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Introduction
How do you respond to confrontation?
Do you respond with humility and repentance or do you react in anger?
Does the issue suddenly become the person confronting you?
Do you tell him or her never to talk that way to you again?
What about the times you have had to confront others?
Do you look back on that with regret, perhaps wishing you hadn’t taken that course of action?
We are human, this means confrontation will always be necessary.
Background:
A quick review of the book of Nehemiah will give us the context for all that we will cover this morning.
In , we see the wall rebuilt regardless of the problems that arise.
In , we observe how the people are rebuilt.
As we zoom in to view how the people are rebuilt we can summarize the chapters as follows:
chapter 7-Reviewing the returnees
Chapter 8-Reviewing the law during the seventh month
Chapter 9-Praising God for His Mercy and Confession of Sin
Chapter 10- this is where we will pick up this morning, swearing to keep the covenant
Chapters 11-is a list of names of all the people who will be repopulating the city.
Chapter 12-covers the dedication of the wall
Chapter 13-is the breaking of the covenant and the accountability Nehemiah brought
The Renewal of The Covenant Means Grace
Mercy and Grace in the Covenant renewal are seen in a few simple words...”The rest of the people…and all who have separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God.”
God does not teach His people legalism.
This commitment is not a legalistic covenant.
They are entering into this covenant having been mercifully redeemed and as a sign of their commitment to respond to the mercy the mercy that has been shown to them.
The three main offenses are intermarriage, keeping the Sabbath, and providing for the priests and the temple.
The first promise they make concerns intermarriage with foreigners.
The issue with intermarriage is always a worship issue for God.
It does not have to do with anything less than paganism.
The problem with intermarriage for these people is that the people they were marrying were not laying aside their false gods and practices and embracing the God of the bible.
Remember at the very beginning of this section this covenant is open to all who would separate themselves.
How can marriage be what God intended it to be if the husband and wife are not united on the most fundamental issues?
How can the one flesh of achieved fully with agreement on who God is and what it means to know and worship Him?
The second issue
The Renewal of the Covenant Means Sacrifice
Notice in verse 29 they agree to take a curse upon themselves.
The implication here is that if they fail to keep this covenant then they have agreed to due consequences.
In addition to agreeing the the consequences or the curses, they also promise to obey to what they have promised.
The people are making a promise, a commitment, a covenant between them and God to do all that had been forgotten, and agreeing to certain stipulations of consequences on their own.
The three main offenses are intermarriage, keeping the Sabbath, and providing for the priests and the temple.
The first promise they make concerns intermarriage with foreigners.
The issue with intermarriage is always a worship issue for God.
It does not have to do with anything less than paganism.
The problem with intermarriage for these people is that the people they were marrying were not laying aside their false gods and practices and embracing the God of the bible.
Remember at the very beginning of this section this covenant is open to all who would separate themselves.
How can marriage be what God intended it to be if the husband and wife are not united on the most fundamental issues?
How can the one flesh of achieved fully with agreement on who God is and what it means to know and worship Him?
The second issue is the observance of the sabbath.
The people don’t simple reiterate the commandment to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy.
The close a loophole.
It appears that people were claiming that they were not working it was the idolaters who were working, so they were not technically breaking the the Sabbath by trading with those who were doing the work.
Sabbath is an interesting subject to bring into application for us today.
Let me state it this way.
keeping a Sabbath is evidence of faith.
Keeping the Sabbath is not about legalism.
It is a declaration that you trust in God..
A man in these days could not keep the Sabbath because their would always be something he would like to be doing, especially when your food and livelihood depended on you working the land or animals.
The only way for the People of God to keep the Sabbath was to rust that resting would be better than being physically productive would be.
The man who kept the sabbath trusted that the best stewardship of his time was to rest, not work.
How are you at resting?
Do you have periods and times set aside to rest in God.
The sabbath after all was created for man not man for the Sabbath.
Jesus affirmed Sabbath.
Do you trust God enough to spend time resting from your work and focusing on Jesus?
Sabbath rest is not College football rest, days of our lives rest, or whatever else we sit in our chair and watch while not being physically active.
Sabbath is about resting in God through worship.
This could mean mediating on a verse, reading the bible, spending time in prayer, singing songs, working with your kids on bible verses, reading the bible to kids and talking through it.
It could mean listening to a podcast in your favorite chair.
Sabbath rest is about you getting your spirit filled by connecting with Jesus.
The final sacrifice they promised to make was to support the temple.
At this point in time the temple and the Priests who worked their needed supplies to ensure that the sacrifices and duties God prescribed were done.
The temple and in particular the Holy of Holies is where God’s presence met with the people.
The city of Jerusalem and it’s temple was the beacon of the true religion all people.
Neglecting the upkeep and care of the one place the people gathered was not to be neglected.
The temple is referred to as the house of God 8 times in these verses.
The temple and worship there represented and point people to God.
The sacrifices the people were committing to make focused in on on thing: The LORD. the Lord is the point of marriage.
The Lord is point of sabbath rest.
The Lord is the point of temple worship.
Repopulating the City
Chapters 11-12 are all about repopulating the city.
It is the list of those selected and volunteering to live in the city.
And if I could point out one thing about this list, so it doesn’t go by as an unimportant list in scripture.
Being selected or volunteering to live in the city of Jerusalem was an economical hit to a family and meant a place with less safety.
Living in the city meant you could not farm and raise animals they way others could.
It was a huge financial sacrifice.
Living in the city also meant when trouble like invading armies came, they would be headed for where you lived.
So to think that some actually volunteered for this is astonishing.
Who could we compare the group living in the city today to?
Who would we bless if we looked around to speak weal of a group comparable to these people who are willingly offering to do what is less advantageous for themselves in order to pursue God’s Kingdom?
Don’t think to hard about this one, but the people we should bless and thank are those that do what we don’t want to do on a weekly basis.
We should bless those who we perceive as more gifted than we.
Could this list for us include but not be limited to:
Nursery and Children’s ministry workers
The Warming Shelter Volunteers
Those who set up and tear down classrooms
Those who greet others, and make sure guests are taken care of
Who else comes to your mind?
The Dedication of the Wall
A the end of Chapter 12 we read this:
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