Who is it that, according to the agreement, delays the execution of punishment, waiting for a change of heart? Who is it that, according to the agreement, does not delay in bestowing grace? Who is it that, with compassion, grants and treats His people kindly? Who is it that, after each act of love is met with betrayal, still shows great mercy and listens? Who is it that is slow to anger and abundant in unchanging love!
Reflection Questions:
(Nehemiah 9:1-5) With what attitude did the Israelites confess their sins to God?
(Nehemiah 9:9-22) How did God treat His people and lead them out of Egypt?
As we look back on our history, how much of God's grace have we seen, and how much honest dedication have we given?
This is a covenant-keeping God, who desires to give us good things and establish a covenant with us. In truth, we are not qualified to enter into a covenant with Him, for all things in the universe belong to Him. Yet He makes a covenant with us—what grace! I would like to title this chapter The Covenant-Keeping God, because it begins with God making a covenant with Abram and then renaming him Abraham.
Later, Nehemiah led the people to re-establish a firm covenant with God in response to all that had happened. I believe this is a concept the author wants to emphasize because those in the past did not keep their covenants. Today, we must be covenant-keepers, for God is a God who keeps His covenant and shows mercy. Truly, there is nothing to lose in making a covenant with God. We are elevated to enter into a covenant with God, and yet we do not appreciate it, insisting on going our own way. This is the root of all suffering in the world; man's departure from God is the root of all suffering.
Serving Him is Our Life
If people enter into a covenant with each other, you can choose to enter or not. But what grace it is if God enters into a covenant with you! We come to the church to seek Him and know Him, for God is our life. What is the purpose of our living? Many are unclear. If you are unclear, then you have lived in vain—and I do not say this lightly. Some might say they live to work, but isn't that strange? In truth, a person lives to worship God, we come into this world to serve and worship God, and to manifest His glory, yet many do not agree.
Joshua said, As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. (Joshua 24:15) Yet the Israelites of that time sinned again and again. They stood before Joshua and said, We will serve the Lord. Joshua said, You cannot serve the Lord. They said, We will indeed serve the Lord. I never understood the meaning of this until God revealed to me: if people want to serve God because He has done something for them, they will not be able to serve Him. That is a transaction; only because He is God, the purpose of our lives, can we truly serve Him.
All things in the universe belong to Him, and the purpose for which I was created is to serve Him. If you think you live to make money, then your vision is very short-sighted. Suppose five hundred years ago there was someone who lived desperately, doing whatever business they could, and then they died. And there were such people four hundred, three hundred, and two hundred years ago. I ask you, where are they today? If we were to summarize their lives, it would be nothing more than toil and trouble. Do you want to repeat such a life? I do not! No matter what you do, always know that you live to worship God.
Once our lives are connected to God, we will surely live a beautiful life. Now you should understand why worshiping God is our life because then our lives will be very beautiful, becoming those the world is not worthy of. Today, you can challenge yourself and ask yourself why you live.
Some might think they live to get into university, but what happens after you get into university? You will not know why you live. If you say you live to work, then work will take your life. Just this past Wednesday, a young person committed suicide because of their work. But if you live to worship the Lord your God, this world will be under your feet, you will not die senselessly, and God will be with you.
God Desires to Find Honest People to Make a Covenant With
This is an attribute of our God. He earnestly desires to come among people, and His Spirit desires to dwell among us. Because He is love, He desires to come among us to make a covenant with us. He seeks honest people and found an Abram. Abram was a man who saw through everything in the world; he saw through life and death.
Abram had heard the story of Noah's flood in his time, as if it were vividly before his eyes. He realized that there was a God in the world, and he did not want to live the way the world did. He wanted to find a new way to live, he wanted to live meaningfully; he did not want to live and then die, he wanted to live forever. Then he began to seek, seeking until he was 75 years old.
Later, I discovered that it is easier for wealthy people to see through things, but not so easy for the poor. Abram was a wealthy man, he did not care much about money; even when he saw a lot of money, he was not satisfied, feeling empty inside. So he sought God, and God came down to make a covenant with him, promising him and giving him meaning in life. When these meanings entered his heart, he became a blessing to all nations, and he lived very beautifully.
Today, we must become the ones whom God comes down to find and make a covenant with. He also makes our name great, a blessing to all nations. Are you such a person? God saw that Abram had honesty in his heart before Him. This honesty is not the same as the honesty we think of. This honesty is acknowledging that one is a sojourner in the world, a stranger on earth, and that I am not content to live and then die—this is called honesty. But many people in the world live in vanity and do not even know it is vanity. Some people have just attended a funeral, sent the deceased away, and then return to living in vanity, not pausing to think, Will I also pass away like this? Has anyone seen a dead person put into a cremation furnace? When you see it, your heart will be deeply shaken.
I have been in Singapore for 25 years, and it has been 25 years in the blink of an eye. How many 25 years does a person have in a lifetime? I still vividly remember when my son was born, and in the blink of an eye, he is already eighteen years old; in the blink of an eye, my mother is already 82 years old; my father passed away five years ago. Every time I think of these things again, I truly lament that life is not long, only a few tens of thousands of days.
Today, you must truly know that your years are not long and also know for sure that the days in this world are nothing more than toil and trouble. If this is the case, I advise you to find a path, the path of honesty, knowing that this is the state of things in the world. Then, I advise you to start asking, Is there a better way? This way is the way to make a covenant with the true God. Begin to serve Him and worship Him because He is God.
Perhaps when you begin to serve Him, you will worry about what to eat and what to drink. But surely, if you make a covenant with this almighty God, the Creator of the universe, and He has elevated you to the status of a son of God, will you lack food and clothing? Absolutely not. You will never see God's children living in a very miserable state. Some people have made covenants with God, and even if they repeatedly break God's covenant, God is still faithful. Imagine how good it is for you to make a covenant with Him? I encourage you to carefully consider this matter.
When a Covenant is Made with People, He Bestows the Way of Life, Giving Laws, Statutes, and Ordinances at Mount Sinai
Today, as we read the statutes and ordinances, a common misconception arises among Christians, believing that since we are under the age of grace, we no longer need to observe these laws and can do whatever we please. This is not the case. The laws given by God are the way of life. Even in the Old Testament, His focus remained on enabling people to live a good life.
Some say, Being a Christian is not free at all; one cannot go to nightclubs or engage in prostitution, etc. But Christians have the way of life! Can doing those things bring life? Absolutely not. A person's life comes from obeying God's statutes and ordinances. If you obey God's statutes and ordinances, you are walking on the path of life.
Today, we must be clear about one thing: There is a path of life, which is the path of life that God has told us. Even if He had not written these down or told you, if you did something accursed, the curse would still come upon you. God has simply told you which are the accursed and which are the blessed things.
In the Ten Commandments, there is one commandment: Honor your father and your mother, as the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the Lord your God is giving you. It is a blessing with a promise, the only commandment with a promise. So, brothers and sisters, today I am grateful, I say: God, you are truly faithful. Even long before we knew God, He still treated the people of the world with grace according to the way of life He revealed.
On Sunday, I shared a testimony of my mother with the new brothers and sisters: My mother got married around 1957 or 1958, and in 1960, 1961, and 1962, my grandfather was penniless, came to my parents' house, and fell ill. My grandfather never showed my mother any grace. In 1962, my mother borrowed two thousand RMB, which is equivalent to one hundred and fifty thousand Singapore dollars today, to treat my grandfather. Later, they didn't know how to survive. With forty RMB a month, they didn't know how to repay two thousand. Moreover, at that time, basically everything needed for life, eating and drinking, was gone.
Later, my mother decided to give up her city residence and go to the countryside to work in the fields, which was very hard. Until later, I said: Mom, today you can live a life of grace because you unknowingly obeyed God's statutes and ordinances, honoring your father-in-law, although he was not your biological father.
I think, at this time, I really encourage everyone to know: The grace that God gives also includes statutes and ordinances. Whether you obey intentionally or unintentionally, it is grace; if you know and deliberately obey, what grace that is. Today, my mother is in her eighties, and God still treats her with grace. Although she still has many problems, God, because of what she did, because she obeyed God's statutes and ordinances, still treats her with grace in her eighties.
What do I want to say? I want to say that God has given us a way of life; it does not limit us, but prevents us from choosing a curse and allows us to choose life. Today, the Israelites mentioned in Nehemiah forsook this way of life and suffered endless hardships. God gave this way of life for our benefit.
People Can Choose to Walk Their Own Path or Choose to Walk God's Path
Choosing to walk your own path is called arrogance; choosing to walk God's path is life. It is choosing the path of life or death, blessings and curses are set before you. The path of Israel, the history of the Israelites, reveals a key: If people walk their own path, it is a path of suffering, and a path of suffering without glory.
By the time of Nehemiah, the Israelites had suffered hardships that few nations could endure. Although the Israelites were God's chosen people, because they forsook the covenant God made with them, the result they walked out of was very tragic, tossed around among the nations of the world.
Think about it, Hitler alone killed six million Jews, equivalent to two-thirds of the Jews in that generation being killed. I think, today we need to know that people can have choices, to choose to walk the path of life or walk their own path. I want to remind everyone that if you walk your own path, that is called arrogance. Maybe you don't appear very arrogant, you appear very humble, but you stiffen your neck and walk your own path, which is no different from arrogance.
If you insist on walking your own path, I guarantee that the suffering experienced by these Jews mentioned here will come upon you. If it does not come upon you, then there is only one thing that can prove it, that is, you are not chosen by God. Today, the choice is up to us. When we are in a very painful, suffering, and difficult situation, I encourage you to think carefully about whether you have gone the wrong way.
Later, I thought about it and understood that the kind of pain inside a person is self-inflicted, not given by others. If you are very painful inside, the one thing you need to do is to change yourself. The same things happen to you and me, if I am narrow-minded, I will be more painful than the broad-minded. In other words, our inner state determines the situation we are in.
Remember to Call Upon God When Encountering Disaster
God is a covenant-keeping, loving, gracious, and merciful God. The whole passage speaks of how God is covenant-keeping, loving, gracious, and merciful. Even though they forsook God, killed the prophets God sent, and then when they turned back and called upon God, God once again bestowed grace and mercy. I think, this is the God who makes covenants.
So Paul said, even if all the people in the world are liars, God is still faithful. You don't need to look at someone to believe in the Lord; you believe in the Lord because you see a faithful God. When we turn back to God, God turns back to us. He longs for people to gain life; He does not want people to gain disaster, nor does He want people to live in misery; He wants people to live in life.
So when encountering disaster, you must know to call upon God, which is the main point of the entire prayer. Encountering disaster and calling upon God, God bestows mercy; after mercy, they eat and become fat; after becoming fat, they sin again; after sinning, they encounter disaster again; they call upon God again, and God bestows mercy again; after mercy, they live good days again; after living good days, they begin to sin again; after sinning, they begin to encounter disaster again; they begin to call upon God again, and history repeats itself. Today, can you wake up, we should not enter this endless cycle, but be determined to live under the covering of the living God all our lives, to dwell in His temple all our lives, forever.
In fact, it is very easy for people to be away from God; as long as you are busy with your work every day, you are already away from God. The reason why the Israelites were away from God is very simple; I have said it again and again, it is living a comfortable life. Before I finish, I want to tell you that you must make a covenant with God:
God, you are a faithful God, even though I am a liar; I am not faithful, but you are still a faithful God. I want to make a covenant with you, asking you to keep me, so that in my days on earth, I will always dwell in your temple, not violate your covenant; so that in my days on earth, I will be able to live out your glory all my life. Amen.
Before we finish, let us make a covenant with God. When you are ready, let us make a covenant with God together:
Lord Jesus, you are God, you are a faithful God, we invite you into our lives, I am willing to make a covenant with you, I will keep and obey your statutes and ordinances all my life, I will live under your grace all my life, I invite you to discipline me often in my life, have mercy on me, lead me, and often shine your light on me, so that what the Israelites experienced, I do not have to experience, let me only live in your grace, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.