I had the privilege of presiding at my aunt and uncle’s fiftieth wedding anniversary service. It was a joy for me to be a part of such a wonderful celebration. Every year around Valentine’s Day, a pastor friend has a service where people renew their wedding vows. They say, "I do," all over again. Many who have been through the ceremony express how enriching the experience is and how much it means to them and their spouse. I think at times it is healthy for us to be reminded of the vows that we took ... especially those of us who have put a number of years between those wedding vows and today.
These kinds of ceremonies remind me of the people of Israel and their relationship with God shortly after they finished building the wall of Jerusalem. You will recall that Ezra’s reading of the Law had given birth to a joyful celebration. This in turn led to a time of national confession, after which the people felt the need to say "I do" to God all over again.
READ READ Nehemiah 9:38; 10:1, 28-29
In the Hebrew text of Nehemiah, verse 38 of chapter 9 is actually the first verse of chapter 10. Although it provides a transition between the two chapters, it actually serves as a better introduction to chapter 10 than as a conclusion to chapter 9. For this reason I have included in our text for tonight.
Verse 38 begins, "Now because of all this..." indicating that the covenantal renewal of chapter 10 was based upon the confession of chapter 9: a confession that emphasized not so much the repeated failure of Israel as the repeated mercy of God. In some texts this verse states, "We make a sure covenant." The leaders did not make a covenant with God because of their sin, nor in order to earn God’s approval. Rather, they made the covenant on the basis of God’s grace ... in response to His mercy.
In reality, the people did not make a "covenant" at all. The NKJV supplies this word, though it is lacking in the Hebrew original, which reads: "we are cutting a firm agreement and writing it." Although Hebrew speakers generally "cut" a covenant, here the word "covenant" is replaced by "firm agreement." "Firm agreement" might be a synonym of "covenant," but I suspect that it reflects a deeper theological principle. The Bible consistently describes God as the one who makes covenants with people; only rarely are people said to make a covenant with God. So in chapter 10, the Israelites do not make a covenant with God, rather, they make a firm agreement to live according to the former covenant that God had established through Moses. As 10:29 states, the people "are joining with their brethren, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God’s law, which was given through Moses, God’s servant..." Therefore, the original terms used in 9:38 suggest a theologically profound truth: God is the covenant maker; his people are the covenant “renewers.”
By sealing the covenant, the leaders of Judah, including Nehemiah, demonstrated their support of the firm agreement. One aspect of this list that is a bit surprising is the fact that there is no mention of Ezra. Scholars have suggested varied theories for this omission, but the most persuasive theory recognizes that the list calls out leaders according to their families, and Ezra is a son of "Seraiah" (v. 2). The priests, Levites, and secular leaders who sealed the covenant took a stand for God, much as the signers of the Declaration of Independence took a stand for political freedom in the United States over two hundred years ago. They led by costly example, not by coercion. The text of 10:28 clarifies that those who "signed on" with the leaders did so on the basis of their "knowledge and understanding." This extended not only to heads of families but to "their wives, their sons, and their daughters" (v. 28) as well.
Even in this solidly patriarchal society, each person had to make his or her own choice to support the firm commitment of the leaders. And we who read today would do well to consider how faithfully we imitate this example. Do we live exemplary lives and take a stand according to our convictions. More importantly, do we take a stand according to God’s Word. Or do we coerce and compel those around us to do what we want them to do? Are we helping people to grow as mature decision makers, or do we keep them in moral infancy by treating them as immature children?
The "rest of the people" (v. 28) joined with "the nobles" by entering into "a curse and an oath to walk in God’s Law" (v. 29). The language of curses and oaths sounds strange to our ears, but notice that they not only swore to walk obediently, they also swore to be punished if they failed to walk obediently.
This is what to enter a curse means. Often covenants, including those between God and people, had curses associated with them. For example, on Mt. Ebal when Moses told the people the consequences of disobeying God’s Law, he said, "The Lord will smite you with consumption and with fever and with inflammation and with fiery heat and with the sword and with blight and with mildew" (Deut. 28:22). Now that’s enough to encourage covenantal faithfulness.
Even with unspecified curses, the people chose to join with their leaders in making a new commitment to God. They agreed "to keep and to observe all the commandments of God our Lord, and His ordinances and His statutes..." (v. 29).
They consented to do all that the Law required. In fact, we will see next, the people actually agreed to do more than the Law required. They aspired to an absolute obedience, above and beyond the letter of the Law.
Look with me at the rest of chapter 10: READ 10:30-39
The people promised to obey all of God’s Law (v. 29), and, in addition, made specific promises concerning: intermarriage (v. 30), the sabbath (v. 31), and support for the temple and its personnel (vv. 32-39). Some of the specifics of these promises simply restate biblical laws (for example, bringing "the first fruits of the ground" to the temple [10:35, see Lev. 23:10]), but most extend or reinterpret biblical precedents (for example, bringing "the first fruits of all trees" went beyond the requirements of the Law). Therefore, as we look in this agreement for aspects of the agreement in the Mosaic Law, we find something resembling but not exactly the same as the Mosaic agreement.
The Law needed to be extended because the life-setting of God’s people had changed since the time God originally gave the Law. Verse 31 provides an apt illustration. The Ten Commandments stated clearly that you should not work on the sabbath (Ex. 20:8-10), therefore, the Israelites refrained from selling anything on the sabbath. But between the giving of that law and the time of Nehemiah, the situation of God’s people had changed. Foreigners had come to live within Judah who had no reservations about selling and buying goods on the sabbath (see 13:16). So the question arose: In light of the sabbatical law, could Jews buy on the sabbath? Verse 31 answers the question negatively: neither selling nor buying on the sabbath was acceptable. So the people instituted an ancient version of "Blue Laws" that prohibited commerce on the sabbath. They interpreted the Law to fit their new situation.
Therefore, the specific promises contained in this agreement reflect the issues and crises of Nehemiah’s day. These included the problem of intermarriage with "the peoples of the land" (this had already been an issue in Ezra 9); indebtedness (previously dealt with in 5:1-13); and inadequate support for the temple and its ministry (a crisis later in Nehemiah’s tenure of leadership, 13:101-3). Given the likelihood that Malachi prophesied around the time of Nehemiah, we have another witness to the people’s utter failure to provide acceptable tithes and offerings to God (Mal. 1:7-8; 12-14; 3:8-10).
Verse 39 sums up the majority of the specifics of these verses very simply:
"We will not neglect the house of our God."
Applying God’s Standards to New Situations
The people of Israel applied the Law to their current situation, and we are certainly in the same position today. Biblical standards continue to be authoritative, but many do not speak immediately to our life-setting today. As we seek to obey God, we are challenged to reinterpret His standards in our new situations.
Consider Matthew 7:12: "Therefore, however you want people to treat you, so treat them, for this is the law and the Prophets." Can you imagine if everyone acted on that. We’re supposed to. We are supposed to treat everyone else like we would want to be treated.
All of us, not just pastors, but every person in the church, has the responsibility of applying God’s timeless standards to the world in which we live. As our community changes, we need to meet the challenges of our changing community with the timeless message of the Gospel. The call to make disciples has not changed, but how we, the church, respond to the challenges of making disciples in the world today, will be changing as our culture changes ...
or our church will cease to be effective in reaching the world for Christ.
We live in a world that changes more rapidly every day. Not only do we confront more changes, but the pace of change itself accelerates dramatically. It is hard to keep up with what is happening in our communities, not to mention our county, state, nation and our world. Yet we must find ways to meet this challenge. In his excellent book on a Christian’s place in tomorrow’s world, Wild Hope, Tom Sine urges Christians to take change seriously. He writes, “If we don’t begin in our lives, professions, and churches to anticipate both the new challenges and the new opportunities the twenty-first century brings us, we will quite literally be buried alive in the onrushing avalanche of change. No longer can we drive headlong into the future with our eyes fixed on our rearview mirrors.”
Like the people of Israel in Nehemiah 10, we must apply God’s permanent standards to a world in constant transformation.
Renewing Our Commitment to God’s Covenant
We Christians, like the Jews, are people of God’s covenant. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God first promised a new covenant. Jesus becomes the "mediator of a new covenant" through His death, and we who believe in Him have become the new covenant people of God.
God promised that in the new covenant we would know Him intimately. As Christians we often talk about "having a personal relationship with Christ," but do we ... really? Do we know God intimately? Do we enjoy spending time with him?
Do we live in true fellowship with Christ? Are we experiencing the new covenant offered through the blood of Jesus?
I find myself in need of several types of covenant renewal. On the one hand, I require a daily recommitment of my life to Christ. At some point each day, I must say to the Lord: "Lord, I belong to You. You are my God. Use me this day for Your purposes and Your glory." Additionally, I need the weekly renewal that comes in worship. I look forward to singing God’s praising and to joining with each of you as we reaffirm our faith in song, in giving, in confession, and in prayer. Beyond that, I find our quarterly communion services to be especially helpful in my relationship with Christ. Here I literally remember and recommit myself to the "new covenant" in Christ’s blood. But, in addition to these regular times of spiritual renewal, my faith journey is marked by spiritual watershed events in which I renew my covenantal relationship with God in a profound way.
One of the most recent was my last time studying Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby & Claude Cone. I never fail to gain some new insight in my relationship with God through this dynamic Bible study that is literally touching lives around the world.
Renewing Our Commitment in Reliance Upon God’s Amazing Grace
Yet a word of caution must be added here, because whenever we consider renewing our covenant with God, we run the risk of trying to earn his grace. We may be tempted to say: "If I can only get my life together, then I’ll be acceptable to God. If I can only be good enough, then God will love me." But as Nehemiah and the people knew, such arrogance only turns out to be folly. In their confession of sin the people remembered with excruciating detail how they had broken their covenant with God. They remembered how, again and again, God had been more than faithful in his endless mercy. The covenant renewal of Nehemiah 10 is not an attempt to earn back God’s favor, it is a response, in gratitude, to his favor already given. Remember, the people did not make a covenant with God ... they renewed their commitment to the covenant God had already made with them, on the basis of his overwhelming grace. And so should we.
Whenever we renew our covenantal relationship with God, we do so because God’s Spirit has drawn us, for our very desire for renewal comes from the Holy Spirit.
The more I grow as a Christian, the more I realize my imperfections and failures. Renewing my relationship with Christ no longer grows out of a youthful idealism; I no longer believe I can be a "pretty great Christian for God." Now, when I renew my faith in Christ, I know all too well my past failures, and my capacity to fail again. I know that renewal comes from God’s grace in my life, and I look ahead with certainty to the times when I will, once again, need to depend on more of God’s grace.
O to grace how great a debtor,
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee:
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it;
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart Lord, take and seal it;
Seal it for Thy courts above.
There is something particularly touching about renewing vows after experiences of pain and failure.
When Patty and I married, we did not realize exactly what it meant when we vowed to remain married, "for better or worse, in sickness and in health, in our joys and in our sorrows." There came a time when I didn’t feel love for her. You see, Satan knew that we considered our marriage to be the one area that was beyond his snares. Peter said, "Let him who thinks he stands, take lest heed lest he also fall." We learned to guard against the idea that the marriage is the problem, when in actuality, it is our circumstances. The same is true with our relationship with our Lord.
There are times when we have not felt close to Him. He has always been faithful to the covenant that we made to His child. His love never fails. We are the ones who become unfaithful. With renewal comes the temptation to prove that your commitment is genuine. And ladies and gentlemen, it has been true of every single time that I have made a vow of faithfulness. That has been followed by a time of testing to prove that I mean business. Don’t commit yourself to tithing unless you are ready to be faithful when the refrigerator goes out. Don’t commit yourself to your marriage unless you are ready to be tempted to leave that marriage and involve yourself in a life of sin.
But, now this, the grace of God enables us to renew our covenant with Him ... the Covenant Maker. Not only do we respond to Him with first-time commitment, but also with frequent times of renewal.
In the words of "Amazing Grace,"
Through many dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
God’s grace, revealed and confirmed to us through the death of Christ, beckons us home. In covenant renewal we come home to God and say to Him, "I do" ... all over again.
