“They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that You performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, You in Your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave Your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold Your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst.” Nehemiah 9:17-20
Devotional Thought For The Day
These verses are part of a larger prayer of repentance and praise of God for His gracious mercy and forgiveness. Those doing the praying and crying out are described as Levites, and they are named [9:5]. They reflect upon and confess the faith of the children of God from near the beginning of time, when Adam and Eve fell into sin. This book, which records these words, was written sometime around 450 B.C., and this gives us insight as to the spiritual condition of the children of Israel who had returned to Jerusalem from the Babylonian captivity, under the Persians who had taken power from the Babylonians. They were quite literate in the Holy Scriptures, well aware of the history of Abraham, of the Exodus, of the idolatrous unfaithfulness of the children of Israel, especially during the preceding 250 years, and of their own sins, rebelliousness, and weakness. They took no comfort in their own personal righteousness, and refused to put themselves forward in the presence of God on the basis of personal merit or commendation. Rather, as you can see from these words and the words that follow, they were utterly humble and contrite, and were focused on one thing only: the gracious mercy, steadfast love, forgiveness, and faithfulness of God.
We wonder how in the 450 years from this time to the birth of Jesus, that such humble and joyful faith and trust in God was lost and supplanted by Judaism. It is not that there were no true believers at the time of Christ’s birth – Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Simeon, Anna, and others were part of the remnant of this ancient and eternal faith of Abraham, who “believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness.” [Gen. 15:6] But the religious institution somehow had been taken over by Pharisees, self-righteous hypocrites, who were utterly ignorant of the grace and mercy of God, and who focused only upon our need to keep the law, denying and repudiating any notion of a suffering Messiah Who would take away the sin of the world and reconcile God to us. Rather, those adhering to Judaism reacted to Jesus in a manner that is perfectly consonant with the basic principles of Judaism – they rejected Him as a false prophet, a corrupter of morals, one who had to be removed by putting Him to death. The author of our text would have understood all of this as being exactly in line with the character and nature of God, and no doubt rejoiced to know Him.
There is a great deal of emphasis in the church today on doing what is good and right – in contrast to the religious institutions, some bearing the Name of Christ, which have departed from God’s Word and joined in the world’s wicked justification of moral turpitude. This is good, since what is moral and right is always better than the darkness of hideous sin. However, many Christians have naively succumbed to thinking that real, genuine, and loyal Christianity is a matter of achieving moral superiority – rather than understanding that the chief benefit of holding firmly to what is right is to preserve understanding of our need for utter repentance and the gracious mercy, forgiveness, and love of God. These highly moral Christians are in the process of doing exactly what the adherents of Judaism did to the faith of Abraham – they got rid of repentance and faith and replaced the message of God’s gracious love with one of self-righteousness and grotesque hypocrisy. It is a sad reality that this same phenomenon has occurred many times in the history of the Christian Church, and among many of the cults and sects that have left the church but still use Christian words and names. Both Ezra and Nehemiah strongly advocated adherence to God’s Word, and a high degree of morality; but they also knew and understood that without God’s gracious mercy and forgiveness – expressed throughout the Old Testament times, and revealed most fully in Jesus Christ, His suffering and death and resurrection – there is no hope for any of us.
It is a fine and difficult line that we have to walk today – continuing to adhere to biblical teaching in regard to right and wrong, sin and righteousness, but avoiding self-righteousness, impenitence, and hypocrisy. While we have a battle in standing our ground against the grotesque and rampant immoralities of our time, it is also a battle to keep the message of God’s grace, mercy, and forgiveness foremost in our own hearts, and at the center of our ministry to others. The sin of forsaking the Gospel is at least as bad as forsaking the righteous decrees of God’s law, probably much worse, for it locks people into a pathetic religion of law that inoculates them from receiving and living in the Gospel. I’ve seen as much of this self-righteous and hypocritical delusion in the church as I have capitulation to sin and wickedness. I suppose that it is not that great a mystery as to why this happens, given the perversity of our sinful nature. However, we can learn from Nehemiah and the other authors of God’s Word, that both moral laxity and self-righteous hypocrisy are horridly deadly departures from God. May we always join the prayer and song of these Levites, confessing our own great sin, and rejoicing eternally in the very character of God, His gracious mercy, steadfast love, and eternal faithfulness to us.
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, our own prideful sinful nature makes hypocrisy and delusional self-righteousness appealing and alluring. Forgive us for our flirtations with this spiritual death, and keep us in humble, contrite, and joyful faith in Your free gift of salvation. Forbid that we fall into making our religion and spirituality one of self-exaltation. May we always treat others around us with the same grace, mercy, forgiveness, and love that we have experienced from You. Keep Your church alive and well through Your Word, that we never turn Your grace into license, or forsake it in legalism. Amen.