Seeds for 08/28/2024 - Nehemiah 1:5-7
Scripture:
5 Then I said:
“Lord, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and keep His commandments, 6 let your ear be attentive and your eyes open to hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel. I confess the sins we Israelites, including myself and my father’s family, have committed against you. 7 We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.
Observation:
Nehemiah fasted and prayed over the terrible report about the state of Jerusalem. What we have in the remainder of chapter 1 is Nehemiah’s prayer, which marks a turning from receiving the news about Jerusalem to initiating a response. We'll take the next few days to observe Nehemiah’s prayer in order to process it a little more slowly in bite-size pieces.
First, Nehemiah begins with an acknowledgement of the qualities and character of God. “God of heaven,” “great and awesome,” keeper of “His covenant of love with those who love Him and keep His commandments.” Addressing God this way keeps Nehemiah anchored in the relationship. It’s certainly fine to address God familiarly in prayer—Jesus did, and invited us to. At the same time, there’s something to be said for the touch of formality from Nehemiah here. It isn’t stiff and stilted. For us, it’s comfortably formal, an acknowledgement that the God who calls us friends in Jesus is still the Creator and Lord of the Universe.
Second, Nehemiah grounds the prayer in relationship. God “keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him and keep His commandments.” In Hebrew, the term related to covenant love emphasizes loyalty—love in action, rather than only affectionate feelings. God enters into covenant love with His people and He is faithful.
Third, Nehemiah is not offering a one-time prayer that magically and immediately produces the result he wished for. Nehemiah asks God to “hear the prayer your servant is praying before you day and night for your servants, the people of Israel” (emphasis mine). This tells us that the prayer we have in scripture is representative of Nehemiah’s praying, not the whole sum of it. Nehemiah is contending in prayer on a continual basis.
Fourth, Nehemiah confesses his, his families, and his people’s sins in clear, non-evasive terms. He doesn’t beat around the bush. He is blunt: “We have acted very wickedly toward you. We have not obeyed the commands, decrees and laws you gave your servant Moses.” This is something I find powerful in our church’s communion liturgy. Our prayer of confession as a congregation includes the following: “we confess that we have not loved you with our whole heart. We have failed to be an obedient church. We have not done your will, we have broken your law, we have rebelled against your love, we have not loved our neighbors, and we have not heard the cry of the needy.” There is something powerful about being concise and direct that prevents the truth from being hard to find underneath the couched language that softens our confession. Nehemiah has no such problem because he is brief, blunt, and to the point, for the good of his soul.
Application:
In what ways do you like to address God when doing so with “comfortable formality”?
Is it hard or easy for you to be “brief and blunt” in confession to God?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, help me to confess with the honesty and contend with the consistency of Nehemiah in my life of prayer. Amen.
“But the seed falling on good soil refers to someone who hears the word and understands it. This is the one who produces a crop, yielding a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.” (Matthew 13:23)
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