God's Mercies Change Us

Nehemiah 9 is the recounting of God's faithfulness throughout Israel's history and apostasy. It ends with the returned exiles ratifying a covenant before the Lord.

Nehemiah 9:38 (ESV)  “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.

Chapter 10 opens with the names of those who ratified the covenant with the Lord. 

Nehemiah 10:1 (ESV) “On the seals are the names of Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hacaliah, Zedekiah... and the list goes on.

What I love about that list is they put themselves out there in public. This was no silent ceremony or commitment of the inward person. They wrote their names down and sealed the documents for keeps! 

These are the commitments they make:

Nehemiah 10:28–29 (ESV) “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.

The moment of recalling God's faithfulness in Nehemiah 9 has produced this moment in Nehemiah 10 wherein the people are changed and resolute to follow Him and learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. 

They pledge marital purity:

Nehemiah 10:30 (ESV) We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons.

They pledge to honor the Sabbath:

Nehemiah 10:31 (ESV) 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.

They pledge to honor God in giving alms and tithes:

Nehemiah 10:32 (ESV) “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:

Nehemiah 10:35 (ESV) 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;

Finally, they pledge to honor God's house:

Nehemiah 10:39 (ESV) 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.”

You can see in their commitments pledges to live in the opposite ways that led them to exile. Sexual fidelity instead of immorality, the sabbath instead of busily working for more, generosity instead of greed and theft, and honoring God's house instead of despising it. These are the pictures of repentance. 

Do not miss what happens here. The message of God's grace in their past transforms what they do in their present. Repentance is not just turning from, it is turning toward. And in this case, the people turn toward actions that honor the Lord and His ways. 

Too many Christians simply try to avoid sin and leave their discipleship at that. This ultimately fails because they never filled their hearts with the things of the Lord. They were drawn back into their waywardness for failure to cultivate new affections. 

The people following Nehemiah and Ezra do not simply recount God's grace, they are transformed and changed by God's grace. 

May the same be true for us. 

Amen.