A Covenant to Keep the Covenant part 2

But Nehemiah chapter 10 and we're going to cover verses 30 through 39. Like I said this is a part two. The title of the message is a covenant to keep the covenant. A covenant to keep the covenant. Now I know I read earlier verse 38 from chapter 9 and I do want to ask you to note that verse. I think it's a pivotal verse. I think it's a turning point in all of this work that we see in chapter 8, 9 and chapter 10. It would do us some good to kind of know that verse by heart. What I mean is it reminds us of how they were responsible to do their share. Now in chapter 10 we're seeing the Jews take their responsibility very seriously.

They had experienced this great spiritual revival. Now I use this wording, this terminology on purpose. I repeat this on purpose because that is what we see and we do need to see it. And we need to really see that they're reacting properly. But we need to see they're reacting biblically. Our reactions must be biblically and they were reacting biblically. They were making a covenant to keep the covenant and that was their biblical response. Now let me stop here for a minute because I want to make a little application. In the life of the church when we encounter truth individually and corporately we must react properly.

Well, we react properly by reacting biblically. Let me give you an example. I've got a friend of mine that ministers on church staff and he was telling me about how he is approaching and dealing with some, he's correcting some bad structure in the life of the church. They have some women who are in positions of leadership that should not be there. It's unbiblical. The scripture teaches that women should not have authority over men but there are women in some of those positions and he was dealing with that.

They were some women in the life of the church who wanted to have a meeting with the church staff and certain leaders in the life of the church. They were not rude, they were not ugly. They were just pointing out how some of the church constitution was wrong and then they were laying out the scripture and saying we're addressing some of this erroneous structure in the life of the church. Some of the women took issue with that.

My friend, my minister friend said, "Well, ma'am, we just must choose to be biblical over what the church constitution says." Well, I'm sad to say that this particular lady voiced a little outrage and said, "I'd rather choose what the constitution says over what the scripture says." Well, that's not reacting biblically. I use that example because we might can relate to that. We must react biblically to what we learn in the scripture individually and corporately. Well, that's what they were doing. They were reacting biblically because they were a covenant people.

For us to understand fully what's taking place here, we do need to understand that the Jews were a covenant people. Now, we don't have time to go back and study all of the covenants and all of what that means. This is a very simplistic definition. The fact that they were a covenant people meant that they were bound by God by covenant, bound by God by agreement. God had committed himself to them as God's chosen people and they had committed themselves to God. We see the covenants all through the Old Testament. You might not realize it, but there is a covenant between God and Adam and Eve in the garden. We see that in Genesis chapter 3.

Then we see there's the covenant between God and Noah in Genesis chapter 9 verse 9. And then we see there is a covenant with Abraham beginning in Genesis chapter 15. Some of you might understand or have knowledge of the Abrahamic covenant, but maybe not some of the other covenants. And then we see that God made a covenant with His people at Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 19 starting in verse 5. And we see them becoming the nation of Israel. God's chosen people really in a fuller sense right here in Exodus 19 with the covenant at Mount Sinai. So they were a covenant people. They were bound by God to the covenant.

God had bound himself to them by the covenant. So we see that they're reacting biblically as God's covenant people. Now I keep repeating myself, but we're ready to see this. Their reaction was after the great spiritual work. They were a backsliding people. Their forefathers were a backsliding people. Their forefathers had broken the covenant and God was calling them back. He was calling them back to Himself, but back to the Word. We saw that in chapter 9 of Nehemiah and chapter 8. But back to their original purpose and that was to be the covenant people of God. So they had a big responsibility and they had a big choice to make.

Was it just enough to agree with what Ezra taught? Was it just enough to agree with the Word? It was to agree that they were the covenant people and they had broken covenant and they were coming back as God's covenant people. Now we're seeing that these people, they're reacting properly. They went back to the covenant and again I go back to this title. The covenant to keep the covenant. A covenant to keep the covenant. So you see how we're going to divide the verses. So let's look starting in verse 30. Let's look starting in verse 30. This picks up right in the middle of the verses that we left off with our part one.

Verse 30, in that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or Holy Day and we will forgo the crops of the seventh year and the extraction of every debt. We also placed ourselves under the obligation to contribute yearly. One third of the shekel for the service of the house of our God.

For the showbread, for the continual grain offering, for the continual burn offering, the sabbas, the new moon, for the appointed times, for the holy things and the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel in all of the work of the house of our God. Verse 34, likewise we cast lights for the supply of wood among the priests, the Levites, and the people in order that they might bring to the house of our God according to our Father's households, at fixed times annually, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God as it is written in the law, and in order that they might bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all of the fruit of every tree to the house of the Lord annually, and to bring to the house of God the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks as it is written in the law of Moses, for the priests who are ministering in the house of our God.

We will also bring the first of our dough, our contributions, the first of every tree, the new wine and the oil to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God, and the tithe of our ground to the Levites, for the Levites are they who receive the tithes in all of the rural towns. And then I'll pause there, the rest of the verses continue of all of the offerings that they would bring to the Levites, to the house of God. Now you see how we're going to break down the verses. Now in our part one, we looked at the renewal of the covenant, chapter 9, verse 38.

Then the leadership led the way, and we really took a large portion of scripture, verses 1 through 27. And then we saw the solemn promise in verse 28 and 29. And then now we see the specific separation. We see the specific separation. Now it might seem strange, but we're talking about marriages here. Look back at the verses. And that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land, or take their daughters for our sons. And then they're dealing with the Sabbath regulations. Here we see that the people are turning back to the Word of God. They are not just hearers of the Word, but they became doers of the Word.

This is evidence of this spiritual revival, that it was a true revival. The people were drawn back to the Word of God. In so doing, they saw that they were living just as the pagans were living around them. As God's chosen people, as the covenant people of God, they could not live as everyone else did. Their God, their standard, had to be the Word of God. So there are two observations out of these verses. Comes out of verse 30 and verse 31. First, they separated from the pagans in marriage. That's fairly obvious there in verse 30. They separated from the pagan peoples in marriage.

Now the Word, the Law of Moses, it forbid the marrying of the Jews to foreign women and foreigners in the land. Now we saw earlier in verse 29 the mention of the Law of the Lord. The Law of Moses. All through these verses we see that language woven in the verses. This had been a continual problem. This was a problem back in Ezra in chapter 7 all the way to chapter 10. We will see this arises a problem again later in chapter 13 of Nehemiah. Bible scholars believe that the prophet Malachi was ministering during this exact time. In his writing he addresses this problem of mixed marriages among the pagans as well.

We see that in Malachi chapter 2 verse 11 and in chapter 2 verses 14 through 16. So this was a very serious, reoccurring problem for God's people. When they married the pagan peoples, they inevitably took on their foreign customs and then they worshiped their false gods. And so taking pagan spouses in marriage led to idolatry every time. So they separated themselves from the pagans in marriage. And then second they separated from the pagans on the holy days. Let me go back to verse 31. As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day.

Because the Jews had many different holy days. And we will forgo the crops of the seventh year and the extraction of death. And this is from the teaching of Moses. This is from the laws within the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. The Jews as God's covenant people were not to buy and sell on the Jewish Sabbath day. Now their Sabbath day was a Saturday. Exodus 23 verses 10 through 11 speaks of a Sabbath year. The land was to be rested from farming every seventh year. That's what that's referring to in verse 31. Exodus 21 through 6 says that every seven years those who were slaves because of debt had to be released.

Those debts had to be forgiven. And living in such close proximity to the non-Jews, they were tempted to abandon these teachings and to live like the pagans and not practice such things. So in summary, what do we see out of these two verses? The people saw from the law of Moses that they were to be a separate and holy people. They were to keep the Sabbath day and other holy days as well as the other commandments. They were and would be tempted to live in the pagans' debt. But as God's chosen people, they could not do so in these areas of the Sabbath days and in the areas of marriage.

In summary, I believe we can wrap up what's taught here in two words, separation and trust. You can jot those two words down. They were to live a separated life from the foreign peoples. And they had to trust that God would meet their needs even when they rested and did not trade on those holy days, when they let the land rest on that seventh year. Even when they forgave those debts, they had to trust God. So I believe those two words can really summarize. They had to separate and they had to trust. Now what can we learn from these verses? How do these verses apply to us today? Because we're not Jews. We're not the covenant people of God.

Now we're spoken of all throughout the Old Testament. When God took Abraham outside and said, "Look up at the stars in the sky. Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars in the sky." That was speaking of us as Gentile believers. But what can we learn from these scriptures? First of all, we can learn from the situation with them marrying the pagan women and marrying the pagan sons. We are to be a separate people. We as God's people who love God, we should seek to have Christian spouses for our sons and daughters. Marriage is a one-time thing. We understand the scriptures teach that.

And listen, we need to be careful how we deal with marriage. And our sons and our daughters, we trust and pray, will grow up and love the Lord and be born again. But we should pray for Christian spouses. We should not just give our okay for our sons and our daughters to marry any person. Because we should desire that our sons and our daughters marry men and women who love the Lord and serve God and want to do this thing called marriage right. But also I think that we can learn from the Jews here in that they had to trust God for their needs. They had to trust God for their provisions. Now imagine this. They were an agricultural society.

But imagine that all of your neighbors are plowing their fields and on the seventh year you let your field lay in rest. You let your field stay there. You do not plow your field. Your neighbors are saying, "How are you going to make a crop? How are you going to make a living?" See, they had to store up enough to get through those years. It was about trust. And we must trust as well. Now we could go on with that. But the point I'm trying to make here with this is that they had to trust the Lord that He would meet their needs. And we as Christians need to look to the Lord that He would meet our needs financially and physically.

But inevitably these passages here lead to a question. How do the Sabbath regulations apply to us? Do they apply to us today? Now I've said this. We are not Jews. We are not Israel. The church is not a modern day Israel. And we are not modern day Jews. But do these apply to us today? Now we must enter this from the Scriptures. Now nowhere in the New Testament are we commanded to keep the Jewish Sabbath day regulations. There are various places where these issues are dealt with. But one I'm going to turn to and I will read in Colossians chapter 2 verse 16.

Paul commands the Colossian church not to judge anyone according to the Old Testament or Old Covenant regulations. I'll read this verse. "Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day. These which are a mere shadow of what is to come but the substance belongs to Christ." So we see Paul deals with not judging those according to these Old Testament, Old Covenant regulations. Now we need to see those regulations were a shadow of what was to come. Look back with me or listen to me in this verse again. What is Paul saying?

These things, these Sabbath day regulations, they were a shadow of what was to come but the substance belongs to Christ. What Paul is saying is everything in the Old Testament pointed to the coming of the Christ but we see that we have Christ. What is Paul doing? Paul is saying that is the Old Covenant and the Old Covenant pointed to the New Covenant which is Christ. Now I want to simplify how I see this issue from the New Testament. I want to simplify how I see this in the Scriptures. What do we see the New Testament Christians doing in the New Testament?

They worship on the first day of the week which was Sunday which was called the Lord's Day. Now I'm going to get to the Lord's Day but I want to give you some information before we get there. In Acts chapter 20 verse 7 we see Paul worshiping on the Lord's Day on the first day. In 1 Corinthians 16 too we see Paul doing the same thing, worshiping on the Lord's Day on the first day. Now all through the book of Acts and all through the epistles, all through the New Testament you'll run across the New Testament Christians worshiping on the first day of the week. If you go back and you look the resurrection happened on the first day.

As a matter of fact the giving of the Spirit at Pentecost was on the first day. And if you progress all the way through the book of Revelation there at the end of the canon in Revelation 1.10 the first day is even called the Lord's Day. So the New Testament Christians devoted that day the Lord's Day for worship. They called it the Lord's Day and they never called it the Sabbath. They never called it the Christian Sabbath. They called it the Lord's Day. Now I'm going to let you in on some of my preaching preparation. I'm going to teach a little more on this subject.

Every now and then, every so often I will revisit my series, Messages from the Pastoral Heart. There are several subjects I want to deal with. There are several things I've been studying and praying over and soon I will come and I will bring some of these issues to you. This is one of them. But I do want to give some guidance here. I don't want to just say these things without giving you some guidance. So this is my guidance. Four things. This is still an application. This day, Sunday, the Lord's Day, the first day of the week that all of the New Testament Christians honored and served and worshiped.

This day, Sunday, the Lord's Day, we should see it as the Lord's Day. It was seen as the Lord's Day in the New Testament. It was seen as the Lord's Day by the Apostle Paul. It was called the Lord's Day in Revelation 1.10 and we should see it as the Lord's Day and it should be set apart for worship just as we see in the New Testament. If you go back to the 1 Corinthians 16.2 passage, Paul spent with the Corinthian church a long amount of time preaching and teaching to the Corinthian Christians and it was set aside as the Lord's Day devoted to the Lord's Day in all through the New Testament when it's referenced the context is corporate worship.

So we should see Sunday, the first day of the week, as the Lord's Day and it should be set apart for a day of worship exactly like we see in the New Testament. Second, this day, Sunday, the Lord's Day, we should organize our time, we should organize our devotion to Christ, we should organize our families, we should organize everything that we do around the Lord's Day being the Lord's Day and it should be our devotion to Christ. Now a lot of people ask the wrong question. The wrong question is what? The right question is who? Who should it be centered around? It should be centered around Christ. Go back to the Colossian passage.

What does Paul say? Some of you are in bondage because you're holding on to some things from the Old Covenant and some of you are judging others in like manner. What does he say? These things are a mere shadow of what is to come. What is he saying? The Old Covenant talked about Christ, now Christ has come. What is he saying? You don't have to hold on to the Old Covenant, we have Christ. Now the point is who? We should honor Christ, we should organize our time, we should organize our families, we should organize our devotion to not what, who? It's Christ. And we pull that right out of what Paul is teaching.

And then the third thing that I want you to see is we should develop convictions based on the New Testament Scriptures. This should come out of the New Testament and the Scriptures chapter in verse and there is a difference in personal convictions and straight biblical convictions right out of the Scriptures. Let me give you an example. There are times when we can say that the Scripture says this, black and white, and we have a conviction. I'll give you an example, when we go back to marriage, when we go back to relationships, there are plenty of Scriptures that talk about how we should relate to those who are lost and not Christian.

In my years of student ministry, I remember I had many times young people would say, "Is it wrong for me to be involved in someone who is not a Christian?" And I could pull Scripture. Yes, bad company corrupt good morals, that's one. We should not be unequally yoked. Now I would always point them back to their parents. That's straight out of the Scripture. But what I'm trying to show you is sometimes we will have personal convictions that are not tied entirely to the Scriptures, but we should develop our convictions from the Scriptures. And we need to pray through those because they can be personal opinions and not be biblical convictions.

And there is a big difference between personal opinions and personal convictions. And then fourth in this guidance, we should not judge others in their biblical convictions. Look at what Paul says again, "Therefore let no one act as your judge in regard to food or drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ." He's saying, "Quit judging one another in regards to these things." And we should not judge others in their biblical convictions. I'll give you another example.

The issue that really became an issue in the beginning of the New Testament church, especially when they began to reach the Gentiles, was should we eat food that's been sacrificed to idols? They lived in pagan towns, and they were literal people who worship pagan idols, and they would sacrifice those animals to those pagan idols, and then the meat would be sold in the market. And there were some that would say, "We cannot eat that meat. We cannot." It was sacrificed to an idol. Well, what was Paul? Paul's conviction. Paul said this, "We know that idol doesn't exist. There's nothing wrong with that meat.

And if I take that meat and I ingest that meat, it does not do anything to me on the inside. That idol doesn't exist." But he also said, "I will not do that if it offends my brother. I will not do that if it offends someone to my left or someone to my right." And what is he saying? We have to be careful how we judge one another. Now there's a lot more that can be said here. I wanted to give you some guidance here. I wanted to start us off with these scriptures in the New Testament. We've got to notice what the New Testament scriptures say. It's the Lord's Day and how they honor the Lord on the Lord's Day.

But again, I've touched real quickly on this guidance. Sunday, the Lord's Day, we should see it as the Lord's Day. It should be set apart for worship. It should not be another Saturday in any way. We should see that the New Testament Christians did that. They honored it in Christian worship. Sunday, the Lord's Day, this day, we should organize our time. We should organize our week. We should organize our families. We should organize our activities so as to uphold the Lord's Day. And Christ should be the center of the Lord's Day. And we should develop our personal convictions based on New Testament scriptures.

We should be able to say chapter and verse. And there is a difference in personal convictions and biblical convictions. And we should not judge others if they are not where we are on some of these issues. Now I want to move on to the remaining verses. I didn't mean to spend so much time there, but these are some issues that we face in the life of the church. And we will face more in the future, like I said. But the remaining verses in the chapter all deal with the same subject. That's why I've lumped verses 32 to 39 together. The people of God the Jews, they were to support the work of the ministry within the temple.

Not only were they to be a separate holy people, but they were to be committed to worship in the temple. So our second main truth is the support of temple worship. Now for the second time, I won't go back and read all of the verses, but I will mention and read some of the verses as we progress. Now when the people of God returned from captivity and judgment, they had to rebuild every aspect of Jewish life. Those of you who go all the way back with our study in Ezra remember that. In the book of Nehemiah, we learn that their major project was to rebuild the walls around Jerusalem. It's a major undertaking.

Now if we go back in the book of Ezra, we learn that their major project was rebuilding the temple. And I want you to see the temple came first, even before they built their own homes. The temple was built first because worship of the one true God was central to their lives as God's people. So in reinstituting temple worship, there were certain expenses that had to be met. Now you might say, "Brother Chris, they rebuilt the temple way back." They were still working on the temple and reinstituting worship in the temple. Now there are five observations real quickly out of these verses. First they were to bring monies to the temple.

We see that in verse 32. We also placed ourselves under the obligation to contribute yearly one-third of a shekel. Now back in Exodus 30 verses 11 through 16 and in chapter 38 verses 25 through 26, there was a precedence to this tax in Nehemiah. In other words, this was the forerunner to this tax in Nehemiah. In Exodus it does not seem that it was a tax, but here we see that the tax was developed. And it is referenced later in Nehemiah 13.10. So they were to bring money to the temple in the form of a tax. Second they were to bring breads and grains to the temple. We see that in verse 33.

Here we see that breads and grains were brought for specific offerings. Simply this was a part of the offerings and the burnt offerings that were a part of their worship. Then third they were to bring wood or wood for burnt offerings in verse 34. Now there was not a wood offering mentioned in the Pentateuch of the first five books of the Bible, but Leviticus 6 states that the fire on the altar of God was to be kept burning at all times. So they were to bring wood for the burnt offerings. Fourth they were to bring first fruits, verse 35 and 37. Here in both verses we see the same phrase, first fruits.

Now this phrase, you might want to note that, it can be translated the best of. And that meant that they were to bring the best, the first of what they brought. And we see here that this was the best of their produce. And then fifth, they were to bring the first born. They were to bring the first born in verse 36. Here we see that they brought the first of the best of their herds and their children. And they were dedicating their first born or their children to the Lord. They were bringing the first fruits of their herds, the best of their herds, and the first fruits, their first born to the Lord to dedicate them to the Lord.

So in summary, what do we see here? The people of God were coming together to attend the worship needs of the temple. They were contributing to meet the needs of the temple. They were not going to neglect temple worship and the needs within the temple. Now we don't worship in a temple. The Lord does not live in a temple anymore. We don't worship like this in a temple. We say this is the house of God, but we know that God doesn't live within this house. Now what might we learn here? How might this apply to us? I've taught that we bring the tithe and then we give above the tithe. We give the offering.

And what we do is we bring the tithe and we bring the offering and we bring that to be a part and given to the Lord's work. We must give faithfully. We must give faithfully. We must bring the tithe because the tithe is the Lord's and we must give above and beyond the tithe because that is scriptural. It's been a while since I've taught on tithing. It's been a while since I've taught on giving and that might be one of the things that we look at as time comes on. But the point I'm trying to make is we need to be faithful to give because it costs to do the work of the church.

I'm thankful Brother Keith and I have enlisted the help of some of the men of our church to go back and we're revisiting some of the old ways that we've done finances. A lot of the finances in the life of the church really are as they were five, ten, fifteen years ago. And we're revamping and we're retooling and we're examining every nickel and every dime. And in the new year we look to have a new plan in place. Now why do I share that business with you? We take this job serious. We want to be faithful to bring in the tithe to give to the offering and then we want to be faithful to use it properly to facilitate worship.

Now what do we see here? A lot out of these verses. It's all part of the same story. In Nehemiah 8 and 9 we see a great spiritual renewal and spiritual revival starting in verse 38 of chapter 9, the people are making a covenant to come back and be the covenant people of God. They renewed the covenant. Then the leadership, they were the ones who led the way. They made this silent promise before God. There is a specific separation. See the Word of God identified their areas of sin. They adjusted their lives to the Word of God and then they committed themselves to support the temple, to support worship.

And they were responsible for their end of the bargain. Now as I conclude real quickly, I want to make three points of application. I'll call them the "We Should Live" statements. We should live. First of all, we should live in submission to the Word of God. Isn't that what these people have done? Ezra and the leading men, the priests and the Levites, they brought the Word of God before them and the Word of God did what only the Word of God could do. It revealed their sin. They were broken before God.

They knew what their forefathers had done and God, by the revelation of the Spirit of God, using the Word of God revealed the sin in their lives. And they submitted to the Word of God in our personal lives, in every area of church life, when we come into the face of the Word of God, we should adjust our lives to the Word of God. I'll use this example again. Many of you know that I like and I listen to and look up to Grace Life Church of the Shoals and Muscle Shoals, Alabama. I look up to them because they've been reforming the life of the church for some 30 plus years. I can identify with their work.

I can identify where their church used to be and I look up to where they are now. But I heard the pastor Jeff Noblett say, in years gone by when they would systematically go through the Word of God, when they would come in contact with teaching from the scripture that was in opposition to church life, they would call a business meeting, address the scripture, address the area in church life, fix it, change it, alter it, and move on. That is being in submission to the Word of God. Now that's in a corporate way. We should do it corporately and individually. The second we should live, we should live a dedicated, a life dedicated to holiness.

We should live a life dedicated to holiness. That's what they were doing. We have fallen in these areas. We are covenant people. We must be separated from the pagans. And we are to be living a life of holiness and separation from the world. This is a constant struggle. It was a constant struggle for them. It's a constant struggle for you. It will always be a constant struggle. But we should live a life dedicated to holiness and separation from the world and to the Lord. And then the third we should live statement is we should live faithfully committed to the work of the church. In their day, the center of God's activity was in the temple.

In our day, the center of God's activity is in his church. The most precious institution on the face of the earth is the church. He's coming back for the church. He died for the church. He spilled his life's blood for the church. And we as God's people should be faithfully committed to support the work of the church. You might say, "Pastor, well you're making a plea for money." No, I'm making a plea for your life. Christ gave his life. We give our lives. I'm making a plea for you to faithfully be committed to support the work of the church. Let's see how that simplistically comes right out of what we've learned. Submission to the word.

We should live in submission to the word. We should live a life dedicated to holiness. And we should live a life faithfully committed to support the work of the church. That's what these people did. So what do we see? the covenant to keep the covenant. Let's pray.