Sermon Transcript
In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement, putting it in writing, and our leaders, our Levites, and our priests are affixing their seals to it. The rest of the people— priests, Levites, gatekeepers, musicians, temple servants, and all who separated themselves from the neighboring peoples for the sake of the law of God— together with their wives and all their sons and daughters who are able to understand, All these now join their fellow Israelites, 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 deeds of the Lord our Lord. We promise not to give our daughters in marriage to the peoples around us or take their daughters for our sons. When the neighboring peoples bring merchandise or grain to sell on the Sabbath, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on any holy day. Holy day.
Every 7th year, we will forego working the land and will cancel all debts. We assume the responsibility for carrying out the commands to give a 3rd of a shekel each year for the service of the house of our God, for the bread set out on the table, for the regular grain offerings and burnt offerings, for the offerings on the Sabbaths, at the new moon feasts, and at the appointed festivals. For the holy offerings, for sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and for all the duties of the house of our God. We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have cast lots to determine when each of our families is to bring to the house of our God at set times each year a contribution of wood to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law. We also assume responsibility for bringing to the house of the Lord each year the firstfruits of our crops and of fruit tree.
As it is also written in the law, we will bring the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, of our herds and of our flocks, to the house of our God, to the priests ministering there. Moreover, we will bring to the storerooms of the house of our God, to the priests, the first of our ground meal, of our grain offerings, of the fruit of all our trees, and of our new wine and olive oil. And we will bring a tithe of our crops to the Levites, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all the towns where we work. A priest descended from Aaron is to accompany the Levites when they receive the tithes, and the Levites are to bring a 10th of the tithes up to the house of our God, to the storerooms of the treasury. The people of Israel, including the Levites, are to bring their contributions of grain, new wine, and olive oil to the storerooms where the articles for the sanctuary and for the ministering priests, the gatekeepers, and the musicians are also kept.
We will not neglect the house of our God.
The year was 1932, in the month of October, and some members of the freshman football team at Stanford met together after the varsity lost to USC for the 5th straight time. Tired of their losing streak, the quarterback of the freshman team gathered the rest of his teammates around him, and according to the Stanford athletic department, you can look this up on their website, said, we will never do that to us— they will never do that to us again. We’re never gonna lose to USC. This particular group is not gonna lose to USC again. And according to, again, the Stanford athletic department, shouts of, that’s right, then echoed through the locker room from the other players, which sounds like a really made-up movie scene.
Scene. And then apparently halfback Robert Bones Hamilton, which I love that nickname, if you want to nickname me Bones, I’d be okay with that, I think. Robert Bones Hamilton spoke up and said, let’s make this a vow, which they then did. And the vow was fulfilled by 3 consecutive wins over USC. It turns out that this team was also good enough to win the conference championship 3 times in a row and to be the first team to play in 3 consecutive Rose Bowl They’re known today in Stanford lore as the Vow Boys.
Now history is filled, and we know this, with countless stories of people or groups making solemn vows or commitments to some cause that they feel is right or worthwhile. When the Mayflower ship brought a group of English families known as the Pilgrims from England in the year 1620 to what they labeled the New World, which we know wasn’t really all that new, but it was new to them, they formed what they called the Mayflower Compact. They made a vow together. Together, drew up rules for living in this new land, and they all signed it as an agreement, as a vow to live by these principles and these laws. Or take the Declaration of Independence, which set forth the reasons why the signers felt compelled to establish a new nation on this continent almost 250 years ago.
The closing words of the Declaration of Independence includes this vow: For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. The taking of vows, the making of resolutions, the commitment to a new lifestyle and turning over a new leaf, the making of purpose statements, the announcement of positive intentions, the stern declaration that things are really going to be different this time, I promise, the drawing on one’s inner resources to change the future, all of that is a familiar experience to all of us, isn’t it? And that’s what we see happening in our text today at the end of chapter 9 of Nehemiah and into chapter 10. Nehemiah chapter 8, I spoke on it a couple weeks ago, informed us, you may recall, that shortly after the walls of Jerusalem were rebuilt in record time, no less, the people gathered as one in the public square to hear the reading of the Law of Moses. And we pointed out a couple of weeks ago that one of the reasons why this was so significant was because it reinforced for us one of the major themes of the book of Nehemiah.
We were reminded that God wasn’t simply interested in only rebuilding the wall. He was actually more interested in rebuilding his people. They had been fractured. They had been disunified and in exile for the 70 years prior due to their rebellion against God. But God had not given up on them, as we’ve been showing throughout this book of Nehemiah.
In this message series. God hadn’t given up on them and he brought them back to Jerusalem and delivered them from their enemies in completing the wall project. So the people now are coming together in a vow renewal ceremony of sorts, gathering expectantly, listening attentively, and responding appropriately to the reading of God’s word. And they listened hour after hour after hour to God’s word being read and the reading of scripture, and it changed them. They worshiped God like never before, or at least not like they had in a long, long time, and experienced deep spiritual renewal.
But they also responded with open acknowledgment and confession of their past failures and errors and sins to God. We looked at that last week. Pastor Dan shared from chapter 9 of the book of Nehemiah, and the natural consequence of this was an intentional decision on their part at the end of chapter 9 and into chapter to make a recommitment of their faith. As we heard in today’s text read just a moment ago, they reestablished a covenant with God. Now, every once in a while in a church setting, you might hear the word covenant used and you might wonder, what are you people talking about?
Seriously, can you come up with a less archaic sounding word than covenant? And the answer to that is really no, because there’s not a true modern equivalent. At its most basic level, a covenant is an oath-bound relationship between 2 or more parties. It’s a firm commitment to perform certain actions. And you say, well, that sounds an awful lot like a contract.
Just call it a contract. But a biblical covenant is actually a unique category-busting concept that has a much deeper meaning than a contract.
It uses the language of law, like a binding contract, but unlike contracts, biblical covenants also contain language of love and intimacy, and often things like personal possessive pronouns. You are our God, and you are my people, and we belong to you, and those kinds of things are found in the language of a covenant. See, a biblical covenant at its heart is a relationship, but it’s a relationship that is more loving loving and intimate than a merely legal relationship, yet it’s more binding and enduring and accountable than a merely personal relationship. Now I want to come back in a moment to this concept of covenant, but the main idea here is that this is what the people of Israel are doing at the end of chapter 9 and moving into chapter 10. They had broken the covenant with God that, that God had made with them.
They had broken it time and time again, so now they’re making a recommitment to this covenant. Moved by the spiritual renewal that they have experienced, they’re now putting into verbal form this new direction that they’re wanting to take. And the last verse of chapter 9 of Nehemiah, verse 38, puts it like this: In view of all this, we’re making a binding agreement. There it is, this vow, this covenant, this binding agreement, putting it in writing. And our leaders, our Levites, and our priests are affixing their seals They’re basically saying, we aim to do better this time, God, and we really, really mean it.
And we’re ready to publicly sign on the dotted line as an indication of our renewed commitment to obey you. And maybe you’ve done something like this before. I know I have, where you get inspired by a sermon or a Bible study or a camp experience where you just come to a place where you realize that some things need to change in your behavior, in your habits, your marriage, your career, your spiritual life. So you make certain commitments and goals to help hold you accountable and to enable you to measure your progress. And what Israel is doing here, though, is much more significant and consequential and far-reaching than just simply resolving to lose a few pounds or to stop watching so much TV or to pray more often or to start going to bed at a more reasonable hour.
See, a covenant with God is a very serious commitment. And I realized that we don’t talk much about covenants today. I understand that, but they’re super important in the Bible and to understanding the overarching narrative of scripture. And we have it right here in our text. God, in fact, and you need to know this, God only ever really relates to people in terms of covenant.
And as soon as humans began arriving on the scene back in the book of Genesis, God entered into one covenant after another in order to reveal himself himself and to extend relationship to people. So covenants give us a framework, a framework to examine and to explain who God is and how he relates to us, but also they enable us to better understand ourselves, explain who we are, and to explain why we exist. So I want us to take a closer look at this particular covenant commitment in chapter 10, the end of chapter 9 and into chapter 10 today, and I hope to point out 3 facets of this account that I think can help us as we consider our own relationship to God and the covenant that exists between him and his people. I want us to first see the people’s motivation in making this recommitment at this point in their history. I want us to consider the stipulations of this covenant commitment, and most importantly, I want us to take a look at the implications, certainly for Israel, but more importantly for us here today.
Why would we take a look at this commitment, and what does it say to us today. So their motivations, the stipulations, and the implications. First, the motivations. Why are they making this solemn commitment now at this point? What is the underlying reason?
What is their motivation? And take a look again. I’ll read it again. Verse 38 at the end of chapter 9, which leads directly into chapter 10. The first part of chapter 9, verse 38 says, in view of all this, you may want to underline that.
In view of all this, we are making a binding agreement and putting it in writing. So that phrase, all of this, in view of all of this, is a reference to all that had been addressed in their prayer in chapter 9 that Pastor Dan took us through last week. They’re saying, in view of our sin, in view of God’s mercy, in view of God’s faithfulness, in view of all that God has done in, through, and for us and our ancestors, in view of all the spiritual renewal that we’ve experienced thus far since returning from exile, We are making this firm commitment today, this covenant commitment. That was their motivation. All this that we read about last week in chapter 9, God had done a special work in their life.
And so now they’re taking the next logical step that we would expect is to make a commitment. And I bring up this matter of motivation for you and for me, because we need to know that our motives really, really matter to God. Proverbs 16:2 puts it like this: God weighs our motives. And because our sin-sick hearts are hard and can deceive us, we can easily fool ourselves about the commitments we make and about our motives, the why we’re doing what we’re doing. We can pretend, for instance, that we’re choosing certain actions for God or making a certain commitment to God for the benefit of others or for God, when in reality we often have selfish motives.
We may do good things, we may even do the right things when we give, when you pray, when you serve, but when we do those things for selfish reasons or motivated by pride or anger or revenge or the desire to look good in front of others, God isn’t fooled by that and he isn’t honored by it. He sees our hearts always, our motives are open to him. He sees what no one else sees and he knows what no one else knows. Knows. So we can’t pretend with him.
We should therefore constantly evaluate our own hearts and our own motives and be willing to be honest with ourselves about our true motives and intentions and our commitments to him. You might then reasonably ask, how do I do that, Steve? How should I reevaluate my motives? How do I know if my motives are pure and pleasing to God or not? Great question.
I’m so glad that you asked. Let’s start with what should be, I believe, our overall motivation if you’re a Christ follower at all times. And 1 Thessalonians 2:4 puts it like this in the New Living Translation. It says, our purpose is to please God, not man. Our purpose is to please God, not people.
So a good question to ask is, am I doing what I’m doing, am I making this commitment to please God or to please people?
People. That’s it right there. Now, if you want to build on that overarching goal and you want to get more specific in terms of your motives, you want to press in further, there are a few different questions you could ask. I’m just going to give you 2 more that I think are great litmus tests for the quality and the sincerity of your motivations when you are serving God or making a commitment to him. One is this: if no one ever sees or finds out about what you’re doing, would you still do it?
Would you still do it? That can indicate your motives. Another question: do you measure your success or your failure based upon your faithfulness to what God has asked you to do, or do you measure your success by how you compare to other people? You see, this last question about motivation gets to a deeper issue, a danger really, that I think we need to bring up and be cognizant of and vigilant to guard against, quite frankly, and it’s the issue of legalism. In its most basic sense, legalism believes that we can earn or keep God’s favor by what we do.
Legalism is a system that thrives on personal performance and personal exertion, hoping that I just— if I just obey more, if I just do more, if I just put forth more effort, if I just commit more sincerely, then God will love me more, and then God will bless me more. And even if I fall short of those things, if I don’t follow through on my commitments, as long as I’m at least more outwardly righteous than someone else— in other words, if I give more, if I serve more, if I love God more than they do— and as long as I outwardly avoid committing the same sins that someone else is doing, then I can keep God’s favor. That’s what legalism does. That’s legalism. And it finds its way into our hearts all the time, sometimes without us even knowing.
But it ultimately fails to accomplish God’s purposes. It fails to garner his approval because legalism is all about outward performance rather than inward humility. And legalism seeks to try to manipulate God for our own personal benefit. God, aren’t you impressed by what I’m doing? Now, we don’t know the people’s motivations here in chapter 10.
We We don’t, we can’t peer into their hearts. As far as we can tell, they seem sincere, right? They seem genuine. They seem genuine in their astonishment at the miracle God had done in bringing them back from exile and completing the wall project so quickly. They seem genuine in their sorrow and in their distress over their sins.
They seem genuine in their desire to follow through this time. They even go so far as to get all the leaders involved, put their names on this binding and to put their seal on it. Nehemiah committed to it. The spiritual leaders committed to it. The political leaders committed to it.
The laypeople committed to it. They were saying, we’re all in. What I want to suggest though, friends, is that it would be easy for us to look at this text and to conclude that God was and is more interested in outward commitments and outward actions and in outward compliance to rules. Than in the actual motivations of our hearts. And if we do that, we’re arriving at the wrong conclusion.
The more important question for Israel and the more important question for you and I is not what are you doing or not doing, or what are you committing to or not committing to, but rather what is the motive of your heart in doing so? What is your primary motive in making a commitment to God? What is your primary motive What’s your motive for following him and obeying him? Is it to please God or is it to please people?
I just encourage you to surrender your motives to God and just be honest with him. I love how Psalm 139:23-24 put it, and I’ve prayed this many times in my own life. Search me, God, it says, search me and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. Thoughts.
See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting. And saying, God, my life is open up to you. You can see into my heart. You can expose the thoughts and motivations of my heart. You know them better than even I do.
So God, show me in my life what is offensive to you and realign me with your purposes so that my focus is on simply pleasing you more than anything else. Commit your motives and your ways to the Lord. Friends. So we take a look at the motivations here in this commitment. What about the stipulations?
Every covenant has terms, conditions, stipulations. And verse 29 of chapter 10 here in Nehemiah, through the remainder of chapter 10, describes for us the terms and the consequences of this particular covenant commitment. What were they committing to? Their commitment was both general and specific. On a general level, they made a commitment to, quote, 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’re saying, God, whatever your law says, we will do it. And to back it up, they agreed to accept a curse from God if they didn’t follow through. Now, they don’t mention what specific forms or forms of a curse that the people would experience if they didn’t follow through, but Deuteronomy chapter 28, you can look through that at another time, time. Deuteronomy chapter 28 provides a list of curses for disobedience to God that were originally given to Israel in the law that are largely physical in nature but not exclusively so. And one of the ultimate covenant curses for disobedience listed in Deuteronomy chapter 28 was exile, being cut off from God’s people, cut off from the Promised Land.
And we can be sure that the people in chapter 10 aren’t interested in reliving that all over again after having just come back from exile. I mean, you’ve got to hand it to the Israelites, right? They appear to really mean business with their general commitments in verse 29, but then they get even more specific with their commitments beginning in verse 30. And let’s be honest, right? It would have been much, much easier for them to have just kept their commitment vague and to just say something like, we should probably improve at some point in time.
Time, or to make some sort of vague promise like, we’ll try harder, Lord. We’ve done that, right? We get vague in our commitments so that we can’t help be held accountable for those things. But they’re getting really specific here, and they were willing to be held accountable if they fell short. The first specific commitment— and I, and I bring up these specific commitments because they have application for us today— the first specific commitment we see is in verse 30.
They committed themselves to separate themselves from the non-Jewish people around them and to not intermarry with them. Now we need to know intermarriage was not intended to be a discriminatory prohibition for Israel, nor was it about simply preserving their ethnic distinction from others. Not intermarrying was an issue of spiritual compromise because as the history of Israel prior to this moment had shown, to intermarry was to pollute their devotion to God and to turn their hearts to worshiping other gods, just as King Solomon heart had been moved away from devotion to God towards idolatry and compromise as a result of marrying outside of the faith. That’s what they’re doing here in Nehemiah. They’re making a recommitment to not marry outside of Israel.
And there’s a similar principle for us today from the New Testament that is an exhortation and a teaching for believers to only marry other believers. In 2 Corinthians 7:14, it uses a word picture And it talks about Christian believers not being unequally yoked, so to speak, with unbelievers. And the imagery there in 2 Corinthians 7:14 is of 2 incompatible animals sharing the same yoke. And I realize we’re not in an agrarian society for the most part anymore, but try to visualize— I think you probably can— what would happen if a farmer yoked together, say, an ox and a donkey, 2 very, very capable animals, but you put them 2 together, the heavy wooden yoke yoke designed to harness the strength of the team would be askew, wouldn’t it? As the animals are of differing heights and weights and they walk at different speeds and with different gaits.
And instead of harnessing the power of the team to complete the task, the yoke would chafe both animals since the load would be distributed unequally and the work doesn’t get done. And that’s kind of the idea behind believers only marrying believers. Believers and not marrying unbelievers. And the Israelites here in Nehemiah had historically, and against God’s command, married people who were not of the same faith and who were heading in totally different spiritual directions. That’s the point of this.
Worshipping idols and pursuing other interests that inevitably drew them away from God was part of their history. So the people here in Nehemiah are making a covenant commitment and saying, no more, God. We will no longer be unequally yoked with marital partners outside of Israel. We’re taking this seriously. The second specific commitment we see here in chapter 10 is in verse 31.
They committed themselves to no longer conduct business on the Sabbath, and they committed themselves to observe what is known as the sabbatical year. And by the way, I should say, none of these were new concepts. God had given this to them 1,000 years prior. They just hadn’t been doing it. But what they’re doing is they’re recognizing it now, and they’re saying, we don’t want to treat the Sabbath just like any other Now, I’m sure people on the outside at that time would look on and would probably wonder about why would you observe the Sabbath like this?
Just like people may wonder why you take a Sabbath and set, set aside a day each week. And I hope that you do this for rest and for worship. Because people look at that and they’re like, what are you doing? Every day is a good day to make money, isn’t it? Every day is a good day to conduct business.
Every day is a good day to get things done. Done. God, though, called his people then, and he calls his people now, to set apart a day specifically, or a time, for rest and for worship. Why? As evidence of our faith, as evidence of our commitment to obey.
It’s a declaration of trust in God for the Israelites here to say, the best stewardship of my time on the Sabbath is to rest, not to work. It’s a declaration of trust in God to say, even though I could make more money selling on 7 days of the week instead of 6. I trust God to provide for and to bless me as I seek to obey him in this. Now the concept of the sabbatical year is something that is outlined earlier in the law, and it was that every 7th year in the sabbatical year, every 7th year, you don’t work in the fields at all. You just let whatever happens to grow grow by itself.
And to do that meant that you had to live by faith for 2 years because there’s the year that you let the land lay fallow and then there’s the next year when you are working the land to prepare for the next 6. You get it? And you did that for 7 cycles of 7 years, 49 years. And then every 50th year was called the Year of Jubilee. And in that 50th year, you’d let the land lay fallow, which meant that you had to trust the Lord for 3 years.
Meanwhile, the people at that time were in a period of economic crisis here in Nehemiah, heavily taxed by the Persian king. So for them to commit to keep the Sabbath and to keep the sabbatical year was an enormous statement of faith on their part. And as we read about in 2 Chronicles chapter 36, one of the reasons why God allowed the people to go into exile in the first place was because they had previously refused to keep the Sabbath and to keep the sabbatical year. So now they’re saying here in chapter 10, we learned our lesson, we’re not going to do that again. And keeping the sabbatical year, you think about it, was evidence of faith.
The whole concept just sounds It’s very absurd to us on the surface, and it must have sounded absurd to people back then. Every 7 years you’re not to work the land at all? You’re not to plant, till, sow, harvest. The whole setup just sounds really unwise and impractical. And the only way you would willingly participate in it would obviously what?
Be by faith. And that’s what you’re trusting in. What you’re trusting in again is that God will provide. You have faith that he will take care of you. And that’s their commitment here in chapter 10.
And then thirdly, the third specific commitment in verses 32 through 39, the people made a specific commitment to not neglect the, quote, house of God. You may see that there. In fact, that phrase, the house of our God, or the house of the Lord, is used 8 times in this particular section, and it refers to the newly restored temple. And so every statement in this particular section is communicating the people’s their renewed commitment to support the work of the ministry of the temple with their time and with their finances. They’re saying, we’re gonna contribute to the temple tax.
They’re saying, we’re gonna pass around the signup sheet and we’re gonna put our names on it to provide wood at specific times during the year for, for the fire on the altar. They’re saying, we’re gonna set apart and dedicate to the Lord in an act of worship the first, which means the best, of their produce harvest, first of their flocks or herds, herds. And they’re saying, we’re going to begin to tithe again, giving 10% of our crops that we grow and the livestock that we raise to the temple and making sure that the priests are able to make a living. Again, these aren’t new concepts for Israel. God had given it to them long before.
They just had been neglecting it for a long time. So what we have here, I don’t want you to miss this. We have a general commitment and we have some specific commitments, but what’s more important, I think, these specifics of these commitments is the principles behind them. And at the heart of these particular commitments, these specific commitments, I believe, is the Lord. Why would you do this?
Because of the Lord. The Lord is the point of marriage, putting God’s love on display in your relationship. The Lord is the point of the Sabbath, and the Lord is the point of the sabbatical year, declaring that God is your provider and the one who gives you you true rest. And the Lord is the point of worship, of temple worship, which is ultimately all about knowing God more and fully enjoying his presence. So with these commitments, the people are saying, we belong to the Lord and all that we have belongs to the Lord.
And because of that, of course, that’s going to dictate who we marry. If that is your focus, of course, it will dictate who your relationships are with. Of course, that will dictate what your schedules look like. Of course, it dictates how you spend your money, how you spend your time, how you spend your resources, and the priority that we place on worshiping God. Of course, that’s the implication.
I mean, and I hope and I pray, friends, that you and I would be just as committed as they were here in Nehemiah 10 to these same things, the principles beneath it, that in our marriages, in our homes, in how we spend our time and how we worship God, that we would pursue the same mindset that says, God, I am not my own.
I and all that I am and all that I have belong to you. And maybe you just need to stop and just say that right now and confess that. That’s a scary commitment to make, but that’s at the heart of every commitment that we make to the Lord, or it should be, is to say, God, I, I belong to you and everything that I have belongs to you. So we’ve taken a look at the motivations, we’ve taken a look at some of the stipulations and the principles behind them. But before we leave this text, I just want to take a moment to consider the bigger picture of all of this.
I want us to think through the implications of not just these particular commitments, but really the overall commitment, covenant commitment that the people were making in this chapter. And I have to say, I mean, after studying this and reading this chapter several times in preparation for this message, the whole thing, I mean, the motivation, the good intentions, their zeal to not repeat the mistakes of their ancestors, it sounds It sounds great, doesn’t it? It’s all very, very inspiring, but there’s a real problem just looming over the whole deal, and I’m guessing you may have picked up on it, so I’m just gonna say it. Here it is, you ready? This isn’t going to work, right?
It’s not gonna work. Dan told us this last week. After millennia of failure, do we really think Do they really think that they’re going to do better this time? I mean, it’s not looking good. No, there’s not a chance that they’re going to be able to keep up their end of this commitment and this covenant.
It’s impossible. They have to know that. And we know it too, partly because we’re able to look back and know how their story turns out, but also because we’ve all done the same things too. I make a commitment, I fail, I cry out to God for his help, he forgives, I make a new commitment, I fail, I vow to do better next time. Time, and on and on and on and on.
And you’ve done it too— lather, rinse, repeat. We surely know, you surely know, right, from personal experience, that it’s one thing to make a promise or a commitment, but another thing entirely to actually keep it. We don’t keep our promises, for the most part, to one another, and certainly not before God, not on a consistent basis. And what we know, and we see it here lived out, is that good intentions no matter how sincere or genuine you may feel in a moment, no matter what your intentions are, good intentions don’t address the core issues of your heart and of my heart. And the heart of our problems, as it has always been, and as I’ve said a few different times during my ministry here, is the problem of our hearts.
That’s the heart of our problem. It’s the problem of our hearts. You can pray, you can confess, you can grieve over your sins, you can repent, you can furrow your brow, You can grit your teeth and vow that you will faithfully obey all that God wants. God, I’ll go where you want. I’ll do whatever you want.
I’ll change how you want me to change. I’ll give what you want me to give. I surrender all and things are really going to be different this time.
But does that work? I’m going to answer that for you. No, it doesn’t work. I mean, it might work for a moment. You might be able to do a little bit better than you had before, but you and I always end up in the same place.
Why? Why? I think you know the answer to this, because we are covenant breakers. We break covenant with God. We’re all covenant breakers who fall far too short of God’s righteous standard.
We don’t even get close to it. Our sins separate us from God. And the wages, the cost of our sin is death, not just physical death, but eternal separation from God. God, experience the experience of hell for eternity. And we can’t do anything about it.
We can’t, we can’t change our circumstances or the conditions of our heart on our own, not by resolving to do better, not by making a commitment and vowing to try. Lord, I really, really mean it this time. We can’t do that. And we can’t do it by anything else. The great news is that when God wants to address your commitment and my commitment, when he wants to address our vows to him, he actually doesn’t start with our commitment.
He doesn’t start with our vows. He starts with his commitment. And what Jesus, the Son of God, did when he became a man and obeyed all of God’s laws perfectly, and then he died condemned in our place, was to meet all of the terms and the conditions of the covenant that we could not keep and we can never keep. Instead of us experiencing a curse for falling short of God’s standard, Jesus became a curse. He experienced the curse of God and he bore the penalty that we deserve so that we might receive the blessing of salvation and a restored relationship with him.
You may remember at the Last Supper, Jesus said this cup that he had, that he shared with his followers, is the new covenant in my blood. That’s what he said. And what’s he talking about? Well, God had one— had said that one day he would bring about a new covenant, a new covenant with his people, where he gives his people a new heart and where he doesn’t just cover over sin and he takes care of the penalty of sin, but he also removes the sting of sin, the power of sin, and makes it possible for anyone who follows him to one day have the opportunity to be free from the presence of sin. Of sin.
And this new covenant that Jesus ushered in, the good news again is, is it’s not 50% God and 50% us. It’s 100% God all the way through. And our part is simply, friends, to look at the finished work of Jesus on the cross and to place our trust in that alone for our salvation, not in our commitment to him, but his commitment to us. So our relationship with God and our acceptance by God isn’t based on our being committed to him, but rather his being committed to us. And that commitment flows from his great love for us.
You see, Nehemiah, and really the rest of the Bible for that matter, isn’t the story about the commitment of God’s people to God. It’s the story of God’s commitment to his people. And if you truly understand this, if we truly incorporate this into our thinking and how we live, it will lead you to greater obedience and love, not so that God will love you, but because God loves you. Your love and your obedience, yes, are a way of thanking God, but it’s not a way of earning your way to God. God isn’t impressed by your love and your obedience.
And when you fail, and you will, you’re going to fail, you understand that there is no condemnation and no curse for anyone who professes faith in Jesus alone for salvation. For anyone who’s in Christ Jesus, there is no condemnation for falling short of your commitment because Jesus’ commitment on your behalf was perfect and was complete. And by God’s grace and because of his great love for you, you can experience eternal blessing and eternal life.
We should put our faith and our trust in him. If you’ve never done that before, do it for the first time today. If you’ve done it before, recommit yourself to him. To placing your hope and trust in, in, in the Lord, yes, but also because he’s the one who keeps his covenant commitment to you.
Let’s pray.
Heavenly Father, I want to thank you so much that you keep your covenant commitment to us. We confess, I confess, that we fall short of your perfect standard. Standard. And I ask, Lord, for your forgiveness, and I ask that you would examine my heart and our hearts, all who are watching this today. Examine our hearts and our motives.
Reveal to us impure motives. Reveal to us all the ways, God, that we might, whether intentionally or not, lean on some standard of legalism that pretends that the more I’m committed to you, then the more you will do for me. God, it doesn’t work like that. I thank you that we are saved by grace alone through faith in Jesus, not as a result of our good works. And we’re so grateful.
Although, God, I do want to pray that we would repent if that’s where we only just stay, because I believe, God, you desire to do good works through us, that we would love you fully with all of our heart and enjoy you and obey you and not so that we can earn your love and approval, but because of what you did for us through Jesus. God, we thank you. Renew us today. And anyone who does not know Jesus as their personal Savior, I pray, God, that you would show them that that invitation is available. As long as we have breath, there is time.
Oh God, draw anyone who does not know you to yourself and cause us as your people to live with greater appreciation this week, this day of your new commitment through Jesus. We pray all these things for his sake and for his glory. Amen.
