Seeds for 11/01/2024 - Nehemiah 9:32-38
Scripture:
32 “Now therefore, our God, the great God, mighty and awesome, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes—the hardship that has come on us, on our kings and leaders, on our priests and prophets, on our ancestors and all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until today. 33 In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous; you have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly. 34 Our kings, our leaders, our priests and our ancestors did not follow your law; they did not pay attention to your commands or the statutes you warned them to keep. 35 Even while they were in their kingdom, enjoying your great goodness to them in the spacious and fertile land you gave them, they did not serve you or turn from their evil ways.
36 “But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land you gave our ancestors so they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces. 37 Because of our sins, its abundant harvest goes to the kings you have placed over us. They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please. We are in great distress.
38 “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.”
Observation:
“It’s not you, it’s me.”
We usually think of this line in the context of a break-up. The line captures the basic idea of this section of the prayer, though the context and meaning are different. In this case, “it’s not you, it’s me” is about the Levites confessing the sin of the people to God and confessing His goodness.
They have been acknowledging their history of and propensity to turn away from God and His ways. Now, they are making a turn from confessing their fickle history as a people to admitting to their present shortfalls. Still, at every turn they are careful to note that God has been good all along. Verse 33 sums it up well: “In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous; you have acted faithfully, while we acted wickedly.”
Another observation: the Levites are blunt and to the point. No sugar-coating their situation or their responsibility for it. They just name it plainly. I don’t know about you, but too often I’m a hedger. It’s uncomfortable to admit my faults to the Lord in such stark language. But that’s a gift of this prayer. The quicker and clearer they name the problem, the swifter the solution can be requested and/embraced.
Finally, I love that the Levites leading the people in prayer have the wherewithal to ask God to do it again. They do not let the weight of their past sin inhibit their request for God’s deliverance once again. They are depending on His character and not their performance. They know Him to be a delivering God, so they are willing to call out for deliverance once again.
This reminds me of the relentless willingness of God to forgive and restore, articulated in 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
Application:
Is it hard to ask the Lord for forgiveness yet again?
How does the Levites’ prayer and the promise of 1 John 1:9 reframe this for you?
What else might the Holy Spirit be speaking with you about in the text today?
Prayer: Lord, help me believe more in your character to redeem than in my sin to separate. 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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