The People’s Confession

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So we’re going to be in Nehemiah chapter 9, like I said, and some of it will go through verse by verse. Some of it will just kind of skim through. But we’re going to start in verse 1.

Where we left off in verse 8 was a discussion about the Feast of Tabernacles, Ezra’s reading of the law, some of the things that they did in preparation for. Doesn’t that feel like it’s been forever ago? It’s been almost a month when I looked at that.

I don’t, you know, it was one, various things, but they all added up, and it’s been about a month ago that we discussed that. But it was their handling of the law, how they responded and how they prepared to hear the scriptures. And now on the heels of that, we come to chapter 9, where they have this big worship service involving the confession of their sins.

really the heading in my Bible, which is not inspired, that’s some editor’s summary of the text, says the people confessed their sins. But as we read through this, we’re going to see that they confessed more than just their sin. So it says, starting in verse 1, Now on the 24th day of this month, the children of Israel were assembled with fasting in sackcloth and with dust on their heads.

Then those of Israelite lineage separated themselves from all foreigners, and they stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for one-fourth of the day, and for another fourth they confessed and worshipped the Lord their God. We’re going to stop there for just a second.

So this starts out with the people of Israel gathered in Jerusalem for a time of confession. And this is a big worship service that they’re having, one of the first, One of the first that they’ve had since the walls of Jerusalem have been rebuilt. They’ve come together, and if you remember from chapter 8, all those weeks ago that we looked at it, when Ezra read the law to them, they were not supposed to mourn and weep.

They were told in that chapter, do not mourn, do not weep, this is not time for that. Which seems kind of strange that they have been, the nation as a whole has been in captivity for decades because of their sin against God. And now they’re finally being restored into the land.

They’re finally being restored into their city. They’re rediscovering the law. And when the law is being read that outlines the holiness of God, so they would also understand their sin in contrast to the holiness of God, they’re being told, but don’t weep over your sin.

It’s not time. It’s kind of an odd thing. I mean, who wouldn’t want to lead a worship service where people are flocking to the altar to confess and get right with God.

But it wasn’t because it was wrong for them to be sorry about their sins. It was just the wrong time. They were coming into this Feast of Tabernacles, which was supposed to be a time of rejoicing over what God had done for them.

And so basically it’s don’t make this about you and what you’ve done. For right now, we need to focus on God and what he’s done, and then we’ll come back to your time of confession. So it’s just the wrong time then.

But now when we get to chapter 9, it’s time for them to deal with their spiritual issues. It didn’t mean that just because it was Feast of Tabernacles that God had forgotten all these things that were going on for 70 plus years. Well, through the 70 years of captivity and then all the years before that.

God hadn’t forgotten. He just said, we’re going to do things in my order and in my time. So it’s time for them to deal with the spiritual issues.

and we see that they were serious about it because in verse 1, it says they gathered together with fasting in sackcloth and with dust on their heads. So they were fasting, which means they didn’t eat. I mean, we’re aware of what fasting means.

But usually, if you lose your appetite, if you quit eating, it’s something pretty serious. Now, we need to remember that not everybody has lived in the world that we live in today. A few years ago, I talked to my doctor about weight loss, and I said, Is there any clue?

Is there any key to this? And he said, because, you know, you hear certain diets and eat certain times of the day and all these tricks. He said, the trick is eat less.

I said, thanks. I was looking for something a little more revolutionary than that. And he said, the way we were designed is to gather and to store calories.

I don’t know if he was coming from an evolution standpoint or creation standpoint, but it works either way. Our bodies are designed to store calories. That’s why, you know, you start losing too much weight and your body says, oh, let me help you with that.

Let’s slow down your metabolism and start storing fat. Like, thanks, that’s helpful. I’m trying to lose this on purpose.

But throughout most of human history, they haven’t had ready access to just all the food that we have. I mean, it’s incredible. You walk into a store.

I’ve remarked on this to my kids numerous times. In most places in the world, throughout most of human history, they have lined up for food. And now because of capitalism, we walk into a grocery store and food lines up for us.

That hasn’t been most of people’s experiences. And so the idea that I’m going to forgo food, you know, there’s got to be some serious reason. It’s the point I’m trying to get to.

For them to be fasting, for them deliberately to be giving up food when you didn’t always know where your next meal was coming from or what it was going to be, shows how serious they were about what they were doing, about what was going on. They were brokenhearted over their sins, and they said, we are going to take this time that we would be eating, and we’re going to spend that time focusing on God. So they were fasting.

They were wearing sackcloth. If you remember the old potato sacks, the burlap, that does not seem like it would be comfortable to wear. Can’t imagine that it would be.

But it was a way of showing their sorrow. I don’t know if it was to make themselves feel worse. I really don’t understand the whole concept of why you would wear the burlap, but that’s what they did.

And they put ashes on their heads. Now, in the late winter, we’ll see people for Ash Wednesday. They’ll go to Ash Wednesday services and they’ll mark the ashes on their forehead.

Where that originated was not necessarily that you went and dumped ashes on your forehead to show that you were sorrowful over your sins. you would end up with the dirt on your forehead because you were on your face on the ground before God. I’m not saying that the ashes on the forehead, I’m not saying they’re doing anything wrong.

It’s not anything I’ve ever done. But I’m saying it didn’t start out with here, let me put dirt on my forehead. It started out with let’s get on our faces before God.

And so that’s what they were doing. They were falling on their faces before God and they were confessing. So they were serious about this.

And they gathered for what we see as a family meeting, basically the whole country. at least those that were gathered in Jerusalem, they had this family meeting. It says they put the foreigners out of the gathering.

And some people have looked at that, and because Ezra deals with their pagan wives and getting rid of them, they’ve said, oh, it messes with the timeline here, and this belongs in Ezra, and they use it to question the Bible. But this was not the same thing as them getting rid of the foreign wives. This was nothing against the foreigners at this point.

This was saying, this is us. The foreigners don’t need to repent and get right with God. They’re not part of the covenant.

We need to deal with God. We need to confess. We need to rededicate this nation to him.

There’s a family meeting. You know, I don’t call all of you up when we’re going to have a discussion about, you know, I don’t know, what was our last family meeting? Y’all stop running upstairs.

It sounds like you’re coming through the ceiling. I don’t call all of y’all and invite you into the living room for a family meeting. It’s nothing against you.

It’s just you don’t have to be part of that conversation. So they were having this meeting. They put the foreigners out and they were dealing with God.

And we see in verse 2 that they were dealing with not just their own sins, but the sins of the nation. They were dealing with God about their individual sins because it says they stood and confessed their sins. but they were also dealing with the sins of the nation because it says, and the iniquities of their fathers.

So there were things that individually they may not have been complicit in, but they’re saying we as a nation have done this wrong. We’re like, we have our national sins. Is everybody pretty clear on that?

America as a whole is guilty of some things. It’s not an exhaustive list, but our country is guilty of blood of millions of unborn babies that have been sacrificed in the name of convenience over the last 50 years. I’ve never voted for that.

I’ve never supported that. I’ve fought against it. But as a nation, we need to repent.

And if that means I need to be involved in the repentance of America for that, then so be it. It may not be a sin that I’m personally guilty of, but they were looking at things that they were not involved in the sin that got these people alive here at this meeting. We’re not involved in the sin that got Israel taken into captivity 70 plus years earlier, but they said, we’re still part of the covenant of Israel.

We, and on behalf of our nation, we’re going to repent of this. Okay. And so they confessed their sins and the sins of the nation, but understand too, it wasn’t just the sins of the nation.

It wasn’t, oh, the nation has sinned. They were individually also getting right with God and saying, this is where I’ve fallen short of your expectations for me. So they gathered for this time of confession.

And as we read the confession that they went through, they really compared God’s faithfulness to keep his promises with their own tendency to stray from what they had said they would do that he had told them to do. And so I think we get this wrong idea, or at least incomplete idea of what confession is. We think of confession as I’m going to list my sins, but there’s more to it than that.

And we need to look at what they did here. See, they weren’t just confessing about who they were and what they had done. They were confessing also about who God was, who God is, and what God had done.

And I kind of charted this out to help me visualize it. And you kind of see them going back and forth. So I put things in different columns in my notes.

If any of you want to see that, I can get it to you later. But I’ve got columns here for them praising God, and columns there for them acknowledging their sin. And we start out with verses 5 and 6, them praising God for his creation and his power.

And it says in verse 5, Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. This is their prayer as part of this service. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens with all their host, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them. And you preserve them all.

The host of heaven worships you. And I’d love to go through this in detail, verse by verse. But I like what Blake Gideon said in that video message.

I like several of the things he said. But one of the things he said was, I can’t give you a worm’s eye view of the text tonight. I’ll give you a bird’s eye view.

So that’s what we’re going to. . .

I like that explanation of it. That’s what we’re going to do. But they start out not by making it about them and what they’ve done.

Who do they start out by talking about? The Lord. It’s about Him and what He’s done.

They said, you made heaven. You made all the heavens. I mean, the heavens declare the glory of God.

You made all of it. You keep all of it spinning and under control. By the way, I’ve been reading, well, not reading, but having it read to me on Audible, an excellent book about the proofs and evidence for creation.

And it’s just, it’s phenomenal. I mean, I’ve believed in creation, but hearing some of the evidence is just, we may have to do some lessons on that. It’s good stuff. But he made it all.

He made it all. All the things that live on the earth, he said, everything in the sea, you preserve them. And the host of heaven, the angels of heaven, worship you.

So they start out by praising God for his creation. And then they praise God for his kindness in the covenant that he made with Abraham. Look at verses 7 and 8 here.

You are the Lord God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees and gave him the name Abraham. That speaks to God increasing Abraham’s influence and family. You gave him the name Abraham.

You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites, and give it to his descendants. You have performed your words. You are righteous.

So they praise God for creation. Then they praise God for calling out Abraham and making promises to Abraham and following through on the promises that he made to Abraham. God made some incredible promises to Abraham.

That Abraham, if he were not such a man of faith, would have looked at and said, how is that even possible? I don’t believe that. But in his faith, Abraham said, okay, Lord, I believe you.

And God did every single thing that he promised to Abraham. And so we move into verse 9, and they began to praise God for delivering Israel from Egypt. Let me turn to verse 9 here.

You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heard their cry by the Red Sea. These lowly slaves, God was willing to hear them and listen to them. You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants, and against all the people of his land.

For you knew that they acted proudly against them, so you made a name for yourself as it is this day. and you divided the sea before them so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land and their persecutors you threw into the deep as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover, you led them by day with a cloudy pillar and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the road which they should travel.

Okay, so they’re praising God for his power. And I’ve got to hurry through this, I know. But they’re praising God for his power and his faithfulness to Israel to deliver them out of bondage in Egypt.

The incredible things that God did on behalf of this group of slaves to rescue them from one of the greatest powers in the ancient world. And we see in verse 13 that they’re praising God for his justice in giving a covenant with Israel through Moses. It says, You came down also on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments, You made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them precepts, statues, and laws by the hand of Moses your servant.

You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought them water out of the rock for their thirst and told them to go in to possess the land which you had sworn to give them. So they’re saying, you showed them your holiness and you showed them the way that they ought to walk and you promised to give them a land and you promised to bring them into that land and you did the things that you said you would do. And then in verse 16, it kind of switches.

All this up to this point has been a very positive confession about who God is. And now we start to get into what we understand confession to be, where they talked about how Israel disobeyed God by their wickedness during the time of the judges and by demanding a king. So he says, you did all of this for Israel.

And then we came into the time after the wilderness and look at what we did. But they and our fathers acted proudly, hardened their necks, and did not heed your commandments. Verse 17.

They refused to obey, and they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them, but they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage. But you are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them. And I realize as I’m reading this again, I misunderstood something as I was putting it in my notes.

I was thinking this was referring to Saul and them demanding a king. This isn’t. This is still them wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years.

And they kept saying, we’re going to appoint somebody to lead us back into Egypt. Because they didn’t trust God enough to provide for them. That’s what it’s talking about.

They didn’t trust God enough to provide for them in the wilderness. This is when they kept whining, why did you bring us out here just to kill us in the wilderness? And so they said, we’ll go back to Egypt.

Living in slavery is better than dying in the wilderness. They refused to obey. But the end of verse 17 shows how God responded.

They go back and forth between talking about what they’ve done and how good God has been in spite of it. Verse 17, but you are God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them. They said God didn’t abandon them even though they had failed to keep the covenant that he had made with Moses.

And then we see in verse 18 how Israel disobeyed God by turning after idols in the wilderness. That even when they made a molded calf for themselves and said, this is your God that brought you up out of Egypt and worked great provocations. You remember the story of them building the golden calf?

They took the gold to Aaron. It’s so sad, but so funny at the same time Moses shows up and says, Aaron, what are you doing? He said, I just threw the gold in and the calf jumped out.

I don’t know how it happened. Sounds like something one of our kids would say. And there have been times I’ve looked at him and said, I don’t know if I’m angry or that you’re lying or that you’re so bad at it.

Not that I want them to get better at it, but at least be creative. But they had this moment where they made this golden calf. They stopped trusting God.

They made the golden calf and said, we’ll worship this. We’ll let this go ahead of us back to Egypt. And you know that made God mad.

It was one of the first things he told them not to do. Verse 19 says, yet in your manifold mercies, in your numerous mercies, you did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud did not depart from them by day.

God’s leadership and God’s provision and protection did not depart from them. to lead them on the road, nor the pillar of fire by night, to show them light and the way they should go. You also gave your good spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth.

You fed them and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness. They lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

And I asked a question in this series of lessons a few weeks ago, something about them changing their socks. And Marcia O’Malley called me and she said, I found it in Deuteronomy, the answer to this. And it’s here too.

She said they were there and their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. So apparently they didn’t have to change their socks for 40 years. But they were, but it’s talking about how God led them and fed them in spite of how they were acting.

So this confession is not just, Father, we’re sorry about how bad we’ve been. but we’re also in awe of how good you were in spite of how bad we’ve been. And then in verse 22, God kept his promises during the conquest by giving them the promised land.

Moreover, you gave them kingdoms and nations and divided them into districts. And they took possession of the land of Sihon, the land of the king of Heshbon, and the land of Og, king of Bashan. And you multiplied their children as the stars of heaven.

You gave them numerous descendants, just like you promised to Abraham, and brought them into the land which you had told their fathers to go in and possess. So the people went in and possessed the land. You subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands with the kings and the people of the land that they might do with them as they wished.

And they took strong cities and a rich land and possessed houses full of all goods, cisterns or wells, water storage places, already dug vineyards, olive groves, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and grew fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. So he said, in spite of how they acted, you brought them into the land you promised, you gave it to them, and it was even better than you told them.

And they were delighted, and they delighted in your goodness. They were thrilled with the gifts you gave. Nevertheless, that’s not a good word to hear at this point.

They go back to confessing what they had done wrong. And in verse 26 and 27, we see that Israel disobeyed God by following just a succession of wicked kings who led them into serving idols and rejecting the law of God. It says, nevertheless, they were disobedient.

In spite of everything you had done for them, they were still disobedient and rebelled against you. Cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets who testified against them to turn them to yourself. So when you sent prophets to plead with them to come back, When you gave them chance after chance after chance to repent, they ignored you and they killed and persecuted the men that you sent to call them back.

And they worked great provocations. So we see that God finally has enough in verse 27. But even in his having enough, he shows mercy because he disciplined them with the foreign armies, but he spared them from the destruction that they deserved.

So it says, Therefore you delivered them into the hand of their enemies who oppressed them. And in the time of their trouble, when they cried to you, you heard from heaven. And according to your abundant mercies, you gave them deliverers who saved them from the hand of their enemies.

So God, we know that you sent them into bondage. But we also know you could have destroyed them and you didn’t do that. When they cried out to you, which was the goal, the goal was not to punish them.

The goal was to bring them back. And so when they finally cried out to you, you sent deliverers. I mean, how incredible is God?

I saw something on Facebook today. I can’t remember who posted it. It said one of the differences between religion and the gospel is religion says, I messed up.

My dad’s going to kill me. Where the gospel says, I messed up. I need to call my dad.

And time after time, God was that loving father who, yeah, they probably deserve to be killed, literally and figuratively. But instead, they called out to God. And God disciplined them, but God also restored them.

Time after time after time. How incredible is God? And so we see in verses 28 through 31.

I kind of wish I had a shorter chapter tonight. Where’s one of those 18 verse chapters when I need it? Verse 28, but after they had rest, they did evil.

They again did evil before you. Therefore, you left them in the hand of their enemies so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they returned and cried out to you, you heard from heaven.

and many times you delivered them according to your mercies and testified against them that you might bring them back to your law. Yet they acted proudly and did not heed your commandments but sinned against your judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. And they shrugged their shoulders, stiffened their necks, and would not hear.

Yet for many years you had patience with them and testified against them by your spirit and your prophets, yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercy, you did not utterly consume them nor forsake them.

For you are God, gracious and merciful. And folks, if you read the Old Testament, you will see over and over and over, it’s really just one big cycle of them going through this disobedience and then discipline and then repentance and then rescue, God rescuing them. That cycle is repeated over and over and over and over throughout the Old Testament.

If you ever think the Old Testament’s hard, just remember that cycle. And of course, it helps if you kind of read it chronologically, not in the order that it’s there. But take those stories and keep that cycle in mind.

And suddenly the Old Testament is easy. It’s easy to understand. But this cycle went on and on and on.

And just like we ask with our children, how many times are we going to have this conversation where you apologize for the same thing, and then we make up, and you go back to doing the same thing over and over and over and over. It’s what God did, and he forgave them every stinking time. He was patient, and he gave them opportunities to repent.

Because God’s goal was not to destroy them, it was not to punish them, it was to bring them back to him. And so now they cry out in verse 32, starting in verse 32 through 35, because they’re saying, we are in the same predicament again. We are in this same place that our nation has been time after time.

Now therefore our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome God who keeps covenants and mercy, do not let all the trouble seem small before you that has come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers on all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day. So they start out by saying, God, you are merciful. God, you keep your promises even when we don’t.

And so we’re asking you to notice what’s going on here. Pay attention to what’s happening to all of us, to the trouble that we’re seeing. But in verse 33, they say, however, you are just in all that has befallen us.

So we can’t blame you and say, God, if you were loving, you wouldn’t let this happen to us. How many times do we hear that? We hear stuff like that all the time.

How can a loving God do such a thing? They got it. They said, God, we are getting exactly what we deserve from you.

You are just. We can’t blame you. You are exactly right in the judgments that you mete out. You are just in all that has befallen us, for you have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly.

You’ve lived up to everything you’ve said. We are the ones who have not. Neither our kings nor our princes, our priests, nor our fathers have kept your law, nor heeded your commandments and your testimonies which you testified against them, or they have not served you in their kingdom, or in the many good things that you gave them, or in the large and rich land which you set before them, nor did they turn from their wicked works.

Okay, so they’re in the same predicament. But we’ve already read verse 32, and they point out the key to this, that even as they are in the same predicament, God is the same as he’s always been. You, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome, who keeps covenant and mercy.

You are the same forgiving, mighty, awesome, incredible, gracious, loving, patient, promise-keeping God that you always have been. And so they acknowledged that they deserved judgment. They acknowledged they deserved all the trouble that they were getting for their sins, but they also entrusted themselves to God, hoping for his mercy on the basis of his kindness.

They said, because of the holiness of God, we deserve all of this. But because of the mercy of God, we know we can trust him to show grace here, to show kindness. So through this confession, they confessed that they had done wrong and they deserved all of their trouble, but they also confessed that God was faithful even when they weren’t.

And they committed themselves to serving him in verses 36 through 38. I’m not going to read all of it to you tonight. I’m running out of error.

Go read it yourselves. But they said that they were committing themselves to serving him. And so as they’re asking God in verse 32 to pay attention to what’s going on with him, It’s not so much a request here that they have for a trouble-free life as it is recognition that God is a faithful, promise-keeping God.

Because they’re saying, notice what’s going on. Pay attention. We hope that you’ll be mindful of what’s happening to us.

They’re not saying, oh, fix it so we never experience any trouble. They say, we deserve this. But they are saying, we know you’re merciful.

We know you still love us. We know that you’ve been using this to draw us back to you, which is what’s happened at this point. I really overestimated how much I was going to be able to get through in what space of time tonight.

So I’ve got a lot more stuff in my notes. I’m not going to go through all of it. I’m going to leave you with this.

We see from this that confession is about more than just listing our sins. It’s about affirming our confidence in the holiness and justice of God who hates our sin, but also stands willing to forgive. Because if all, you know, the Bible encourages us in the New Testament, confess your sins.

If we confess our sins, he’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If the Bible was just about us confessing our sins, just said you need to go to God and list your sins, then it’s nothing different from a malice struggle session. And what I mean by that, I’m kind of a history buff.

during the cultural revolution in China you were instructed to be a good Maoist, to be a good communist to meet in these meetings in the whole village or the whole workplace and you were supposed to do self-criticism and talk