This episode takes you on a verse-by-verse journey through Nehemiah 9, where confession and repentance are at the forefront of the Israelites’ spiritual renewal. Pastor John Kyle emphasizes the critical role of humility and prayer as foundational practices for aligning our lives with God’s will. Explore how seeking God’s face and turning away from wickedness can lead to a profound transformation, freeing us from the chains of pride and mediocrity. Be inspired by the Israelites’ commitment to covenant renewal and understand how these ancient truths are vital for us today as we navigate our spiritual journeys.
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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Please turn in your Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 9, verses 32 through 38. Nehemiah 9. 32 through 38. This prayer that we’ve been looking at here 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 ways 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, which we clearly saw last time, look, God did not forsake His people. Amen? He did not forsake His people… For He truly is a God of amazing love, grace, mercy, kindness, and incredible patience. Look how the prayer ends, verse 32. Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy, do not let all the trouble seem small to you that has come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers and on all your people from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day. However… You are just in all that has befallen us, for you have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly. Neither our kings nor our princes, our priests nor our fathers have kept your law, nor heeded your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them. For they have not served you in their kingdom, or in the many good things that you gave them, or in the large and rich land which you set before them, nor did they turn from you. their wicked works. We’re going to stop here for now. And here as we end this repentant prayer that had been prepared and recited before all the people, we can observe six truths which give us great hope for ourselves when we ourselves have sinned and fallen and rebelled against the Lord. First is this, our God is awesome. Anybody? Right? Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, the awesome God who keeps covenant and mercy, our God is awesome. Second, they ask, don’t let this trouble seem small. Verse 32b, don’t let all the trouble seem small before you that’s come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers and on all your people from the day of the kings of Assyria up until this day. Third, you are just and faithful. Isn’t that right? Verse 33, however, you’re just in all that’s befallen us, for you have dealt faithfully. Fourth, we are wicked. Verses 34 and 35, neither our kings nor our princes, our priests nor our fathers have kept your law nor heeded your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them, for they have not served you in their kingdom or in the many good things that you gave them or in the large and rich land which you set before them, nor did they turn away from their wicked works.” This is bad stuff going on. Now again, we see their humility and we see them acknowledging all the bad stuff. They’re acknowledging all their sin. We haven’t obeyed. Isn’t that serious? Why? Because God’s people who love Him obey. Right? True believers obey. Love compels us to obey. True faith and obedience always go together because if you love the Lord, then you’re going to gladly obey the Lord as His willing, loving servant. Obedience literally means to listen under with attentiveness and to respond positively to that which is heard. And that’s what true believers do. The Bible is very clear about that. And while we are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, look, all who are truly saved will indeed grow in obedience to their good and faithful God. Deuteronomy 13.4 says, You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him and keep His commandments and obey His voice. You shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. In Jeremiah 7.23, God said, Obey My voice and I will be your God. and you shall be my people. God’s people obey. Romans 1.5 says, through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name. The saved obey. And Romans 6.27 says it like this, but God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. So you were delivered, and then you obeyed because that’s how it works. speak lord for your servant hears that’s the true believer’s motto like king david said i made haste and delayed not to keep god’s commandments why because god’s people love him and obedience pleases him see obedience proves who we are and whose we are so question how clear are you today one of the failures of israel throughout their history is that they didn’t obey the lord From the top down, they haven’t kept the law of God, they haven’t obeyed the Lord, they haven’t served Him, they haven’t turned from their wicked ways, which are all things that should mark the people of God. Who are we? We are the lovers of God. What do we do? We honor Him. We worship Him. We obey Him. We serve Him. We seek to glorify Him with our lives by pursuing Him and by loving what He loves and by hating what He hates. But they haven’t been doing that at all. And confessing that sin… It’s a very good response. I think Ezra probably wrote this prayer for the people to recite. And I think he probably had 2 Chronicles 7.14 in mind. It says this, If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves, pray, seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways… Then, see, then I will hear from heaven and forgive their sin and heal their land. So he clearly had that in mind when he wrote this prayer for all the people to recite. And this prayer and then their response is a way for the people to put this verse into practice. Look, the people have fallen. They have been in sin and they’ve been rebellious. And while things aren’t as bad as they could have been, even so, they’re still under the thumb of the Persian Empire. And now the wall is finally finished. It’s time for the people to get right with God spiritually in a formal way, in a corporate way. And that’s what we have going on here. So, get right. The call in 2 Chronicles, I want to look at that for just a second, because it applies greatly here. The call in 2 Chronicles first says to humble yourselves, and they’re doing that in this prayer. Proverbs 16, 18 says pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. So look, grace can never thrive where pride and self-conceit grows. God hates pride because it exalts self and lowers God when we should be exalting God and lowering ourselves in his mighty presence. Biblically, the person that God gives grace to, the person that God comes to, the person that God is pleased with is the humble person. The Lord regards the lowly, Psalm 138.6. The Lord does not forget the cry of the humble, Psalm 9.12. Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up, James 4.20. And so the Bible is very clear that humility must mark the people of God. See, the prideful person will continue on in his sin, but the humble person will run to God with his sin. Be humble. The prideful person will dig in his feet and refuse to lower himself before God with his sin, but the humble person will flee to God and seek God’s forgiveness, whatever the cost, and no matter how it looks to others, be humble. The prideful person will continue on in his sin because he knows that he can still fool some people. But the humble person cares only what God thinks and does what’s right before God, no matter what the cost. Be humble. And this prayer in Nehemiah 9 reveals a humble people, doesn’t it? They aren’t hiding their sin. They’re acknowledging their sin. They aren’t sugarcoating their bad behavior. They’re confessing it before the Lord, all of it, which is very good. What about you? Hey, hiding your sin will not do you any good. Your call is to go to God with that sin and to do it now. Don’t put this off. But what if it all comes out? And what if all the people find out what I’ve done? So what? What? So what? Who cares about what other people think here? We’re all in the same boat. Sinners saved by amazing grace. And why would we judge you when we have enough issues of our own to deal with? Stop worrying about that. Humble yourself and flee to God. What else? Pray. which is what the people are doing here in Nehemiah 9. Prayer here is simply petitioning God. It’s communicating with God. It’s talking to Him. It’s pouring out your heart to Him, presenting your request to Him, praising Him, calling out to Him. Isn’t that interesting? That if you’ve been harboring sin, mediocrity, compromise in your life, that God immediately calls you to humble yourself, and then your call is to pray to Him. Why? Because it’s really hard to pray when you have sin on your heart. But if you truly humble yourself, you will then go to God and seek out His forgiveness. So humility and prayer go together, and they’re vital for you to get back where you need to be with God. Biblically, prayer is commanded, and biblically, prayer is very powerful. See, God sovereignly works through the prayers of His people. When God’s people pray, amazing things happen. And your call is to pray much. And look, when you need to repent, the wise thing to do is to go to God with that immediately. Matthew Henry said… When God intends great mercy for His people, the first thing He does is set them a praying. He’s right. John Bunyan said that prayer will make a man cease from sin, or sin will entice a man to cease from prayer. Pray often, for prayer is a shield to the soul, a sacrifice to God, and a scourge for Satan. And our call is to pray much. Prayer is indeed a key for revival, and it’s a key to renewal, and we could certainly use more prayer. And the people of Israel set a good example for us here in Nehemiah chapter 9. Pray. What else from 2 Chronicles? This. If you’ve fallen into mediocrity, if you’ve fallen into compromise, then you must seek the face of God, which is exactly what they were doing here in chapter 9. The word for seek speaks of desire, passion, hunger, earnestness, and a longing for something. For what? For God. The face of God. The presence of God. The pleasure of God. More of God. The word face refers to the countenance of God or to a turning to God’s direction. It’s a call for God’s people to stop looking at other things to satisfy them and to simply look to Him. For Him to be the primary focus and the first priority. Do you yearn and hunger for that? The face of God like that? King David said, In other words, all I want is Him. All I seek is Him. He is my life’s passion because I know that He’s all that really matters. Him first. David also said in Psalm 42, 1 and 2, As a deer pants after the water brooks, so pants my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and appear before God? In other words, I just pan for Him. I hunger for Him. I can’t wait to see Him. And only a heart that has been humble and has prayed to the Lord and has fellowship with God can say that. But note this, if you have sin in your heart, you can’t really seek the face of God, right? Not really. So there’s a progression in 2 Chronicles that we see the people in Nehemiah 9 doing. And we would do well to do the same. Seeking God’s face. What’s that mean? It means that you fight the sin. You battle the enemy. You never give in to mediocrity. and to the weak Christianity that’s so prevalent these days. You pray and you read and you study and you fellowship with other Christians and you eat up the Word of God and you’re not lazy when time is flying by. You don’t put off serving Him. When you can serve Him today, you don’t make excuses for your sin. You stand up for the truth in the midst of a crooked and depraved generation, and you forgive, and you turn the other cheek, and you’re gentle and humble and loving and meek and bold and gracious, and you’re sure to shine brightly the light of the one who saved your soul from eternal wrath. All of that pleases God, and He is the one, the only one, that you are seeking to please, honor, and glorify. Is that true of you? Psalm 27, 8. When you, Lord, said, seek my face, my heart said to you, your face, Lord, I will see. And that’s what the people were doing in Nehemiah 9. And that’s what my prayer is for myself and for all of us here today, day by day by day. What else from 2 Chronicles? Turn from wickedness. This here is talking about repentance, which is what the people were doing in Nehemiah 9, and we’ll see more of that in a second. So you go humbly, and you see your desperation for God. You pray, you turn to God, and you seek after Him, and then you turn away from your wickedness. Hey, do that when you have fallen, and God will indeed work a mighty work in your heart and in your life. Talking about repentance here. Repentance means to change your mind, to be converted, and to turn around. Biblically, repentance means a turning away from your sin and a turning to the Lord in living faith. Now, some people think that repentance means to feel sorry about your sin. But many people feel sorry about their sin and they never truly repent. Why? Because true repentance is something that changes your behavior. It’s something that changes your direction. It’s not just stopping our wickedness, but turning away from it and turning to the Lord. Therefore, true repentance is a godly sorrow for sin… an internal repugnance to the ugliness of sin, followed by the actual forsaking of that sin. One preacher says it like this. True repentance has intellectual, emotional, and volitional ramifications. The intellectual element of repentance is a change of view, a recognition of sin as involving personal guilt, defilement, and helplessness. The emotional element is a change of feeling manifesting itself in sorrow for sin committed against a holy God. And then the volitional element is a change of purpose, an inward turning away from sin and a disposition to seek pardon and cleansing. That’s right. And God loves that when true repentance happens in the life of a person. Think about it. To be saved from eternal wrath, a person is called to repent and turn to the Lord in saving faith. And then, look, once they have been saved, a Christian is called to be in a continual state of repentance and to not let any sin linger inside of his or her heart. What about you? Is sin lingering in your heart, in your mind, in your life? What else? Verses 36-38. Here we are, servants, today. And the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its bounty, here we are, servants, in it. And it yields much increase to the kings you have set over us because of our sins. Also, they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle at their pleasure. And we are in great distress. And because of all this, we make a sure covenant and write it, our leaders, our Levites, and our priests to seal it. So fifth, we are in great distress. Here’s the truth, that because they have refused to serve God, they are now slaves to others who are still under the dominion of another. Now, it’s not as bad as it could have been for them, and it’s not as bad as it’s been in the past for them, but their present situation is still very bad. And while the Persians weren’t cruel overlords, look, God’s people at that time weren’t entirely free. And if you remember, heavy taxation frequently brought them into dire poverty. Remember that back in chapter 5, which shows us how bad things were for them? Three things were going on. You remember that? First, chapter 5, verse 2 tells us that families were going hungry and the economic situation was getting critical. Second… There was a group of people who owned land but who had to mortgage their property in order to buy food. On top of everything else, a famine was taking place which led the people to mortgage their land, vineyards, and houses as security against loans to buy grain for planting. These people are now in debt and it was pretty hopeless that they would ever be able to pay those debts. Third, the ridiculous taxes that had been imposed on the people by the Persians. See, the taxes that they required were severe. One said that the Persians’ greatest oppression of its conquered peoples was financial and socioeconomic oppression, and the people of Judah were feeling that oppression in full measure. The taxes were so excessive that many of the Jewish landowners had to borrow money to pay their taxes, and now they’re finding it impossible to pay off those loans, loans that had interest rates of anywhere between 20 and 50 percent. If you remember, the people who gave these loans, the creditors, the loan sharks, were fellow Jews. See, they saw an opportunity to make some money, and so they took that opportunity, regardless of whether it was right or wrong, and regardless of what it did to their own people. Well, the landowners who took out these terrible loans now find themselves in default, so now what? Here’s what. Some had to give their children as servants to their lenders to pay off the debt, which was really a form of slavery. In other words, they basically sold their daughters as sex slaves, either to the Jewish creditors or else to the local Persian government officials. So yeah, things are really bad. I mean, this is wretched, right? Poverty, famine, debt, enslavement, and, oh yeah, the prostitution of daughters. That’s not good. But now, good news, the people are turning to the Lord for help. That’s it. I mean, that’s what you do. That’s what you should always do. You in distress today? Anybody? You struggling? We all struggle, right? It ebbs and flows throughout life. Anybody? Right? You’re dealing with trials, loss, hardships, people hurting you and letting you down, financial worries, stresses, whether from your own sinful doing or just from life itself. What’s the call? The call is this, to cry out to the Lord. If there’s sin, then go to God with it, acknowledge it, confess it, give it to Him, lay it down at His feet, and seek His forgiveness and mercy. Do you think He will turn you away? No. That doesn’t mean that all our problems will go away, for life is filled with problems. But being right with God makes all the problems seem much smaller. And God will walk with us through those problems instead of oppose us when we are in rebellion. Go to God. Run to God. Flee to God. That’s the call. Look, when life is hard without God, great distress. When life is hard with God, peace in the midst of the hardship. When everyone fails you and lets you down without God, distress and loneliness. When everyone fails you and lets you down with God, God will never leave you nor forsake you and He gives great comfort and abundant love. Flee to God. So look, this prayer exalts the God who across the centuries has done so much for these fickle people. In His great mercy, God has given Himself to the work of Creating, choosing, encouraging, hearing, delivering, guiding, meeting, teaching, protecting, feeding, forgiving, loving, accompanying, clothing, empowering, sustaining, multiplying, prospering, correcting, and rescuing them. Looking back, they could trace not only their own appalling unworthiness, but His abundant faithfulness. They see that clearly and now abundantly. Good news, they are fleeing to Him in repentance, and they are committing themselves to obeying Him once again. We are in great distress. This is a sign of faith in God. See, the people knew that God was their only chance for deliverance, just as He had been for the children of Israel when they were in Egypt. But note this, that while they earnestly want deliverance, I believe it seems clear that they want to be right with God first and foremost. So even if God doesn’t deliver them, they still are going to seek his face. And that is the right attitude. That is the biblical attitude. I love and honor God because I love him and he is worthy even if it makes life harder for me. I love and honor God even if I continue to have distress. I love and honor God even if I lose all my friends. I love and honor God even if it means I suffer much for it. Why? Because God is my all in all. Right? He saved me. He rescued me. He gave me life. He fills me with hope and peace and joy and love. And He makes everything else seem like rubbish. Him. Him. Hey, when all else is stripped away, what lasts? Him. Only Him. Sixth, we make a covenant with you today. Verse 38. Because of all this, we make a sure covenant and write it. Our leaders, our Levites, and our priests seal it. See what they’re doing here? This is serious. This here is a covenant renewal ceremony on part of the people of God. See, whenever the Israelites faced a major new chapter in their journey, they were encouraged to renew their covenant vows. In Joshua 24, before they entered the promised land, in 1 Samuel 12, before they entered a period of rule by monarchy, and here again in Nehemiah 9. Clearly the Israelites are sensing a new beginning. They have been worshiping collectively in some kind of formal way for almost a month. Feast of trumpets, feast of tabernacles, this corporate meeting now going on here. It’s been an amazing time. Bible study, prayer, corporate worship have led to this event in which they make solemn promises before God and also in each other’s hearing to worship. We’re looking ahead right now. Walk in God’s law that was given by Moses to the servant of God and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and His rules and His statutes. Chapter 10, verse 29. Now we’re going to look at more of that next time, but just note this for today. That here, they’re making a solemn promise to live wholeheartedly for God, whatever the cost. That is very serious. It’s a good reminder for us. And let’s stop wasting our precious time on other things that fade away and rot in the end. Lord help us.
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Thanks for joining us for today’s exposition from the book of Nehemiah on expository truths with Dr. John Kyle. 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.
