The Compassionate Mercy of God
Nehemiah 9 - 11 November 2007

Andrew Lim

For the last two days we have had a picture of a great crowd of happy people
feasting and enjoying the presence of the Lord

Now quite suddenly we see them going without food
dressed in sackcloth / with dust on their heads

What seems to be happening?
Was some kind of awful sin been uncovered?

No there were here expressing the sorrow of their sins
and for three hours they stand confessing their sins

and listening to the Word of God
and for a further three hours they worshipped the Lord

After that the Levites led them in a prayer

This is the longest prayer in the Bible

What a great prayer
Like all great prayers / it begins with worship adoration and praise
It starts by focusing on God as the Creator of all that exists

And it goes on to recall and recount
all the things God has done for them

You will be amazed when you start to count the number of times
the word “You” appears in this prayer
Without doubt / God is very clearly the focal point
The word “You” is used over 50 times

6 You alone are the LORD
You made the heavens
You give life to everything
7 You are the LORD God who chose Abram
8 You found his heart faithful to you, and you made a covenant with him
You have kept your promise because you are righteous

9 You saw the suffering of our forefathers in Egypt
You heard their cry at the Red Sea
10 You sent miraculous signs and wonders against Pharaoh
You knew how arrogantly the Egyptians treated them
You made a name for yourself
11 You divided the sea before them
12 By day You led them with a pillar of cloud
and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light
13 You came down on Mount Sinai
You spoke to them from heaven
You gave them regulations and laws that are just and right
14 You made known to them your holy Sabbath
15 In their hunger You gave them bread from heaven
and in their thirst you brought them water from the rock
You told them to go in and take possession of the land

What a great prayer
All of God / the focus is all on the nature and character of God

That’s worship / and worship is really the heart of true prayer

If you’re struggling with your faith this morning
it may well be because your view of God is too small or too narrow

David Wells / a theologian / talks about what he calls
the “weightlessness of God”
He believes that our sense of inadequacy and ineffectiveness
arises out of our limited understanding and experience of God

This is what he says: “God rests too inconsequentially upon the church
His truth is too distant / his grace too ordinary
his judgment too benign / his gospel too easy
and His Christ too common”

Church / we need to glory in the incomparable greatness of our God

Nehemiah does this
He says / “You alone are the Lord / You made the heavens
even the highest heavens / and all their starry host
the earth and all that is on it / the seas and all that is in them
You give life to everything
and the multitudes of heaven worship you”

There is no one like God
and we need to express this in our prayers

But when we hit verse 16 / we see a tragic note

16 But they / our forefathers / became arrogant and stiff-necked
and did not obey your commands
17 They refused to listen
and failed to remember the miracles you performed among them
They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion
appointed a leader in order to return to their slavery

But You are a forgiving God / gracious and compassionate
slow to anger and abounding in love
You did not desert them

19 Because of Your great compassion
you did not abandon them in the desert
20 You gave your good Spirit to instruct them
You did not withhold your manna from their mouths
You gave them water for their thirst
21 For forty years You sustained them in the desert
22 You gave them kingdoms and nations
allotting to them even the remotest frontiers
23 You made their sons as numerous as the stars in the sky
You brought them into the land that you told their fathers to enter

24 You subdued before them the Canaanites
You handed the Canaanites over to them

26 But they were disobedient and rebelled against you
they put your law behind their backs
they killed your prophets
they committed awful blasphemies

27 You handed them over to their enemies
But when they were oppressed they cried out to you
From heaven you heard them
In your great compassion you gave them deliverers
who rescued them from the hand of their enemies

28 But as soon as they were at rest
they again did what was evil in your sight
Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies
so that they ruled over them
And when they cried out to you again / you heard from heaven
and in your compassion you delivered them time after time

29 / You warned them to return to your law
but they became arrogant and disobeyed your commands
they sinned against your ordinances
they turned their backs on you
became stiff-necked and refused to listen

30 / For many years you were patient with them
By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets
Yet they paid no attention
so You handed them over to the neighboring peoples

31 / But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them
or abandon them / for you are a gracious and merciful God

32 / Now therefore / O our God / the great / mighty and awesome God
who keeps his covenant of love
do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes
the hardship that has come upon us

33 / In all that has happened to us / You have been just
You have acted faithfully / while we did wrong

36 / But see, we are slaves today / slaves in the land you gave our forefathers
so they could eat its fruit and the other good things it produces

37 / Because of our sins / its abundant harvest goes to the kings
you have placed over us
They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please
We are in great distress

In spite of God’s repeated forgiveness / the people persist in their sins

I want us all to take a careful look at the result of this

Look at 37 / Because of our sins
its abundant harvest goes to the kings / you have placed over us
They rule over our bodies and our cattle as they please
We are in great distress

This is an inviolable law of God
Sin brings God’s displeasure upon us
and often that translates into poverty of one kind or another

The Word of God abounds with this teaching
Disobedience and sin
will bring you nothing but disaster of one kind or another

This is a crucial teaching of Scripture
and we do well to pay careful attention to it

Jeremiah 5:25
“Your wickedness has deprived you of these wonderful blessings
Your sin has robbed you of all these good things”

Take Deuteronomy 28
29 You will be unsuccessful in everything you do / day after day
you will be oppressed and robbed with no one to rescue you
30 You will be pledged to be married to a woman
but another will take her and ravish her
You will build a house / but you will not live in it
You will plant a vineyard, but you will not even begin to enjoy its fruit
31 Your ox will be slaughtered before your eyes
but you will eat none of it
Your donkey will be forcibly taken from you and will not be returned
Your sheep will be given to your enemies / and no one will rescue them 32 Your sons and daughters will be given to another nation
and you will wear out your eyes watching for them day after day
powerless to lift a hand
38 You will sow much seed in the field but you will harvest little
because locusts will devour it
39 You will plant vineyards and cultivate them
but you will not drink the wine or gather the grapes
because worms will eat them
40 You will have olive trees throughout your country
but you will not use the oil / because the olives will drop off
41 You will have sons and daughters but you will not keep them
because they will go into captivity
42 Swarms of locusts will take over
all your trees and the crops of your land

Micah 6:14,15
14 You will eat but not be satisfied / your stomach will still be empty
You will store up but save nothing
because what you save I will give to the sword
15 You will plant but not harvest
You will press olives / but not use the oil on yourselves
You will crush grapes / but not drink the wine

Jeremiah 12:13
13 They will sow wheat but reap thorns
They will wear themselves out / but gain nothing
So bear the shame of your harvest / because of the Lord’s fierce anger

Amos 5:11
11 You trample on the poor / and force him to give you grain
Therefore / though you have built stone mansions
you will not live in them
Though you have planted lush vineyards / you will not drink their wine

Leviticus 26:16 / I will do this to you: I will bring upon you sudden terror
wasting diseases and fever that will waste away the eyes
and cause your life to drain away
You will plant seed uselessly / because your enemies will eat
In other words / when you blatantly disobey God
you will be given over to be plundered
the blessings that are supposed to come your way
will enter into someone else’s home instead

This is an inviolable law of God / and there is no running away from it
Ezek 18:20 / “The soul that sins / it shall die”
Obedience to God beings blessings
Disobedience brings trouble

And if we are repeatedly in grief and misfortune
when we should be enjoying God favour
then we need to pause and examine if indeed we’re being plundered

Have you been plundered in some ways?
Are there rich blessings that could have been yours
but your disobedience has robbed you of those blessings

God says / “It shall be well with you” / but you are in great distress
God says / “It shall be well with you” / but you are missing out on life
God says / “It shall be well with you” / but you are in some deep grief
God says / “It shall be well with you” / but you have seen no success
God says / “It shall be well with you”
but you’ve been overtaken by one misfortune after another

Have you been quiet enough / to take stock
and to realize what might be some riches that could have been yours
but they have been plundered from you
because of some grave sin in your lives

Have you been plundered?
Have you been missing out on some blessings?

I have a sobering thought for some of us who are no longer young
but who are older in years

The sobering thought is this
Most of the Bible characters who failed
did so in the second half of their lives

You think of leaders like Noah / David / Moses and Solomon

Many leaders in their mid-life fall into sexual immorality
they fight with the demons of wealth and power
they struggle with professional disillusionment
many ended up questioning their call

Many people when they are growing old
come to see that life is fast slipping away
and they begin to reason to themselves
that they’ve worked hard for long years
and they deserve a little zest in life

I personally believe more older people than ever before in history
are going to come to grief in their latter years
It is frightening but I believe we can expect more older people falling
and with increasing frequency / because we are living
in a time when the volume and intensity of evil
is unprecedented in other ages in history

Matthew 24:12
“Because wickedness / or lawlessness is multiplied
the love of many will grow cold”

Back to my point / We need to understand
that there is an inviolable unbreakable law of God in operation here
As sure as the sun will set this evening / this law of God will prevail

There is no blessings for the person who fights God
The way of the sinner is really really hard

Solomon says this himself
Proverbs 13:15 /“The way of the unfaithful is hard”/ old version “transgressor”

Right from the start / in the first few opening pages of the Bible
we are confronted with the stark contrast
between the way of the sinner and the way of the righteous

Which was easier:
- for Adam and Eve to live without sin or to live in sin?
- were they happier inside the garden or outside the garden?

Which was easier:
- for Jonah to have obeyed God immediately
or to run away like he did
- We learn from Jonah that when a person runs away from God
the direction is always a downward one
- he was met with a storm
- he a prophet of God / was rebuked by a pagan captain / what shame
- he was thrown overboard the ship
- the waters close in about him / he was chocked by seaweeds
- finally he was swallowed by a huge fish

That’s a lot of going down in a short story of four chapters
But it is always that way when a person disobeys God
From a human point of view
- some moves we make may look like a promotion
but in reality its a downward descent
- things may look bright and rosy for a while
but the general path is a downward one

Short from doing the will of God / there is no elevation in life

Sin takes a terrible toll on anyone
It has no blessed rewards / none whatsoever
It plants no good seeds / it brings no nourishing sustaining harvest
It spoils families / breaks up marriages / breaks up friendship
rips apart the hearts of children
throws you into a grave financial debt
You / and the people around you
end up resentful / angry / bitter / jealous

By day / he lives under the cloud of guilt / shame / and condemnation
By night / his mind is haunted with fears of the fruits of his sins
his heart is plagued by the dire judgment to come
- the disobedient Christian does not go to be happy

Great things that were meant for them / are taken away from them
Nadab and Abihu were sons of Aaron the priest
but they were struck dead because they offered “strange fire”
God promised great things for Samson
he ended up grinding grains fro the Philistines
God had a great mission for Jonah
but he ended up in a storm / then in the belly of a fish
Our Lord called Judas to be one of His band / he ended in suicide

There is an inviolable law of God at work
Ezek 18:20 / “The soul that sins / it shall die” no running away from that
Disobedience brings trouble

And if we are repeatedly in grief and misfortune
when we should be enjoying God favour
then we need to pause and examine if indeed we’re being plundered

But we thank God / that this is not the last word

For the Bible teaches us / that just as disobedience brings grief
obedience beings blessings

The Bible explicitly teaches us
that the way of righteous is safe and secure

The very first psalm / assures us that
blessings come / not to the man whose walk is ungodly
blessings come / to man whose walk is righteous

And we will find / that when we turn our backs on our rebellion
and turn to God / there is an equally inviolable law operating

Just as disobedience brings poverty and grief
obedience to God will bring health to our souls

When we obey God / all will be well with us
This is God’s absolute promise

Dt 5:33 / Walk in all the way that the LORD your God has commanded you
so that you may live and prosper
and prolong your days in the land / that you will possess

Deut 6:3 / O Israel / you should listen and be careful to do it
that it may be well with you / and that you may multiply greatly

Deuteronomy 12:28 / Be careful to obey all these words that I command you
that it may go well with you and with your children after you forever
when you do what is good and right in the sight of the Lord your God

Jeremiah 7:23 / But this is what I commanded them / saying
Obey My voice / and I will be your God / and you will be My people
and you will walk in all the way which I command you
that it may be well with you

Exodus 20:12 / Honor your father and your mother / that your days
may be long / in the land which the Lord your God gives you

Deut 6:18 / Do what is right and good in the Lord’s sight
so that it may go well with you

Deut 6:3 / Hear / O Israel / and be careful to obey
so that it may go well with you

God is ready to restore us / when we start again
when we begin afresh to obey Him

This chapter speaks of the richness of God’s grace

We run from Him / We persist in doing things our own way
We sin repeatedly

At any point / God could’ve said
“That’s it / You’ve messed up one time too many / I’m out of here”

Of course God will deal with our sins by painfully correcting us
But He never stops loving us

The Bible teaches the compassionate mercy of God
“Your mercy is great to the heavens” / Ps 57:10
“For as the heaven is high above the earth
so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him” / Ps 103:11

When we turn to God again in genuine repentance
When we ask for His forgiveness / quick as a flash He forgives us
washes our sins immaculately clean
removes our sins as far as the east is from the west
and forgets that we’d ever sin before

Max Lucado tells a story about a young girl from Brazil
who wanted to see the world

Discontent with a home having only a pallet on the floor
a washbasin / and a wood-burning stove
she dreamed of a better life in the city
One morning she slipped away / breaking her mother’s heart
Knowing what life on the streets would be like
for her young, attractive daughter
Maria hurriedly packed to go find her
On her way to the bus stop she entered a drugstore to get one last thing
Pictures / She sat in the photograph booth / closed the curtain
and spent all she could on pictures of herself
With her purse full of small black-and-white photos of herself
she boarded the next bus to the city

Maria knew Christina had no way of earning money
She also knew that her daughter was too stubborn to give up
When pride meets hunger / a human will do things
that were before unthinkable
Knowing this / Maria began her search
in bars, hotels, and nightclubs, any place with a bad reputation
She went to them all / And at each place she left her picture
taped on a bathroom mirror / tacked to a hotel bulletin board
fastened to a corner phone booth
And on the back of each photo she wrote a note

It wasn’t too long before both the money and the pictures ran out
and Maria had to go home / The weary mother wept
as the bus began its long journey back to her small village

It was a few weeks later that young Christina descended the hotel stairs
Her young face was tired
Her brown eyes no longer danced with youth but spoke of pain and fear
Her laughter was broken / Her dream had become a nightmare
A thousand times over she had longed to trade these countless beds
for her secure pallet
Yet the little village was / in too many ways / too far away

As she reached the bottom of the stairs / her eyes noticed a familiar face
She looked again / and there on the lobby mirror
was a small picture of her mother
Christina’s eyes burned and her throat tightened
as she walked across the room and removed the small photo
Written on the back was this compelling invitation
“Whatever you have done / whatever you have become
it doesn’t matter / Please come home”

She did

The same with us today with God our Father
No matter what you’ve done or who you’ve become
it doesn’t matter / Jesus wants you to come home


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9-13-27 / The Levites and the civic leaders signed the covenant


First / 30 / they pledge only to marry people from within the covenant
Marriage is a covenant / not only between the husband and wife
but most importantly between them and God

Are you willing to make a covenant with God
only to marry within the covenant people of God

Second / 31 / They pledged to be faithful to God in their business dealings

They pledge not to do anymore trading on the Sabbath day
They had been breaking this law / because of their greed
but now they covenant with God to obey Him

We need to trust God that He will take care of us

Third / 32-39 / they pledged to be faithful to God
when it comes to supporting God’s work

The gave one-third of a shekel / to support the work of God’s temple
they pledged to bring wood to the temple
they pledged to bring the firstborn and the first-fruits
and ten percent of the produce of their land to the house of God

Firstborn and first-fruits were “risky” giving
your land might not yield much more produce
and your cow might not give birth again
yet the first still belonged to God
and was given to the priests

God promised to bless this giving of the firstfruits and firstborn in faith:
“Honor the LORD with your possessions
and with the firstfruits of all your increase
so your barns will be filled with plenty
and your vats will overflow with new wine / Prov 3:9-10

The Bible says we need to be givers
Not so much for the sake of those to whom we give to
but because giving sets our heart right about material things

If you hold on to money so tightly that you will not giv
then you have revealed where your heart is when it comes to money