Nehemiah 9:38-10:39: A New Kind of Obedience

Nehemiah 9:38–10:39: A New Kind of Obedience

 Please turn with me in your Bible to Nehemiah 10. If you’re using one of the Story Bibles we provide, that’s on page 326. We’ve been going through the book of Nehemiah passage by passage, and this morning we come to Nehemiah 10. And before we go any farther, let me pray.

When I was younger, one of the things my parents made me do that I didn’t always desire to do was eat my vegetables. The rule was that I would have to sit at the table until I finished my food, including the generous helping of vegetables that was typically on my plate. And me and those vegetables frequently did not get along with each other. So, like many children, I would find ways to make my vegetables disappear without actually eating them. At first, I would just throw them in the trash can when my parents weren’t looking. But of course, that didn’t work very well because, more often than not, my parents would see them and I would get in trouble. So then, I started sticking them farther down into the trash can or even wrapping them in a napkin or several napkins and putting that ball of vegetables down into the trash can. But it turns out my parents were actually pretty smart people, and they eventually caught on to what I was doing.  So eventually, I figured out that the best way to make my vegetables disappear was to remove them from the house entirely. So I would wrap up the vegetables in a few napkins, stuff them in my pocket, and then nonchalantly walk out to the back porch, remove the vegetables from the napkins, and just throw them as far as I could from the porch into the field behind our house. Fortunately, we lived in a rural area, so there was a lot of overgrown grass within throwing distance. And that’s how I became an expert in making my vegetables disappear. But now, looking back on those days, I of course understand that my parents didn’t require me to eat vegetables because they hated me or wanted to make my life miserable. Their required it because they loved me. And that’s the way it was for all of their rules. They gave me the rules they gave me out of love. They wanted me to be safe and happy and healthy. Their rules were for my own good. 

And it’s for that same reason God laid down various rules for the people of Israel. And this morning, in Nehemiah, we’re going to read about some of those rules. But before we do that, I want to make sure you really understand what a gracious thing God was doing in giving them these rules and what a blessing it was for the Israelites to posses them. And unlike me as a child, the Israelites in their better moments understood the blessedness of possessing God’s commands. Throughout the Old Testament, they repeatedly praise God in the loftiest of terms for the commands he had given them. In fact, just last week in Nehemiah 9, we read an example of the Israelites doing that. As they’re recounting all the ways God’s blessed them over the years, listen to what they say to God in the middle of that list in Nehemiah 9:13: “You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with [our ancestors] from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments.” So they’re praising God for his laws—right rules, true laws, good statutes. Also, back in Deuteronomy, Moses was presenting God’s laws to the Israelites. And he gives them this charge in Deuteronomy 4:6-8: 6 Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ 7 For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? 8 And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? And then throughout the psalms, we repeatedly read the psalmists praising God for his rules. Psalm 19:7-11: 7 The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple; 8 the precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes; 9 the fear of the Lord is clean, enduring forever; the rules of the Lord are true, and righteous altogether. 10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold; sweeter also than honey and drippings of the honeycomb. 11 Moreover, by them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. 

So God gave these laws to Moses back in the day because of his kindness and love. That’s the point of all those verses. And God promised Moses that if the Israelites kept the laws, they would be phenomenally blessed. But God also warned Moses that if Israel didn’t keep the laws, they would be punished. And that deal is what we call the “Mosaic Covenant.” A covenant is a sacred agreement. So the Mosaic Covenant was God’s sacred agreement with Moses and by extension the Israelites that if they kept the Law, he would bless them. But if they didn’t keep the Law, God would punish them. So what do you think happened? Well, as we see throughout the Old Testament, it was a train wreck—kind of like the train wreck that happened near Station Square this past week. Israel failed constantly. In virtually every generation, there was some form of rebellion against God—typically blatant and brazen rebellion. So God punished Israel by allowing them to be conquered by a pagan nation and exiled into various places all over that part of the world. And as a part of that, both the temple and the walls of Jerusalem were destroyed. That’s why Israel is having to rebuild the walls in Nehemiah.  And that brings us finally to the main passage we’ll be looking at: Nehemiah 10. Now, as we saw last week, Israel has just spent the entire previous chapter collectively confessing their sins to God and begging for God’s mercy. So this week, in Nehemiah 10, we see the evidence and the outworking of Israel’s repentance as they together renew their commitment to the Mosaic Covenant. So that’s the main idea of this chapter. The Israelites renew their covenant with God. And as we make our way through this chapter, I believe there are two features of the covenant that are important for us to observe. Number one, the requirements of the covenant. And number two, the limitations of the covenant. 

The Requirements of the Covenant

So first, let’s look at the requirements of the covenant. Let me actually begin reading in the last verse of the previous chapter, chapter 9. It kind of sets everything up. The Israelites say to God in Nehemiah 9:38: 38 “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. Then, in verses 1-27 of chapter 10 they list the names of prominent people who signed the document. Then skipping ahead to Nehemiah 10:28-39: 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 lands to the Law of God, their wives, their sons, their daughters, all who have knowledge and understanding, 29 join with their brothers, their nobles, and 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 and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord and his rules and his statutes. 30 We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. 31 And 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. And we will forego the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. 32 “We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God: 33 for the showbread, the regular grain offering, the regular burnt offering, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. 34 We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the Law. 35 We obligate ourselves to bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the Lord; 36 also to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks; 37 and to bring the first of our dough, and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of 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 our towns where we labor. 38 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 to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. 39 For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers, where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.” 

Now I don’t know how many of those commandments you recognize, but just know that those were all things God had commanded the Israelites to do. Those were all elements of the Mosaic Covenant—not intermarrying with pagan nations, observing the Sabbath day, observing the Sabbath year, contributing money for temple upkeep, offering sacrifices, and tithing. So the Israelites renew their covenant with God to start doing those things again. Now, how does that apply to us? Because we’re not Israel and we’re not a part of God’s Covenant with Moses or under the Mosaic Law. So is there anything for us here? As it turns out, yes there absolutely is. This chapter illustrates that God requires his people from all time periods to obey him in very specific ways. In the pages of the Bible, he’s given us specific instructions and commands, and he expects those instructions and commands to be observed. 

Unfortunately, even as Christians, we so often have a tendency to do things our own way and live life by our own set of rules. So we might read the Bible and hear biblical teaching, but then nothing really changes in our lives. As the old saying goes, many of the things we read just go in one ear and right out the other. Kind of like when parents tell their children to do something. For those of you who are parents with children, have you ever told one of your children to do something and it’s like they didn’t even hear you? I think that happens in a lot of families. It’s an issue I like to call “Selective Hearing Syndrome.” Now I don’t know if this disease of Selective Hearing Syndrome is officially recognized by leading medical authorities or not, but it should be—because it really is an epidemic. It’s amazing how you can ask your kids to do something or not do something, and out of nowhere their ability to hear you suddenly stops working. And if you get a little upset with them and maybe scold them, they give you this confused look like, “What? …Did you say something?” Now of course when you say something they want to hear, they have no problem hearing it. Like whenever I mention going out for ice cream, my kids have no problem hearing that. They can hear things like that from clear across the house. But when it comes to things I’m asking them to do, Selective Hearing Syndrome frequently gets the best of them. And a lot of times, adults also can have Selective Hearing Syndrome when we read the Bible. We often read something in the Bible that’s difficult to practice and then kind of just move on. We read it but don’t do it. That’s why the Bible itself gives us this warning in James 1:22: But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. So if you hear the word but don’t do the word, what does this verse say about you? It says you’re deceiving yourself. You’re deceiving yourself by thinking that you’re so spiritual just because you read the Bible when in fact you’re not spiritual at all because you’re not making an effort to obey the things you read. 

And remember: God’s given us his commands because he loves us—just like we talked about with Israel in the Old Testament. God’s not out to ruin our fun or steal our joy by telling us to live a certain way. Rather, he’s showing us how we can have fullness and abundance. Many of you have probably heard me compare the Bible to an owner’s manual before. What’s the purpose of an owner’s manual? Well, it’s to show us how to use something and take care of something in the best possible way. Things generally work out a lot better if you follow the owner’s manual. For example, the owner’s manual for my car tells me to change the oil every so often. It even tells me what kind of oil to use and how much I need to put in there and everything else I need to know. And if I want my car to last a long time, I’m going to follow those instructions. They were written for my benefit. And it’s the same way with the Bible. God’s given us his commands because he loves us.  So is that how you approach God’s commands? Do you receive them with joy and gratitude? Do you delight in them? You see, I’m not promoting legalism here. I’m not suggesting that you should follow the rules just for the sake of following the rules. Quite the opposite: obedience should never be an end in itself but always an expression of trust in God and gratitude toward God. It should be an expression of trust in God in the sense that we believe his way really is the best way. And obedience should also be an expression of gratitude toward God in the sense that we genuinely want to honor him and exalt him for all the ways he’s been so good to us. So make sure your obedience is an expression of trust and gratitude rather than something you approach legalistically as an end in itself. 

The Limitations of the Covenant

So those were the requirements of the covenant between Israel and God. God commanded the Israelites to do certain things and expected them to do those things with the right heart—a heart of trust and gratitude. But there was a problem. It was actually a really big problem. And that problem is what I’m calling “the limitations of the covenant.” That’s our second point this morning. The limitations of the covenant. The covenant had severe limitations in the sense that it commanded the Israelites to obey without empowering them to obey. Make sure you get that. The Mosaic Covenant was deficient because it commanded the Israelites to obey without empowering the Israelites to obey. That’s why Nehemiah 10 is even necessary. Why do the Israelites have to renew the covenant here in Nehemiah 10? It’s because they had been colossal failures in keeping their end of the covenant. In fact, this utter failure to keep the covenant was something that had characterized the nation of Israel from day one. Back at the beginning, while Moses was receiving the covenant instructions in the form of the Ten Commandments, before he even came down from the mountain, the Israelites had already fashioned for themselves an idol that they were worshipping. In the language of a train wreck I used earlier, you might say that the train hadn’t even left the station before it derailed. And then throughout the subsequent generations of Israel’s history, every generation proved unfaithful to one degree or another. That’s why this covenant renewal we read about in Nehemiah 10 is actually just the latest of a long line of covenant renewals that stretched throughout Israel’s history. King Asa found it necessary to renew the covenant in 2 Chronicles 15. King Jehoiada found it necessary to renew the covenant in 2 Chronicles 23. King Hezekiah found it necessary to renew the covenant in 2 Chronicles 29. And King Josiah found it necessary to renew the covenant in 2 Kings 23. And then of course we have this renewal in Nehemiah 10. So the abundance of covenant renewals points to the abundance of covenant failures. The Israelites had to renew the covenant all these times because they couldn’t stop breaking it. 

And that’s the problem with the Mosaic Covenant, also known simply as “the Law.” The Law can’t empower the obedience it requires. Rather, it just reveals how far short you fall of reaching God’s standards. And then, the Law leaves you there, condemned in your sins and separated from God. A good friend sent me an email a few months back with a comic that I think illustrates this point quite nicely. Here it is on the screen. As you can see in the first window, a guy who’s drowning in the ocean says to a guy on shore, “Help! I’m drowning!” So the guy on shore responds, “Don’t worry! Just do exactly as I say and you’ll be fine!” Then he continues, “Breathe air into your lungs instead of water!” But of course, the guy who’s drowning says, “I can’t…! I don’t think… Glub, glub, glub” as he sinks down into the murky depths. Then at the end, the guy standing on shore wonders to himself, “If he isn’t going to accept my help, why did he ask?” So that’s a somewhat humorous depiction of how the Law can’t save you. It just tells you to do a bunch of things you’re not able through your own strength to do. 

That’s why, in Jeremiah 31, God promises to replace the Mosaic Covenant with what he calls the new covenant. He says, in Jeremiah 31:31-33, 31 “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. 33 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. So the main way this new covenant will be better is that, as verse 33 says, the law will now be “within” us and written on our hearts. In other words, God promises to empower and enable the obedience he requires. He promises us to change us from within in such a way that we’ll have both the desire and ability to follow him. Sounds pretty good, right? So when does this new covenant come into effect? Well, it actually already has through Jesus. When Jesus came, he inaugurated the new covenant. Through the Holy Spirit, we as Christians now have the ability to follow God’s commands. That’s what Paul means when he writes in Romans 7:6 that “we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” He then describes what life was like for him before he received the Spirit and while he was still under the law. He states in verse 15, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Then he continues in verses 18-19, 18 I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. But once Paul received the Holy Spirit, everything changed. And he spends eleven verses at the beginning of the next chapter, chapter 8, describing how he’s now truly able to overcome sin in his life through the Spirit’s power. 

So if you’re a Christian, are you trying to obey God through your own power or through the Spirit’s power? Leaning on your own power will only bring the frustration of Romans 7, but leaning on the Spirit’s power will bring the victory of Romans 8. So are you living with a conscious reliance on the Spirit’s power? That’s the key to overcoming sin in your life. You can’t do it on your own. You can’t sanctify yourself any more than you could save yourself. In the words of Philippians 2:13, God is the one who has to work in you both to will and to work according to his good pleasure. In other words, he’s the one who has to give you both the desire and ability to obey. So look to him for that. Pray to him for that. And he’ll give you victory over the sins that are plaguing your life. 

Conclusion

And maybe you’re here this morning, and you’ve never really embraced the wonders of the new covenant that Jesus has made available. To state it simply, you’ve never been saved. You’re still in your sins. And maybe you’ve tried really hard to be a good person and to do what you think God wants you to do. But like Israel in the Old Testament, all of your efforts have only ended in failure time and time again. To use a metaphor the Bible uses, it’s like you’re a slave—a slave to sin. And because of your sin, you stand condemned before God. What you need to realize is that there’s no way you can ever get to God through your own efforts. It’s only through Jesus. You see, Jesus sacrificially died on the cross to pay the penalty for every sin you’ve ever committed, and then he victoriously resurrected from the dead to break sin’s power over you. And as you put your trust in him, you can be both forgiven and freed—forgiven of sin’s penalty and freed from sin’s power. But it’s only through Jesus. It’s not something you can do. It’s all through him and his grace. As one noted theologian has said, “The essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” In other words, the way we’re saved isn’t by earning anything but by trusting God’s grace in Jesus—so “the essence of Christian theology is grace.” And then after we’re saved, our motive for obeying God, again, isn’t one of trying to earn anything but simply of gratitude. So, “the essence of Christian theology is grace, and the essence of Christian ethics is gratitude.” Let’s pray.