We turn tonight into our Bibles to Nehemiah chapter 9. Nehemiah chapter 9, if you've, of course, a member of Christ covenant, you realize we've been working our way through the book of Nehemiah, but if you happen to be turning on with us tonight, and haven't been with us for the last weeks, we're midway, maybe a little bit more than midway through this book of Nehemiah. And again, turning to chapter 9 tonight, Nehemiah chapter 9, a little bit longer reading, but we are going to read the entire chapter as much of the chapter as a prayer. And we want to hear this prayer of confession that God's people raised to the Lord. And here now God's word. Now, on the 24th day of this month, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sack cloth and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day. For another quarter of it, they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. On the stairs of the Levites, the Joshua, Bonnie, Cadmiel, Shabinaya, Bunei, Sherebaya, Bonnie, and Chennai. And they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Joshua, Cadmiel, Bonnie, Heshabnaia, Sherebaya, Hodaya, Shabinaya. And Pathalaya said, stand up and bless the Lord your God, from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them. And you preserve all of them and the host of heaven worship you. You are the Lord, the God who chose Abram and brought him out of Earl of the Caldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you and made with him the covenant to give to his offspring the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Parasite, the Jebusite, and the Gurgishite. And you have kept your promise for you are righteous. And you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry at the red sea. And performed signs and wonders against Pharaoh and all his servants and all the people of his land for you knew that they acted arrogantly against our fathers. And you made a name for yourself as it is to this day. And you divided the sea before them so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land. And you cast their pursuers into the depths as a stone into mighty waters. By a pillar of cloud you led them in the day and by a pillar of fire in the night to light for them the way in which they should go. You came down on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them right rules and true laws, good statutes and commandments. And you made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them commandments and statutes and a law by Moses your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought water for them out of the rock for their thirst. And you told them to go into possess the land that you would sworn to give them. That day and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. 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 were not God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding instead fast love and did not forsake them. And when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said this is your God who brought you up out of Egypt and 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 night 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 mana from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. And you brought them into the land that you had told their fathers to enter and possess. So the descendants went in and possessed the land and you subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hand with their kings and the peoples of the land. So they might do with them as they would. And they captured fortified cities and a rich land and took possession of houses full of all good things, sisters already hewn, vineyards, olive orchards, and fruit trees and abundance. So they ate and were filled and became fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you. So they asked your law behind their back and killed your prophets who had warned them in order to turn them back to you and they committed great blasphemies. Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven. According to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies. So they had rests, they did evil again before you and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you you heard from heaven and many times you delivered them according to your mercies. And you warned them in order to turn back to your law yet they acted presumptuously and did not obey your commandments but sinned against your rules which if a person does them he shall live by them. And they turned a stubborn shoulder and stiffened their neck and would not obey. Many years you bore with them and warned them by your spirit through the prophets yet they would not give you. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands nevertheless in your great mercies. You did not make an end of them or forsake them for you are a gracious and merciful God. And now therefore our God the great the mighty and the awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love. Let not all the hardships seem little to you that has come upon us upon our kings our princes our priests our prophets our fathers and all your people since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. Yet you have been righteous and all that has come upon us for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly our kings our princes our priests and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom and admit amid your great goodness that you gave them and in the large enriched land that you have set before them. They did not serve you or turn from their wicked works behold we are slaves this day in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts behold we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins they rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please and we are in great distress. Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing and on the seal document are the names of our princes our Levites and our priests. May God bless both our reading and our hearing of his word let's pray together. Father in heaven as we turn to this chapter in the book of Nehemiah and look at this great confession that your people made. We're reminded of your great grace to us in Christ Jesus which leads us Lord as well to confess our sins and repent before you. We pray that your Holy Spirit would work this into us that these would not just be words that we hear but words that we respond to that we would be people of broken hearts and contrite spirits remembering what your word says that when we are that kind of people Lord you will not despise. And so give us humble hearts to see your word to see ourselves and to see Christ and we pray these things in Jesus name. Amen. Dear friends in the Lord Jesus we make our way through the book of Nehemiah remind you tonight of this book's theme. We could kind of summarize it like this that God renews his people in the land that he promised to give them through Abraham. This is a book about renewal about the renewing of God's people and so Nehemiah in the first chapter of the book had learned that the walls of Jerusalem had been broken down in the gates burned. He left Susa and returned to Jerusalem now the walls were rebuilt and it seems like the book of Nehemiah can end at that point because what he has come to do has been accomplished. But the book doesn't end there does it. And the reason for that is that this is not a book just about the restoration of the city. But it is a book really about the renewal of the whole nation of Israel. God not only wants to renew his city God wants to renew his people. And so in Nehemiah 8 that we looked at last week the renewal began with the word of God the law. God's people left their homes. They came back to the city to hear the word of the Lord and what it impact God's word made on them. They confessed their sins and they went to obey the word as they celebrated the feast of booths. Now here in chapter 9 we see the next step in the renewal of God's people. And all of us need this at times, don't we? We need to be renewed. Maybe you're at a point of stagnation. Your relationship with the Lord you might say tonight isn't awful, but maybe it's not vibrant either. You know that it's not where it ought to be. Maybe you're going through the motions. There's not much life to your walk with God. And how can you be renewed? Nehemiah 9 reminds us tonight that renewal comes through brokenness and confession of sin. That's right. Renewal through confession. And we see in this chapter how central confession of sin is to a life of spiritual growth with God. And on the alliteration train for the last few weeks and I'm going to carry it along one more time. Three C's tonight that we see coming out of this chapter. Conviction of sin number one. Then confession of sin and finally commitment to God. So first of all, conviction of sin. We begin asking the question tonight. How is it that renewal comes through conviction and confession? Isn't renewal about building up? Whereas we might say tonight that confession of sin is about humbling us. Isn't renewal like healing from a disease? Whereas conviction is about identifying the disease. How is it that spiritual renewal starts with conviction? We can answer it this way. It's the same reason that you only get cured of a disease only after you have been diagnosed with the disease. That bad news comes before the good news. And if we want spiritual renewal in our lives, we cannot take a shortcut around conviction of sin or confession of sin. I think tonight about what the High Library of Catechism and the great confession that it makes. At the very beginning of the confession, the great confession it makes about comfort. What is your only comfort in life and death? I don't have any answer that I'm not my own, but I belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior Jesus Christ. We often stop there in that confession. But the second question of the confession asks us, what must you know to live and die in the joy of this comfort? What do you have to know if you're going to have this kind of comfort in your life? The answer the confession gives is this, I must know how great my sins and miseries are, how I'm saved from them and how I must serve God. So the High Library of Catechism says, if you want to know the joy of living in the comfort of belonging to Jesus, you first have to know what Jesus has saved you from. You have to know your sin before you can know the comfort of belonging to Christ. It's like one person who put it this way, I prayed, Lord, show me more of your grace and the Lord answered me this way. I will show you more of my grace by showing you more of your own sin. Friends, that's what we find here in Nehemiah 9. God's people gather for a national day of repentance and recommitment before God. It was a gathering that was prompted by the Word of God. It was God's Word that brought conviction of sin for them and for us. And so Nehemiah 8, what we looked at last week, God's Word is read, it led to a sorrow over sin. The feast of booths occurs at the end of chapter 8, seven days of reading from the Word of God and now it's only a couple of days after that and the Word of God is read again. 3, chapter 9, God's people stood up in their place and they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day. And that led for another quarter of it, them making confession and worshiping the Lord their God. A quarter of the day, the Word of God is read, a quarter of the day, God's people confess their sins. Something like for three hours at a time, they hear the Word of God and then as they hear the Word of God, conviction of sin was brought upon them to lead them to confess their sins. And that's what God's Word does. It convicts us, it's one of the uses of the law, to convict us of our sin and to show us our need of Christ. Or again, is one of the reformed confessions puts it, how do we come to know our sin, the law of God tells me so. This is what the Word of God does. It leads us to the joy of Christ but before that it leads us to see our need of Christ. God's Word, if some people have put it, is like a mirror. You stand before it and you see your own reflection in the Word of God. And so God's Word says we're not to have any other gods before him. And we see His Word and we begin to see our own reflection in it and we begin to realize that we have loved things more than God or alongside of God. And we have broken His commands. But God's Word says we're not to murder and we look into the mirror and we see ourselves and we realize what we may not have physically killed anyone. That we have murdered other people through our words or harboring hate for others in our hearts and God's Word shines a light onto us or reflects what's in our heart and we become convicted of the sins that are there. Paul reminds us in Romans 7, 7 and 8. He says if it had not been for the law I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said you shall not covet. But sin ceasing the opportunity through the commandment produced in me all kinds of covetousness. I remember some years ago when I was passing through the city of Toledo with our family were on vacation. We stopped in a hotel in Toledo in inside of the bathroom of the hotel was a sign that said don't clean fish in the sink. There was a lot of fishermen around Toledo on Lake Erie but I have to say it never dawned on me to use a sink to clean fish until I saw that there was a rule against it. And people of God that's what God's Word his law is like. It reveals to us what is in our heart. I would not have known sin Paul says but as soon as we begin to look into the word into the law we hear it. God begins to reveal all kinds of things in our heart that need to be confessed that bring conviction. And people have this was the first step in their spiritual renewal before the Lord for God's people here in the am I and I. Conviction of sin prompted by the word of God and also demonstrated by the leaders among the people. So we read here that the people were assembled with fasting and in sack cloth with earth and dust on their heads all signs of repentance. And verse 4 tells us that the leaders Jesu Abani, Cadmiel and the others they stood before the people on the steps and they called the people to bless the Lord. That's what spiritual leaders do. They call God's people the confession of sin to conviction of sin. And they also act as the lead repenters among the people of God. Leading away in spiritual brokenness demonstrating a humble broken and contrite spirit before God's people that give them an example of broken hearts before God. So we see number one conviction conviction of sin it led secondly to confession of sin. And this is really the heart of the chapter. The prayer that we find here beginning in verse 5 and then carrying all the way through verse 37. Think about this prayer in a few different ways tonight. First of all, of course, it's a history lesson. There's a rehearsal in this prayer of covenantal history or what we could say the Old Testament history of redemption. And you can see this in the various parts of the prayer. And so verse 6 begins with a story of creation. You are the Lord, you alone, you have made heaven the heaven of heavens with all their host and the earth and all that is in it. Verse 7 and 8 we find God's covenant with Abram. And this promise to give him and his offspring the land of Canaan. Verses 9 and following the captivity in Egypt and the Exodus. Verse 13 following the giving of the law at Mount Sinai. Verses 15 through 21 the wilderness years. And a summary of that in verse 21 that for 40 years, God's people were sustained by the Lord. Verse 22 and following the conquest, 26 and following the judges. And then verse 30 the exile to Assyria and Babylon and the return to the promised land under Ezra in Nehemiah. Now why is all this history here? It's here because this is a rehearsal of Israel's history showing the people of Nehemiah's day what was behind the destruction of Jerusalem and their return to Israel after exile. It's the backdrop, it's the backstory to everything that had come before the destruction of Israel, before the destruction of Jerusalem. And then subsequently what followed as God's people returned to the land. This is national history, Israel's history. But people got it's more than that because this isn't sort of like for us thinking about the 4th of July. It's not only national history, it's covenantal history. This is the history of God saving a people to be his very own. Who were delivered by God, who had been set apart by God for his glory and renown. This is a story of what God has been doing. We have to remember that, that's why it's here. It's what Israel was being reminded of in Nehemiah's day. But there's a second way of looking at this prayer. It is a history of contrast, then between God's faithfulness, his mercy and the people's sin. And you can see this in the pronouns of the prayer, the you versus they. And so verse 6 begins off, you are the Lord, you alone. And it carries all throughout the prayer, you preserve the earth and the seas. You came down on Mount Sinai, O Lord, you gave them bread from heaven, and so on. I encourage you to take your own Bibles at some point and just begin to underline how often the word you is used. God, you did this, you did that, you were faithful, you were merciful. And then in contrast to that in this prayer, we see how often the word they is used, talking about the fathers. Verse 16, they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks. They refused to obey. They were disobedient and rebelled as the prayer goes on. They acted presumptuously and did not obey your commands. And all throughout this prayer, back and forth, God, you did this, God, you acted this way. But nevertheless the people of God acted this way back and forth, back and forth between God's greatness, His goodness, His grace, and the people's rebellion. God was merciful but nevertheless the people turned away from God. Friends, you see the ugliness of our sin, surfaces so clearly in the light of God's greatness, goodness. It's his word that convicts but also reflecting upon who God is, what God has done for us in Christ that our sin begins to show and show up in our lives. It's like Pastor Kevin referred this morning to Isaiah. When he sees the greatness of God, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. All Isaiah can do is say, I am undone. He sees God's greatness and it begins to reflect upon himself. And so that's what we see here. God is merciful but so often we are faithless. This is Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones who said this was the problem of God's people. He says there is no doubt that 99.9% of our troubles as Christians is that we are ignorant of God. 99.9% of our problems is that we are ignorant about God. We do not understand or realize His greatness, His goodness, His grace to us. David Wells put it similarly. He said, we are persuaded too often of the weightlessness of God. And sin, prosperous, you see, then when a diminished view of God is present in our lives. When sin is getting a hold in your life, you can be sure that one of the things that's happening is you don't realize who God is or understand it or not appropriating it as you ought to be. We are not seeing God, we are not thinking about God, we are not worshiping God as we ought, we are not praising God for the cross. It happens, sin explodes in our life. But when we do begin to see God for who He is, then we begin to see our own hearts as well. The ought to lead us to confession of sin. Clear Ferguson put it very clearly. He said one reason why we know so little affiliate fear is that we do not appreciate the gospel. We grow in grace so that we fear God like this. We must first return to the gospel and to the meaning of the cross. Think about all that God has done for us in Christ. We will be undone. We will come to God with confession. One other thing that is important to notice about this prayer, and that is that it led to authentic, specific, and personal confession of sin on the part of Nehemiah and the people of this time. In other words, this prayer doesn't simply reflect upon what had happened with the fathers in the past. But there's a shift at the end of the prayer to the present. The history of the fathers are billion to an owning of their own sin. This verse 32 begins now, therefore, our God. Here comes the conclusion from the history. The great summary line in verse 33. Lord, you have been righteous in all that has come upon us. For you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. And then the conclusion verses 36 and 37. Behold, we are slaves this day in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. Behold, we are slaves in its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. You see, it began to settle upon Nehemiah and the people of his day that they were not unlike the fathers. In rebelling against God. There's no blame shifting, no excuses, no defensiveness, no accusations that God is being too hard or too harsh. No batching of their sins together and confessing sinfulness versus specific sins. And all of these are ways that we sometimes try to soften our own confession of sin. We know the truth of our sin, but we don't always fully acknowledge it or want to own up to the specific sins that we've committed. Sometimes we confess a condition rather than our sin. And Israel did not do that here. This prayer sets a wonderful example for us. It's owning up to our sin that drives us to see the wonder of grace. Trouble in our own life that drives us to God. For us, maybe it's why we're lacking in renewal and hunger for God because we have lost a sense of the depth of our own sin. As we think about them specifically and as we begin to realize how they pile up and how great our sin is. This, of course, is not where we often want to go. The culture shouts to us to be think more of ourselves, not less of ourselves, to build up our self-esteem, not to confess our sins. But we cannot hope for real spiritual growth and renewal without this. We want God to be at work in our lives. We need to see our need for Christ and his gospel and to confess our sins before him. So God's word brings conviction of sin that I'll lead to confession of sin. And then finally, we see commitment to God. And this is the last verse of the chapter because of all this, the verse reads, we make a firm covenant in writing. On the steel document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. Now, we're not able to say much of anything tonight about this renewed commitment to God, what it looked like. The reason for that is that's where chapter 10 takes us. Lord willing, we'll look at that next week. We can say that Israel must have sensed this was a new beginning in their walk with the Lord. Because what we see so often in the Old Testament at new chapters in their spiritual life, is this renewed commitment to the covenant. God, we're starting over. God, this is a new beginning and we commit ourselves a new to you, to live for you. That's what happened when Israel entered the promised land, that new beginning. That's what happened when they received Saul as king that new chapter in their history. And now as they return to Jerusalem after exile, they commit themselves a new in writing to God, making a pledge to live for God again, to turn from the sins of the past to renew themselves to the Lord. And people of God, these three parts, I think of the chapter here, remind us of the rhythm of renewal in the Christian life. Some have put it like this with three words. The rhythm of renewal is guilt, leading to grace, leading to gratitude. Or as others have put it, sin, salvation, and service. When author put it like this, gospel logic is this, it is obedience offered by way of gratitude for grace received. Let me say that again, obedience offered by way of gratitude for grace received. That is gospel logic, it is never the other way around. It is never grace received because of obedience offered. So why does conviction and confession of sin lead to renewal? Because of course, they're meant to lead us to Christ. They're meant to lead us to the cross. Our sin ought to drive us to our Savior, to Jesus who fulfilled the covenant for us through his perfect obedience and death at Calvary. You see, we are to be undone so that we can be renewed and rescued by what Jesus has come to do for us at Calvary. I end tonight with this prayer. We have here in Nehemiah 9, a prayer, but let me end with this prayer from the valley of vision that summarizes what we've been talking about tonight. Let me, Lord, learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul. And let me find thy light in my darkness, thy life in my death, thy joy in my sorrow, thy grace in my sin, thy riches in my poverty, and thy glory in my valley. So God, we pray that we would not be people who run from our sin but rather run with our sin to Christ. We pray, Lord, that you would convict us of your sin by your word, that you'd lead us to confess our sins before you, that we would see your grace and mercy in Christ Jesus, and then we would recommit ourselves to live for God. May those be the rhythms of our life this week, from guilt to grace to gratitude, sin, to salvation, to service, and we pray these things in Jesus' name.