Time to Put Things Right
This article is based on a talk on Nehemiah chapters 9 and 10, first given by David Couchman at Above Bar Church, Southampton, on Sunday 18th June 2006. It may be reproduced in print or on other web sites, subject to the copyright notice below.
- Think of a situation where someone has wronged you, or done something that offended you.
- Think of a situation where you've wronged someone else, or done something that offended them.
- Think of a situation where you've done something that has offended God.
In Nehemiah chapters 9 and 10, the Jews are putting things right with God. It would take too long to go through these chapters verse by verse. Instead, we are going to put five key questions to them. I hope that as we answer these questions, it will help us to see how they relate to us.
(1) What motivates them to put things right?
We can see two things that motivate them. The first is their situation. So in chapter 9 verse 32, we read:
Now therefore, O our God, the great, mighty and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes...
Then in verse 36:
But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land you gave our forefathers so they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces. Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress.
There is more going on in the book of Nehemiah than just rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem. It is also about rebuilding God's people as a nation. Although they are back in the land and the walls have been rebuilt, they recognise that their situation is one of hardship and great distress. This is the first thing that moves them to put things right with God.
Sometimes, it seems that the only thing that will get us to turn back to God is trouble. If you are going through some kind of trouble right now, could God be trying to get your attention?
The second thing that motivates them is hearing from God in his Word. Nehemiah chapter 8 is is all about Ezra reading the Law. Again at the beginning of chapter 9, in verse 3, we have the Levites reading from the law of the Lord for a quarter of the day. One of the things that will motivate us to put things right with God is hearing from him in his word.
So what motivates them to put things right with God? They are motivated by their situation of hardship and distress, and by hearing from God in his word.
(2) How do they start to put things right?
They begin with worship. From the middle of verse 5 to verse 31 of chapter 9 is a long prayer of worship to God for what he has done for Israel. The second half of verse 5 says:
Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise.
Then they worship God for:
- his majesty in creation (verse 6)
- making a covenant with Abraham (verses 7-8)
- rescuing the people from Egypt (verses 9-11)
- leading them the desert (verse 12)
- making his covenant with them at Mount Sinai (verses 13-14)
- providing for them (verses 15-16)
So they begin with praise to God for all he has done for them. But mixed in with this, there is a darker strand, of confession of the nation's failure:
But they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery... (verses 16-17a)
But in spite of what they did, God still showed them mercy, verse 17b:
But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, 'This is your god who brought you up out of Egypt,' or when they committed awful blasphemies. Because of your great compassion, you did not abandon them in the desert...
Verses 22-25 describe God's goodness and care in giving his people the Promised Land to live in. But then again in verse 26:
But they were disobedient and rebelled against you; they put your law behind their backs. They killed your prophets, who had admonished them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies...
God hands them over to their enemies (verse 27). But as soon as they turn back to him, he rescues them again. This pattern is repeated all through Israel's history. Verse 28:
As soon as they were at rest, they again did what was evil in your sight.
Verse 29 says that they became arrogant, and disobeyed God's commands. They became stiff-necked and refused to listen. Clearly, the nation deserves God's judgment. But again and again, God shows them mercy and love and compassion that they do not deserve. Verse 31 says:
But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are a gracious and merciful God.
The point of this long section, from verse 5 to verse 32, is to remind themselves - and to remind God - of his mercy and compassion to disobedient, rebellious people who do not deserve it.
How do they start to put things right? By confession - confessing both God's greatness and goodness, and their own rebelliousness and disobedience. Confessing what God has done and what they have done.
(3) What does putting things right look like?
I wonder if you have ever been in the position that you have done or said something wrong. You know that it is wrong, and there is nothing you can do about that. You have to try to put it right with the person you have offended. You have to say sorry. Don't we find this difficult? Don't we just look for all kinds of ways out?
Here are two different ways to say sorry. See if you can spot the difference:
I'm sorry if you were upset by what happened, but...
I'm sorry that I upset you by what I did.
One of these is a real apology. The other is not. Can you spot the differences?
- 'I'm sorry if you were upset... ' / 'I'm sorry that I upset you...' 'If' does not even face up to the reality that an offence has been caused. It is a weaselling way with words. It implies 'well, maybe there's been an offence, and maybe there hasn't.'
- 'I'm sorry if you were upset...' / 'I'm sorry that I upset you...' 'I'm sorry if you were upset' is not actually an apology at all. It shifts the responsibility for being offended onto the person who has been offended. It does not admit that I have done anything wrong at all. If you were dumb enough and thin-skinned enough to be offended, that is your stupid fault.' 'I'm sorry that I upset you,' takes responsibility for my own actions.
- 'I'm sorry if you were upset by what happened.' / 'I'm sorry that I upset you by what I did.' Well, it is the same idea. Am I willing to take responsibility for my actions or not?
- 'But...' - followed by a long list of justifications and excuses for what I did. The full stop is important. No excuses. No justifications
When we say sorry (whether it is to God or to another human being), the words we use matter. Can you see how one of these is an apology and the other is not?
'I'm sorry if you were upset by what happened, but...' is the sort of apology you get from politicians, or from television companies, when they have broadcast something completely inappropriate or dishonest.
A real apology accepts that there has been a genuine offence. It takes responsibility for its actions. It does not make excuses or give justifications.
Did you notice that the Jews' confession in these chapters is genuine? They accept that there has been real offence. They take responsibility for it. They do not excuse it or justify it. Then in verses 32-37, they pray for God to restore them. So in verse 32 they say:
Now therefore, O our God, the great, mighty and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes...
They were confident that God would forgive them. Not because they deserved it, but because, as chapter 9 verse 17 says:
You are gracious and compassionate...
They had already see this again and again in what God had done for them in the past. God is much kinder to us than we imagine.
Whatever we have done, we can be confident that God will forgive us and accept us. We have even more basis for that confidence than they did - because of the death of Jesus Christ as the sacrifice for our sins. In his first letter, John writes this:
If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.
What does putting things right look like? It means real confession, which accepts that there has been a genuine offence, takes responsibility for its actions, and does not give excuses or justifications. We can be confident that God will forgive us and accept us, because of what he has already done in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
(4) Who needs to put things right?
(a) It is personal
In Nehemiah chapter 9 verse 38 through to chapter 10 verse 29, the people make what they call a 'binding agreement' - they put it in writing, and the leaders put their names to it individually. They are taking personal responsibility for putting things right with God.
It involves all of them, individually. Chapter 10 verse 29 says:
All these now join their brothers 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.
They have been confessing that the nation has been disobedient and rebellious against God, and broken his laws. According to the Bible, this is a picture of all of us. We have all disobeyed God. Each one of us has rebelled against him, and broken his law. Because of this, each one of us needs to put things right with Him. So, as Paul says in those very well-known words in Romans:
All have sinned. All fall short of God's glorious standard.
It means you and me. It is personal.
You sometimes hear people talk as if Christians think they are better than everyone else. But they could not be more wrong. Christians are precisely the people who recognise that we have disobeyed God and broken his laws, and need him to forgive us.
The Bible is clear that in this life we never stop being disobedient rebels. We never reach the point where we do not need to put things right with God. So John says, in his first letter:
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins...
In the pattern prayer that Jesus gave his followers, he taught them to pray:
Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
He expected us to pray this regularly. We have an ongoing need to pray to be forgiven. It never goes away.
Who needs to put things right? We all do, all the time. It is personal.
(b) It is corporate - it is a community project
Confession is personal, but it is not just personal. It is a matter for the whole community together. Did you notice that they are even standing together with previous generations?
None of the individuals who were there on that day confessing these sins had actually committed them. They had all been committed by earlier generations of the people. So, for example, in chapter 9 verse 17, they are talking about the people who came out of Egypt about a thousand years earlier, and what they had done. In verse 26, they are talking about people in the time of the Judges.
But they had a sense that 'we're all in this together.' We are responsible individually for what we as a community of God's people have done. So they say to God:
You have been just; you have acted faithfully, while we did wrong. (verse 33)
Part of the challenge of these verses is to us together. Is there anything that we need to put right, as a community of God's people? Is confession and putting things right with God on our agenda? Not just as individuals, but as a church?
So who needs to put things right with God? We all do, both individually, personally, and as a community of God's people, as a church.
(5) What does putting things right lead to? (Chapter 10 verses 29-39)
If confession means anything, if there is any reality to saying sorry, if we have truly put things right with God, this will lead to changed priorities, and these will show in what we do. For the Jews in Nehemiah's day, putting things right with God led to changed priorities in three areas:
1. Separation (verse 30)
They committed themselves not to intermarry with the surrounding nations. They would distinguish clearly between themselves and the people around them who were not believers in the one true God.
Was this just something for the Jews in 445 BC, or does it still apply to us today? Let's look at the New Testament, at what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6. We can see here how he applies the same principle to Christians:
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Corinthians chapter 6 verses 14-16)
The New Living Bible says:
Don't team up with unbelievers.
Paul says, do not go into partnership with people who are not Christians. Because you will be pulling in opposite directions.
What does this mean? It means do not form any relationship which may lead you to compromise your Christian standards, or your Christian witness. Do not get into anything that involves sharing the responsibility for decisions with someone who isn't a believer. Why? Because this person does not share our goals or our standards.
It does not mean that we think we are any better than other people - just that we are travelling in a different direction.
What does this apply to?
The first and most obvious application: do not go into a business partnership with someone who is not a Christian.
As with the ancient Jews, it means do not marry someone who is not a Christian. At the core of your relationship, you will have divided loyalties and priorities.
If you are single, do not date someone who is not a Christian. Do not be an item with an unbeliever. Why? Well, what can dating lead to? It can only end in one of three ways: in a broken relationship (which almost always causes pain to at least one of the partners); in having sex outside marriage, or in marriage. And if you know that you cannot marry this person, why date them?
Of course, people often say, 'well, I hope they'll become a Christian.' Yes fine. But why not trust God, and pray for them, and wait for them to become a Christian before you start dating them? Otherwise, what you are really saying is that this person - this relationship - is more important to me than God is.
In fact, it means do not get into any kind of relationship which involves sharing the responsibility for decisions with someone who is not a Christian.
So the first changed priority is about separation: it says that God is more important to me than any other relationship.
2. Sabbath (verse 31)
The second changed priority, in verse 31, is that they promised not to buy and sell on the Sabbath. This is not just a legalistic rule that says 'don't go shopping on Sunday.' It is a principle of rest from my work.
I will not just work and work non-stop. I will set aside time for rest and for God, because God is more important to me than my work. It is a check on us relentlessly pursuing career and success, at the expense of rest and worship. A real commitment to God will show itself in how we spend our time.
What about you and me? Are we in danger of letting our work become all-consuming? Or do we stop working long enough to rest, long enough to hear God speak to us?
3. Support (verses 32-39)
The third changed priority, in verses 32-39, is support for God's worship and God's work.
In these verses, the people promise to provide for the temple worship, in several different ways: for the priests, for the offerings, and so on. The key is at the end, where they say:
We will not neglect the house of our God. (Nehemiah chapter 10 verse 39)
If we are real about putting things right with God, this will show itself in how we spend our money. Some of our money will go for God's work and God's worship. I am not going to give you a percentage - I do not believe the New Testament does this. But some of it will. Whatever amount we settle on, it will cut across our own desire for things, and for security.
So it was a way to say that God is more important to me than my money. I will show that by giving part of my material wealth for God's work and God's worship.
What about you and me? Do we support God's work? Or do we say 'I can't afford to do that,' or 'I'll do it when I get round to it'?
So what does putting things right lead to? Changed priorities in our relationships, work, and money.
Let's put it at all together:
- What motivates them to put things right? Their desperate situation, and listening to God in his word.
- How do they start to put things right? By confessing God's greatness and goodness, and their own disobedience and rebellion.
- What does putting things right look like? Real confession which accepts that there has been a genuine offence, takes responsibility for its actions, and does not make excuses or give justifications.
- Who needs to put things right with God? Each one of us individually, and all of us as a community of God's people together.
- What does putting things right lead to? It leads to changed priorities, where God is more important to us than any other relationship, than our work, and than our money.
As we come to God like this, we can be confident that he will hear us, and will forgive us, not because we deserve it - we do not - but because of the kind of God he is: a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in love.
Copyright notice
You may use this article in print or on a web site, subject to the following limitations:
- The article is reproduced in its entirety, without variation.
- There is a link back to this site.
- There is a copyright notice crediting Focus Radio for this article, and including these conditions.