The Village Church
The Cycle of Rebellion and Faithfulness - Audio
Open them, your Bibles, open them to near my chapter nine. Last week, we saw Israel's joy in the Lord being renewed through worship and through the reading of God's Word. Again, this took place on the first day of the seventh month during the Feast of Trumpets. We also saw the people celebrate the Feast of Boots in this month, too. And the Feast of Boots, it was celebrated to highlight God's deliverance of Israel from Egypt. So every year in the first month, they would celebrate God delivering them from Egypt. Now, there was one more feast, one more celebration that was supposed to take place during the seventh month, and it's not mentioned here. Do you know what the name of that feast is? Do you remember? It was the Day of Atonement, the Day of Atonement. It was celebrated on the 10th day of the seventh month, and the Day of Atonement was a time for the people to humble themselves before the Lord. It was a time of mercy. It was a time of redemption, a time of forgiveness. It was a time of repentance. It was a time when the high priest was to go and make Atonement for the sins of the people through sacrifice. And this day, this very important feast was not mentioned in chapter eight as being observed, or it could not have just been recorded. But you would think an important feast of this, if it was observed, they would have said so. One author says, "The spirit of the Day of Atonement has been poured out in what happens on the 24th day of the seventh month." And what happened on the 24th day of the seventh month is shown right here near my chapter nine. On the 24th day of the seventh month, the people assembled together, they came together again, they assembled together again for worship. This time with fasting, with sathcloth, and dirt on their heads. What does that represent? It represents humility. It represents mourning and weeping. And like on the first day, they worshiped the Lord. They read the God's word again. And for the first time, we see the people confessing their sins before the Lord. The text says, "The people confess their sins and the iniquities of their fathers." This was repentance. And like worship, and like God's word, repentance renewed their joy in the Lord. And this is seen in near my chapter nine through this long prayer, this long prayer that Rich and Aggie just read, this long prayer, it recounts the historical relational cycle that existed between the Lord God and the people of Israel. It was a relational cycle. And it was a cycle that had faithfulness in it. Forgiveness was there, rebellion was there, and repentance was there. Let us pray. Father God, as we come before your word this morning, we pray that your spirit will once again come, that he will take the preached word and apply it to the hearts of your people, for which I'm one of. He needs to apply it to my heart as well. He needs to come and make you glorified. Come and show us our need. Come and show us how much you care about us in spite of us. We need a word. We need truth. We need the gospel in your word to speak into every crack and area of our life. It needs to be the light that shines in our darkness, while your word. So bring it to us, the Christ in my prayer, amen. As I said, this prayer here in near my chapter nine, it recounts the relational cycle, relational cycle that existed between the Lord God and the people of Israel. This relational cycle begins with God's faithfulness, and it eventually ends with the repentance of his people. And so the prayer begins with God's past faithfulness and goodness to Israel. Look at verses six through eight of chapter nine. It says, "You are the Lord, you alone. You made the 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. You preserve all of them, and the hosts of heaven worships you." You see, this prayer recounts God's faithfulness as his role as creator. His past faithfulness as a creator. In a sense, this prayer, it takes us back to the book of Genesis. In the real sense, this whole prayer goes through the older books of the Old Testament. It's what it really does, and how God constantly was faithful to the people and how the people constantly rebel. And so here it takes us back to the very beginning. What tells us of God's creating works. He created the heavens and the earth by the word of his power. He created everything in the space of six days on the seventh day he rested. During those six days of creation, there were three things that he specifically gave names to. And that was the heavens, that was the earth, and that was the seas. The things, the same things that I mentioned here, mentioned in that created order. You made the heavens with all the hosts, the earth, and all that is on it. The seas, and all that is in them. The Yahweh, the creator of all things, is what you are. This is what our God is. In this verse, in verse, this verse here, it's not just praising him for being our universal creator, but it's praising him for being a faithful creator. Who does what through his creation? He preserves it. We don't preserve ourselves, do we? Not even the pagan preserves himself. He too is still preserved by God, the God he does not worship. That's how bad our God is, in a good way, when he was a bad in a good way. He preserves even the pagan. 'Cause he is that pagan's creator. He sustains his creation. He keeps all the hosts of heaven, all that is on the earth, and all that is in the sea, every living thing, he preserves, every living thing. He preserves. He is a universal creator. He's faithful to preserve his creation. Not just his creation, but he's also faithful to his covenant in particular. Well, you mean by covenant, Alex? You see, the Lord God had a covenant relationship with the people of Israel. And this covenant relationship was rooted in the covenant that the Lord God cut with Abraham. And he just didn't cut a covenant with Abraham, but he initiated this covenant relationship with Abraham. He initiated it. He called Abraham to go, to get up, to move. You are the Lord, the God who chose Abraham and brought him out of his pagan land and gave him the name Abraham. You see, in that covenant relationship, the Lord God promised Abrahams all spring and land. I'm gonna give you descendants. Many descendants are gonna come from you and are gonna give you a promised land. The His people, Abraham's descendants, were going to inherit this promised land. And when the Lord cut this covenant with Abraham, Abraham asked the Lord one question, how am I to know that I shall possess it? This is where Abraham asked the Lord God. How am I to know, Lord, that I am to possess this land? I'm gonna read to you what the Lord told Abraham in Genesis chapter 15, well, if I can get there. In Genesis chapter 15, ( Pause ) Beginning in verse eight. But he Abraham said, oh Lord, how am I to know that I shall possess it? The Lord said to him, bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turta dove and a young pigeon. And he brought all of these, cut them into half, and lay each over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. And when the birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abraham drove them away. And as the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abraham. And he began, he and behold, dread for him, and great darkness fell upon him. And the Lord said to Abraham, no for certain that your offspring was so journey in the land that it's not theirs, it will be servants there. They will be afflicted for 400 years. But I would bring judgment on the nation that they serve. And now, at the worst, they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you should go to your father's in peace. And you should be buried in a good old age. And you should come back here, and they should come back here in the fourth generation, in four generations, for the iniquities of the Ammonites is not yet complete. When the sun had gone down, it was dark, and behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. What's the significance of that? When the sun had gone down, and it was dark, and behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. Do you know the significance of that? Usually, when a people cut a covenant in an Old Testament, they would have this ritual where they would cut up the animal pieces. And each person in the covenant would walk between those pieces. And what that is saying is that if I don't own up to my end of the covenant, what you did to these animals happened to me, that I may be cut up into pieces. Who walked between the pieces and the covenant between Yahweh and Abraham? God. And what was God saying to Abraham? If I don't fulfill my covenant promises to you, may I, the Lord God, be cut up into pieces like these animals here. So the Lord said, I'm going to do it. I'm going to be faithful to my promises to you. And Abraham didn't walk through, because Abraham couldn't keep the covenant. But the Lord could. So the Lord goes through the pieces. So he kept his covenant, for he is righteous. He is faithful to his covenant. He always keeps his promises. And in beginning in verse 9 on the Amiah, verse 9 on the Amiah 9, they begin to list off all these examples of how the Lord was faithful to this promise. The first one is seen here in verse 9. It says, where am I? These small print bibles are killing, man. OK, I need to get a big Bible. Verse 9 says, you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the ready sea. You see, the first thing he did to show his faith in it to the covenant was redemption for Israel from Egypt. He saved them. He brought them out of their slavery. That's one example of him being faithful to the covenant with Abraham. He brought them out of the houses of slavery through Moses. He brought them out. And what he did, that he showed all those signs, all those plagues. He made his name great in Egypt. He made a reputation for himself in Egypt. All these great wonders he performed for the people. And he brought them out. He showed himself to be Yahweh Elohim, to be the Lord God, whose faithful to his covenant. And so when they came out of Egypt, they came out with great possessions. They did. And when he brought them out, he also told them, it wasn't because you were more than number the people that he set his love on them and chose them. For they were the fears of all people. But it was because the Lord loved them. And the Lord was keeping his oath that he swore to their fathers, that he would bring them out of the land of slavery and bring them to the promised land. He is faithful. Hasn't he redeemed you for certain things? Not just at the important salvation, after salvation, he still delivers his people from the things they flipped upon themselves, usually. Am I the only one who has a testimony of that? Redemption from Egypt, redemption from slavery. The second thing he did is that he gave them guidance in the wilderness. It says here that when they were in the wilderness, they had a cloud that led them by day, and a pillar of fire that led them by night. What is that? The Lord has given guidance to those people that they're not lost in the wilderness. He is there with them even there. Give them guidance. In the verses 13 and 14, he gives them his word. Good statutes, good commandments, good laws. What's the purpose of that? He gives instruction to his people. Instruction for how to live as the people of God. He gave that to them. The 10 commandments at Mount Sinai. All that stuff he gave them for the benefit of the people. The law that the Lord gave to Moses was to benefit the whole community. And fourthly, he gave them provision in the wilderness. So how did he give them provision? In verse 15, it says he gave them manna from heaven. Manna from heaven, right? The stuff that was on the ground that they ate every day. The law provided them provision for their hunger. And when there was thirsty, he gave them water from the rock. They were without nothing. He provided everything, everything. Every given moment, he was there to meet their need. Redemption, guidance, instruction, provision. And finally, he gave them the blessing of the promised land. The promised land. That's the fifth example of him being faithful to the covenant promise. He told them to go in, take possession of the land. And he blessed the efforts. Now, a couple of generations passed before they actually went there. But still, when they went in to take the land, he blessed the efforts. As Aggie read, he gave them kingdoms and peoples. He made them strong. He made them into a great nation. He subdued before them all the people of the land. He kept this promise. And when they got into the promised land, it says they ate and refilled and became fat and delight themselves in God's great goodness. The Lord, faithful, all these things here present us with a history of God's faithfulness to the people of Israel, a history of it. Redemption, guidance, instruction, provision, and blessings. And the people in Nehemiah's time, they were reflecting on this history, looking back and saying, look how good God has been to us as a people, to our fathers, and they're praising him for that. And this helped them to see that what God did in history on behalf of his people, he does presently on behalf of his people. Right? He still does the same thing today, faithfulness. Imagine your life, the life that you live in. Imagine it as a novel, a book that's still being written, a novel, all of our life as a novel. And you've got to see that every completed chapter, every page that has been written is inked in God's faithfulness over you. Do you see that? Your life is inked in his faithfulness. And sometimes you just got to go back through the chapters and see, yes. I remember that time he provided. I remember that redemption, yes, I remember. I remember 10 years ago when I was struggling with this, but my marriage was almost falling apart here and God showed himself faithful. We all have that. How often do we go back and remember what God has done for you? Because he's done great things for all of us. And sometimes we need to go back to remind ourselves, to refresh our memory of what he has done for us. Can you see it? Do you see it? Or are you blind to it? You see, it's a history of faithfulness. We have it. The people of Israel, he'll have it. And the Jews here near Maya were reminding themselves and praising God for his faithfulness to their fathers, despite how much their fathers rebelled against the Lord. So they were praising God and remembering his faithfulness, despite how much their fathers rebelled. So this prayer not only recounts God's faithfulness, but it recounts the rebellion of God's people. It shows us of history of faithfulness in the midst of a history of rebellion. He's not saying he's been faithful to good people. He's been faithful to rebellious people. That's what they're showing us here. Faithful to rebellious people. He said, well, how did Israel rebelled? In verses 6 to 15, it talks about how faithful God was. Then when you get to verse 17, you see, but that shouldn't know something bad is getting ready to be said there. God's been faithful, but, but, but what the people would build. But they and our fathers at the arrogant, stiff their necks and did not obey your commands. In light of all that you've done, in light of all your redemption, in light of all your provisions, in light of all your guidance, in light of all your good word, in light of all your blessings, they still rebelled in light of how good you've been to them. And if you know anything about Israel history, you know they were rebellious people at every turn or every corner. What happened when he delivered them from Egypt? As soon as they got in the wilderness, what happened? They started complaining, oh, Moses, you balls out here to die. Oh, I wish we could go back to Egypt. They wanted to go back to their slavery. Oh, I want to go back to Egypt, Moses. You balls out here to die. God doesn't love us. Don't forget they witnessed all the miracles he did in Egypt. And by the time they got into the wilderness, they already forgot it. For God His faithfulness, just like us, just like you and I, that's what the text says, they forgot the wonders that God did among them. We forget, we forget those wonders. We forget that past faithfulness. And at Mount Sinai, they also persuaded Aaron to help them to make a golden calf. And they worshipped that. They actually said, this is the God that delivered us from Egypt. A creating to idol where the Lord God had done for them. Again, rebellion. And when they became a great kingdom, when they went into the Promised Land, what happened? They rebelled them all. Oh, we want to be like the other nations. We want to have our own king, God. We don't want just you to be our king. We want our own king. And he gave it to them. He gave them that kingdom. And so they constantly fail, constantly rebel. You see, you get the sense if you're looking at these present day Jews and near my time, you're like, why are they airing up their fathers dirty laundry? I mean, they don't really care about their fathers here. I mean, they're talking about how messed up they are. I mean, they're just not holding anything back. Our fathers rebel. And they're just airing it all out here. They've been honest about their history. And how their people were always prone to warn them from their God. And we all are too. You see, many families, my family too, people groups, churches, denominations, and any organization. We only like to remember one side of our history, don't we? We only like to focus on one particular side of our history. I don't care what church you are or what denomination or what business. We always like to focus on that side of history that puts us in the best light possible. That's the side we write about, that's the side that's on our website. That's the side we share with people. But any side that casts darkness on that light, well, we try to hide that as much as possible. Families call them family secrets. That's what families call them, they're family secrets that only certain people know about. And so we hide it. Took it away, deep in some closet, never to be spoken of ever again. I was at this church meeting some time ago, this guest speaker gave a short presentation about the history of his denomination that he's a part of. And he went on and on and on about how great it was, on and on about how it has always stood up for biblical truth. On and on about how basically how good it was. I was at this meeting mad because I knew there was another side of the denomination history that he's not even talking about. Just totally just skipping over. It was the side that was not so good. The side that was not so great. The times when the denomination did nothing when it should have. The time when the denomination hid behind the Bible instead of living out the Bible. You see, everyone, every church, every denomination, let's get there at this. I say we need to put everything out on the table, put out the dirt, just like the Jews did here in this prayer. What makes God's faithfulness so amazing is that he preserves us in spite of us. That's what makes it so amazing. Not how good we were historically, not how much we made all the right decisions, but how much we failed and yet God still preserved us and brought us to where we are. That's the context of history. That's what history teaches us and we fail to remember that. That is God's history, not that we were so good, not that we stood up on biblical principles. That's why the nomination is what it is. No, God preserved us in spite of us because we all have rebelled us some form of fashion. We all have, he's been faithful and we have been rebels. That's what history teaches us. He's faithful with rebels, but in the midst of all that, we also know that he is faithful and forgiving to those rebels, which we're all are. Verse 17 says, "You are God ready to forgive." Think about that. You are God ready to forgive, gracious, merciful, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love. The picture that should come to your mind here is a kid in a candy store. You just can't wait to get that candy. God can't wait to forgive you by these people. He wants to forgive you. He's ready to forgive you. And when the people send him outside now, did he forsake them? Did he cast them to the side and go out and find another group of people to love? The word says here, "You and your great mercy did not forsake them." You sustain them in the wilderness for 40 years. They were without want, they were without need. You continue to guide them. You continue to provide for them. You continue to sustain them in the midst of their rebellion. You didn't stop being your dad. Just like when Madison traced the disobedience to me, "They don't stop being my child." They don't stop. And those who have been saved by Jesus, brought with to the Father, your sins now no longer cash you away from your Father, your forgiveness through Christ. That's the relational cycle, faithfulness, rebellion, forgiveness that He gives to all of us. Now, does this mean that people here didn't have any consequences for their sins? Does it mean they didn't have any type of judgments? Does this mean God is not just in holy? No, He's just in holy, and the people did have consequences. There was judgments, and that's what verses 26 to 31. You see some of those judgments, and a lot of it was whenever they sinned against God, He gave them into the hands of their enemies. Oh, you see that several times in those verses here, they sin, He gives them into the hands of their enemies. There was consequences. There was judgments. But here's the thing about those consequences and judgments, the purpose of those things was to correct conviction in the people, why, so that they can repent, so they can see the arrow of their ways and repent. Lord, I've sinned against you, forgive me, and every time here you see that the people repented, it says they cried out to the Lord God, and the Lord of God extended forgiveness to them. And there's a time, and there's a cycle, Israel was in this cycle, and we're in this cycle too. There's a relational cycle for the faithfulness, rebellion, repentance, forgiveness. That's the cycle for the rest of your life. God is always faithful and forgiven. You're always rebelling and repenting. I mean, that's it, I mean, that's the cycle. It ain't ever going to change on this side of glory, it ain't ever going to change. Where you accept it, where I accept it. See, repentance renews our joy in the Lord, because we know He is a God who's ready to forgive them. Whenever we repent, we're going to get forgiveness, and that renews you. If you're not repenting to a goddess, that she's like, "Well, I don't know if you're going to forgive me today." Well, maybe He will, well, I don't know Him, this sin may be too big, there is no sin that He will not forgive you of. The question is, do you want forgiveness? It says here, "Well, again, I wish I had a bigger print Bible." Okay, basically it says here that when, okay, thank you, yeah! You know what? I love you, Mark. So when the people, when God, it says that God sent saviors to deliver the people of Israel whenever they repented of that sin. And the thing is, today you don't need saviors, it's just one, it's just one. And that's the question, do you want forgiveness? Do you want that internal life? Do you want that grace? Do you want that mercy? Because there, y'all heard me say this before, there is no other way in which you can end the glory. And that's only through Jesus, only through Jesus, you ain't ever going to be good enough, you ain't ever going to be, to fulfill the perfections of the law, you can't do it, none of us can. And so that one savior, Jesus, as you all know, live the life, you couldn't live, die out of death, we all should die so that we can have life. And the question is, do you want it? Do you have it? Because it's freely available to you. And here's the thing, you don't have to wait to get your life in line. I hear a lot of people say, "Well, I got to wait till I get things straight before I come to church and surrender." We surrender all because we need it, because we need that. You ain't ever going to be in a place where you're going to be totally free from things in your life, ever, we ain't ever going to be that free. We come to Jesus because we can't be free, because we need grace, and He will not turn you away. I don't care how messed up you think you are, He loves sinners, He's get it to forgive you. Let us pray. Father God, I do ask that you will continue to show us just how amazing your grace is, and help us to embrace this relational cycle that we all have in our relationship with you. That you're faithful, we rebel, we repent, you forgive, and that's it Father. And we sometimes frustrated by that because we want to be better, we don't want to deal with certain sins anymore, but Christ died for those sins that beat us up every day. That's why He died. Help us not to bear them no more. Help us to know that all those things have been nailed to the cross, Father. Nailed to the cross, and we pray, O Spirit, that you will come and make those things a reality in our hearts and our life. Help us to understand the gospel more. Help us to repent more than we do instead of sacrificing ourselves and trying to be our own Savior. Help us to repent, Lord, more and find joy in it, because we know we're repenting to a God who's going to forgive us. He's not going to hold it over us like a bad dad would do for those kids. You know, like the Father and the Prodigal Son story, your arms, Father, are wide open. Every time we go to the far country, you're there waiting for us to repent and come home and cross them up for it, amen. (somber music)