Nehemiah had come to Jerusalem to rebuild the wall, and he had been successful in doing it. But we discover now that the rebuilding was far from all he had in mind. Nehemiah wanted to rebuild the wall, but beyond that objective he had the far more significant objective of rebuilding the nation.
In the eighth chapter of Nehemiah we see the starting point for any true national renewal. It is the Word of God.
If we are to see a spiritual recovery in our land today, it will be helpful to review the steps to revival as revealed in these activities.
In yesterday’s study we looked at the first two steps to revival as seen in our passage. Today we consider the third step.
The result of this anticipatory prayer, the reading of the Law of God and the explanation of the law was revival. And the first evidence that revival was truly on the way was grief over sin.
The first evidence of a true movement of the Holy Spirit is an awakened conscience, leading to genuine sorrow for sin in God’s people. It is only after this that revival comes. This is what happened in Jerusalem in Nehemiah’s day, and it is why it is proper to speak of this as having been a true revival. There were three parts to this revival. We have already seen the first element, the prominence given to God’s Word. In this chapter we need to study its profound impact upon the people.
In yesterday’s study, we concluded by observing that when the people expressed sorrow for sin, Nehemiah and the Levites directed to people to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. I find two very interesting things about this.
The main part of Nehemiah 9 consists of a long formal prayer by the Levites (vv. 5-38), who presumably had been leading the people in the personal expression of sorrow given earlier. This too is a prayer of confession; that is why it is included here. But it is also a prayer which directs the people’s thoughts to the goodness and power of God and prepares them for a final appeal to Him for mercy in their distressed condition.
The second, major part of the Levites’ prayer is a review of Israel’s history. It begins with God’s calling of Abraham (vv. 7-8), as Genesis does. The people must have been thinking about the actual text of Genesis at this time, for Nehemiah 9:7 contains the only Old Testament reference after Genesis to the changing of Abraham’s name from Abram to Abraham (cf. Gen. 17:5). The name change calls attention to the unilateral way in which God dealt with Abraham, a point made repeatedly throughout this section. Notice that God is the subject of every action. But unlike God, who kept His promises, the people (so it is implied) did not keep theirs. God was utterly faithful; they were not.
Is it hard to repent? It certainly is! Nothing is harder or goes more against the grain of our sinful natures. But it is necessary for personal happiness and God’s blessing. The promise is that, if we will repent of our sins, then God will hear from heaven (He never turns a deaf ear to the repentant), forgive our sin (how much we need it) and heal our land.
Things changed in Jerusalem under the governorship of Nehemiah and the pastoring of Ezra, and they did so radically. I have been calling it a revival, because that is what it was. Revival means coming to spiritual life again. The people had been spiritually dead. Now they revived, and the changes that came transformed their nation and culture permanently. Some of these changes lasted more than four hundred years up to and even beyond the time of Jesus Christ.
Change for the sake of mere change means nothing, of course. What matters is the direction of the change. So, before we examine the specifics of the covenant, it will be helpful to see its characteristics, which indicate where the people saw themselves to be heading. There are three of them. We will look at the first two today and the third tomorrow.
The third striking characteristic of this covenant is the people’s strong sense of responsibility. Nothing in the covenant looks to other people to do what they should do. Nothing sets some of them apart from these responsibilities, or assigns specific tasks to one group and other tasks to another. The dominant word is “we,” referring to the whole people together. It was as one whole people that they took it upon themselves to keep God’s entire law.
The second specific commitment of the people on this great covenant day was to the Sabbath, to keep it by abstaining from all commercial activity, and to observe the seventh year Sabbath of the land in which the fields would not be worked. The requirement has precedent in God’s resting from creation on the seventh day and goes back to the Ten Commandments which say, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy” (Exod. 20:8).
I suggest that you formally covenant to put God first in everything you do: order your marriage or family according to the Bible’s standards, set aside one day in seven to worship and serve God in the company of other Christians, tithe your income for the Lord’s work—and do whatever else God’s puts it upon your mind to do for Him. And make it a lifetime commitment!
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