Scripture Daily

Context No. 1663 of 4322 · Nehemiah

Context · Reflection

Nehemiah 9:31-38: in context

31“Nevertheless in your manifold mercies you didn’t make a full end of them, nor forsake them; for you are a gracious and merciful God. 32Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and loving kindness, don’t let all the travail seem little before you that has come on us, on our kings, on our princes, on our priests, on our prophets, on our fathers, and on all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria to this day. 33However you are just in all that has come on us; for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly. 34Also our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law, nor listened to your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them. 35For they have not served you in their kingdom, and in your great goodness that you gave them, and in the large and rich land which you gave before them. They didn’t turn from their wicked works. 36“Behold, we are servants today, and as for the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its good, behold, we are servants in it. 37It yields much increase to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. Also they have power over our bodies and over our livestock, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. 38Yet for all this, we make a sure covenant, and write it; and our princes, our Levites, and our priests, seal it.”

The Levites' long prayer of confession comes to its close. In your great mercies, they pray, you did not make a full end of us, nor forsake us, for you are a gracious and merciful God. They acknowledge God's justice in all the trouble that has come upon them: you are just in all that has come on us, for you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly. Our kings, princes, and fathers did not keep your law. And they end resolved: even now, as servants in the land God gave them, they make a firm covenant and put it in writing.

What marks this confession is its honesty, the way it takes responsibility and vindicates God rather than blaming him. The people were in real distress, subject to foreign kings in their own land; and they might have complained that God had treated them harshly. Instead they say, you are just in all that has come on us; you have dealt truly, but we have done wickedly. They own the fault as theirs, trace their troubles to their own and their fathers' sin, and declare God righteous in his dealings with them. That is the mark of true repentance: it does not make excuses or shift the blame to God, but takes responsibility, saying, we have done wickedly, and you are just. There is something bracing and clean about that honesty. It is the natural instinct of the human heart, when things go wrong, to blame, to fault our circumstances, others, even God, anyone but ourselves; real confession does the opposite, owning our sin plainly and refusing to charge God with wrong. And notice what such honesty rests on: the mercy of God. The very reason they can confess so freely is that God, in his great mercies, did not make a full end of them; he is gracious and merciful, and it is safe to tell the truth about ourselves before a God like that. Honest confession that owns our fault and vindicates God is not a way to earn his favor but a response to the mercy that has already spared us. The people confess wickedness and acknowledge justice, and then, resting on his mercy, bind themselves afresh to him.

When things go wrong through my own fault, do I make excuses or shift the blame, even onto God, or can I confess with the honesty of these Levites, owning that I have done wickedly and that God is just, resting such honest confession on the mercy of a God who has not made a full end of me?

Sources