even a good vow, if carried out with man-made schemes, always ends in self-righteousness.

A good vow carried out with man-made schemes ends in self-righteousness.

If the transmission of my car breaks, I can't vow to keep driving because I will regularly put gas in and change the oil.

My transmission is broke.

The car won't go into drive, but Lord, I vow this car will drive because I'm gonna put gas and oil in it.

I'm feeding the wrong problem.

Often that's the way it is with our sin, our lust, and our pride and sins that we're dealing with in our life.

We feed the wrong problem by making vows.

If you want to get serious about obedience, realize that the law cannot help your heart.

That's not to say you shouldn't obey the commands of the Bible.

Of course you should obey what the Bible says.

It just means that doing so has to be a fruit, not a root.

Obedience is a fruit of sanctification, not the root of it.

The fruit of devotion to Christ.

If you want a banana tree to grow, you don't plant a banana.

You want to grow a banana tree, you don't just plant a banana.

It's not going to grow a banana tree.

That doesn't mean the banana is broken.

You plant a banana in your backyard and no banana tree grows, you're like, oh, that stupid banana?

It's defective.

I want my 99 cents back.

No, the banana is not designed to grow a banana tree.

You need a banana tree seed for that.

The seeds of obedience are affections to Christ, not rote obedience.

So the seeds of obedience are not just rote obedience.

The seeds of obedience are love for Christ.

And this is huge with Israel.

Israel's issue in Nehemiah 10 is not so much about pride as it was Sabbath keeping.

They love money, they love making it.

So they try to vow their way out of breaking the Sabbath, and it's not going to work.

And this isn't the first time they've tried this.

They've tried this before.

Deuteronomy 29, I was going to have us turn there tonight, but we just don't really have time.

But Deuteronomy 29, 10 through 15 is where this is described, where they're all gathered.

Moses gathers them all together, right before Moses dies.

He gathers them all together, and he says, You're standing here before Yahweh, all your men, your little ones are here, your wives are here, you're all here.

Deuteronomy 29, verse 12.

Deuteronomy 29:12

So you can enter the sworn covenant of Yahweh your God that Yahweh is making with you today.

It is not with you alone, Moses says, but with your children that will come after you.

And they don't keep it.

You can turn to Joshua 24, because this is just so good to see.

Flip over left.

Joshua 24 after Deuteronomy.

Joshua 24, verse 14, is where this gets serious.

Joshua 24:14

This is the end of Joshua's life now.

There's a covenant at the end of Moses' life, now covenant at the end of Joshua's life.

They're remaking the covenant that made with Moses and they all broke it, of course, and now they're remaking it again.

Verse 14, now therefore fear Yahweh and serve him with sincerity and in faithfulness.

Put away the gods that your father served beyond the river in Egypt.

Serve Yahweh.

That's just a discouraging thing to read.

That means they've already picked up idols.

They've been in the promised land, you know, for five months, and they already have repopulated the idol population there.

And he says, verse 15, if it's evil in your eyes to serve Yahweh, choose this day whom you'll serve.

Make a decision if you're going to serve God or Baal.

If you're going to serve the idols or you're going to serve the true God.

The people answered, Far be it from us that we should forsake Yahweh to serve other gods, for it's Yahweh, our God, who brought us up and our fathers out of the land of Egypt, verse 17.

We want to serve God.

And Yahweh drove out all the peoples, verse 18, and the Amorites who live in the land.

Therefore we will serve Yahweh.

He's our God.

So sign this up, Joshua.

We're part of this covenant.

Put our names on the dotted line on the seal and everything.

Verse 19, Joshua said to the people, You're not able to serve Yahweh.

And haven't you been watching the last 50 years?

You're not able to do it.

You're not able to do it, he says.

He's a holy God, he's a jealous God.

He won't forgive your transgressions or your sins.

If you forsake Yahweh and serve foreign gods, he will turn and harm you.

And the people said Joshua to Joshua, this is incredible, isn't it?

No, this time we will serve Yahweh, verse 21.

We will serve Yahweh.

And Joshua said, Fine, you're witnesses against yourself.

You've chosen Yahweh to serve him.

And they said, We are witnesses.

Joshua verse 23.

Then put away the idols already.

And you're even listening to yourselves?

And of course, again, a few chapters later, they're back.

Into sin.

You cannot vow yourself into obedience.

What would have been a better response for the people?

A better response would have been Joshua's response, wouldn't it?

Oh, we love Yahweh.

We love Yahweh.

We want to serve Him because we love Him, but we know we're sinful and we need His help.

That's the response of faith.

People who make vows that fancy themselves God, you're not in charge of your future.

You don't know what the future holds, so don't vow away your future.

Making vows leads to technical rule keeping.

You know, I made a vow I wouldn't work on the Sabbath.

What does work really mean anyway, huh?

I made a vow I wouldn't leave my house on the Sabbath.

Well, what is what do you mean by house?

What do you mean?

Isn't all the whole world the Lord's house?

I mean, I can go wherever I want.

Yeah, the Pharisees adopted this.

The Pharisees said, you know, if you made a vow by Jerusalem, it was non binding.

If you vowed to Jerusalem, that was binding because the Lord put his name in Jerusalem.

But if you made a vow by Jerusalem, you could break it.

What?

That's why Jesus says Matthew twenty three, verse sixteen if anyone swears by the temple, it's nothing, you say.

If anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he's bound by his oath, you say, you blind fools.

You blind fools.

Better let your Yes, be yes, and you're no be no.

So let me appeal to you.

God gives you commands that you should obey.

Put off, put on.

Put off unrighteousness, put off sin, put on obedience, follow the commands of the Lord.

The way you do that is by recognizing that the commands expose sin in your life.

Confess your sin to the Lord and ask the Lord's help as you apply scripture to your life to motivate you in sanctification.

That's the way you perceive sanctification.

This is what Israelites should have learned.

The law was the guardian of Israel until Christ came.

That's Galatians 3.24, in order that they could be justified by faith.

The law was supposed to keep Israel as a tutor does, keep them, watch over them until graduation day, where they enter into the gospel.

And so the right way to relate to the law would have been this is what I should do.

I can't do it.

I need the Savior.

That's the way David related to the law.

That's the way the people in Hebrews 11, through the hall of faith, related to the law.

This is the law.

We need to obey it.

We can't, though, we need the Savior that will come through the law.

He will keep it for us.

How absurd is it to say that I will keep the law by my own effort and my own discipline?

It's absurd to say that Christ is my substitute, so I will try hard to keep the law, so I need him as a substitute less and less.

That's the implication.

You think you can keep the law by your own motivation and your own effort?

You're saying you don't need Christ as your substitute.

He is your substitute.

So what's missing from your sanctification?

Not a vow.

What's missing from your sanctification?

You got a besetting sin you're dealing with.

What's missing from your sanctification?

Grow your love for Christ.

You love him more and you will find that you will sin less, and this is a lifelong process.

Don't come to me next Sunday and say, I've had this besetting sin I've been working on for months or years, but I vowed to love Jesus more last Sunday, and I'm still sinning, so love doesn't work.

No, love works.

Love works.

You will grow in it the rest of your life.

Lord, we're grateful for the love of Christ who died to bear the penalty for sin.

We're thankful for this covenantal construct that you enter into a relationship with us.

You call us by name, you draw us to yourself.

You then sanctify us as we separate ourselves from the world.

We don't want to be conformed to this world, we want to be conformed to the image of Christ.

It's him that we love, not the world.

It's him we want to be transformed more and more into his radiance, not the image of the world.

But, oh Lord, the world draws on our hearts.

Every week there are new temptations.

So, Lord, we pray for your mercy and your grace.

Help us withstand temptation, and when we fail, forgive us of our sin because you are righteous and yet merciful.

We recognize we can't be sanctified apart from your will and your effort.

But we're grateful you've given us your spirit, you've given us your law, you've given us a heart that wants to obey your law.

So, Lord, we fight sin.

And as we fight sin, we pray that you would cause us to grow in Christ's likeness, that we would gain victory against sin, and we would gain it through loving you more.

That's ultimately our prayer, love that, Lord, that you would cause us to love you more and more.

We ask this in the name of Christ.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.

Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.

If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to tms.edu.

I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.

May the Lord bless you.