The Village Church
Covenant Prayer - Audio
If you have your baubles, please open them to Nehemiah. We want to continue looking now a study of Nehemiah. Some years ago, I read an article in the Lifestyle section of a local newspaper. It was an article about women who are now seeking prenuptial agreements with their partners before they get married. As we all know, we all know what a prenuptial agreement is. It's an agreement between a couple before marriage concerning the ownership of their property. The things that they owned before they actually got into the marriage. In this article, it tells the story about a woman named Sarah and her boyfriend how they came to such an agreement. She asked her boyfriend over dinner, "You're open to a prenupt, right?" Now the boyfriend was like, "Call off guard by that question." But he said, "I soon realized that a prenuptial agreement would protect my house, too." Sarah tells the reporter, "It's not that I plan to get a divorce, it's not that I plan to separate from my husband, but I have to protect myself and my daughter." A prenuptial agreement is all about self-protection for the couples who enter into them. Self-protection against what? The uncertainties of a marriage relationship working out. Because in today's world, you just never know, right? Things happen. People change, things change, marriages end all the time. That's the reality. Now I'm not an advocate for a prenuptial agreement, so I'm not going to ever tell a person to get into one. But people do, and they get in them because they feel like they got to protect themselves. It's their safety net. Just in case safety net, if the marriage doesn't work out, that's something that will catch me with all things fall apart. You see, we can never escape the uncertainties in our human relationships. You do realize that, right? They're always going to be uncertainties. None of us can stay without 100% of a doubt that, "Yes, my marriage is going to work out. It's going to work out." I honestly can say that, with 100% certainty, can we really work at it, we pray about it, we hope that it does, because we know things change, situations happen. There's only one relationship in all creation that we can say with 100% certainty that it will last forever. It's a relationship where you don't even have to think about having a self-protecting prenup to serve as a safety net if it falls apart, because this relationship will not fall apart. We all know what relationship that is. It's the one with Christ, the one with Jesus, and when you receive Him in safe and faith, you will actually enter into a personal relationship with Him, and He does not ask you if you open to a prenup when you enter into a relationship with Him, and neither do you ask Him that question. Why? Because our relationship with Him is still in His blood, His sacrificial blood, and because of that, it never ends in divorce, ever. He won't let it. Where Jesus Himself says in John 6, "All that the Father gives me come to me," not just something, "All that the Father gives me come to me, and whoever comes to me, I will never cast out." Never cast out, for I have come down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of Him who sent me, and this is the will of Him who sent me that I shall lose nothing of all that He has given me, that I shall lose none of them that He has given me, but raise it up on the last day, for this is the will of my Father, that whoever looks on the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life, and I will raise Him up on the last day. That's why I went in in a divorce, because of Jesus. In this relationship that we have with Christ, if you know Him, it's a covenant relationship, a covenant relationship sealed in His blood, and this covenant relationship has its roots in the covenant relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel. There's a connection, and it's this covenant relationship that Nehemiah prays about in his prayer to the Lord God of heaven. Remember, it's four months of him praying to God before he meets with the king, four months of him crying out, and when you read this prayer that I'm going to read, when you look at it, you can see that Nehemiah had great insight into the Old Testament. He knew about the covenant relationship between God and His people. The words here can be found in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You can see those books through this prayer, and so if you have your bibles, open them to Nehemiah chapter 1 beginning in verse 5. I said to the Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love Him and keep His commandments. Let your every attentive, your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you night and day for the people of Israel, your servants, confessing their sins which we have sinned against you, even I am my father's house of sin. We have acted very correctly against you and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, the rules that you commanded your servant Moses. Remember the word you commanded your servant Moses saying, "If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though you are dispersed under the far disguise, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen to make my name dwell. They are your servants, your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand." Amen? Please pray with me. Lord, as we come to the preaching of your word, I pray that your Spirit Father will come and He will come and work in our hearts and take what is preached and apply it to our hearts and our lives. He is the one Lord who helps us to understand Scripture. We don't do it apart from Him. He has a vital role in our life, and so I pray Him down, I pray Him to move, I pray Him to bring glory to your name, Father, that your word would meet us where we are and all of us would hear the things that we need to hear so that we can be encouraged so that we will be strengthened so that we may even be convicted so that we may repent. So wherever we are, whatever we're dealing with, let your word meet us there this morning, Christ in my prayer, amen. Covenant relationship. This is what Nehemiah prays about, "And off the back, this covenant relationship, there are no prenuptials in the covenant relationship," so go ahead and take that off the table. The covenant relationship does have three things. There are covenant responsibilities, covenant consequences, and covenant promises in the covenant relationship. So the first thing we want to look at are the covenant responsibilities. This is singing Nehemiah's prayer. He said, "I said to the Lord God of heaven, the great and awesome God who keeps covenant and staff as love, but those who love him, and keep his commandments," that your ill be attentive, your eyes open to hear the prayer of your servant that I pray before you night and day for the people of Israel. Nehemiah is beseeching the Lord. It's like you're saying, "I beseech thee, Yahweh, of heaven." And when you beseech something, you have a strong urgency. You do it with passion, because I need an answer, Lord. This is Nehemiah displaying passion because he just learned about what the conditions that his people are living in, horrible conditions, the city's broken down, the people are in great trouble, great trouble, and shame, and he says, "I beseech thee, Yahweh, of heaven, great and awesome God. Yahweh, and knowledge is the fact that Yahweh is the God of heaven." We talked about that phrase last week. He is the one who is controlling all things, sovereignly controlling all things. And here, Nehemiah offers praises to him, "Great, awesome, Yahweh." Awesome here is awe-spiring, it's fearful, it's like reverence for God, praising God for his character, for who he is, not always for what he does, for who he is as God. So what is Nehemiah's petitioning the Lord for? He says in verse 6, "Let your ear be attentive, your eyes open, to hear the prayer of your servant that I now pray before you night and day for the people of Israel, your servants." He wants to be heard. This is what he's beseeching the Lord for. Even before he gets into any petition or request, "Lord, I want you to be heard. Will you hear me? Lord, I want your attention, let your ear be attentive, your eyes open, to hear your servant as he intercedes for the people." Remember, he's praying this prayer for several months now, several months he's beseeching the Lord for this, waiting on the Lord to make a way, to move. He shows dependency, dependency on him, not just his gifts, not just what he can do, but he needed the Lord to make a way. This also shows humility that he has before the Lord, acknowledging the fact that Yahweh is the one that has the power to get things done. Because as I preached a couple of weeks ago, remember, Nehemiah could not just quit his job and go to Jerusalem, he didn't have that type of job. The king had to give him permission to go, and if the king didn't grant permission for him to go, he was not going anywhere. I don't care how much he wanted to go, so that he couldn't change the king's heart. His God had to change his heart, depending upon Yahweh, to do the impossible, because nothing is impossible with God, right, right. Now in the middle of Nehemiah beseeching the Lord and petitioning the Lord, there are two phrases that speak about the covenant relationship between Yahweh and His God. You're in verse 5, "Great and awesome God who keeps covenant and staff as love with those who love him and keep his commandments." Those two phrases are talking about covenant responsibilities for those who are in the covenant. Yahweh's responsibility, the people's responsibility. Now these words are not talking about the conditions of entering into the covenant. They're not saying you've got to do this to get into the covenant, it's saying once you're in the covenant, there's all the expectations. You see the difference? It's not talking about doing things to get into the relationship. It's saying once you're in the relationship, these are your expectations. There's a difference. Once I am in the covenant with Yahweh, what does he now expect of me? That's what he's talking about. Here's how you should understand these. Yahweh, God of heaven, "Great and awesome God who continues preserving the covenant, who continues staff as love with those who continue loving him and observing his commandments." It's the Lord's responsibility to continue to preserve the covenant and to preserve something means you maintain it, you guard it, you keep it safe, you keep it alive, you prevent it from falling apart, that's what it means to preserve. You keep it safe from harm, and Yahweh does this with his covenant people, preserving, keeping safe, guarding that relationship, his faithfulness. One commentator says, "The Lord is fundamentally disposed to be faithful to the promises to Israel which he began with the promise to Abraham, is part of his character to be faithful, is part of who he is to remain faithful. Because if the Lord did not preserve the covenant, would the covenant stand, would it? If it's up to us to preserve it, no, it would not stand if it's left to us. So he has his responsibility to keep the covenant there. So we can say with a hundred percent certainty that a covenant relationship with Yahweh withstands because it flows out of who he is, he will remain faithful to that covenant. Then Nehemiah goes on to say that the Lord does this for those who continue to love him and observe his commandments. Now who are the ones that will have a desire to do such a thing as to love Yahweh and to observe his word, is it just anyone, any group of people? What about King Oraerxes? Is he talking about him? Is he the one who will love Yahweh and keep his commandments? Is it a pagan god? Will a pagan god have a desire, a pagan rush of a hell of a desire for that? Will the unbeliever have a desire to love God and to observe his word? No. They were not. Why? Because they don't know him, that's why. So he's talking about a particular group of people, not just anybody, God's expectations for his people is that they will love him and live for him. Only those who have a relationship with him will have a desire to do that, right? Do you agree? Do you have a desire to love God and to read his word? You should if you know him. And here's the thing, God's expectations for Israel is that they will live like the people of God, not like the pagans. That was his expectation of him because my name has been placed upon you where you reflect that in the way that you live. You see, he's calling them to faithfulness because he's faithful. Whatever, their faithfulness is a response to what he's already done for them and the same is for us. God calls us to faithfulness because he's faithful, it's never vice versa. Everything we do is always a response to what he's already done. All good parents set boundaries for their kids, every good parent, especially when they're younger, you set their bad time, they don't, you filter what they can watch on TV and what music they can listen to, they don't. You're responsible for their well-being, making sure they have all the things that they need, clothing, food, the medical attention, the education, whatever, you provide it. Now during those times when they break the rules and overstep the boundaries, do you stop being the parent? Do you stop loving them? Do you stop taking care of them? Good parents don't know, but you're doing forced consequences, right? As a parent, you can sit down, talk to your child about what's expected of them, what's going to be the consequence if they do certain things, and sometimes you can talk to them you think they're getting it, then you turn around and you catch them doing the very thing you just talked about. And he's like my goodness, we just went over this, and you said you understood it, but they do it anyway, they're no different than us, I mean how many times do you read God's Word? And he says if you do this, this is going to happen, then you do it anyway, and then you're surprised when that happens. We are constantly overstepping the boundaries of God's Word. Even when we read it clearly, that it says when you do there are some things that's going to happen, certain consequences, and this is constantly what Israel had to deal with. God told them constantly, when you did this, this would be the consequence. In the covenant relationship with them, there was blessings for being faithful, curses for being unfaithful, and they knew this, and yet they constantly overstepped the boundaries. He and Maya understood fully about this nature of the covenant relationship between God and his people. That's why he begins his prayer with confession, because he knew that in this covenant relationship it was between a God who was always faithful and the people who were not, and so he's driven to confession. What does he say? Confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you, even I and my father's house have sinned, we have acted very correctly against you, have not kept the commandments and the statutes and the rules that you have commanded your servant Moses. The current relationship that God has with his people is not one of equals, is one of a God who is holy, perfect, faithful all the time, and of people who are unfaithful. So if you think that God didn't know what he was getting into, then you don't really understand the Bible, he knew completely what he was getting into. He tells the people to do the wrong to me, "It wasn't because you were righteous and great that I chose you, you are disturbing people, but yet I love you anyway, because of the covenant I made with your forefathers, I choose to love you." So Nehemiah is driven to confession, "I confess the sins of Israel, which we have sinned against you." And keep in mind, Nehemiah was not born, he was not even born when the people went into that sound. So it wasn't his fault, his sin that contributed to the condition that they were in, it was his forefathers. He used to be suffering the consequences of it, but yet he's not bitter toward them in his prayer. He's not saying shame on them, look at what they did, look at the pain they have caused. No, he identifies with them here in their sin, in what they did wrong. I confess the sins of Israel, which we, not they, which we have sinned. He's aware of his own brokenness, of his own sins, the repents of his sins, take responsibility for them, even I, my father's house, have sinned against you, Yahweh." It's like he's saying, "How can I throw stones at them when I, myself, is not without sin in my life? How can I even pick up a stone and throw it?" And when I look at my heart, I have sinned there as well. "Lord, I'm just like them. Lord, I'm one of them, an Israelite, an Israelite with issues, man." That's what he's saying. That's what you see here. He can't stand there in his self-righteousness because he's just as guilty. He might not have done what they've done, but he's done something just like us. You might not do the things your neighbor do, but you do something, right? You fall short, in some ways, what's the sin that the people committed. Nehemiah said, "We have acted very comfortably against you, have not kept the commandments, the statutes, the rules that you have commanded your servant Moses." He repents to the fact that the people have not loved God, that have not kept His Word, that have not lived like the people of God she lived, and so he repents. They have fallen short, and so they have suffered the consequences of the covenant, the cause last week, we talked about Nehemiah relating to the people, his people with compassion, and you know by him having awareness of his own sin and brokenness, that helps him to relate as well because it helps him to see that he and them are on the same level. On the same level, a friend of mine, Carl Ellis, he preached it before, he once said, "You will never reach out to people that you think you're better than," because you think they are beneath you, you're not going to stoop down to that level. You will never reach out to people that you think you're better than. Having awareness of your own sin and brokenness helps you not to go to that place of making that you're better. I'm not better, I'm one of them. You know what I love about the gospel? It does not discriminate, it's not prejudice, it does not show favoritism, it says you all are messed up. And the gospel is an equal opportunist when it comes to revealing sin, it reveals sin in all of us, not just some of us. It says you are all on the same level, the same plan field, it's level, everybody's messed up. Everybody has issues, who has issues? And if you don't think you have issues, that's the issue, that's the issue. So none of us have loved Jesus perfectly this week, nor have we perfectly followed His word. Many of us are even now living with the consequences of some sin in our life. What do you do? What do you do with the consequences? What do you do with the issues in your life? We do what Nehemiah does, He let them drive Him to repentance. That's what they did, they drove Him to the sweetness of repentance. I usually don't read the business section in the newspaper, but last week something led me to, and I came across an article in the Huntsville Times, it was an article about a new app for the Apple's iPhone iPad called Confession, a Roman Catholic app. And the article says this application aim is to help Roman Catholics get back into the professional booths while they keep track to their sins, one commandment at a time. And so how the applications work, it lists out all the 10 commandments and have different questions under each commandment. And whatever sin you commit that week, you check it, you check it, and you take that with you into the professional booth. It says, one question is like, have I wished evil upon another person or whatever, have I committed adultery or whatever? This process is called the examination of conscience that weren't undergoing before confession. See, I don't believe, again, I don't believe in keeping the list of your sins, but I do believe in specific repentance, not the general repentance, that when you go before the Lord and you go before Him with specific things that you're seeking repentance of, and repentance should be seen again as a gift, not a taskmaster whose aim is to beat you down with your failures and issues. If you see it as a gift, then you won't have to go spend $1.99 on the app to get you to repent. You freely go, you freely do it, it will be a delight. Do you know why it's a delight? Do you know why it should be sweet? Here's why. In our covenant relationship with Yahweh, the Lord, there are covenant responsibilities to love Him and to live for Him, but there's also covenant consequences for our sins, but also our covenant promise. You know the covenant promises that the Lord will never withhold forgiveness and mercy to His repentant people. That's a promise. That is what makes repentance under the light, sweet, water to the soul. We can be certain without our doubt that our God will always and forever continue to show mercy, no matter what we have done. So you know, I'm always looking for illustration, that's what you do as a pastor. And you know, Mike Vick was supposed to appear on the Oprah show this upcoming week and he bells out. And so I was looking for articles, the reason why he felt why he's not going to come on the show. And so I went to Oprah's website to see, you know, what some of the comments and some of the people, some of the things they said about him, and he did a horrible thing, but some of the things that people were saying was like, "I can never forgive this person for what they're doing." He's the lowest of all people. Do not, I will never forgive him. Thank God that they're not my God. The man who pours in the tree down in Auburn, people are sending their threats to his family. Now, talking about I can never forgive him for what he's done. Thank God that they're not my God, that God, our God, unlike man, is ready to forgive. He does not withhold forgiveness like we do. Now don't get self-righteous because you will withhold just forgiveness as well. We all do. It depends upon what it is that you value the most, because if I step on that, it's going to take you a long time to forgive me. So don't get self-righteous now because you have your lines drawn in the sand that someone crosses over it. I'm not going to forgive that. It's going to take me a long time, so don't get self-righteous. So our God is a God ready to forgive. Covenant promise, Nehemiah says, "Remember the word you command your servant Moses, saying, if you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples. But if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, throw you an outcast in the other most parts of heaven, from there I will gather you and bring you to the place that I have chosen to make my name dwell. There you are, your people, your servants, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand." These words that are calling the Lord to remember what He spoke to Moses during the very early days of the Israelites of the people, we talked about some of this in Sunday school. The outfit of the Lord delivered them from Egypt. These are the words He spoke to them. These words came to Moses in Leviticus and Deuteronomy. You can read them there and think about this. These words were spoken to them before they were a people, before there was a kingdom, before there was the division of the kingdom. They were nomads in the wilderness when the Lord spoke these words to them from Moses. They were nomads just being delivered from Egypt. But generations later, the exile did happen. They did scatter them, right? The people were scattered in Babylon for their unfaithfulness. And the Lord told Moses what was going to happen. He gave a covenant promise also that He would bring them back to the land, hear their land. And as you know, the people were already back in Jerusalem now, even before nearby goals. So the restoration process has already started, there has already begun, but the land was still unsecure. The wall was not built yet. And what you've got to understand is that the Lord God cares about our spiritual condition and our physical condition. He cares if your marriage is not good, to say that He doesn't, then you underestimate your God. He cares about the brokenness that you go through. He cares about it. He cares about the conditions of our city, the conditions of our neighborhood, the conditions of our school. He cares about those things. And to just make everything spiritual is to make your God very, very, very small. He ain't small, and He does not live in the boxes we put Him in. We just live on the illusion that He does. He's bigger than you. You've got to see that. So Nehemiah is wanting the Lord to secure the land, to rebuild the wall so the people can be protected. He wants restoration. He asks the Lord to do this. Why? Because these people are your servants. They are your people whom you have redeemed by your great power in your strong hand. That's why they're in the covenant relationship because of that verse. That's how they got into the covenant, because He redeemed them. When did He redeem them? When He delivered them from the house of Egypt, from the slavery of Egypt. That's when He redeemed them. That is what Nehemiah is talking about. Constant through the Old Testament. You always hear the Lord says, "I'm the Lord your God," who did what? Who delivered you from Egypt. Constantly you see that phrase. Constantly He redeemed them to be His people. He says in Deuteronomy, "You are holy people to your Lord God." The Lord God has chosen you to be His treasured possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. It was not because you were a more number than any other people that the Lord God said His love on you and chose you. For you are the fears of all people, but it's because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath. He swore to your forefathers. The covenant promise for forgiveness would never change because God does not change. He remains faithful to His people, to you, no matter what you go through. He never withholds it from you. Do you desire forgiveness this morning? Do you? It's available to you. It's repent and believe. If you desire restoration in your life, family, your community, pray for it. The Lord will move and he won't move, but he will move. It's a process that he initiates and that he brings to fruition. I said earlier that the words that Nehemiah says here refers to what Moses said to Israel a long time ago. You can read about this in Leviticus 26. This is what the passage that Melissa read and it was spoken to the Israelites when they were in the wilderness, talking about exile, talking about God's faithfulness. Listen to these words again. Listen to them. Play close attention because that's so sweet, I love it. But if they confess their iniquity and their iniquity of their fathers and their treachery that they have committed against me also in walking contrary to me, so that I walk contrary to them and brought them into the land of the enemies, if then their uncircumcised heart is humbled, they make amends for their iniquity, then I will remember my covenant with Jacob. I will remember my covenant with Isaac, my covenant with Abraham and I will remember the land. The land should be abandoned by them to enjoy at Sabbath, why it lies desolate without them and they shall make amends for their iniquity because they turn their backs on my rules and their souls regarded with disgust my statutes. Now listen to this, yet for all that, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not turn my back on them, neither will I regard them with disgust as to destroy them otherly and break my covenant with them, for I am Yahweh their God. I will remember for their sake the covenant with their fathers whom I broke out of the land of Egypt in the sites of the nations that I might be their God. I am Yahweh, he promises by his name, I am Yahweh, not just some idol, not some image, I am Yahweh, I promise by my faithfulness, by my name that I will be faithful to you. Do you see those words again spoken in the wilderness before any of this happened, that God was reassuring them that I am never going to be with you, even when you mess up, even this week when you mess up, remember I am faithful to you, it is beautiful, do you see and hear the covenant promises of old wavering faithfulness to our God, that when we turn our backs on his word and regard with disgust and statute, that when we fall into sin suffer consequences, and for all of that he would not turn his back on you, he would not regard you with disgust, he says I will for their sake remember calvary, put calvary in them, I will for your sake remember calvary, the cross, the blood of my beloved son, by whom I have redeemed him from their sins, that I might be their God, I am Yahweh. Jesus, the fulfillment of that promise, Jesus is the fulfillment of it, that is what you have to see, calvary, do you see it, do you see it, you should, let us pray, Lord thank you Father for calvary, that it is the fulfillment, that it is through Jesus that you have this delivered us from our sin, by your strong hand, through the death of your son, and because of him Lord, we are your people, you are our God, Yahweh, there is great power and assurance in that Father, that is your people Lord, we are love, we are taken care of, we are treasured, we are adored despite our failures, despite our shortcomings, you never say you are no longer my child, Lord you heal us, you discipline us, but you do it in love, and I thank you Father for that fightfulness, and I pray as we go out this week, that Lord your kindness will drive us to more repenting in our lives, that you will draw us closer to yourself in the places that we truly live, it is easy to say we are close to you now, I will talk about when we are at work, when life is hard, the things get difficult, that the goss will be sweet there, that your words will be sweet to us there, and Christ in my prayer, amen. Please stand as we sing. I'm a friend of God.