I invite you to turn in your copies of God's Word now to Nehemiah chapter 9. As you turn there, I'll remind us of some of the context for where we're at in Nehemiah. If you've been here, you know that we are moving past the section of Nehemiah that talks about the physical rebuilding of the land of this remnant restored out of exile, that we've moved past the rebuilding of the wall that has been finished, and now the attention is turned to the spiritual rebuilding that must take place, that there needs to be a reformation in the people of God, that they need to be reconciled to God, reminded of His faithfulness, reminded of their sin. And we see that very beautifully laid out before us in our chapter tonight. Nehemiah 9. We will be reading the chapter in its entirety. This is the word of the Lord. Now on the 24th day of this month, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day. For another quarter of it, they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Buni, Jerebiah, Bani, and Chenani, and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Heshabaniah, Jerebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethiah, said, Stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them, and the host of heaven worships you. You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you, and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Jebusite, and the Girgashite. And you have kept your promise, for you are righteous. And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt, and heard their cry at the Red Sea. and perform signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land. For you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers, and you made a name for yourself, as it is to this day. And you divided the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land. And you cast their pursuers into the depths as a stone into mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day. and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. And you came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments. And you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go in to possess the land that you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiff in their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them. But they stiff in their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive. gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf, and said, This is your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt, and had committed great blasphemies, you and your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave your good spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna from their mouth, and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out, and their feet did not swell. And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon, king of Heshbon, and the land of Og, king of Bashan. You multiplied their children as the stars of heaven, and you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land, and you subdued from them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand, and with their kings and the peoples of the land, that they might do with them as they would. and they captured fortified cities and a rich land and took possession of houses full of all good things, cisterns already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore, you gave them into the hand of their enemies who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering, they cried out to you, and you heard from them from heaven. And according to your great mercies, you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of all their enemies. But after they had rest, they did evil again before you. and you abandoned them to the hand of the enemy, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies, and you warned them in order to turn them back to your law. Yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments, but sinned against your rules, which if a person does them, he shall live by them. And they turned a stubborn shoulder, and stiff in their neck, and they would not obey. Many years you bore with them and warned them by your Spirit through your prophets, yet they would not give ear. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God. Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love. Let not all the hardships seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully, and we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom, and amid your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land that you set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day, And the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have said over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress. Because of all of this, we make a firm covenant in writing. On the sealed documents are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. Thus ends the reading of God's Word. Let's ask that He would bless our meditation upon it this evening. Father in Heaven, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for this section of Your Word that we have just read. and how it recounts your goodness despite the sin of your people. Father, as we turn and look at this time in history recorded for us, we do pray that we would hear these words as an authority for our lives, that we would see ourselves written here, that you are good to us and faithful, and yet we continue to have stiff necks. Please humble us, Father, and help us to be quick to confess our sin and to confess Your greatness. We pray that You'd work that into our hearts by the power of Your Spirit this evening. We pray in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, we have a fairly simple outline for a rather lengthy text this evening. We are to confess the faithfulness of God and we are to confess our unfaithfulness. Confess the faithfulness of God and confess our unfaithfulness. We return here in Nehemiah. We see that it begins, the context here is that the Jews, restored out of exile, have been spending a lot of time in the Word of God. If you remember, back in chapter 8, they began to turn to the word of the Lord, and they began to revive their spirit. In chapter 8, very similarly, they spent a whole half of the day where Ezra and the priests, those volunteers, were reading God's law to the people. And then they began to celebrate the feasts and the Feast of Booths. And they would continue to read God's Word. And it's specifically said that the fathers of the houses would gather and study God's Word even more fully. And this, the events that we're reading now, take place just a couple days after those events, after that week of feasts. They have spent a lot of time in God's Word. And even our text begins by noting that for a quarter of the day, they read from the Book of the Law. and then a quarter of the day they spent in confession. We see here in Nehemiah 9 a beautiful summary of God's faithfulness despite the faithlessness of God's people in times past. If you were here for Sunday school, we talked about how this is a common theme in this section of God's Word in the prophets prophesying about the exile or the post-exilic time, that there are summaries given reminding us, reminding God's people of God's faithfulness despite the faithlessness of His people. By the way, that series, if you weren't here or if you were just here this morning and you want to hear the full extent of it, that series is all online by Tim, going through the overview of the Bible on YouTube on his account, and I'd commend that to you. And it's been pretty amazing how that's just fit so nicely with our sermons as well. It's great to see God's hand in that. But we're seeing, once again, Nehemiah 9 is one of those summaries, a beautiful summary of the plan of redemption, of God's continued faithfulness. We also see here modeled for us a very robust and particular confession of sin. And it's important for us to see that there's a proper order here, modeled for us. that what rightly ought to happen is that when we go to God's Word and spend time in God's Word, that we are to be convicted of our sin. That a proper response to God's Word, to the reading of the law, is to recognize how far we fall short. that God's law, that one of its uses is to be a mirror to us, to reflect to us our own sin. That when we look into God's law, we see we are sinners. We need to confess. And we see that modeled. They have been spending time in God's Word. And back in Nehemiah 8, you might remember that when they spent time in God's Word, they were truly mourning over their sin. And Ezra and the Levites said, Hold on. First, rejoice. God is faithful. God has given us Sabbaths and a feast, and we need to rejoice for His faithfulness. And then they moved to confession. And there's a time to mourn and to confess. Scripture rightly leads to conviction, and conviction rightly leads to confession. And then, if you will be here next week in Nehemiah 10, we'll see that confession rightly leads to repentance, to a turning from sin. And repentance rightly leads to reconciliation, and with God, it always leads to restoration. many times in my sermons, the practical application, one of them, is often, be in God's word. And I try not to do that lazily or just, that's an easy application, I'll throw in there, that's a safe one. But it comes out of the text. And it's been in our sermon text, a reminder, be in God's word. And we need to be reminded of that, and it's all throughout God's word, so bad at it. We struggle being in God's Word. And I think one of the reasons that we struggle with being in God's Word is because we know that if we go to God's Word, we will be convicted over our sin. And we don't want to go through that. We don't want to go through the discomfort of being confronted by our sin. We know that if we open God's Word, we're going to be reminded of our failures and we haven't been dealing with them. We've been trying to ignore our sin rather than confessing and repenting. So I want to encourage you to go to God's Word and go through this beautiful process of being convicted and then confessing and repenting and seeking restoration with God. We make it too hard. We complicate it too much. God has made it easy. for His people. But because of our pride, because of our sin, we are so unwilling to confess. If you are in a particular period of life where you are struggling to go to God's Word because you don't want to be convicted over your sin, please talk to someone. Please seek help. That is a scary place to be. That is a lonely and dark place to be. Talk to me or talk to the elders or talk to someone in the church that you don't like to read God's word because you don't like your sin. Don't wallow in it. Let the conviction lead to confession. Find freedom in the promise of forgiveness. So there's the word, there's conviction, there's confession, repentance, reconciliation, worship. These are all the right steps. These are the things we ought to strive for. And we see this model for us in Nehemiah 9. I think so often we look at Nehemiah 9 or we look at other points in scripture where the confession is really robust. You may think of Psalm 51 or we may think of Romans 7. And when we read those things, we might say, we might think, oh, there's one of those really hard moments where an individual had to confront his sin, and he dealt with it, and let's read through that, and it's uncomfortable and hard. Let's get through it so we can get to the easy parts of grace or the narratives and the stories of heroic times. We grimace through confession. But I think what we are to see here in those chapters are to remind us that confession isn't meant to be these moments where maybe once a year or once every couple years we get serious about our sin, we deal with it, and then we're good to go for a while. But what we want to see tonight is that this is to be a regular pattern of our life, that we are daily asking for forgiveness. Just as we need daily bread, we daily ask for forgiveness of sin. That we are to have lives marked by confession. Because until we go home to glory, we will be struggling with sin. And we will have things to confess every day. Well, that's convicting. The beauty of this chapter is that it models for us a proper balance. That our confession is easy in many ways because there's two aspects. We are to confess our sin, yes, but we are also to confess God's faithfulness. We are to proclaim His faithfulness. And doesn't this chapter do it so beautifully? The focus, even in confession, is not on us. It's not the Jonathan Show, when I'm talking to God about my sin. It's not a focus on us. Even in confession, we are to be directing our hearts and our thoughts to God. We are to look to His continued faithfulness, and in light of that, we recognize our failings. our faithlessness and our sin. Here's where I was stiff-necked. Here's where I acted wickedly. Here is where I struggled with faith. But God, You are faithful. You have been faithful. And we interweave those proclamations and praises of God's faithfulness with our confession. We are reminding ourselves of God's grace and praising Him. God is God, and we are not. We are to recognize that distinction, that there is a steady sinfulness of man, and there is a steadfast faithfulness of God. We see as the people here are bringing their sin, the history of sin of God's people, and their own sin before God, that they are regularly resting in His faithfulness. God, you were faithful in the past, so we're counting on you to be faithful again as we confess our sin before you." And we see that pattern, even as we were reading it. I hope you felt, God is faithful, God is faithful, but we acted wickedly. Our fathers acted wickedly, but you were faithful. You were faithful, you were faithful, but we acted wickedly. We see that pattern, a beautiful interweaving of confession. We look to verse 32. I think that's really the climax of the chapter, as it gets to the more current history of the writers at the time of this setting. They begin to say, not just, our fathers sinned, but we have sinned. We see in verse 32, as they do that, again, interwoven proclamation of God's faithfulness. We see in verse 32 that God is the great, the mighty, the awesome God. There's those beautiful statements of His character, who He is. But it doesn't just stop there in verse 32. It's not just that God is great, that He is awesome. Verse 32 also says, it continues, this is who He is, and He who is like this is the One who keeps covenant and steadfast love. Not only is this God's character, but His posture towards us is covenant in steadfast love. So we confess God's greatness, His character, His might, and His glory, but we also confess, proclaim, rest in, demand steadfast love towards us from God. We are to proclaim this. That word steadfast love, hesed love, It could be translated, it's difficult to capture in the English, but it's steadfast. It has a covenantal aspect in this verse, so hopefully it holds those together. Keeps covenant and steadfast love. Continued mercy and kindness. Unfailing grace. Covenant grace. We're reminded that God's position towards us, even in the midst of confession, even as we sin, it's not dependent. on our ability. God's posture towards us is not dependent on our faithfulness, our merit. His love is steadfast. And what God says is steadfast is steadfast. God is faithful even when we are not. We are to confess God's character, His most loving gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin." It can be difficult to strike that proper balance in confession, can it? Holding praise and confession together. We can work on this and we can be instructed here from Nehemiah 9. I think too often our prayers are dependent on our mood. And it's good to pray and thanks be to God that the Spirit intercedes for us and makes all of our prayers, even the groans that we can't put into words, pleasing before God. And yet we can grow in our faithfulness, even in our prayer, and we can recognize that there are things to learn. And we shouldn't be only praying according to our mood, but we should be instructed by Scripture and pray Scripture to God to direct our hearts to pray more faithfully. And we're directed here to strike that balance. Too often, if we are in the mood to praise God, we're not often in the mood to confess our sin. We might be blind to our sin. We might be failing to recognize it. That's slightly reminiscent of those times maybe where you have a friend or someone that you encounter and they do something great, they're doing something really well, and you just struggle to enjoy their gifts because you're jealous. Too often our mood towards God is that jealous mood, where we wish that we were God and He was not. That we didn't have to confess our sin and that we didn't have to struggle with sin. and we have those feelings that hurt our prayer life. We can sinfully wish that we could just dismiss our sin. Other times, if we are in the mood to confess our sin, we might be drawn inward and not focused on what's worth praising God about and not focused on who He is. May our hearts be changed that we're not drawn inward either in our pride or in our self-pity, that we would be able to confess and praise God and confess our sin regularly. Think about Westminster Shorter Catechism 4, what do the scriptures principally teach? The scriptures principally teach what man is to believe concerning God and what duty God requires of man. We are to be pointed towards who God is, what we are to believe concerning God, and we're to be reminded of our duty to Him. And as we're reminded of our duty to Him, we know how often we fail in our duty before God. So we are to confess, here is what we believe about you, God. Here is where I have failed in that duty that is required, a God who has character like yours. to confess his faithfulness, but also confess your unfaithfulness. The Israelites have gone through suffering. It's recounted here, and there's even a portion of this prayer where they ask God not to think too lightly about their current circumstance. And they prayerfully acknowledge that through all of the suffering, through all of the sin, God has been righteous. And they have that moment in verse 31. Nevertheless, in your great mercies, you do not make an end of them or forsake them, for you are gracious and merciful. And they recognize God's steadfast mercy. And as they recount their suffering, they remind us that the suffering itself wasn't the biggest problem they had. As a session, we've been reading a book by Ed Welch called Side by Side, and he has a chapter on confession, and he starts that chapter by saying, too often we think that our biggest problem in this life is suffering, but our biggest problem in life is sin. and our greatest need is forgiveness from sin. Too often our prayer life is consumed by requests for a change of circumstance, that we wouldn't have to suffer. Too little we are praying for forgiveness, recognizing our greater problem than suffering is our own sin. God's children recount their history here in Nehemiah 9 of suffering, but they so clearly understand that their biggest problem is sin, and that they need forgiveness. Ed Welch goes on to say that suffering often reveals sin. And isn't that recounted? That as they're wandering in the desert, that they are asking to go back to Egypt, and we think about all those times in the history of God's people, that the suffering provokes and that the allegiances of our hearts become more apparent in suffering. We might think that we're pretty good with God, that we don't have much to confess, but when suffering comes, it so quickly becomes apparent what our comfort is, what our idols are, where our allegiances are. And if we are honest with ourselves, we must recognize our greatest need is forgiveness of sin. And we see that here with this remnant. They do not hide their history of sin. They don't sweep it under the rug. They confess boldly. Here's our sin. And you think about the circumstance. This is a restored people of God that are being brought out of exile. How tempting would it be to try to rewrite history Here we are, fresh start. Let's forget about all of that. Let's try to get rid of that history. We are going to be the nation that comes back. But they record the sin, and they confess it publicly, corporately. And isn't that full-orbed confession, complete confession? So often our confession is like a child's hurried, I'm sorry. You may think about when your children wrong someone. You say, you need to apologize. You need to confess your sin. They might quickly and willingly just throw out, I'm sorry, and go back to what they're doing. And if we have the energy and the wisdom, we'll say, hold on. That's not right. You need to say, I was wrong for what I did. I need your forgiveness. Please forgive me. And that kind of confession is what's demonstrated to us here in chapter 9. And don't we all struggle with that kind of confession? It's so much easier to give the vague, I'm sorry, or the vague, Father, I have sinned. But the particular confession, the specific confession, this is what I did that was wrong. I need forgiveness. Please forgive me. That is hard. we're shown here in Nehemiah 9 to be robust in our confession. We're also instructed to have that kind of history of sin, that there's a flow here, that there's a recounting of a history of sin, and by the way, that's our corporate history, that as we, the covenant people of God, we now get to claim that, that our fathers sin in that way. This isn't just about those in Nehemiah 9. This is our history. And as they claim that history, they turn. They say they recount their history, and then they begin to include their own sin. We have acted wickedly, in verse 33. We are in this mess because of our sins, verse 37. As we think about confession, We so often want to move straight to maybe repentance. I'm going to turn from the sin, but I'm not going to first acknowledge the sin. I've been struggling with a particular sin for some time and God, I'm ready to turn from it. And before I confess, I don't want to have to deal with that. I don't want to deal with the shame. And I'm just going to turn. I'm not going to acknowledge it. I'm not going to recount the history there. But Nehemiah 9 says, no, it's important. to acknowledge humbly our history of sin. In our testimony, our Reformed Presbyterian testimony, we're told that every man bears a degree of responsibility for the sins of groups in which he participates. When sins are corporate, repentance and confession should be corporate as well as individual. We don't often like to own the sin that we think we can blame on others. But we see here a model of corporate repentance. In church we need to be confessing corporately and not just be blaming others that came before us or those around us. We need to have that kind of humility. We need to confess corporately. We need to confess a history of sin. There are ways that we can begin to get more in that pattern. It is a difficult thing and it is counter to our intuition. We are defensive and we are quick to sweep under the rug. And so I want to encourage you to think about ways. How can I make confession more a part of my life? How can I be dedicated in confessing? Set aside time to pray to God particular sins. Thinking back about your day, where did I turn from God? Where was I sinning against Him in the things that I shouldn't have done and the things that I should have done? In my thoughts and in my words and in my deeds. And as you confess to God, we also, as we are sinning against those that we interact with, we ought to be confessing to them. Someone once counseled Evelyn and I that to get in the habit to really be intentional, start dramatically. and make a deal that five times a day you're going to confess something particularly to your spouse. And that's hard to do. Not because you're only sinning four times a day against your spouse, but because we do not want to admit our sin. And it feels uncomfortable and it feels weird and foreign, but it's so helpful to recognize the importance of confession. We're constantly sitting against one another. Just be quick to confess. Ask for forgiveness. And those small things so often build up. The little things, the quick response, the short temper, the selfishness. Confess quickly. I should also say that Evelyn was much better at that than I was, so I won't throw her under the bus. Confess regularly. Confess history of sin. Be humble. And as you do so, don't be focused on self. Don't be drawn inward. Don't be drawn to self-pity. Don't make everything about you, but interweave it with confession of God's greatness. As we think about where we're at in the history of God's people, this is one of the last recorded events in God's Word before the New Testament. We see in this prayer a hunger for the people, for a deliverance. There's a pattern of sin and faithfulness. Sin and faithfulness. Sin and God's faithfulness. Sin and forgiveness. As they recount their sin, they are trusting in God. And they also acknowledge, they say, God, we are still enslaved. even here in this time as they've been restored from exile, they're recognizing we have not fully been delivered. And they're speaking temporally there. They recognize they're still under these pagan kings, that they haven't been reestablished as a nation, that they don't have the freedoms they once experienced, the former glory of Solomon and David. They're nowhere near that. We're still enslaved. And as they confess that and recognize that and bring that before God, they're saying, we need a more permanent solution. they are looking for that final restoration, that permanent forgiveness. For us who are looking at this event from this side of the cross, we know that what's coming next in the story of God's Word, that chronologically what's recorded next is the birth of Christ and the promises of that permanent forgiveness. that permanent restoration. There won't be a wondering. Is this pattern of stiff-necked people, and then chastisement, and then God's faithfulness, is that going to go on forever? We know that Christ comes, that Christ is what makes this prayer of confession here in Nehemiah 9 for those waiting for Him effective. that the forgiveness that's seen in the faithfulness of God and His graciousness towards Him is all rooted in and fulfilled by Christ, made possible by His work. As we read this morning, that the law was not abolished, that the sin of God's people was not just forgotten, but it was dealt with. As we confess our sin, we look to that mediator of the covenant of grace Christ Himself. We know that He was perfectly faithful on our behalf. That we can confess knowing that our salvation is not dependent on ourselves. That we can confess quickly because we can live in light of the Gospel. That we do not proclaim a faith that we need to look like good people that never sin. But we can admit our sin. We can record it. We can proclaim it. we can confess because Christ came. He accomplished what we never could in fulfilling the law and the requirements of the law before a holy God. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and chastened to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. May we confess the faithfulness of God, confess that Christ has come, that He was that climax in the fulfillment of those covenants of grace demonstrated throughout the history of God's people, that one covenant of promise. And as we confess God's faithfulness, may we continue to admit and recognize our unfaithfulness and seek forgiveness and restoration with God. Let's pray to that end. Father in Heaven, we thank You for Your Word. We thank You for how You've preserved the history of Your people and that you are at the center. That you are preserving your people throughout history and we can see your faithfulness and we can be reminded that no matter the greatness of the sin, the idolatry, the idols that were made, the blasphemy, you remained faithful and you preserved a remnant. And Father, for all of us who are in Christ, our hope is in that fact, that that is your character. that that is your promise, that though we will sin, that you remain faithful. Father, help us to rest in your steadfast love, and may the fruit of our resting in you be quick confession, robust confession. Father, we pray that we would be a church marked by those who are genuine in life, quick to admit our weaknesses, quick to confess the faithfulness of God. Father, we pray that you would do this in us, for we so often fail. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.