In this episode of Expository Truths, Dr. John Kyle delves into the transformative journey of Nehemiah, an inspiring biblical figure who led the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls amidst overwhelming odds. As Pastor Kyle takes us through Nehemiah chapter 9, verses 5 through 8, we witness the dramatic revival and spiritual reformation sparked by the conviction of returning to God’s Word. With an emphasis on praising God for His creation and divine sovereignty, this discussion profoundly impacts how we view our personal faith journey.
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.
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Well, please turn with me in your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 9, verses 5 through 8. Nehemiah 9, 5 through 8. Now remember, Nehemiah was a faithful Jewish man who was living in the capital city of the Persian Empire, Shushan, also known as Susa. And Nehemiah was a cupbearer to King Artaxerxes. As we saw, the good hand of God led Nehemiah to go to Jerusalem where the people were in great distress and reproach and where the walls of the city were still in ruins. And look, God used Nehemiah to lead the people in rebuilding the wall in 52 days. An absolutely amazing miracle of God. Now what? We’ll do more to help the city return to its former glory, of course, which Nehemiah will continue to do. But even more, help to bring spiritual reformation for the people who have been living in mediocrity and rebellion for way too long. The good news is that the wall rebuilding project lit a spiritual fire under the people. And so, as we saw in chapter 8, the people turned back to the Lord in repentant faith. How good is that? Remember what happened? They read from the law, and then they wept and rejoiced at the feast of trumpets. And then two weeks later, when they celebrated the feast of tabernacles, they read from the law again. They worshiped and celebrated the Lord. And there was great gladness from all the people. Of course there was, because that’s the result of being right with God. Last time we saw the people observing a national day of repentance where they fasted, they mourned, they wore sackcloth, they put dust on their heads as they cried out to God to express their turning away from sin and to the Lord in heartfelt love and worship to the Lord God Almighty. It was an amazing time. It was real. And God was certainly well pleased by what He was seeing. Okay, now what? Pray. Look what happened. Chapter 9, verse 5. And the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hobijah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah said, Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and everything in it. The seas and all that’s in them, and you preserve them all. The host of heaven worships you. So try to picture what’s going on here. Just two days after the observance of the Feast of Tabernacles or the Feast of Booths, the people gathered together again for a time of national repentance. See, they were under deep personal conviction as a result of the previous days spent in Bible study. Their sorrow over their sin and the sin of their fathers was expressed in the wearing of sackcloth and fasting and putting dirt on their heads. They also read from the law of God and they worshiped and they confessed their sins. And then they prayed. And this prayer that’s found in verses 5 through 37 records the longest prayer in the Bible. This is a penitent prayer of confession that offers an amazing survey of Old Testament history. See, as the people confessed their sins, they reviewed God’s love and grace toward them from creation to the choosing of Abraham, through their deliverance from Egypt and rebellion in the wilderness. through their disobedience in the period of the judges and the monarchy, and then through the period of exile to their present state of affairs. They also acknowledged that the discipline and judgment of God upon them was well deserved. Think about that. That said, they’re now ready to make things right. They’re now ready to get serious about the matter of living their lives in obedience to God’s Word once again. What a time! Today we’re going to be looking at the very first part of that prayer. How did this go down? It seems that this prayer was prepared beforehand, probably by Ezra, the priest, the scribe, the spiritual leader of the people. The prayer was then recited by a group of Levites, the ones mentioned at the beginning of verse 5. And they either prayed this prayer successively, or else, as some think, they broke up into eight different groups, and each group was led by one of those men. It seems that there were two movements to what took place here. The Levites mentioned in verse 4 opened the service with a loud cry, and then the Levites mentioned in verse 5 began the prayer. This prayer seems to have been initiated the hours-long time of corporate confession and worship. And the Levites perhaps probably expounded on that prayer. The time began with a call for the people to stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. That’s appropriate. That’s fitting, isn’t it? Bless the Lord your God forever and ever. Blessed means to praise, to adore, and to speak words of excellence about. And our God alone is certainly worthy of His people who love Him to stand up together and to bless Him forever because He is forever worthy of our praise. And as this is a special time and as this is a special prayer, it’s good that everyone stands up for this time together. It’s after that that the actual prayer begins. Here in today’s passage, as we look at this first part of this prayer, we see three reasons that we, the people of God, can bless and praise Him. First, because He alone is God. Verse 5, Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are Lord. So look, His name is glorious because He is glorious. Glorious means honorable, dignified, splendid, beautiful, and radiant. That’s our God. His name is exalted above all blessing and praise. That reflects Psalm 72, 19 that says, Blessed be His glorious name forever. May the whole earth be filled with His glory. Amen and amen. In other words, all the blessing and all the praise that we can give to God won’t be close to being enough in light of what He alone is worthy of. Why not? Because He alone is Lord, Yahweh, the proper name for the one true God. And so, because of who He is, that alone is a reason to praise Him and to exalt Him forever and ever because He deserves it, see? He’s worthy. He alone. That reflects back to what the Shema says in Deuteronomy 6.4. Shema, O Israel, or here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. The same idea. That the Lord alone is the one true God. He’s it, and there is no other. In Exodus 15.11 it says, Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders? The answer is, No one. And every other so-called God is no God because our God alone is King of kings and Lord of lords. He’s it and He alone. He answers to no one. He rules. He is above all. He gets His way because He is sovereign Lord. And He’s not merely first among the gods. No, but He is the one and only God. And He doesn’t share His glory with other so-called gods. No, He isn’t one of many gods. He doesn’t bow the knee to anyone or to anything, but He is above all and He stands alone. And therefore, He is to be the sole object of our worship, devotion, service, and praise. He alone is Lord. God stands alone. And He truly is the one and only God, the maker of heaven and earth, the all-powerful, almighty, perfect, holy God over all. He bows to no one. Nothing else deserves glory, honor, and praise but He alone, and He is above all else. Isn’t that good to know? That’s good to know. See, we don’t worship a wimpy God who doesn’t know what He’s doing. No, no. We worship the all-powerful God over all who stands alone, who is sovereign, and who is in control. Therefore, lift Him high in your life. Right? Bless Him. Adore Him. Love Him. Praise Him. And exalt Him because He alone is worthy. Okay. Why else can we praise Him? Second, because He made everything, including you. Verse 6. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and everything in it, the seas and all that’s in them. And you preserve them all. The host of heaven worships you. So because he’s Lord God Almighty, he’s the one who made everything, and he also preserves everything. Therefore, worship him, of course. See, God is not only creator of all things, heaven, earth, and the seas, and everything else, but he is a life giver and sustainer as well. What he makes, he sustains. What he brings into being, he preserves. And look, for all this, he receives worship from the host of heaven, speaking of the myriads of angels. Implication for us, we too should worship him, praise him, exalt him, and lift him high in our lives. See, this is foundational. That God is a creator of heaven and earth and everything else. That means that this world isn’t left to chance or by some impersonal fate. No, the world was created by an all-wise, all-powerful, and loving God. Matter isn’t eternal, but it is made by a sovereign God. Furthermore, God is the maker, not the thing made. God isn’t created by man in sticks and stones, but it’s God who made man and everything else that exists in the universe. And look, if He made you, and He did, then you must answer to Him. See? So, this truth has great implications for our lives. In the beginning, who created the heavens and the earth? God. See how smart we are? God did, right? In this Genesis creation account, the word God is used some 35 times. And that ought to reveal something to us as to what’s important and as to what truly matters. Look, God created. The Spirit of God was hovering. God said. God saw. God called. God made. On and on we see God front and center. Implication, it’s not about us. It’s all about God. The God who made the heavens and the earth and everything in it. This truth shows us that God is central to everything. That God was before everything. That everything had a beginning save God alone. That God was there before there was a beginning. And that God is a key subject matter of the universe. Some say, but John, millions of people believe that this universe started with a big bang. And that after billions of years, life on earth evolved into all of this complexity of its own accord. Really. Now, first of all, evolutionists have to figure out how all this came about without a creator. It had to have a beginning, and the result has been a hopeless hodgepodge of conflicting hypotheses, conjecture, assumptions, and guesses. In light of this, an extraordinary theory was invented called the Big Bang Theory, which declares that in the beginning there was nothing. There was absolutely nothing. And when much of this nothingness gathered itself into one place… it became so greatly compressed that it exploded and blew itself into hydrogen gas from which the entire universe evolved. So nothing suddenly turned into something. Very scientific. Over millions or billions of years, we then evolved from that first amoeba that came out of nothing by chance. Now think about that. Logic says, hey, there’s a universe, somebody must have made it. What else would logic say? There’s a building, somebody made it. There’s a piano, somebody made it. There’s a universe, somebody who’s very powerful and very intelligent made it. You say, no, no, no. Chance made it. Well, that makes no sense at all. Chance can’t make something out of nothing. No one can but God alone. Oh, we can create things out of other things, but not out of nothing. See, there’s no explanation for the universe without God. I could spend much time talking about this, but instead let me just quote some prominent scholars of our day who came to some conclusions about all this and who are willing to speak up about what they have found. Fred Hoyle, an astronomer, said, I have little hesitation in saying that a sickly Paul now hangs over the Big Bang Theory. Dr. A. Fleischman said, The theory of evolution suffers from grave defects, which are more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge. Professor Jay Agassi said, The theory of the transmutation of species is a scientific mistake, untrue in its facts, unscientific in its method, and mischievous in its tendency. Dr. Ambrose Fleming, the president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, said, Evolution is baseless and quite incredible. Physiologist Tian Tamizian said, scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great con men. And the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact. Finally, scientist Louise Bonner concluded, evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. This theory has helped nothing in the progress of science. It is useless. And that’s right. How about this? God did it. How about that? God did it in six literal days, and He did it with ease. Look, the oceans, the mountains, the sky, the rain, your children, the trees, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon, it all points to the glories of our Creator God. He created all things, and also He created you, and that reality has ramifications for your life, for you will indeed answer to Him. Look, God your Creator says that you have a problem. And that He is the only solution to that problem. What’s the problem? The problem is sin. We’re all sinners. Sin separates us from God and it has deadly wages. Death. That means that you’ll not only die physically, but you will be eternally separated from God in hell unless something is done to pay those wages. Okay, so what’s the payment? Eternal separation from God in hell. That’s kind of steep. No, no, it’s not because sin committed against an infinite and eternal God is worthy of infinite and eternal wages. So either you pay for your sins for an infinite amount of time in hell or else an infinite and eternal one pays once for your sin. Every sin ever committed in all of history will be paid for in full because God is a just and righteous God. That means that either you will pay for your sins in hell, or else Jesus, the infinite and eternal one, God the Son, paid for your sin in your place on the cross one time. And it’s one or the other. You pay or he does. But mark this, you don’t want to pay up. Look, the Bible says that Jesus is a Savior. for all who believe on him for forgiveness in life. It tells us that he, God the Son, left heaven, came here, took on human flesh, lived a perfect life, died on a cross in the believer’s place, and then three days later he rose up from the dead. On the cross, the sin of every person who would ever believe was placed onto Jesus, and he was punished for all that sin, so that we who believe could be saved and forgiven. He, the infinite and eternal Son of God, took our sin onto Himself and He was punished for our sin as our substitute so that we could be forgiven, saved, and go to heaven instead of hell. How is that possible? It’s possible by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. See, forgiveness and salvation comes by faith, where we put our trust in Christ as Savior, who alone can rescue us from the deadly wages of sin and pay the wages that we could never pay. And the result of that saving faith is now a life of love. lived for the pleasure of this most amazing, saving, gracious God. He saved my soul. I believe Him. I love Him. I live for Him. I bless and I exalt His glorious name because He alone is worthy. See, in light of who He is and in light of what He’s done. So, while we all have a serious and eternal problem, God has given us a solution to that problem. Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Have you surrendered to Christ in repentant faith today? Are you saved? That’s a question to ask. Look, He created you. He makes the rules. We don’t. We can’t just brush this off if we don’t like it. For this is His world and we must all answer to Him. But I’ve got good news for you. He is kind. Anybody? And He is gracious. And He is merciful. And He is good. And He’s given us a way to escape judgment through faith in Jesus Christ. Third, we can bless God because God chose Abraham. Verses 7 and 8. You are the Lord God who chose Abraham and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham… You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Girgashites to give it to his descendants. You have performed your words for you are righteous. Look at this. God chose Abraham. God brought him out. God gave him the name Abraham from Abram. God found his heart faithful. God made a covenant with him. God gave his descendants the land. God performed his words. Who’s central to all this? God, right? Abraham was a father of the faith for the Jews, but Abraham isn’t the one to exalt here. No, no, God is very clearly. Now Ur of the Chaldeans is modern-day Iraq between the Tigris and the Euphrates River to the east of Israel. The city of Ur itself is no longer around, but its remains are located just south of Baghdad on the Euphrates. Ur was a totally pagan city that was known to be a center for the worship of the false moon god. And Abraham was a pagan himself who descended from a long line of idolaters. It was here that God revealed himself to Abraham. And it’s here that I believe that Abraham came to saving faith in the Lord. See, Abraham was a pagan idolater, living in a pagan culture, who had no merit in himself whatsoever for God to appear to him and to make a covenant with him. But in God’s sovereignty, God did all that. God chose him. God revealed himself and his truth to him. Abraham then believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. He was saved by God’s grace through faith. He then obeyed and was faithful. And then God made a covenant with him. So here… This prayer focuses on several aspects of divine sovereign actions in the life of Abraham, which also has ramifications for us and gives us some great reason to praise our God today. Look, God chose Abraham. From this frail human being, a man who was on the threshold of the grave, with a wife well beyond childbearing years, the nation of Israel was born. As one noted, God selects unlikely people from undistinguished places to fulfill His plans, so that men and women cannot boast about their own achievements. That’s right. God did this. He also changed his name from Abram, which means exalted father, to Abraham, which means a father of a multitude. God then also knew Abraham. God knew that Abraham’s motives were pure and that his allegiance was true. Look. The omniscient God found Abraham’s heart faithful. See, God knows everything. God sees all. Nothing is hidden from God’s sight. He’s aware of everything, and there are no secrets. He sees into the deepest recesses of our hearts and our minds. And when God looked into Abraham’s life now as a saved man, yes, he saw a sinner like everyone else, of course, but he also saw a man who was determined to trust God, a loyal man, a faithful man, and aren’t those the kind of people that God uses? See, God saved Abraham by his amazing grace when Abraham was dead and lost in sin. God awakened him, God chose him, and God gave him faith to believe as a gift. But now, as a saved man, Abraham is compelled to intense love for God, to be loyal to God, to obey God, to be faithful to God, to live for the glory of God. And that faithfulness was recognized in heaven, so God made a covenant with him to give his descendants the promised land, the land of Canaan. Although the land was inhabited by Canaanite nations, all the earth belongs to God. So God made Abraham a pledge that he would become the father of the promised race Israel, and his offspring would occupy the promised land. Note that while Abraham is a great example of faith for us, the final conclusion wasn’t to give praise for Abraham’s worthiness, but for God’s faithfulness. God always does what he says. You have performed your words. And look, the reliability of his word is guaranteed by the integrity of his character because you, God, are righteous. So all the credit here goes to God rightly so. Then note this, and this is important. God chose Abraham. For what? Well, for salvation and for blessing. Divine choice doesn’t call into question God’s justice. Rather, it demonstrates His mercy. His amazing, incredible, unfathomable mercy. On Abraham, on Isaac, on Jacob, on all of us here today who love Him and who have been saved from eternal wrath. Who are we? Who are we? What do we deserve? What do we get? God gets all the credit for that. Therefore, here we go. Therefore… Exalt Him. Praise Him. Bless Him. Love Him. Be faithful to Him. Lift Him high and live for His glory. That makes perfect sense. And this prayer is lifted up to God to rightly exalt Him and to also remind the people how amazing God truly is. May God give us ears to hear today and may we all praise Him accordingly in light of these truths. Let’s pray. Heavenly Father, we love You, Lord, and we thank You We know that we are nothing and that You are everything. You are Creator. You are Lord God. You deserve all the worship, all the glory, all the praise. Thank You. Thank You for saving us, undeserving sinners like us. Thank You for… being so awesome that we can’t remotely fathom you. And thank you for revealing these deep doctrines that we can’t fully grasp, but we exalt your name anyhow because you are a God of amazing grace, amazing mercy, amazing love. Help us, Lord, to trust you. Help us to exalt you. Help us to lift you high. We love you and we thank you. We ask you to bless us, give us understanding, and help us to honor you now. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
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Thanks for joining us for today’s exposition from the Book of Nehemiah on Expository Truths with Dr. John Kyle. 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.
