[Re]ality
Nehemiah 9:5b-9, 32-38
We’ve all been there. When life is falling apart, things seem to be going against us and we descend into a pit that’s darker and darker. A parent loses a young child, a healthy man with young children discovers he has cancer and just months to live, someone undermines us for a job promotion. It happens totally outside who you understand yourself to be and you begin to live in shame, questioning everything about yourself. It can also happen when you realize the life you’ve been leading has failed God and suddenly you’re paying the price? It’s in those moments that we ask the question, “Why?”
This is where Israel finds itself. They have gathered together, heard the word of God read and were convicted in their hearts of their sins. They began to mourn by fasting, wearing sackcloth, and putting dust on their heads. As they heard the Bible read, they no doubt came across Leviticus 20:26: “You are to be holy to Me because I, the Lord, am holy, and have set you apart from the nations to be my own.” The pain only worsened as they realized how short they had fallen of God’s will. And their question begins to echo in the gathering: “Why?” How does a loving God, who is all powerful, allow bad things to happen?
Judaism had several answers to that question. The first is freedom of choice. Love means that we have freedom of choice. Love can’t be forced but must be a matter of free will. When God created us for a relationship, he opened himself up and made himself vulnerable by giving us the choice to love him or deny him. How does a loving God allow evil? Because love opens the door to freedom of choice, many times we choose our will over God’s. Second, as a result of Adam and Eve’s banishment from the Garden and their innate selfishness, we now live in a sin stained world. And because it is sin-stained, evil exists and is a very real part of the world in which we live. That means it can influence us and even attack us. Third, there are the sins of our ancestors. The Israelites realized their ancestors had sinned and it had a direct impact on their lives, their attitudes and their behavior. We are a product of our past. It is like that pebble thrown into a pond and the ripples that go out. And so the sins of our father and grandfathers are passed on and influence our lives, like alcoholism, drug abuse, physical abuse, divorce and on and on. In other words, the choices you make today are going to affect your children and grandchildren.
And yet sometimes we may not know why things happen in the midst of such events. Rabbi Shraga Simmons tells the story of a farmer who owned a horse. And one day the horse ran away. All the people in the town came to console him because of the loss. "Oh, I don’t know," said the farmer, "maybe it’s a bad thing and maybe it’s not." A few days later, the horse returned to the farm accompanied by 20 other horses. (Apparently he had found some wild horses and made friends!) All the townspeople came to congratulate him: "Now you have a stable full of horses!" "Oh, I don’t know," said the farmer, "maybe it’s a good thing and maybe it’s not." A few days later, the farmer’s son was out riding one of the new horses. The horse got wild and threw him off, breaking the son’s leg. So all the people in town came to console the farmer because of the accident. "Oh, I don’t know," said the farmer, "maybe it’s a bad thing and maybe it’s not." A few days later, the government declared war and instituted a draft of all able-bodied young men. They came to the town and carted off 100’s of young men, except for the farmer’s son who had a broken leg. "Now I know," said the farmer, "that it was a good thing my horse ran away." And then he writes, “Life is a series of events, and until we’ve reached the end of the series, it’s hard to know exactly why things are happening. The Torah itself makes this point very clearly. Jacob is raising the next generation of the Jewish people…. And the key character in that picture is his son Joseph, who is kidnapped by his own brothers and sent down to Egypt. Imagine you would come to Jacob at that point in time and ask him about a good God. What’s he going to answer? In Egypt, Joseph became Prime Minister, and when a grave famine hits the entire world, Joseph is in a unique position to rescue his family. When we look at the whole story in retrospect, everything that happened to Joseph was for the good. It set into motion a chain of events where he ended up saving and building the Jewish people.”
So we need to not be paralyzed by bad stuff, but in the midst of such tragedies, failures and sinfulness, there is one thing we need to do: remember who God is. That is what Nehemiah 9 is about. When you have bad things happen, first and foremost, remember God. The Israelites remember three aspects of God. First is the greatness of God. They cry out: “Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise.” Adoration is really the heart of prayer. If you’re struggling with your faith this morning, it may well be because your view of God is too small. Or, it may be that your theology is fine, but you don’t think God has much to do with your life today. David Wells, a theologian, refers to this view as the “weightlessness of God.” He writes that our sense of inadequacy or ineffectiveness can be traced to our limited understanding and experience of God: “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.”
Today we too are called to glory in the incomparable magnificence of our grand God. The Israelites see the goodness of God in all creation: “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 the evidence for His greatness is seen in His works of creation as Psalm 19:1 clearly states: “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of His hands.” When in the midst of bad things, it’s always best to begin with the greatness of God. Do you see God as great this morning? Or, is your God too small?
Second, the Israelites focus on the goodness of God. Tom Schmidt tells the story of Mabel. “The state-run convalescent hospital is not a pleasant place. It is large, understaffed, and overfilled with senile, helpless and lonely people who are waiting to die. On the brightest of days it seems dark inside, and it smells of sickness and stale urine. He went there once or twice a week for 4 years, but he never wanted to go there, and he always left with a sense of relief. It is not the kind of place one gets used to. On this particular day he was walking in a hallway that he had not visited before, looking in vain for a few who were alive enough to receive a flower and a few words of encouragement. This hallway seemed to contain some of the worst cases, strapped onto carts or into wheelchairs and looking completely helpless. As he neared the end of the hallway, I saw an old woman strapped up in a wheelchair. Her face was an absolute horror. The empty stare and white pupils of her eyes told me that she was blind. The large hearing aid over one ear told me that she was almost deaf. One side of her face was being eaten by cancer. There was a discolored and running sore covering part of one cheek, and it had pushed her nose to one side, dropped one eye, and distorted her jaw so that what should have been the corner of her mouth was the bottom of her mouth. As a consequence, she drooled constantly. She was 89 years old and that she had been here, bedridden, blind, nearly deaf, and alone, for 25 years. This was Mabel. He didn’t know why he spoke to her. She looked less likely to respond than most of the people he saw in that hallway. But he put a flower in her hand and said, ‘Here is a flower for you. Happy Mother’s Day.’ She held the flower up to her face and tried to smell it, and then she spoke. And much to my surprise, her words, although somewhat garbled because of her deformity, were obviously produced by a clear mind. She said, ‘Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.’ I said, ‘Of course,’ and I pushed her in her chair back down the hallway to a place where I thought I could find some alert patients. I found one, and I stopped the chair. Mabel held out the flower and said, ‘Here, this is from Jesus.’ That was when it began to dawn on him that this was not an ordinary human being. Later, he wheeled her back to her room and learned more about her history. She had grown up on a small farm that she managed with only her mother until her mother died. Then she ran the farm alone until 1950 when her blindness and sickness sent her to the convalescent hospital. For 25 years she got weaker and sicker, with constant headaches, backaches, and stomachaches, and then the cancer came too. Mabel and Tom became friends over the next few weeks, and he went to see her once or twice a week for the next 3 years. Some days I would read to her from the Bible, and often when I would pause she would continue reciting the passage from memory, word-for-word. On other days I would take a book of hymns and sing with her, and she would know all the words of the old songs. For Mabel, these were not merely exercises in memory. She would often stop in mid-hymn and make a brief comment about lyrics she considered particularly relevant to her own situation. I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns. … During one hectic week of final exams I was frustrated because my mind seemed to be pulled in 10 directions at once with all the things that I had to think about. The question occurred to me, ‘What does Mabel have to think about-hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?’ So I went to her and asked, ‘Mabel, what do you think about when you lie here?’ And she said, ‘I think about my Jesus.’ And I asked, ‘What do you think about Jesus?’ She replied slowly and deliberately: I think about how good he’s been to me. He’s been awfully good to me in my life.”
And the Israelites in their midst of the pain of their conviction of their sin remember the goodness of God. They begin with the gifts of God. The word “give” is used in one form or another at least 16 different times. This part of the prayer rehearses the history of Israel, revealing God’s goodness to His people and their repeated failure to appreciate His gifts and obey His will. God’s goodness is seen in four ways in Nehemiah 9. First is in His calling. (7-18). God chose Abram and made a covenant with him. Then, when God’s people were suffering in Egypt, God released His people from bondage and divided the sea so they could escape. Then God’s gave the Law to guide and shape them as His people and then God gave them a home. Second is leading (19-21). God was committed to lead His people on a daily basis through the pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. Then God gave His Spirit to the people to provide for their spiritual requirements. Third is in providing. (22-25). For 40 years, as the children of Israel wandered in the desert, their feet did not swell and their clothes did not wear out. In the wilderness, God provided them with food and water. He then helped them defeat their enemies and gave them kingdoms and nations. He multiplied their numbers by blessing them with children. And what they realized is that God gave them much more than they deserved. The land was fertile. Their houses were furnished. The water was already running and the fruit was ripe. They had everything they needed and they “reveled” in God’s goodness.
Fourth is correcting (26-30). And when they were disobedient and rebelled against God, He loved them enough to correct them by handing them over to their enemies. Sometimes we forget that punishment is a sign of love. And when they rebelled repeatedly, God corrected them again and again by sending their enemies to rule over them. First, it was Assyria, then Babylon, Persia, Greece and finally Rome.
All of this was done because God is a good. He demonstrates that fact clearly through calling the His chosen, by leading them, providing for them, and even correcting them. Corrie Ten Boom writes: “Deep in our hearts we believe in a good God. Yet how shallow is our understanding of His goodness. How often I have heard people say, ‘How good God is! We prayed that it would not rain for our church picnic, and look at the lovely weather!’ Yes, God is good when He sends good weather. But God was also good when He allowed my sister Betsie to starve to death before my eyes in a German concentration camp.” Some of us mistakenly thank God for His goodness only when things go the way we want them. The real challenge and test of our faith, is to thank God for His goodness even when we experience pain and loss.
Third, they remember God’s grace. When the Israelites became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey God’s commands,” God was forgiving, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. And God did not desert them. verse 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.” God did not treat His people as they deserve and that’s a good thing because He is a great, mighty and awesome God! Because He is a God of grace, He gave them what they didn’t deserve: His never ending love and grace.
And Jesus has joined in the process. We have a royal, a divine, permanent Savior. Listen to how the writer of Hebrews describes Jesus’ ministry in 4:14-16: “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are--yet was without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” We can draw near to Jesus because in him is grace, mercy, companionship and strength through Jesus.
This entire chapter speaks of grace. God demonstrates His greatness and His goodness and what do the people do? They turn from Him and persist in doing things their own way. In short, they sin repeatedly. At any point, God could have said, “That’s it. You’ve messed up too much. You’re on your own.” Yet God never stopped loving us. When we sinned, God exhibited His grace. As Romans 5:20 puts it: “But where sin increased, grace increased all the more.”
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, 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 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.” No matter what you’ve done or who’ve you become, it doesn’t matter. Jesus wants you to come home.
Ashely G. Emmer tells the story of a famous violinist who ordered an artisan to make for him the very best instrument his skilled fingers could produce. But when the violin was delivered, its tone did not please the sensitive artist. In indignation he smashed it. The disheartened artisan tried to atone for his failure. Carefully gathering the broken pieces, he remade the violin and sent it back to the violinist. This time the master was enchanted with the tone, and was surprised to learn that the violin was the very one he had broken to pieces. And then she writes, Likewise, God can take the fragments of the life shattered by sinful indulgence, and, putting its pieces together, He can produce in the regenerated soul sweet melodies.
