Join Pastor John Kyle as he brings clarity into the nature of God’s anger and mercy as depicted in Nehemiah. This episode focuses on the themes of rebellion, repentance, and deliverance, reminding us that God’s discipline is out of love to drive His people back to Him. Through vivid biblical examples, Pastor Kyle encourages listeners to reassess their spiritual lives, emphasizing the necessity of remaining desperate for God and vigilant against sin’s subtleties.
Welcome to Expository Truths, where we exalt Christ by bringing clarity of truth through the scriptures with Dr. John Kyle, pastor of Faith Community Church in Vacaville. As Christians, we are called to know the truth and be able to proclaim it. We can know the truth when we know the word of God, which is precise, without error, powerful, and effective for both salvation and spiritual growth. Let’s join Pastor Kyle as he takes us verse by verse through the book of Nehemiah, an incredible book showing us how God sovereignly used the faithfulness of Nehemiah to lead the people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem in the midst of many mighty and powerful enemies.
SPEAKER 02 :
Please turn to me in your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 9 verses 26 through 31. Nehemiah 9. 26 through 31. This prayer that we’ve been looking at in chapter 9 is a penitent prayer of confession that offers an incredible survey of Old Testament history. The prayer began by showing us some of the many reasons that we, the people of God, can and should praise Him. And look, even as the people rebelled against Him time and time and time again, look, God did not forsake His people. He truly is a God of amazing love, grace, mercy, kindness, and patience. Don’t we know it? Right? We continue to see this in the next part of this prayer. Let’s go ahead and look at that. Verse 26. He says, But after they had rest, they again did evil before you. Therefore you left them in the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they returned and cried out to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, and testified against them, that you might bring them back to your law. Verse 1. For you are God, gracious and merciful. Note these five truths as we look at this passage. First, note that the people pridefully sinned and rebelled against God. Second, look, God delivered them into the hands of their enemies. Verses 27 and 28 and then 30. The book of Judges is a bit more specific about this by telling us that first, God became angry with his people. And then after that is when he delivered them over into the hands of their enemies. One of God’s attributes is indeed anger. We struggle with that a little bit because when we get angry, it leads us into sin, but not so with God. God’s anger is holy. It is right. It doesn’t lead to anything sinful, but rather it’s in perfect harmony with all of God’s other perfect attributes. Note that there are two groups of people that God is angry with. First, God is angry with non-Christians because they are ones who are in direct rebellion against Him daily, whether they realize that fact or not. And so, the reality is this, that without Christ to save you, you will face God’s anger and wrath against all your sin. And the end result, biblically speaking, will be eternity in hell. And that’s why you need Jesus to pay those wages, the wages of your sin, for you. That’s why you need to surrender to Jesus in repentant faith so God’s anger falls onto Christ and not onto you. But because God is holy, His anger is real. And He must punish sin. He will punish every sin. Hey, if you’re not a Christian here this morning, God is angry at you. And this is very serious. But I got good news for you. That’s when Jesus comes along and says, I am God the Son who became a man so I could become the believer’s substitute for sin. I died on a cross for all who believe so the wrath of God could fall onto me instead of onto you. Because of what I did for all who believe, you can now be clean, forgiven, declared right and fit for heaven and have eternal life instead of eternal wrath. And so today Christ says, won’t you repent and believe in me for forgiveness and life? You don’t want God angry with you as a non-Christian today. Oh, no, you don’t. He hates sin. And in His holiness, righteousness, and justice, He must punish all sin. Surrender to Christ in repentant faith, and the punishment for your sin falls onto Christ. So how about surrendering to Christ today? Call on Him. Call on Him in repentant faith, and you will be saved. But look, we’re not off the hook. God not only is angry with the wicked who reject and forsake Him, but God can also get angry with His own special people. This anger is different, of course, since this anger is for a moment and not continual, but it is real nonetheless. Even as a Christian, see, you can provoke God to anger when you rebel against Him, when you compromise, when you forsake Him, when you toy around with sin. And while God loves His people with an everlasting and unchangeable love, He also may be angry and displeased with them when they rebel. That happened to the children of Israel many times over where they grumbled and complained and rebelled. And what happened? What happened? God got angry and he responded like we see in Judges as is highlighted here in Nehemiah 9. Also in Numbers chapter 12, Aaron and Miriam, people who love the Lord, sinfully complained against Moses and it made God angry. Moses himself made God angry when he put on a self-centered show for the children of Israel instead of simply obeying what God told him to do. It seems that Ananias and Sapphira were true Christians, but they both hypocritically lied and said, we sold our land for such and such an amount, and we have given all the proceeds to the church, but they sold the land for more than that, and they kept back some of the proceeds for themselves. God didn’t like it at all. How’d they end up? They died. Warning, don’t provoke God. Don’t be like the children of Israel. Note that I’m saying this to scare us. Okay? Please understand that. I am. We could stand to have a bit more holy reverence for our God. So we’re not so prone to regard sin so lightly when it should be hated with passion. Hey, I don’t want God angry at me because I’m loving my sin more than Him. I need to take my sin more seriously and I need to take God more seriously. We in Christ tend to regard sin way too lightly because we’ve been forgiven of all our sin. Praise Him. But sin is still serious in the life of the Christian. Sin can no longer condemn us, no. But it can still affect us and those watching us. It can hinder us. It can sap our Christian joy. It can ruin our witness. It can hold us back. It can hurt our fellowship with God. It can do terrible harm still, and yes, unrepentant of. It can incite God’s anger, which will cause Him to act. And so it’s wise for those of us who have been bought with a price to hate what God hates and to love what God loves. What about you? God disciplines His children, and sometimes that’s painful, so look what happened. God delivered them over into the hands of plunderers. The picture here is of God simply lifting His sovereign and protecting hand off of Israel and letting them go their own way. And God selling them into the hand of their enemies. The picture is of God as the owner of His people, who then sells them to the enemy for a time because of their unfaithfulness. In either case, it’s God who is standing against them. Does this sound good to you? Does this sound fun? To be plundered means that you’ve lost a battle and that all your goods have been forcefully taken away from you. See, everywhere they turn, there’s just calamity and great distress, and it’s because the hand of the Lord was against them out of His great love for them. So question, is this on God or is this on them? It’s on them. God had warned them of this time and time again. In Deuteronomy 28, 25, the warning is crystal clear. If you don’t obey the Lord, the Lord will cause you to be defeated before your enemies. You shall go out one way against them, but they shall flee seven ways before them, and you shall be an example of terror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your carcasses shall be food to all the birds of the sky and the beasts of the earth, and there shall be no one to frighten them away. Is that a warning or what? But even so, they refused to listen to Him. Hey, let’s not be like them. Hey, let’s listen to the Lord. Compromise really is deadly. Listen. Sin will always burn you. Listen. Don’t be lazy in your battle for holiness. No, listen. Listen. Guard your heart, guard your mind, guard your eyes and listen. And you will find that if you’re a true child of God and that if you’re persisting in sin, then God’s going to go against you and you will be in great distress and miserable and depressed and despoiled for your own eternal good because God loves you. Look, they need God, right? They desperately need God. What’s the one thing that’s going to drive them back to God? Plunderers. Okay then. Send in the plunderers so that they turn back to God, the God who cares more about their souls than they do. Third, the people cried out to God for deliverance. Yes! And so the delivering over to plunderers worked. They cried out to God, verse 27. They returned and cried out to God, verse 28. The word for cry out refers to an urgent prayer or supplication and a cry of distress in response to suffering or impending doom. Lord, I’m sorry. Please, Lord. I’m sorry. Help me. Note that some commentators say that true repentance didn’t take place during the time of Judges, while others say that it did. It’s hard to tell because we know that many times over, Israel went right back to their sinful ways at least 12 times in the book of Judges alone. So while they were sorry over their circumstances that they were in, perhaps they weren’t truly sorry regarding their sin. But perhaps they did indeed repent, but they just didn’t heed the warnings regarding the dangers of compromise. Perhaps they truly repented, but they then slowly drifted away again through the subtleness of seemingly small sins, because that’s how Satan works. So perhaps they did indeed repent, but they didn’t really take heed. Regardless, they did truly cry out to the Lord, which is the proper thing to do, always. I mean, think about it. Why stay in sinful rebellion and misery when you can cry out to God and receive forgiveness? I mean… Shouldn’t that be clear? You really think your sin and what it reaps is better than being showered with God’s grace and mercy? Would you rather stay dirty than be clean? Would you rather wallow around in a pit when you could be right with the Lord God Almighty? Misery woke these people up and now they’re crying out to God. Is misery so bad if it drives you to the Lord? What’s more important than being right with God? Look, you can never go wrong when you cry out to the Lord. He loves you as child more than you could ever think or imagine, even when you don’t feel that way. But things are so hard and painful and miserable and they’re just getting worse. And I know God could change it, but He hasn’t changed it. I’m so angry. But running from God is not the answer. Running to Him is the answer. Just because you don’t understand His ways doesn’t negate who He is. Hey, I don’t understand many of these things that we have to deal with in this fading life. But I do know that crying out to God, fleeing to God, clinging to God is the best thing you can do. And I know that as a Christian, God loves you with an everlasting love. And He’s good and gracious and loving and patient. And He knows when we don’t know. And He will work all the bad out for us. For our eternal good, that’s a promise for you, His beloved child. Life is hard. Terrible things happen sometimes to God’s good children. Pain is real, but God is good. And the end is great. And your call is to cling to Him and to honor Him with your fading life. And soon, glory. But spurning Him is never the answer. That only leads to more misery. Clinging to Him in the pain brings true peace and meaning. So cry out to Him. All of us, just cry out to Him. You can certainly trust His heart even when you can’t always trace His ways. And so the people in their misery cried out to God. What do you think? Will God reject them? Has He rejected you? Fourth, God rescued them and sent them deliverers. Verse 27, in their time of trouble, when they cried out to you, look, you heard from heaven and according to your abundant mercies, you gave them deliverers who saved them from the hand of their enemies. Verse 28, yet when they returned and cried out to you, you heard from heaven and many times you delivered them according to your mercies and testified against them that you might bring them back to your law. Verse 30, yet for many years you had patience with them and testified against them by your spirit in your prophets. So look, they cried out to God and God not only sent them prophets who gave the people God’s truth and his warnings, but God also sent them deliverers to rescue the people. Judges 2.16 puts it like this. Then the Lord raised up judges who delivered them from the hands of those who plundered them. The word judge means a deliverer or a rescuer. And so the judges were deliverers and leaders that God would raise up who were like military leaders and they would lead in civil matters and bring deliverance for the people from their oppressors, the very oppressors that God had sent. Not how God’s mercy, patience, and compassion is highlighted. God hears. And God is compassionate when His needy people cry out to Him, see? That’s the character of God. He didn’t discipline them for no reason, see? No, He did it out of love. He did it out of compassion to drive them back to Him. And so God heard. And in His great mercy and compassion, He delivers. He sent judges. Altogether, there were 12 deliverers in the book of Judges, with six being major judges, where more is written about them, and six being minor judges, where less is written about them. The major judges are Othniel, Ehud, Deborah, Gideon, Jephthah, and Samson. The minor judges are Shamgar, Tola, Jair, Ibzon, Elon, and Abdon. God used all these people to deliver Israel from the hand of their oppressors, miraculously, amazingly, and against all odds. And God delivered His people when they cried out to Him. What a God. Fifth, and not shockingly, when the people had rest, look, they turned away from God. And thus the cycle continued on. They got comfortable, right? They got complacent. Things got good again, right? And so they turned away from God in their comfort. Verse 28, after they had rest, they again did evil before you. Hey, this is a serious warning for all of us. Take heed to yourself. See, when things are good, that’s when the enemy likes to do his best work. As Raymond Brown put it, the Israelites discovered their best things about God when life was hard and difficult. Once prosperity came, they were in danger of forgetting God and imagined they could rely on their own slender and inadequate resources. But trouble drove them to God and it will do the same for us. And that’s absolutely right. One said, grace grows best in winter. Another noted, if one might say so, an unbroken winter in the soul, a continual inward winter is needed to keep up a steady, deep, and fruitful growth in grace. And that’s right. We are at our best when we are desperate, absolutely desperate for God. So get desperate because you are and stay there. Now, of course, we always are desperate for God, but we forget that. So we need to remember. A great commentary I read gives a few warnings to us as we think about this. One, he says, beware of sloth and laziness because that is a great way that Satan moves in. He said, men love to be at ease, but the spiritual life requires constant diligence in the use of means. Not only promote advancement in holiness, but also to prevent backsliding in the ways of evil. That means being in Bible study, prayer, godly fellowship, service, and the like. You got to stay on top of those things. Never compromise those things. Never grow slack in those things. The current always flows downward. And our call is to actively be rowing our spiritual lives upstream. When the oar is laid aside, instantly there is a going downward because there’s no such thing as remaining stationary in your spiritual life. And so the question is, how are you doing in your spiritual walk in the Lord these days? Are you working at it? Are you disciplining yourself for godliness? Are you fighting the good fight actively? Laziness is easy, but it’s deadly. Beware. There are many lazy Christians around us, by the way. Don’t be one. Two, beware of neglecting watchfulness in prayer. This is Christ’s call for his disciples in times of temptation, and it’s a great litmus test for us. See, all who have overcome spiritual battles have done this, while those who have neglected to do so have sooner or later been overcome. Watch and pray. Watch and pray. There’s much to be opposed within. There’s much to be guarded against from without. We have the flesh to contend with. We have the wicked one who opposes us. We have the world who wants to influence us. So watch and pray lest you fall. So examine yourself. Guard your heart. See how Satan works in the little things. Pray more and be on guard as to the wicked and slimy wiles of the devil. Might you be listening to him today? Israel would have done well to have watched and prayed more. Three. Beware of putting your faith in what you see rather than on the Lord. Israel trusted their own spiritual instincts rather than God’s Word, and therefore they did things their way, and they inevitably began their downward spiral. But our calling is to simply trust the Lord and to know that whatever God ordains is right, and we are called to trust Him and be faithful through it all. Hey, if we put our eyes only on what we think and on what we see, we would all be very depressed. But if we stay focused on what God says and we trust in Him, we can rejoice much because we can rest in His goodness and love for us even when life is hard. So trust Him and remember that He knows best. Four, beware of losing your dependence on God. When Israel got settled into the rich and fertile country, that’s when the danger of losing that sense of dependence on the Lord, which was so necessary to their spiritual lives, came. See, comfort, ease, and times without trial are often bad for God’s people because that’s when we often lose our dependence on God and we put our trust in ourselves. That was Israel, and many times that’s us too. When the times without hardship came, that’s when they became self-reliant instead of God-reliant, and that’s when they really began going downhill. Lesson, never, again, never forget how desperate you are for God. Never forget what you would be without God. Never forget that this is a battle. We are in a spiritual battle, and our rest is heaven, not here. Christians in America, are too comfortable because we have very little real persecution. And because of that, we are, as a whole, mediocre, surfacy, lazy, lacking zeal with conviction, and we are spiritually weak. My prayer is that we here would see this, that we would refuse to give way to it, that we would remain constantly desperate for the Lord, because guess what? We are constantly desperate for the Lord. Beware. All these are ways that sin sneaks into our hearts and into our lives, but there are many others, and they all begin with little compromises with sin. Do that, and soon you’ll end up like Israel. And guess what? You don’t want to be like Israel. Note one last thing here, verse 31. Nevertheless, in your great mercy, you did not utterly consume them nor forsake them, for you are God, gracious and merciful. Amen to that? Amen, right? Same is true with us today. In Judges, Israel’s just flaunting their sin and God doesn’t give up on them. They’re playing the harlot with every false god around, turning away from the one true God for images that men have created, embracing sin and turning against the Lord, doing what they want instead of what pleases their good creator, He set His love upon them. And look, God continued to send them deliverers and He did not utterly consume them nor forsake them because He’s so good and He’s so gracious and He’s so merciful and don’t we know it? And that fact should drive us to Him all the more. Forsake means that God didn’t let go of them, abandon them, leave them or give up on them or us in Christ today. Not ever. Now, this is a setup for what comes next in Nehemiah chapter 9. And it should do the same for us today. Okay, what’s that? Real quickly, what’s that? Cause us to flee to God in repentant faith and love, intent on renewing our commitment to Him out of our great love for Him. I mean, how could we not in light of who He is and what He’s done? Look at who He is. Look at what He’s done. Look at what we have waiting when we don’t deserve any of it. Nevertheless, in your great mercy, you did not utterly consume them nor forsake them for you are God, gracious and merciful. Ain’t that the truth? The glorious truth. May God speak to our hearts today and may we be filled with love and passion for him in light of these great truths.
SPEAKER 01 :
Thanks for joining us. expositorytruths.org faith community church seeks to exalt christ by bringing clarity of truth through the scriptures with a commitment to glorifying god through the pure deep and reaching message of the gospel pastor john is the preaching pastor at faith community church of vacaville a seminary professor and a trainer of preaching pastors overseas Join for services at Faith Community Church Sundays at 9 and 1045 a.m. 192 Bella Vista Road, Suite A. To learn more, visit vacavillefaith.org or call 707-451-2026. That’s 707-451-2026. Or visit vacavillefaith.org.
