The sermon titled 'No Longer Neglecting the Things of God' by Scott Brown focuses on the revival and covenant renewal described in Nehemiah chapter 10. The passage illustrates how the Israelites, under Nehemiah's leadership, commit to a covenant to obey God's laws, distinguishing themselves from surrounding pagan practices. This renewal involves recommitting to the Sabbath, upholding the sanctity of marriage, and supporting worship through financial contributions. Brown emphasizes the transformative power of embracing scripture as authoritative and sufficient, leading to sanctification. He draws parallels between the historic revival in Nehemiah's time and the need for similar spiritual awakenings today, urging believers to examine areas of neglect in their lives, such as marriage, Sabbath observance, and financial stewardship. The sermon also underscores the importance of relying on Christ as the ultimate covenant keeper, recognizing human frailty in fulfilling promises, and the necessity of ongoing spiritual revival.

Nehemiah chapter 10. Now those who placed their seal on the document were Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hacaliah, and Zedekiah, Sariah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pasher, Amariah, Malchaija, Hattush, Shabaniah, Malak, Haram, Merimoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnathon, Baruch, Meshalim, Abijah, Mijamin, Maziah, Bilgai, and Shemaiah. These were the priests. The Levites, Jeshua, the son of Azeniah, Benui of the sons of Hanadad and Cadmiel, their brethren Shebaniah, Hodaija, Kalaita, Paliah, Hanan, Micah, Rahab, Hashabiah, Zakur, Sherebayah, Shebaniah, Hodaija, Bani, and Beninu. The leaders of the people, Parash, Pehath Moab, Elan, Zatu, Bani, Booni, Asgad, Be'bay, Zatu, Bani, Booni, Asgad, Bebai, Adonaija, Bigvai, Aden, Aiter, Hazekiah, Azur, Hodaija, Hashem, Bezai, Harif, Anathoth, Nebai, Magpiesh, Meshulam, Hezir, Meshezabel, Zadok, Jaduwa, Palatya, Hanen, Anaya, Hoshea, Hainanaya, Hashab, Halohesh, Pilha, Shobak, Rahim, Habshana, Masiya, Ahijah, Hainan, Anan, Malik, Haram, and Banna.

Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the nethanyim, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, everyone who had knowledge and understanding. These joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and to do all the commandments of the Lord our God and his ordinances and statutes. We would not give our daughters as wives to the peoples of the land nor take their daughters for our sons. If the peoples of the land brought wares or any grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we would not buy it from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day, and we would forego the seventh year's produce and the exacting of every debt. Also, we made ordinances for ourselves to exact from ourselves yearly one-third of a shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the showbread, for the regular grain offering, for the regular burnt offering of the Sabbaths, the new moons, and the set feasts, for the holy things, for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel and all the work of the house of our God we cast lots among the priests the Levites and the people the bring for bringing the wood offering into the house of our God according to our Father's houses and the appointed times year by year to burn on the altar of the Lord our God as it is written in the law.

And we made ordinances to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all fruit trees, of all fruit of all trees, year by year to the house of the Lord. To bring the firstborn of our sons and our cattle as it is written in the law and the firstborn of our herds and our flocks to the house of our God to the priests who minister in the house of our God to bring the first fruits of our dough our offerings the fruit from all kinds of trees the new wine and oil to the priests, to the store rooms of the house of our God, and to bring the tithes of our land to the Levites, for the Levites should receive the tithes in all our farming communities. And the priest, the descendant of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive tithes, and the Levites shall bring up a tenth of the tithes to the house of our God, to the rooms of the storehouse. For the children of Israel and the children of Levi shall bring the offering of the grain of the new wine and the oil to the store rooms where the articles of the sanctuary are, where the priests who minister and the gatekeepers and the singers are, and we will not neglect the house of our God.

Let's pray. Lord, we thank you that we are able to gather here this morning under the terms of this new covenant in your blood. We thank you, Lord, that you have called us, that you have written our names in your book and just as these names are written here for us Lord we are so thankful and we rejoice in that and that none can pluck us from your hand. Lord we say thank you this morning, Thank you for the assurance of salvation. Lord, we fail, we faint, we sin against you, and yet you pardon us, Lord.

And we don't want to take these things for granted, but rather respond with praise and thanksgiving to you. And Lord, even as we read these words here and see how even young people responded, those who had understanding, sons and daughters, we pray likewise, Lord, that you would use the preaching today to revive and bring to life our sons and our daughters who do not know you. Lord, we ask you to teach us this morning. We pray that you would help Scott as he communicates your word, that you would fill them with your spirit, with power, from on high, that we would leave this place a changed people, Lord, that we would honor you on this, your Sabbath day. We do thank you for how you're teaching us and how you're leading us, Lord.

May you be with us now as we sit under the hearing of your word. Amen. Well, really, it's a very special joy for me to be bringing us this text of Scripture today. As we look into Nehemiah chapter 10, we see that this revival is continuing as God causes His people to desire to enter into a covenant with Him, and the covenant has to do with certain things that had been lost in their experience as the people of God. And it happened as a result of their hearing the Word of God.

You know, this began in Nehemiah chapter 8 when all the people gathered together and they heard the Word of God, you know, for six hours from 6 a.m. To noon. And then that gripped their hearts and then they continued with the Feasts of the seventh month that they were called to do at that time. And then on the 15th day, they began again to read the Word of God. And they did it for seven days, which was required in the law.

But they couldn't stop. They just couldn't get enough. God had been moving their hearts. And so, they, on the eighth day, they gathered again to hear the Word of God, and the scene in chapter 10 is part of that eighth day. So, It's only been about a month since the wall has been completed, and how these elements of revival are beginning to really take hold.

And you notice the progressive consciousness of the people's sin. They're recognizing more and more that they've fallen short in areas that they hadn't realized before. And it really is a picture of the Christian life, which is why in chapter 9, God just declares His mercy toward his people, how long-suffering he is. This is a picture of long-suffering. Remember, we started this in Ezra, and Ezra and Nehemiah give a picture of a 117-year period of revival where God is restoring his people.

The people had been in captivity for 70 years and he brings them back into the land. God places it on the hearts of many to bring this revival. And this is a picture of true faith and it shows how how true faith Actually changes your life that it inspires your heart to change and it engages a whole people to rise up and they And they no longer neglect the things that they were neglecting. Some of the things, they didn't, it just didn't clear their consciences that they were neglecting them. Some of them, they knew they were neglecting them.

And so this is how God works in His people. And it really is a picture of what it looks like when people truly, genuinely, heartfeltedly, if you would say it like that, embrace the authority and the sufficiency of the scriptures. This is what's happening here. And this really is the basis of the Christian witness in the world to embrace that scripture is authoritative and it is sufficient and that we should live by it and that our justification should not stop with just justification, but that our justification should lead us into every possible area of sanctification, that God changes lives. He doesn't call you to just feel things about God and declare yourself to be righteous and to comfort yourself that he has done so but that you actually you actually move in obedience toward his word and this testimony here really helps us to understand what it's like to live in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation to come out of that generation and to make specific changes in life.

And we face the same thing. We live in the midst of a secular and a pluralistic society. And really our only hope to think rightly about our lives is through the windows of Scripture, that we should embrace Scripture as as authoritative and it is profitable for instruction for everything. And these these people here, you know, these this during these this post-exilic period, they're recognizing that God is sanctifying them. They're recognizing that God is taking them one step at a time, closer and closer to obedience to His Word.

And they, the heart of this is that you have a people who they don't want to neglect the things of God. They don't want to neglect them any longer. And there are lots of questions that that should raise in our own minds. And one question is, are there different ways that we are neglecting the things of God? You know, at the very end of this chapter they say, we will not neglect the house of our God.

And they're also saying, and we will not neglect the Sabbath, and we will not neglect the purpose of marriage that God has ordained. So you've seen this wider context here, and you have a people who really, they really are living in the midst of a secular and a pluralistic society. Remember who is king? A Persian is King. Artaxerxes is king, and they're living in the midst of a secular society.

They're occupying a sacred city, but they are under the government of Persia. And so they're living in a society with all of those pressures that are taking place. And God stirs them up and He gives them a passion to obey Him. And there are, as you see the outline in front of you, there are a number of things that are identified here. Just by way of summary, I'll tell you what they are before we get there But first of all, they separate themselves from the ungodly ways of the people around them.

That's the first thing they do Secondly, they separate themselves to God and his word from the filth of the nations to God and his word. And then thirdly they turn themselves to reforming their understanding of marriage and the purpose of marriage. How relevant is that for us today? And then fourthly they they enter into a time of re-examining the use of their time and their resources, and they turn back to the Sabbath day, and they make a covenant that they would begin to keep the Sabbath again. And then they also engage in reforming their whole relationship with the church and And the way that they worship God specifically and tangibly By supporting the work of the church through their finances In other words their faith is going to transform the whole way they use their money, the whole way they use their time, the whole way they manage their families and their marriages, the whole way they interact with this secular and pluralistic society around which they live.

So this is the kind of transformation that God desires for his people. And it really is a tragedy when you find people in the church who think that they're justified and they're just fine now, and they don't need to obey God in anything. They're just going to be fine. And this is a contradiction to that. And now, just continuing to belabor this introduction, as I've worked through this passage, I've gotten more and more excited about bringing it to us today because it really is a cause for rejoicing.

Because I think that many of you are here today because this has happened in your heart. And you, you turn to God and after a while you realized that there were so many ways of the Gentiles that it infiltrated your thinking and your lifestyle and everything that you were doing. And maybe you read Jeremiah who said, do not learn the way of the Gentiles. And it terrified you because you had so much of the Gentiles wrapped around your soul and your mind and your ways that it wasn't even funny. And you wondered what were you going to do about that and how disruptive that would be to actually turn to God from the idols of the age and even your own idols and you know you wanted you wanted to be a people who were learning what it means to be pleasing to the Lord as the Apostle Peter said to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

And so as a result, so many of you have revisited everything in your life. And you may have been a Christian for a while and then you started revisiting everything and everything concerning your family life everything concerning your church life everything concerning the education of your children and Everything And this is the spirit of what we find here. It's people who are setting their minds on things above, not on the things that are on the earth. And people who realize that God is creating a distinctive people with distinctive practices, with a distinctive way that they use their money, a distinctive way that they are married, a distinctive way that they relate with the Church of Jesus Christ. They are a different people.

They actually live different, and they're recognizing that. But here's the point, when you encounter genuine Christianity, you encounter a people who don't just feel things about God, They actually do particular godly things that are spoken of in Scripture. That's what they do. That's what marks the people of God. That's why Jesus said, you'll know them by their love.

Because the whole law is summed up in one word, L-O-V-E, love. And you'll know them by their obedience to the law of God. And so here, you know, is this picture of this progressive revival that took place in them and is also taking place in the true people of God. We recognize things over time and we want to sort of calibrate ourselves according to the Word of God. That's really the essence of this passage of Scripture.

You have an outline in front of you and you'll see what we'll cover here today. Three main points and then some other sub points. First of all, the names of those who signed the covenant. That's in verses 1 through 27. And then secondly, the heart of the covenant, and the big picture is really spoken of here, separation from worldliness, and then secondly, separation to the things of God.

And then the third Subsection of this text as I've broken it up for this morning are the specific areas of the covenant and the first area is marriage for the glory of God return to that and the second area is Sabbath rest and trust, return to that. And then thirdly, the support of the worship of God in the church and the refashioning of how you even think about your money and how you use your money. So those are the things that we're going to cover here this morning in this message. So let's look at the first 27 verses. Paul, thank you very much for such excellent pronunciations.

When we get to heaven, we're going to find out exactly how to pronounce those names. Maybe. But there are 84 who signed the covenant, and these are most likely heads of tribes, heads of households. It represents a lot of people. It may represent 50, 000 people who were gathered there.

And Nehemiah heads the list. Remember, Nehemiah came for this purpose. Remember when God stirred up his heart when he was in the court of art Azerxes to come and restore the worship of God This is the the most fundamentally important thing that any of us can do is restore worship according to the Word of God. That was burning in Nehemiah's heart. His heart was broken for his people who had been broken by their disobedience to the law of God.

And so an enormous number of captives left Shushan and they went back to the land. And so these are people, right? I mean, look at all these names you you don't invent this this is this is not a myth these are names of real people the the bible is about real real eras real cities real people and you can and I think that this is here as a testimony to say that God works in real ways with real people. And it's a testimony of people whom God is working with, And it's such a blessing to be a part of people like that. And so they enter into a covenant.

These are the names of the people who entered into the covenant. It also says that all the people entered into the covenant as well, and even the outsiders entered into this covenant as well. It was a very broad group of people. And it's, they came together to sign a covenant. In the last verse of chapter 9 we read, and they signed a covenant.

And now this gives the detail of that covenant. Now, there had been times when God's people have entered into covenants to live in a particular way. By the way, our, you know, America was colonized by people who wanted to… they wanted to move away from the paganism in Holland, and they wanted to establish a people of God in America, and they entered into a covenant. It was called the Mayflower Compact. This is very common where people band together to make a covenant to do particular things and to live in a particular way.

There are lots of examples of this in history, you know, since the Lord Jesus Christ was here. One of them was during the Great Awakening, during the revival that Jonathan Edwards was experiencing there in New England. And in 1742, the revival was waning. It was falling off, and Edwards began to be concerned about it. And He sends a letter to his friend just explaining how this has been happening, a friend who I believe is living in Boston, and he says that there has been a decaying.

He says, I desire your prayers that God would quicken and revive us again, that He would greatly humble and pardon and quicken me and fill me with His own fullness. He even saw it in His own self. And then they entered into a covenant, and there were people who signed the covenant in his church there in Northampton. Everybody who had a heart for this covenant of age 14 and above signed this covenant. I'm just going to give you some of the elements of that covenant.

It was, it was, they called it a solemn public renewal of their covenant with God to renounce our evil ways and put away our abominations in our dealings with our neighbors. I'm just scattering through this and picking up some of the language of it. I'm not reading it word for word. To engage in honesty, in justice, in uprightness. Not to defraud or overreach our neighbor.

To render everyone what is his due. And to refrain from backbiting. To speak no evil of men. Not to feed a spirit of bitterness or ill, or have a secret grudge against our neighbor, or seek revenge, that we would not make our worldly gain or honor or our interest to rise above that of others, that we would not violate justice with one another in unchristian vehemence or heat of spirit to avoid unchristian reproachings and bitter reflectings and judging and ridiculing others either in public meetings or in private conversation. This was happening right on the heels of the great awakening which began probably around in 1740.

In 1742 the people were slipping back into some of their old practices of dealing wrongly with one another. And not to tolerate the exercise of enmity or ill will or revenge in our hearts, he speaks to the youth, that those who are in youth do promise never to allow ourselves in any diversions or pastimes, in meetings or companies of young people, that which rob God of that honor which he expects by our orderly and serious attendance in family worship and to avoid all freedoms and familiarities that stir up lust. I mean this is the essence of this covenant that Edwards is drawing his people into and he says and he ends it with this and being sensible sensible of our weaknesses and the deceitfulness of our own hearts and our proneness to forget our most solemn vows and lose our resolutions we promise to be often strictly examining ourselves by these promises, especially before the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which in our church happens weekly. So, you know, there are times When the people of God need to say, we need to get back, we need to get back to where we once were.

They had experienced a remarkable and beautiful awakening. Here's the problem. Awakenings in your heart always fade, and they need to be revived. That's the story of the Christian life. That's the story of my life, and that's the story of your life too, if you're a Christian.

That you enter into times where you recognize that you need to be renewed. And that's what was happening here. Now, our church has a covenant that those who become members actually sign that covenant. It's somewhat like this covenant that we're reading here in Nehemiah chapter 10. Our covenant summarizes Christian behavior and how we relate to the church.

And it even does address how we handle our money, how we deal with our treasure and the church, and how we handle our relationships in the church. So, All these people signed this covenant, and it's a common thing, and it shouldn't surprise us because you find it all over the Bible. Here's what you find mostly in the Bible. God makes unbreakable covenants with men. Here's another thing.

Man makes promises that he breaks. That's the reality of Scripture. And while these covenants are exemplary and important, we have to recognize the frailty of all of our covenants. We need the covenant keeper, Jesus Christ, who never broke a single covenant, and he has shed his blood, the blood of the everlasting covenant. He is the covenant-keeping God, and he really does cause us to be like him, but we recognize our weaknesses in all of it.

Okay, the next thing that we encounter here in this passage is the heart of the covenant in verses 28 and 29, and here you find their desire to walk differently compared to the world, And you notice that it's not just the priests and the Levites, it's all the people, and it's everyone. And what is the nature of it? Well, I think there's sort of a summary statement and then the details. And the first is they devote themselves to separation from worldliness. That's in verse 28.

They separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God. Now this is a picture of a people who come out, they come out of paganism and they devote themselves to God and His law. And it's from something and to something. And notice in verse 28, it was their whole families that were involved. This was like a...in some ways it was a family movement because he speaks of their wives, their sons, and their daughters, and everyone who had knowledge and understanding.

They're shepherding their families in the way of the Lord, and they're separating their families actually from the practices of the Gentiles around them. By the way, that can be very disruptive. That can cause a lot of trouble in your life when You try to do that. You extract yourself from the ways of the unbelievers and even the ways that believers have adopted. It can tear a hole in your heart.

And they separated their wives and their sons and their daughters. And anyone who was able to sign such a covenant to enter into a new way of living. Notice there was a willingness here, and then there's the separation to the things of God. So it's from the ways of the Gentiles to the things of God. Verse 29, and it's very specifically stated here that they're going to walk in the laws of God, To walk in the Word of God, to walk.

This is how God has called His people to live, to walk. Wherever they walk, wherever they go. Verse 29, these joined with their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses, the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our God and His ordinances and his statutes. So there's this general move to obey and comply with the law of Moses. And this is what happens to a person who's converted.

They desire to do the will of God. That's why Jesus said, if you love me, you'll keep my commandments. That's why David said, oh, how I love your law. It's my meditation all the day. And he really forms the heart of the Christian life, is to love the words of God.

And this is the reason for every genuine revival. The seed of the Word of God is sown in the hearts of the people who have ears to hear, and the sower goes out to sow and the seed lands in different places. It might land on the wayside, it might land in a rocky place, and there might be excitement at the beginning and it'll fall away. But those who have truly heard their lives change and they bear fruit, some 30, some 60, some a hundredfold. And so here their will is awakened by the Word of God to change.

And notice there's this language of the curse and the oath. What's that all about? They entered into a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, verse 29. And there's much in the Bible that speaks of oaths. You can go to numbers 30, verse 2.

You can go to Matthew 5, 33 to hear Jesus on the matter, Ecclesiastes 5, 1 through 7. But this is a condition of the heart where people enter into a covenant with God and they say, God, you have every right to punish me if I don't fulfill this oath to you. And, you know, our confession of faith, the Baptist Confession of 1689, has a whole chapter, chapter 23, on lawful oaths and vows. The first statement in that confession reads like this, a lawful oath is an element of religious worship in which a person swearing in truth and righteousness and judgment solemnly calls God to witness what is sworn and to judge the one swearing according to the truth and falsity of it and then the confession goes on and defines how this should be done in fear and in reverence, in genuineness and to God alone. And that's exactly what they're doing here.

They're entering into a curse and an oath. And I do think that the language here should take us back to Deuteronomy, where Moses talked about two mountains, Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. And he called the people in the very, at the very end of the very last month of his life, And he told them to go to Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim and have some gathered on the top of that one mountain and another on the other, and that they would speak to one another across this great ravine. And one side would speak of the curses of the law from Mount Ebal and from Mount Gerizim, the blessings and the beauties of the law and how beneficial it is, and they would speak these things back and forth in order to demonstrate that there really is only one way for blessing and happiness in this world, and that is to walk in the law of God and to commit to it. And then there are the specific areas of the covenant that are identified in verses 30 through 39.

So here Nehemiah has given us the general thrust of it to obey the law of Moses. But there were particular things especially they needed to pay attention to and this is always true. There are always things in our hearts and in our cultures that drop out, and they're things that need to particularly get back to. And while these people are committing themselves to the entire law of Moses, in this covenant they don't mention every single element of the law of Moses, but they've already stated that they desire and designed to obey every element of the law of Moses. And so these three specific areas are in the areas of marriage and in the Sabbath and in the financial support of the work of God.

So these particular areas are identified. I also want you to notice these three areas are established at creation. These are creation ordinances. Marriage for the glory of God is a creation ordinance. The Sabbath rest was established by God Himself at creation, far longer, you know, way, way, way before Moses put it in the Ten Commandments.

And then also worship was also established. These are all creation order ordinances. And I, you know, I think that we should always be asking, in what ways have I been falling short? In what ways have I allowed the works of the flesh and my affections to lead me astray? There might be some particular ways that they are.

These were three particular ways, and that should help us to ask that question of ourselves, what about me? What are the three areas that I need to pay attention to here? And I think that we think about that in different levels, you know, what are the sins of our times that we have been sucked into? What are the sins of our family lives that we've been affected by? What what are the sins of our church that we've been influenced by?

What What are the sins that exist in our relationships? The way we relate with people, the way we think of them, the way we treat them, what are the sins that have become common in our own hearts and we've just tolerated them? Or what are the sins of our work life? We are called to God to bring glory to Him in our work. What about our work life?

I think we should ask ourselves this question on all these various categories of life because the world, the flesh, and the devil work their way into everything at some level. And so here are these three areas that they are identifying. So let's look at the first one, marriage, marriage for the glory of God. That's verse 30. We would not give our daughters as wives to the peoples of the land, nor take their daughters for our sons.

So he's addressing a fault in the way that they understand marriage. They had lost a sense that marriage was for the glory of God, and so that they were willing to give their daughters in marriage to unbelievers, and they were...and they did the same thing with their sons. He's talking about tolerating marriage outside of the faith and mixing it with paganism and being unequally yoked. Because when a person gets married, everything changes and their hearts are affected. And the worldliness or the selfishness of a worldly person will have an effect.

It will make you worldly. You should not marry a worldly person. And of course he's speaking of these two processes, giving daughters to suitors, and second, taking daughters for sons. Now, remember, they had returned from captivity almost 100 years before this was written. And they had gotten married to people who were living in this Persian vassal state, and time had passed.

And, you know, And when we get to chapter 13 and verse 23 and 24, we learn that half the children spoke foreign languages. They spoke the language of Ashdod and Ammon and Moab. They didn't even speak Hebrew. They couldn't even understand the Torah. They couldn't even read it because of this mixing of marriages.

They had lost a sense that marriage was created exclusively for the glory of God. And If you don't understand that, you're going to marry for any reason. And it matters who you give your daughter to in marriage. It matters what kind of daughter your son marries and brings into the family because you may or may not be separated from the abominations of the nations by this marriage. And those abominations might infiltrate your marriage.

Worldliness can easily infiltrate your whole family line as a result of a marriage like that. And you get close to a worldly person and you get closer to worldliness. That's how it works and there's just no way to counteract that really. But marriage was created by God to be a living illustration of how the two become one flesh and they serve God and they serve God alone. And this issue, of course, is an issue that we read about in chapter 7.

We're going to read about it again in chapter 13 because it can continue to be a problem. And I think the New Testament landing page for this is probably 1 Corinthians 6, 14, and also Ephesians 5, verses 22 to 33. Paul says to the Corinthian church, do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?

And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has believer with an unbeliever? Well, the reason is that marriage is a fellowship. It's a communion with another person and it's really designed that way. Marriages are designed to be a fellowship and a communion around the glory and the beauty of God.

If your marriage is not like, maybe you've drifted a little bit there. Maybe your marriage has just kind of become functional and perfunctory. But it was actually, it was designed for fellowship and communion with God. And you know, the importance of marriage is critical here. Now we have lots of young people in our church who are, they are either marriageable or they think they are, or they wish they would be.

And the Bible tells us what marriage is all about. And, you know, if you're, you know, if you're, if marriage is ahead of you, which it most likely is in your life, you need to understand why God created marriage. Malachi said it really clearly because he desires godly offspring. And you know, marriage is for the glory of God. It's not for your own glory.

Marrying for your own glory is a very, very big problem that every person who wants to get married faces. And, you know, here in Nehemiah 10, they were marrying for the wrong reasons, And it needed to be changed. They were not marrying for the glory of God. You know, young people often marry for beauty. They often marry for desperation.

They often marry out of pride. They often marry out of lust. They don't marry for the glory of God. They marry for their own glory and for their own satisfaction. And as a result of that, if they're Christians, They're going to endure many years of trouble in that marriage if they started out that way.

And it may take a long time, and it may be very, very harmful. You know, marrying for beauty and things like that, it always backfires. Because beauty fades, but a worldly disposition doesn't fade. And so these are relationships that are so critical and, you know, marriage can bring such misery into a person's life if they marry for their own glory, if they think that their marriage was designed to just satisfy them and make them happy and it wasn't for the glory of God, they'll never know how to interpret the problems that happen in their lives. They'll never know that they were designed to play a role in their marriage.

A husband is designed to play the role of Jesus Christ, not his own role. A wife is designed to play the role of the church of Jesus Christ. She is the church symbolically in the relationship. And if she doesn't understand who she is, she'll never know how to deal with the troubles, the disappointments, the weaknesses of her husband. And a husband will never know how to deal with his wife if he doesn't recognize that this marriage is not for his own glory.

It's for him to become like Jesus and to respond to everything like the way Jesus would respond, that you're not your own in your marriage. And so I think, you know, for the unmarried, here's the question. Are you thinking rightly about marriage? And do you want to marry for the glory of God or or is it is is your own glory? The overwhelming reason It'll affect everything and if you if you for the married, you know Do you have it?

Do you are you living this way? Do you Is your marriage for the glory of God or for your own glory? Are you just seeking your own pleasure and comfort and you just want somebody to be so good to you? Or is your marriage a demonstration of Christ's love for the church and his mercy and his forbearance and his kindness and his truth? So in this society Marriage for the glory of God had been Had dropped off and they were marrying for all the wrong reasons and that can happen to us, too We can actually end up finding ourselves married and realizing that the glory of God is no longer our primary objective in our marriage We just want somebody to treat us right.

But by the way, that wasn't why God created marriage. It's so that someone would treat you right. Or that someone would respond right. That's not why God created marriage. God created marriage so that you would glorify Him when someone doesn't treat you right and doesn't give you what you want and isn't like how you wish they were.

So God created marriage for His glory, not yours. So they they covenanted together to return to marriage for the glory of God. And then they also covenanted together for what I'm calling Sabbath rest and trust. Now I use those two words, rest and trust, intentionally, because there are actually two things that are listed here. There is the seventh day Sabbath, the one in seven, and then there's the seventh year Sabbath that are included in this testimony.

And I don't think that they're intending to leave out everything else, but they're focusing on these two particular things. Verse 31, if the peoples of the land brought wares or any grain to sell on the Sabbath day, we would not buy it from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. So people were coming into the city and the people of God were buying things from them. Remember if you go back to Deuteronomy chapter 5 or Exodus 20, the prohibition is no buying or selling on the Sabbath day. Well, they said, okay, people are going to bring their nice, beautiful wares, we're not going to buy them anymore on the Sabbath.

That was the Sabbath day. Or on a holy day. So they're also speaking about the ceremonial law, holy days that were established, not this, you know, as you know in our church we think that the seventh day Sabbath prevails because it was a creation order ordinance, but the Sabbaths of the ceremonial law of the feasts and that, they have been abrogated in the New Covenant. But so the Sabbath day had been ignored. Now it would be really easy to ignore it, because everyone else is ignoring it.

They're living in a Persian city, and, you know, Persians don't keep the Sabbath, and Nehemiah is even working for the Persian government, and everybody's doing it, and the whole culture is calibrated to working seven days a week and you know, even you know It's even a little bit like here where all the all the restaurants on Sunday get filled with people piling out of their churches Because people just continue to buy and sell even today. It's always been a problem. People don't want God to regulate their time. In the fourth commandment, God says He wants to control your time, like your week, and he wants you to set aside an entire day to delight in him a day and so They were in an environment that didn't honor the Sabbath very much like the environment that we live in too, as well. Now I'm going to give you seven quick arguments for the Sabbath, for the seven-day Sabbath.

It's a creation order command that God Himself observed, number one. Number two, It was affirmed in the moral law of God in the Ten Commandments. 3. There are ten commandments, not nine commandments. 4.

Jesus practiced it clearly in Matthew 12. 5. The apostles observed the Lord's Day Sunday, the day of resurrection. 6. The church has almost universally embraced Sunday as a Sabbath.

And number seven, why wouldn't you want to have 52 days of vacation a year to delight yourself in the Lord? Those are my seven arguments for the Sabbath. Now there are many, there are warnings in Scripture for the violation of the Sabbath. You know, check out Jeremiah 17 and check out Amos chapter 8 verses 9 through 14. They're just remarkably terrifying consequences of rejecting the Sabbath.

In fact, the children of Israel had been in captivity for 70 years because they had refused to keep the Sabbath feasts, and it landed them in captivity. And now they're back from captivity and they're thinking, this could happen to us again. We do not want to go back to Babylon. And then there's the seventh year Sabbath, verse, at the end of verse 31, and we would forgo the seventh year's produce. So this is the seven year Sabbath where they were they were required to let the land go fallow for the seventh year.

It was called the Year of Release, and you can read about it in Deuteronomy 15. It's called the Lord's Release, and at that time, debts were forgiven, and this law also was for the for the relief of the poor you let your land grow fallow Things would just grow up and the poor could just come and take whatever they wanted. So it was really an act of mercy for the poor And it was it was a test of faith I think that It's an application of what Solomon said when he said, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he shall direct your path. In other words, you might think you're gonna starve to death if you don't cultivate your fields on that seventh year.

Not true. Not so. And, you know, God declares His sovereign care over His people through this law that He will feed His flock like a shepherd. He will gather His lambs in His arms. He'll carry them in His bosom and He'll feed those who are with young.

God is going to take care of His children. You know, I think it confronts us on so many levels. You know, Jesus said, Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy, or where thieves break in and steal. He's dealing with this matter of our desire to accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, accumulate, and not stop year after year. Now if you go to Leviticus chapter 25, you'll read the details of this, and I'll just read a couple of phrases out of Leviticus 25 beginning in verse 2 when you come into the land which I give you then the land shall keep a Sabbath to the Lord so the land has a Sabbath remember you your wife your son your daughter your male servant your female servant your ox your donkey and the land And this is a different kind of Sabbath.

Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your vineyard and gather its fruit. But the seventh year there shall be a Sabbath of solemn rest of the land, a Sabbath to the Lord. You shall neither sow your field nor prune your vineyard. What grows of its own accord of your harvest you shall not reap nor gather the grapes of your untended vine, for it is a year of rest for the land. And the Sabbath produce of the land shall be food for you, for your male and female servants, your hired man and the stranger who dwells with you, for your livestock and the beasts that are in your land, all its produce shall be for food." So you don't cultivate, you just let it grow, however it's going to grow the next year, and it's going to be enough for you.

Now, there's a remarkable difficulty here, You know, it's really three years of inadequate provision, or not normal, because in year one, you would need to store up food for the year you're not going to plant, okay? In year two, you didn't plant anything and there's nothing growing. And then in year three, you're planting again and you'd have to store up enough while your crops were growing. So it really was an economic disruption to do such a thing. Now, in Leviticus 25, we learn the secret of this, and God reveals the secret as to why He would call His people to do something so ridiculous, so harmful financially.

He says, and if you say, what shall we eat in the seventh year? Since we shall not sow or gather our produce. So Moses is bringing up the question that's in everybody's mind. Well, what are we supposed to eat? And he answers it.

Then I will command my blessing on you in the sixth year, and it will bring forth produce enough for three years. How about that? God is going to do it supernaturally. You're not going to do it. He's going to command a blessing and it's a blessing that will carry you for three years.

And you shall sow in the eighth year and eat old produce until the ninth year, until its produce comes in. You shall eat of the old harvest." In other words, God's saying, on the sixth year, I'm going to give you everything you need. You're going to be able to survive, don't worry about it. I'm going to command a blessing on that six-year crop." How about that? And it just shows how God is a promise keeper, how He's a provider.

It's a God who makes rich. It really strikes to the core of this that Jesus spoke of in Matthew 6, 33. Therefore, do not worry, saying, What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Or what shall we wear?

For after all these things the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." So the Lord has always said this to His people, to trust. He says, trust me, I'll take care of you.

I'll take care of you on the Sabbath, the seventh year. I'll take care of you on the seventh day. Don't worry about anything. And then they also would, in verse 31, they would not exact payment for debt, and we would forgo exacting of every debt. So debts were forgiven, they're going back to the law of God that governs debt and lending, and the debts could be no more than seven years, and the word forgo actually could mean that they just didn't have to pay during that year or it's a little bit unclear, but whatever it was, it was mercy, It was letting the borrower have some relief.

Now remember, this was a time of famine. It was a time of high taxes. It was an economic collapse. And so it was really helpful at this moment in their history. So all these things just reminded them that God owned the land.

But I also think that this points to Jesus Christ. In Luke 4, Jesus stood up in the temple and he read Psalm 61, and He uses the same word for release that's used here in Nehemiah chapter 10, and he speaks of the release of the captives. In other words, he came to release the captives. This is a picture of Jesus releasing the captives of their debts by His own love and by His own sacrifice. I think this does point to Jesus Christ in His delivering us and giving us liberty.

And then the third element of the covenant addressed the supporting of the worship of God and bringing in the offerings for the house of God. That's in verses 32 to 39. Now there are five elements of this that I'm going to run by here. First there was a temple tax, verse 32. We also made ordinances for ourselves to exact from ourselves yearly one-third of a shekel for the service of the house of our God.

To exact from yourself means to devote, to voluntarily and devotedly give. And interestingly enough, the law said that there should be a higher amount, but they were only required a third of a shekel, perhaps because of the difficulty that they were experiencing, we don't know. A third of a shekel instead of a half, which was required in Exodus 38 verses 25 to 28. And I think, you know, I think it's reflective of, you know, in the New Testament, the church in Macedonia, who out of their great affliction they gave beyond their ability, that each person gives according to his ability. It may reflect that.

And then it says how the money was spent for the worship in the temple. See verse 33, for the showbread, for the regular grain offering, for the burnt offering of the Sabbath, the new moons, and the set feasts, for the holy things, for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel, and all the work of the house of God." So it was part of the whole sacrificial and celebration system that included the feasts and the sacrifices for sin. So you had the temple tax, and then you had how the work was to be done. And this is really interesting. In verse 34, it was spread out among the priests and the Levites and all the people.

Everybody pitched in to handle some of this labor. And in verse 34, we read, "'We cast lots among the priests, the Levites, and the people for the bringing the wood offering into the house of God.'" So they spread out the work to bring the wood to keep the fires burning to continue the sacrificial system. And so, then there's this matter of the first fruits, verse 35 to 37. And we made ordinances to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all our trees year by year to the house of God. So this is the principle of the first fruits that you read about in the Old Testament and they give what comes first not their leftovers.

Do you see the sequence? If you... You can either give last or you can give first. God calls us people to give first, not last. Don't give the leftovers, give the first fruits, you know, while you have them and God will take care of you.

And then the firstborn, that's the fourth element in verse 36, to bring the first born of our sons and our cattle as it is written in the law. And then the tithe, and that's verses 37 all the way to the very end in 39. This was sort of the tithe, was the baseline of giving in the Old Covenant, and there were actually three major tithes in the Old Testament. There was the Levitical tithe, there was the festival tithe, and there was the poor tithe. It was more than 10 percent, probably 23 percent or something like that.

And Deuteronomy 14 tells us on what you tithe, you shall truly tithe all the increase of your grain that the field produces year by year. Now we live in a time when people don't tithe anymore. George Barnett says 6% of Christians tithe. In other words, 94% of people who say they're Christians don't tithe. And I don't want to get into a big debate on whether the tithe is a new covenant practice or not.

I'm not sure, you know, I'm not sure that's really the issue in our minds when we ask that question, because God really calls us to give sacrificially. But, you know, the average, I think, Southern Baptist gives two percent of their income to the church. So there was an impulse to increase their giving to the church. And by the way, Barn also says Southerners give 1.5% of their income compared with 1.4 in the Midwest compared with 0.7 in the Northeast. How about that?

Some of you came from the Northeast, you came to the Promised Land where they give almost double, you know, down here, down here in the South. And then the final phrase, and we will not neglect the house of our God. We will not neglect the house of our God. I think that's a really critical statement in this entire thing. All of this has to do with things that were neglected but that were brought back to life.

Things that had been part of their syncretism or their disobedience, and they're bringing them back to life. They're reviving things that were neglected. I think that's the primary message that's here for us today. And, you know, I think that really has happened to us, but it ought to keep happening in our church. You know, we realized that we had embraced so many of the ways of the Gentiles and that we didn't want to be conformed to this world.

You know I remember those days it happened in the heart of my own wife you know over 30 years ago that she she was no longer willing to give our children to be educated in paganism in the public school system. She did not want education to work that way because it seemed so contrary to bring children up in the ways of the Gentiles. And it was really part of this seed of revival that says, I want to look at everything I'm doing, and I want to evaluate it according to the Word of God. You know, so many of us, maybe it was years ago, we saw this terrible breakdown of the family that was all around us, and it affected us too. And we also saw how off course we were in our marriages, and we saw marriages in trouble everywhere, but we also saw that we didn't know a flip about roles in marriage.

We didn't really know that the husband was the head of the wife as Christ is head of the church. We didn't really know that wives should submit to their husbands as and to the Lord. We didn't, we weren't doing that. And we realized that our, we didn't understand what it meant to be a father. And we went back to the Bible and we found Deuteronomy 6 and it totally shocked us.

It said, fathers should teach their children when they sit in the house, when they walk by the way, when they lie down, and when they rise up. We realized we weren't doing that and that we needed to do that. And so all these people turn to that. Mothers realized that God called them to be keepers at home and to raise their children, and to prepare themselves to be tight as two women in the church. And so all these things, you know, started happening.

We realized we weren't raising our children right. We were letting our children do whatever they wanted. We forgot, or maybe we didn't really, it didn't hit us that the Bible said, children, honor your father and mother as unto the Lord. Obey your parents. We didn't get that, you know, and so we were trying to learn how to do that, try to recover that in our families.

And, you know, it even affected the way we thought about how we were dressing. Are we dressing the way that God has ordained that we are, that we dress? Are we dressing just like the Gentiles? Do we see ourselves wearing robes of righteousness? You know, are we declaring the righteousness and the purity of our salvation, which is, which was declared right at the beginning with Adam and Eve That God created clothes for as robes of righteousness Were we thinking rightly even about the way we dressed it got down to that level didn't it we were asking What are we doing?

You know And we started looking at the church and we asked, you know, are there deacons? Are there elders here? How come all the churches here only have deacons? What's that? How come this one office disappeared off the map of local church life?

You know, almost every...how did that happen? And we started looking at, you know, how the church should be built up through the preaching of the Word of God. And we saw how the gospel had been really misunderstood, and a false gospel had been preached that you accept Jesus and now you've bought your fire insurance. But there really isn't anything in the Bible about accepting Jesus. But there's something else that God does.

He draws people into His kingdom and they serve Him and they love Him. And their lives actually change. So I think that revivalistic impulse that we read about here of this kind is the kind that changes people's lives. And it's the kind that we've really wanted to embrace as a church. Here's the reality.

We don't know how to embrace it perfectly in any area at all. Because our impulse to make a covenant with God always fails on one level or another, either just deep within our hearts or even outwardly as well. And that's why God gave His only Son, Jesus Christ, to keep all the covenants that we couldn't keep. You'll find that this covenant that they signed here didn't get carried out perfectly in their lives, just like me, just like you. And so a passage like this should just take us straight to the cross of Jesus Christ, the one who shed his blood, the blood of the everlasting covenant, so that sinners could be friends of God.

And I pray that you know as we go on in the midst of this if we're gonna call it a revival I think I'm gonna call it a revival for sure it's a revival like this because it's a return to particular practices that are needful in the day. We need to continue to press for every one of those reformations. We need to continue to ask God to examine our hearts and to identify any paganism that's left within us and to give us great energy and passion to serve Him with all of our hearts and to make the changes that are necessary and tangible and really and defined in the Word of God. That's the kind of people that we need to be. But thanks be to God through Jesus Christ who took all of our condemnation for all of our shortfallings in all of these areas.

Would you pray with me? Lord, we thank you that your word penetrates everything and that it's real and it isn't a partial healing, but it's a healing for everything. We thank you that you've come to us with good laws, good commands that are beneficial. We pray, Lord, that you would make us an obedient people who interpret everything from the lens of your word. And as we live in this secular and pluralistic society that we live in, that you would protect us from a salvation that just is in our heads, but that we would walk in your ways and that we would set aside the ways of the Gentiles.

And I pray that you would also come and revive our marriages, that you would revive the delight of our Sabbath days, that you would revive a sense of how we spend our money, that we dedicate it to the worship of God. Amen. Thanks for watching!