Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Sackcloth, Sin, and Stiff Necks | The Writings | Nehemiah 9-12

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

What's up with the Israelites wearing sackcloth and ashes when praying? Are you better at confessing other people's sins or your own? What does it mean to be "stiff-necked"? In today's episode, Keith shares how Nehemiah's prayer in Nehemiah 9-12 encourages us to confess honestly and take responsibility for our sins before God. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Nehemiah 9-12

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. In the past few days on TMBT, we've been following Nehemiah as he led a group of Jewish exiles to return and rebuild the defensive wall around Jerusalem. God allowed the Babylonians to conquer Jerusalem and destroy the temple in 586 BC because of the persistent and unrepentant sin of the people. By rebuilding the wall and eventually the temple, the people are repairing the damage that was

part of the consequences of their sin. But they also need to deal with the sin itself. That's what we find happening in Nehemiah chapter 9. The people confess their sin to God. Verse 1 starts with the Israelites gathered together fasting and wearing sackcloth and putting dust or ashes on their head. Now what's up with sackcloth and ashes? They are signs of repentance. The Israelites would sit in sackcloth and ashes when they wanted to mourn or repent of their sin. Satcloth was made of uncomfortable material, which reminded them that sin always makes you miserable. And ashes represented desolation and ruin.

I think it's interesting that they did things with their body to help their heart get in the right place. We are embodied souls. So what we do with our body affects our soul and vice versa. This might mean that when we pray, we want to get on our knees, or bow our head, or turn our palms up toward, God. We don't have to do these things. Doing them doesn't make us more spiritual. God hears all our

prayers no matter what our posture is. But sometimes it's good to do things with their bodies to help us remember that God is God and we aren't. Verse two, they stood in their places that confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. Notice they don't confess Egypt's sins or Babylon's sins or Persia's sins. These are all nations that held the Israelites in captivity. So Israel, Israel, knew their sins because these nations had sinned against them. But instead of confessing other's sins, they confess their own. There's a great lesson for us in this. We like to confess other people's sins or our culture's sins. The truth is we notice other people's sins before we notice our own, and other people's sins bother us more than our sins do. Just on a personal level, it's easier for me

to see my wife's sins than my own sins, and her sins bother me more than my sins do. But maybe we need to learn from Israel's example and be more concerned about our sins. We are responsible to confess our sins and no one else's. That's just not our job. In verse five, the Levites tell the people, stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting. And that's exactly what they do. Here's verse five. Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You made the heavens, even the highest heavens, and all their story hosts, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them. You give life to everything and the multitudes of heaven worship you. I think it's wise to start all our prayers,

even prayers of confession, with praising God, praising God for his love, his mercy, his kindness, his power, for all the ways that he is good to us. Praising God helps us keep life in proper perspective. We are coming before the throne of the king of the universe. We are talking to the father who loves us and gave his son to die for us. Then in the prayer in Nehemiah 9, he acknowledges all the ways that God has been a part of their story from the very beginning. He says in verse 7, You are the Lord God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ure of the Chaldeans and named him Abraham. You found his heart faithful to you and you made a covenant with him to give his descendants the land of the Canaanites. You have kept your promise because you're righteous. You saw the

suffering of our ancestors in Egypt. You heard their cry of our at the Red Sea. You sent signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his officials, and all the people of his land, for you knew how arrogantly the Egyptians treated them. You made a name for yourself, which remains to this day. You divided the sea before them, so that they passed through it on dry ground, but you hurled their pursuers into the depths, like a stone into mighty waters. By day you led them with a pillar of cloud, and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the way they were to take. You came down on Mount Sinai. You spoke to the, you spoke to them from heaven. You gave them regulations and laws their just and right and decrees and commands that are good.

In their hunger, you gave them bread from heaven, and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock. You told them to go in and take possession of the land you had sworn with uplifted hands to give them. See, there are three stories mentioned here. The story of Abraham reminds the people that God called them to be a people and promised them a land. And then the second story, the story of Egypt, reminded them that God had delivered them from oppression and slavery. And then the third story is the story of Moses, that God had used Moses to give them his good laws and commands. At every point, God had provided exactly what they needed. That's what makes the next section so shocking. Verse 16, but they, our ancestors, became arrogant and stiff-necked. They did not obey your commands. They refused to listen and failed

to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked, and in their rebellion, appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore, you did not desert them, even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf, and said, this is your God who brought you up out of Egypt, or when they committed awful blasphemies. So in this prayer, God's people acknowledged that they were stiff-necked in the relationship with him. Isn't that an amazing description, we stiffen our neck when we refuse to acknowledge God or worship him or lean on his wisdom or trust in his plan. When I think of stiff neck, the image that pops into my mind is a young

toddler arching his back because he doesn't want to get into the car seat or he doesn't want to get into the high chair. That's exactly how we act toward God. We stiffen our neck or we arch our back and rebellion against him. Now when the Israelites stiffened their neck and rebelled against God, did God destroy them? No. He could. have he had plenty of justification to, but he didn't. Instead he forgave them. They say he was forgiving and gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. See, this story reminds us that trying to say that the Old Testament God is harsh or judgmental or angry and that it's only in Jesus that we discover God's grace and forgiveness. It's all silly. God has always been gracious and

forgiving. Verse 19, because of your great compassion, you did not abandon them in the wilderness. by day the pillar of cloud did not fail to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good spirit to instruct them. You did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and you gave them water for their thirst. For 40 years you sustained them in the wilderness. They lacked nothing.

Their clothes did not wear out, nor did their feet become swollen. God was kind and gracious to them, even though they didn't deserve it. He still took care of them. He still provided all their needs. can't we say the same thing? We've sinned against God in our life, and yet he continues to show us mercy and grace. He continues to be good to us.

Verse 26, But they were disobedient and rebelled against you. They turned their backs on your law. They killed your prophets who had warned them and returned them back to you. They committed awful blasphemies. So you delivered them into the hands of their enemies who oppressed them.

But when they were oppressed, they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them. And in your great compassion, you gave them delivers who rescued them from the hands of their enemies. So the people rejected God's prophets and they refused to turn back to them. So God eventually delivers them into the hand of their enemies. That's the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Persians. Their captivity in these foreign nations was God's discipline against their sin. In a similar way, God disciplines us when we sin. The goal of all God's discipline is to wake us up so that we will follow him. When the people

cried out, God delivered them. But notice what happens, verse 28. But as soon as they were at rest, they did again what was evil in your sight. Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they ruled over them. And when they cried out to you again, you heard from heaven and in your compassion, you delivered them time after time. This cycle keeps repeating itself. The people sin and rebel, and that leads to slavery and captivity as discipline. And then the people seek God's forgiveness and mercy, and he delivers them from captivity. But it repeats itself because the people never learned. They again go back to sin and rebellion. Verse 31, but in your great mercy, you did not put an end to them or abandon them, for you are gracious and merciful God. Now, therefore, our God,

the great God, the mighty and awesome God who keeps this 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 our leaders, our priests and our prophets, on our ancestors, and all your people, from the days of the king of Assyria until today, and all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous. You have acted faithfully while we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our leaders, our priests, our ancestors did not follow your law. They did not pay attention to your commands or the statues you warned them to keep. Even while they were in their kingdom, enjoying your great goodness to them, and the spacious and fertile land you gave them, they did not

serve you or turn from their evil ways. Do you hear what the Israelites are doing here? They're confessing the sins of their ancestors. See, we think of sin as only an individual's problem, and it is that. It is a problem for the person who committed the sin, but God also sees sin as corporate. It's right for us to confess the sins of our ancestors. Maybe it's confessing the sins of previous generations and our family, or confessing the sins of our nation. But here's how the prayer ends. But see, we are slaves today, slaves in the land you gave our ancestors so they could eat its fruits and other good things it produces. 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. Confession is an important part of the Christian life. It's the way we deal with sin. When we confess our sins, we are agreeing with God that we are sinners, and we are asking him to forgive us and cleanse us from our sins. sins. It's something we should do every day. As soon as you're convicted of a sin that you've committed against God, you should confess it to him and ask for him to cleanse you. So do you have any personal sins that you need to confess to God? Don't blame other people for your sins. Accept responsibility. Ask him to forgive you, restore your relationship, and change you to make you the person he wants

you to be. God always hears. He always responds to your prayers of confession. Amen.