Remember God’s Promises Nehemiah 9:6-31, Pastor Daniel Reese

Well, if you have your Bibles, we'll be in Nehemiah chapter 9.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

For those of you all that have been here a while, you might notice that we've gone through

Nehemiah a little differently than we have other books of the Bible.

What we're seeing through Nehemiah is we're kind of developing themes as opposed to going

line by line.

So there's really no skipping of things, although it might seem like we're skipping

things as much as there's just this development of the themes found in the book of Nehemiah.

And so we're going to continue with another theme this morning.

So let's look at our text this morning.

Kayla is going to come.

Sweet Kayla is going to come read our passage this morning.

She's going to read three verses out of Nehemiah chapter 9 beginning in verse 6.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

I've never said this, but Kayla might be my favorite root.

Just saying that.

Just saying that.

All right, Kayla, it's all you.

If you'll stand as we honor the Lord's word together.

You are the Lord.

You alone.

You have made heaven.

You have made heaven with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the season,

all that is in them, and you preserve all of them and the host of heaven worships you.

You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of her of the Caledians

and gave him the name Abraham.

You found his heart faithful before you and made with him the covenant to give his offspring

the land of Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amrite, the Perzite, the Jebusite, and the Gurgisite.

And you have kept your promise for you, our righteous.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for Kayla.

Thank you for our willingness to read your word.

And I pray, Father, that as we look at this text that we will see the theme that you are

good and faithful.

And I pray, Father, that you'll just speak to our hearts today.

We ask all these things in your name.

Amen.

Thank you, Kayla.

Kayla, real quick, out of the gate.

That's going to drive me crazy.

Real quick, out of the gate, what we saw, if we start looking at the themes that we've

seen so far through Nehemiah, what we've seen at the beginning was that Nehemiah was

moved with a deep empathy and compassion for his brothers and sisters, despite being far

removed from them.

He's 800 miles away in the palace of the king of Persia when he gets news that Jerusalem,

his city, lies in ruins and that the people there are without protection, they're without

provision and things are really dark there.

The Bible told us that his heart was wrecked for his people.

He began to pray and fast and plead with God on high to rescue people he did not know personally

whom he had no relationship with prior.

It wasn't like they went to college together and he had heard that some of his college

roommates or whatever had fallen on some hard times.

No, these were just people who were ethnically the same and believed in the same God.

We said that the people of God, you and I, as the church, are to be people who are marked

with deep empathy and compassion towards others.

First and foremost to the community of faith, the church, and then that should roll over

the walls into the world around us.

Where we mourn with those who mourn and we're able to rejoice with those who rejoice.

We are called to one another repeatedly.

We said the people of God are to be this way.

We will need the Holy Spirit of God to do the work of grace if you and I will ever be

what God is calling us to be.

We are marked by empathy and compassion, but that's not the only thing we're marked by.

We're people of prayer.

Now when I say prayer, I mean we are people who have a relationship with God.

He's not just some ethereal idea.

It's not just like, oh, oh, oh, yeah, there's a God out there somewhere.

No, we have a relationship with God.

One of the things we watch Nehemiah do is he has two ways that he engages with God.

He has these set aside times, right?

He has these set aside times where he says, I'm going to set aside this part of my day.

This time is just for me and the Lord.

Then on top of that throughout the day, he's interacting with God.

He sets aside time to go, okay, this is just me and God's time.

I'm going to pray.

I'm going to lay my heart out before him.

He already knows my heart.

He already knows my concerns.

He knows my questions, my doubts.

I'm going to lay it all down in this time I have with the Lord.

The things I would love to see the Lord do, the way I would love to see the Lord work,

I'm going to lay those things down.

Then throughout the day, he's actually like shotgun praying to God as circumstances and

situations come up.

Now hear me.

That's a relationship.

Where you have both of these components.

I think you have the ingredients for a really robust relationship where you just pick one

of those.

I think the level of intimacy and the depth of that relationship begins to wane.

What we see Nehemiah doing in his relationship and what we saw from the whole scriptures

council on our lives is we're not just people of empathy and compassion, but we're people

who have a relationship with God that is made visible in the way we approach God, namely

in set aside times as well as throughout our days as situations arise.

Then we also say we're not just people of prayer, but we're also people who act upon

our prayers.

Now hear me.

You are not the solution to all of your prayers.

In fact, sometimes you are the anti solution to a lot of your prayers.

You trying to play the role of the Holy Spirit in someone else's life around you turns into

a bit of a nightmare, right?

But we are people who act upon our prayers as God lays that upon our hearts and as the

word of God lays it upon our hearts to encourage others around us, to act justly in the world

around us.

As we see areas that we are able to enter into.

So these things start putting themselves together.

And as we see there are those around us who are mourning, those who are in tough spots,

those who are the least of these, then we enter in.

Then we don't just pray God would provide.

We don't just pray that God would encourage.

We don't just pray that God would take care where we are able.

We enter in.

So we're not just people with relationship with God that manifests itself in prayer,

but we are people who act upon what God reveals to us out of the word of God and in our prayers,

where we are able.

Then we moved from the rebuilding, the rebuilding the broken world around us with empathy and

compassion, rebuilding the world around us through prayer, rebuilding the world around

us through action.

And really we started looking at the reality of the world we live in, namely that we as

believers can expect opposition.

As the people of God, you and I can expect opposition.

There are those around us in our lives day after day that don't see the world the way

we do.

They don't see that the world is broken at all.

And in a strange turn in the book of Nehemiah, we begin to see that injustice occurs not

just outside the walls of the church, but actually inside the walls also.

And so you begin to see injustice inside the household of faith, which means things are

not pretty in here all the time.

Things are not always going well here all the time.

In our relationships, I'm going to tell you, I'm going to fail you.

You're going to fail me.

It becomes imperative that my hope is put in Jesus and not in your ability to nail whatever

thing you think Christianity is.

So if you're coming to church and your expectation is that church people are living out what

they fully know to be true, then you have come into a church that is completely ignorant

of what the Bible teaches.

There isn't a man or woman or child in this room who doesn't wrestle with temptation.

In fact, I heard a very wise man say, the only ones not struggling with temptation are

those who have given themselves over to a completely.

We are not people who are temptation free.

We are not people who are struggle free.

We still frequently skin up our knees and skin up our elbows.

And I've tried to repeatedly say that that should be an invitation for you to come in.

It shouldn't be used as a wall to keep you out.

Would you not feel safer around those who struggle?

So you know that there's somebody in the battle with you.

Would you not feel safer around those who are not perfect?

Or are you trying to say if everyone you knew who went to church was perfect, then you would

feel like you could believe in Jesus?

No, you wouldn't have anything to do with us if we thought we were perfect.

You would feel so unwelcomed in this place and not at home at all.

The very scent of this type of perfect people would wreak condemnation to you.

We're all banged up and goofy, which means that you should fit right in with us.

And there we moved on to the fact that we are people who are rebuilding with the truth.

We are people who have been given the very words of God in the forms of the Scriptures.

And the Scriptures are going to teach us who God is.

Not who we think he is, but rather who God is.

It's going to teach us who we are.

Not who we think we are, but who we actually are.

The Bible is going to show us those things.

And then the Bible is going to show us how God designed the universe to work.

It becomes the blueprint.

It becomes the plans of how God is going to rebuild the brokenness around us.

That's what the Word of God is.

It is given to us as this perfect, inerrant Word of God.

And that is how we are to approach it.

It's not a suggestion.

And then finally, the last building block for us so far is that we respond to the truth

of God's Word.

We respond to the truth.

Once we understand who God is, once we understand what God has done for us, once we understand

of who we are, and he chooses us anyway, we don't take that lightly.

We respond.

The people in Nehemiah, they fell on their face.

They worshiped.

They shouted, amen, because they experienced the truth in their lives.

They had been delivered.

They had been brought back into right relationship after their infidelity time and time again.

They don't just sit there unaffected when the Word of God is read aloud.

They respond.

So it's important that you hear me say that the things I'm talking about above are true

about the people of God, not necessarily about all people.

That takes us to where we will be this morning, and yet another component of how God uses

the church, how God uses the people of God to be a rebuilding group of men and women

in a broken and fallen world.

So Nehemiah chapter 9, verse 6, again, Kayla read it, says, you are the Lord, you alone.

Nehemiah 9:6

You made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all that is

on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them and the host of heaven

worships you.

Now I'm just going to stop right there so we can talk about this.

That is unbelievably significant.

That verse is unbelievably significant because that's one of the things that marks our identity

as God's people is that we believe in one God who is God of all.

This might not have read to you, but here's what he just said.

There's not a God of the sea.

There's not a God of the land.

There is one God and our God is God of all.

We're not polytheists.

There are not multiple ways to multiple gods.

There is one singular God on high and he rules and reigns over all.

There's nothing in this universe that he doesn't stand over and rightly deem his own.

Then verse 7, you are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of earth, the

Chaldeans, and gave him the name Abraham.

You found his heart faithful before you and made with him the covenant to give his offspring,

the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Parasite, the Jebusite, and the

Gurgashite.

You have kept your promise for you are righteous.

Now again, what you're seeing here in the identity of the people of God, in fact what

marked them was that there was one God singular and that one God was going to redeem and rescue

and rebuild all that went wrong in the fall, all that's broken in mankind, primarily through

his chosen people.

What marked Israel as the people is that there is one God.

He loves us.

He has chosen us.

And that through us, he will make known his righteousness and beauty to the world around

us.

He'll make known the path of life through his people.

Now let's chat real quick because that sounds horrifically arrogant.

That sounds extremely narrow-minded, specifically for a people who are scattered all over the

ancient world in slavery.

This people who are promised this land and moved into this land had seen God do marvelous

and spectacular things.

And they'd seen all that explode as they were led off into exile.

That's why Nehemiah is in the place of the Persian king as a wine tester and not in the

city of God in Jerusalem.

Yet still their identity marks them.

They understand we are the people of God.

We are the people of God and through the people of God will reveal his wisdom to the world

around us.

My question is, as I was reading this text, what can then ultimately bring this type of

confidence in this situation?

I mean they are a confident people who are currently living in exile all over the world

but still they're holding on to this.

Well, we'll keep reading.

What you're going to see here is we are also a people who hold steadfast to the promises

of God of his faithfulness regardless of circumstances.

And so we're going to break down verses 9 through 31 here in chapter 9.

What we see here in this extensive chunk of scripture is really four promises concerning

God's faithfulness that the people of God have historically remembered and grabbed a

hold of regardless of their situation, regardless of where they are in life.

They've meditated on these promises.

They worship God because of these promises.

And here's what the four are.

We see in verses 9 through 11, we see the first promise that God does not abandon his

people and that he is aware of their circumstances.

That's promise number one that we see.

What we heard repeatedly in this text is that God saw their affliction.

He heard their cries and you have multiple situations here over the history of God's

chosen people where God is aware of their circumstances and he did not abandon them in the midst

of their circumstances.

What we pull from this now regardless of how you've come into this room and regardless

of where your life circumstances are right now, the hope we grab a hold of as the people

of God is that he is not unaware of our situation.

He's not unaware of where we find ourselves today.

I say this every week because it's true.

I don't know how you've come in here.

I know I'm not naive and I know that there's heartbreak all around us almost always.

I'm well aware of the tragedy and the hardship of life but in the end here I'm not naive.

I know we've come in here a bit banged up.

I know some of you are disappointed with how life has played out so far.

I know some of you are exhausted in the marriages that you are in.

I know some of you are desperately worried about the trajectory of your children.

Some of you are walking in a weight that is not yours to carry for some of the decisions

your children are making right now.

The promise that is given to us by God and what Nehemiah is drawing the attention of

the people of God back, people of God back to is that God is not unaware.

There isn't a tear in this room.

There isn't an angst in this place that God does not rightfully go.

I know.

I know.

Then on top of that it says he is not abandoning us.

He's not abandoning us and we're not alone.

He's not asked us to walk through this thing alone.

It's why the Psalmist in Psalm 23 you know that one right?

I said I'm going to read it at some of y'all's funerals.

In Psalm 23 says he fears no evil as he walks through the valley of the shadow of death.

Why?

Because you're with me.

Because your rod and your staff they come for me.

In fact the great whisper of God is that he is always here.

God is not unaware of the circumstances of his people.

He is not abandon them.

Then we see the second promise in verses 12 through 14.

God guides and instructs his people.

I mean that's great news.

Multiple times in my life I have not known what to do next.

Anyone else?

Multiple times I've just gone okay this way or this way.

Multiple times I've had opportunities and they were both really great opportunities

but there's only one choice right?

I'm so glad that over and over and over again God has not abandoned me to what I think is

best.

What we see in this text is God engaging and leading and guiding and instructing his people

in multiple ways.

This text says that he has given them a good spirit.

The same good spirit he has sealed in you and me that have put our faith in Jesus Christ.

It says that he gave them the law at Mount Sinai.

The law is about this is what God has for you.

This is the way to go.

For us the law sounds like I like the law.

Not fun right?

But we really like the law.

We even like the law now.

You should like the laws in our country.

If you're not grateful for our laws you haven't lived anywhere else.

It's illegal for people to take your stuff.

You can just pick up the phone, you can dial 911 and someone will show up and handle that

for you.

If someone is trying to harm you there's laws that protect you from that.

See laws are good things.

The Old Testament writers would often talk about the law as honey, as things they meditated

on, as something they were grateful for.

It's kind of this road to a life full of joy, not happiness, joy.

God gave the law at Mount Sinai.

Then he also, and I get kind of jealous for this, but he also gave the people in the wilderness

a pillar of smoke by day and a pillar of fire by night.

How awesome would that be?

How awesome would that be?

You know that commercial from a few years ago?

I think it was Fidelity where you just kind of follow the green line.

You follow the green line and you follow that for years and then you retire with millions

of dollars.

You remember that commercial?

I would love if that line, a little Jesus line, if I could just kind of follow that

pillar which way to go?

Which way do I go?

I go that way because there goes the pillar, there goes the line.

There goes some fire.

I'll follow that, right?

How great would that be?

The point and the promise Nehemiah is pointing us back to is that God guides his people.

He instructs them.

He guides them.

Now, how does he do that?

Now we've talked about this many times.

First and foremost, he does that through the Word of God.

He has given us the Word of God to guide us and instruct us.

But let's be real straight.

Sometimes we can know the Bible really, really, really well and still not know how God is

leading.

Can we agree on that?

Let's agree on that.

Sometimes we can know the Bible, Genesis to Revelation.

We can do Bible study after Bible study after Bible study and still not know, do I take

this job or do I take this job?

Do I go here or do I go here?

What does the Bible say?

So here's the other gift God has given to you.

And so few of you take advantage of it.

It hurts my heart.

The second thing God has given us is not only the Word of God that instructs and teaches

and guides, but he's also given us the church.

He has given us one another.

The reason we want you to connect with smaller groups of people is it is really easy to get

lost in a group of people this size.

What we want to do is connect you with people you will actually do life with who are serious

about growing in their knowledge of the Lord, who are serious about growing in depth in

their understanding of who God is and then doing life with people who are able to speak

into our lives and people we welcome into speaking into our lives.

That's the Christian community.

That's what we're trying to push you into.

And here's what's so wrong with us.

Here's why we're so goofy.

What we want to do is take Christianity and separate it out from this idea of covenant

community and make it individual.

That's not how Christianity has been created or how it flourishes.

My counsel to anyone who goes, what job should I take in this city or that city?

My response will always be, I'm always going to ask what church they have found in that

city or that city that preaches the gospel.

What church have they found that takes seriously the things of God where they can immediately

connect?

You send your high school senior to my office to talk about which school they should go

to.

My question is going to be, what church do you know there?

What covenant community of faith is there that's going to support you and encourage you and

walk with you because how this thing works is you and I are in relationship with one

another, hearing from one another and being instructed by the wisdom to one another.

It's also why I think it's a bad idea for groups to become homogenized.

You don't need to be in a group with just 20-somethings.

There's a lot of ignorance in that group.

In the same way, you don't need to be in a group with only 50- and 60-year-olds, old

glory days.

I'm so glad we're not there anymore kind of group.

In reality, older men are commanded, not suggested, commanded to teach the younger men.

The older women are commanded, not suggested to teach the younger women.

Human community flourishes when we become ferociously committed to one another.

It's not easy and it's not sexy and it's far more difficult than I'm making it sound up

here because people are, as we've already shared, prone to selfishness, prone to walking

blind spots that they don't know are there because they're blind to those spots.

Now, I don't know about you.

I probably do, but I'm going to just base it off me.

I've never enjoyed someone else telling me about where my blind spots are.

I don't think they're there.

In fact, I immediately become aware of your blind spots when you're telling me about

mine.

It's a magical experience.

I mean, I will not see your blind spots at all until you begin to tell me about mine.

And mid-sentence.

Mid-sentence.

I'll go, you know what?

I see some inconsistency in your life, too.

Maybe you need to go fix that up because I think that's the lenses that you're looking

at my things through.

I mean, isn't that almost how all of us handle that?

We notice everybody else's faults and failures before we recognize our own.

This is the reason why there must be an invitation to speak into our lives.

I have literally said to our elderboard, to other people around me, any inconsistency in

my life whatsoever, no matter how small, no matter how big.

I want you to lay that before me.

I want to be a man who's above reproach.

And when we do that, and when we accept that, the ammunition the enemy will use against

us is taken away.

God has given this to you.

This is what He's given to you.

And what you've done is you've just come to service.

Do you know how easy it is to hide in here?

Do you know how easy it is to come here week after week, say hi to a few people superficially

and walk out the door and not one person know you?

You could do that for years.

You could do that for years.

You can be completely unknown in this place for years.

And some of you have been walking to that.

Then in verses 15 through 16, we see the third promise that God provides for His people.

In this text, we see He provides for their physical needs.

He gives them manna to eat.

He gives them water to drink.

But I want us to talk about God's provision in a way that's more biblically faithful.

God does not give you what you want.

He gives you what you need.

And He does that not based on your perception, but His.

Which means that some of you feel like you've been robbed by God because He did not give

you something He never promised to give you.

God doesn't owe you anything.

Do you hear that?

You cannot put Him into your debt.

You cannot make God the slave.

Historically I've said He doesn't live in a lantern and you are most definitely not

Aladdin.

That's not how this thing works.

You being good and moral doesn't equate to God giving you anything you want and everything

that you think you deserve.

Trust me on this.

You don't want what you deserve.

You want what you don't deserve here.

That means that there are times where hardship and difficulties must be rejoiced in because

they have come through the hands of God.

Now if we're thinking about this correctly, if we're thinking about these things eternally,

is not hardship the thing that gets us more of God?

More dependent upon God?

Less dependent on the transient trinkety junk in this world?

In the end isn't that a real gift from God?

If I have nothing but Him, is that not when I'm looking at 10,000 years from now a really

beautiful gift?

It absolutely is.

It absolutely is.

God provides for His people.

Then this is the one I want us to end on.

This is my favorite promise in this text.

Beginning in verse 17 we see that God is ready to forgive.

He's ready to forgive.

He is gracious.

He is merciful.

He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

This the text said repeatedly that the people of God, they grew presumptuous.

They grew stiff-necked.

They grew arrogant.

They grew blasphemous.

They trusted in other gods besides the God who has already rescued them.

The God who saved them multiple times where they tried to give credit to somebody else

for the things that God did.

What Nehemiah reminded the people of was crossing the Red Sea, getting to Mount Sinai, God giving

the law and the law being given to them.

You remember that?

As the law is being given to them, they made a golden calf and said, this is the God that

brought us out of Egypt.

What was God's response?

A couple of things.

Remember?

The plinth knows he loves.

That's what we find out in the book of Hebrews.

And he scourges any he calls sons.

Yet God's response to stiff-necked, presumptuous, arrogant people who have a bit of rhythm of

trusting him and then not trusting him.

And then trusting him and then not trusting him.

And then trusting him and then not trusting him.

His response is what to that?

Grace.

It's grace and mercy and abounding love.

Isn't that good news for us?

It's good news for me.

Maybe you're further along than I am, but that's great news for me.

God's people throughout the Scriptures have had this way of really clinging to God, really

holding on to God.

And then when things got good, when things are going well, he says there were olives

and vineyards and wine and they got fat and lazy.

All of a sudden, all of a sudden, they don't need God anymore.

So God and his love gave them over to their enemies.

Then they cried out, and what did he do?

What did he do?

He didn't go, he didn't go, no, drink your wine, chubby.

Go kill the fat a calf now.

Right?

That's not what he did.

He said, oh, you had your choice and you keep abandoning me.

He doesn't do that three times in just these verses.

Across a span of 100 years, he goes and he extended them mercy and he extended them grace

and he heard their cries.

Our God, our promise, the one who we're clinging to is a God of grace and mercy, a bounding

in love, a bounding in steadfast love.

I think he's just trying to think of words.

As I was reading that, he's just trying to think of words to put before love.

And he's encouraging the people to cling to that promise.

So again, I don't know how you walked in here.

I'll tell you my story.

I grew up in church.

Nine months before I was born, that's my story, right?

So I heard all the stories, I heard all the sermons, I knew all the songs, I participated

in all the right things.

Church Sundays and Wednesdays and then any other time the door was open, I was there.

And I caught myself thinking, once I get my life together, then God's going to love me.

Once I started acting right, then God's going to love me.

And so I was constantly trying to figure out these ways that I could make him proud and

do the right things and be a good kid, at least where people saw me, right?

Like at least what was seen.

And then you come across that passage where it says, but all your rags, all your offerings,

all your good deeds are but filthy rags before him.

And I understood he was ready to forgive me now.

Not some future version of me, but who he made me to be now.

Now I think some of you need to hear that.

The promise of God right now to you is he is ready to forgive.

He's ready to forgive.

And we need to be grateful for that.

So again, however you came in here today, my prayer is that you will not walk out of here

the same.

You will not carry the same baggage you walked in here with home again.

And lay down.

He's not unaware of your circumstances.

He's not unaware of the pain.

He's not unaware of whatever is keeping you up at night.

My challenge to you is to know that and trust him with it.

And so I'm going to pray for us.

We'll sing one more song together and you can respond however you need to respond.

So what we understand through the book of Nehemiah is that one of the building blocks

is we have the truth of God's word and is our responsibility to the world around us

that we respond to that truth.

We don't hold it in.

We respond to that truth.

And so let me pray for us.

Prepare your hearts for whatever the Lord is going to say to you this morning.

And then we'll just hand it over to him.

Father, right now I pray.

I pray that there are people in this room that will hear that you are ready to forgive.

I pray you speak to their heart.

I pray, Father, that they will call upon your name.

Because you are a God of mercy.

You are a God of grace.

You are a God of, that has stead, fast love for your people.

So Father, we focus on who you are and what you've done for us.

I pray, Father, that as we end, that you'll just draw near.

You'll draw near to those that are hurting.

You'll draw near to those who feel like they have no hope.

You'll draw near to those who just feel defeated.

God, I pray that you'll minister to our hearts this morning.

And as we respond, will you lead the charge?

We're responding to you not because of anything that was done here today.

We're responding to what you have said to our hearts this morning.

So Father, we give you this time.

What's your name?

Father.