Please turn in your Bibles to the book of Nehemiah chapter 8. Nehemiah chapter 8. If you're using the Bibles that are under the seats, you can find this on page 403. We've been going quickly through the book of Nehemiah, and today is no exception. I'm going to be reading selections from three different passages, or from three different chapters, starting with chapter 8, verses 1 through 18, moving on to a couple sections of chapter 9, and then moving on from there to chapter 12. Hear God's Word, Nehemiah 8, verses 1 through 18. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could understand what they heard. on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattathiah, Shema, Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseah on his right hand, and Padaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashem, Hashbanah, Hashbadana, Zechariah, and Meshulam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people. And as he opened it, all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also, Jeshua, Bani, Cherubiah, Jamin, Akub, Shabbathai, Hodiah, Maaseah, Kelita, Azariah, Josabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law, while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the law of God clearly, and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites, who taught the people, said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep. For all the people wept as they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, go your way. Eat the fat, and drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites calmed all the people saying, be quiet for this day is holy, do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them. On the second day, the heads of father's houses of all the people with the priests and the Levites came together to Ezra the scribe in order to study the words of the law. And they found it written in the law that the Lord had commanded by Moses that the people of Israel should dwell in booths during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should proclaim it and publish it in all their towns and in Jerusalem, go out to the hills and bring branches of olive, wild olive, myrtle, palm, and other leafy trees to make booths, as it is written. So the people went out and brought them and made booths for themselves, each on his roof, and in their courts, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square at the water gate, and in the square at the gate of Ephraim. And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in the booths. For from the days of Jeshua the son of Nun to that day, the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing. And day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the book of the law of God. They kept the feast seven days, and on the eighth day, there was a solemn assembly according to the rule. Now, as we get to chapter 9, I'm going to start by reading chapter 9, verses 1 through 6, then skip a big part, and then read verses 32 through 38. Now on the 24th day of this month, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day. For another quarter of it, they made confession and worshiped the Lord their God. On the stairs of the Levites stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Buni, Sherebiah, Bani, and Chanani, and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabniah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah said, stand up and bless the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You are the Lord, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve all of them, and the host of heaven worships you. What follows from this is a long confession of sin, and I'll get to the conclusion in chapter 9, verses 32 through the end. Verse 32, now therefore our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardships seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day. Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly. Our kings, our princes, our priests, and our fathers have not kept your law or paid attention to your commandments and your warnings that you gave them. Even in their own kingdom and amid your great goodness that you gave them and in the large and rich land that you have set before them, they did not serve you or turn from their wicked works. Behold, we are slaves this day. In the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress. Because of all this, we make a firm covenant in writing. On the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests. then skipping way ahead, we'll look at chapter 12, starting at verse 27 and going through verse 43. Chapter 12, verse 27. And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem, they sought the Levites in all their places to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings, and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. And the sons of the singers gathered together from the districts surrounding Jerusalem and from the villages of the Natophathites, also from Beth Gilgal and from the region of Kiva and Asmaveth, for the singers had built for themselves villages around Jerusalem. And the priests and the Levites purified themselves and they purified the people and the gates and the wall. Then I brought the leaders of Judah up onto the wall and appointed two great choirs that gave thanks. One went to the south on the wall to the dungate, and after them went Hoshiah and half of the leaders of Judah, and Azariah, Ezra, Meshulam, Judah, Benjamin, Shemaiah, and Jeremiah, and certain of the priest's sons with trumpets, Zechariah, the son of Jonathan, son of Shemaiah, son of Mataniah, son of Micaiah, son of Zechar, son of Asaph, and his relatives, Shemaiah, Azarel, Mililai, Gililai, Maai, Nethanel, Judah, and Hanani, with the musical instruments of David the man of God. And Ezra the scribe went before them. At the fountain gate they went up straight before them to the stairs of the city of David, as at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, to the water gate on the east. The other choir of those who gave thanks went to the north, and I followed them with half of the people on the wall, above the tower of the ovens to the broad wall, and above the gate of Ephraim, and by the gate of Yeshanna, and by the fish gate, and the tower of Hananel, and the tower of the hundred to the sheep gate. And they came to a halt at the gate of the guard. So both choirs of those who gave thanks stood in the house of God, and I and half of the officials with me, and the priests Eliakim, Maaseah, Minyamin, Micaiah, Zechariah, and Hananiah with trumpets, and Maaseah, Shemiah, Eleazar, Uzi, Jehohanan, Malkijah, El-Elam, and Ezer. and the singers sang with Jezrahiah as their leader. And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy. The women and children also rejoiced, and the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away." May God add his blessing to the reading of his word. Good for you. You lasted through. Only days after the wall of Jerusalem is completed, a solemn assembly of Judah and Benjamin is held in one of the squares of the city. The people who worked on the wall are still physically tired from the work. Their nursing blisters and sore backs. Those who did not work on the wall are gathered together with them. Now that the protection of the wall is in place, although it's not perfect, the work of cultural renewal begins again. Ezra had begun this work 13 years before, but it seems to have stalled. Now with Nehemiah in place as governor, it can begin again. And this should be good news to us. Don't churches and denominations get stalled? They start out strong but get derailed? Don't revivals go bad or stop early? The grace of God does not work on our timetables. Ezra needed Nehemiah in order to continue. And when Nehemiah came, revival began again. And it begins with a solemn reading of the Law of Moses in the hearing of all the people. Thousands of people listen as Ezra reads from a high pulpit or platform. And as he does so, probably during breaks in the reading, a team of Levite teachers explains what the scripture means to the people. It's a little unclear here what precisely they're doing. It could well be that much older Hebrew of the law was difficult for the people to understand, and the Levites almost had to translate. Or it could be that what they were doing is what we would think of as teaching or preaching, explaining practically what God's requirements for his people were. In any case, they make the Word of God intelligible to the people of God. And this is always the task of preachers, to make the Word of God intelligible and apply it to the hearers. This is why in the Reformed Presbyterian Church, Elders who regularly preach are normally expected to have a seminary education. There's nothing magical about a college or an educational degree of some kind. Seminary and the degree that most pastors get the masters of divinity is nothing but a process for equipping preachers and teachers of the scriptures. In fact, the teaching or the training of preachers is the original reason that there are colleges and universities. At one of the gates of Harvard University, there's a striking quotation from a 1645 book by the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. There on the plaque it reads, after God had carried us safe to New England and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and to perpetuate it to posterity, dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches when our present ministers shall lie in the dust. So you see in the founding of this nation and in the founding of the greatest university in the world, the goal was that preachers of the gospel would be able to do the same work Ezra and his faculty of Levites were doing on that autumn day in 445 BC. Explain the scriptures to God's people so that they can rejoice in God's grace and walk in God's paths. Now it's also worth pointing out who is at this assembly, which is focused on the reading and preaching of the word. We read that both men and women and all who could understand what they heard were present. I think this is significant in three ways. First, both men and women were gathered to hear the law and also later on are gathered at the dedication of the walls. The Qahal or Ecclesia of Israel was different from the city meetings of the Greeks of the same time in history. Remember that the culture of the West comes basically from these two sources, from ancient Israel and the Judeo-Christian tradition and from the ancient Greeks. But their meetings, their ecclesia, were different from the city meetings of the Greeks at the same time in history. The women were fully people of God, recipients of his grace and accountable to walk in his ways alongside the men. And we live in a culture dominated by feminism, which generally tries to deny any difference between men and women. And Christians rightly have a problem with this. But let's make sure that we don't do theology by reaction, that we don't relegate women to second place. Women are equal with men in the eyes of God, having been made in God's image and redeemed by his grace. Second, as Kylan Dalish comment, all who could understand what they heard would certainly include the elder children. There are churches that do not welcome any children into the worship services. And there are families that do not bring their older children to worship. That is not biblical and it is not right. If kids can sit in a classroom and learn about history and geometry, they most certainly can sit through a worship service and hear God's word. They will surprise you with what they can understand. The third, there are also families and churches that, again, do theology by reaction. They believe it's wrong for even very small children to not be in worship services, sitting through long sermons. I don't think that's biblical either, and it can place great burdens on parents who feel guilty for wanting childcare for their little ones, and on churches who sometimes have to endure an awful lot of child toys during worship. This is not even our historic way of doing things. In 1500 Scotland, children under 8 years old were banned from Presbyterian worship services because they couldn't sit still and be quiet. We're not going to do that of course. We are fine with some child noise. Don't worry about it. But we need to make sure and I think we do a good job of that with our nursery service. We need to make sure that it doesn't get in the way of men women and all those who could understand the older children hearing learning and worshiping. And the people need to hear and learn the law because they didn't know it. And when they heard it, as Ezra preached it or as Ezra read it and the Levites preached it, they wept because they knew that they had not kept it. And this is actually the key failing of the Old Covenant, of what we understand as the Old Testament. Israel's great assurance that God loved them was God's law. It was the heart of the covenant between God and his people. The two tablets of commandments were stored in the Ark of the Covenant as a testimony to the relationship between Israel and the Creator. But by itself, the law can only condemn us. None of us can claim to be truly guiltless before God. If we have broken one commandment, we might as well have broken all of them. But though the law reveals our guilt, the law is not the whole picture, even for Israel. The Levite teachers bring the attention of the people back to the most important thing. God has remembered them and rescued them. They say this day is holy to the Lord. Do not mourn or weep. Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to our Lord and do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength. As we wrestle with our sins, we need to keep first things first. Even the Ten Commandments, the beginning of the most important part of the law, start with these words, I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. They had been freed. Everything else flowed from that reality. Worship is a time of joy for us. We rejoice because God is our God and God is our Savior. Yes, we have failed Him in many ways, but He is still our Father and our Lord. 500 years later, writing to Christians who are facing persecution, Paul the Apostle said, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice. Between those two encouragements to rejoice, he addresses two Christian women who are not getting along. I urge Euodia and I urge Syntyche to live in harmony in the Lord. How can guilty Christians find relief? How can suffering Christians stay strong? How can Christians with serious disagreements come together? By setting before them what God has done for us, by staring at it, by returning to it, by praying to see it more clearly. And we have far more to go on than Nehemiah and Ezra did in their day. We have seen the face of God in Christ, full of grace and truth. Also notice that they say that this day is holy to the Lord. Although it's not mentioned in the text, we are told in Leviticus and Numbers that the first day of the seventh month was a holy day. It was called the Feast of Trumpets. Well, so what? How does that help them? When we are gathered together with God's people, we are taking the first step toward forgiveness and healing. It takes guts to worship God when you've fallen into sin. Imagine that you injured yourself and it's not healing. Maybe you cut your hand and it's become infected. You go to the doctor and he's looking it over and you say, I feel so bad for not coming sooner and so stupid for getting hurt in the first place. The doctor might give you a bit of a hard time, but he's mainly glad you're there. But you did come in and now we can take care of you. If this is you, if you are a Christian who is struggling with sin and it was work just to get to worship, good for you. You're here. If you know people who have stopped going to church, this one or another church, urge them to be brave. Are hospitals for the healthy? Neither is church for the holy. And of course, we see here how to celebrate holy days, and especially that deeply biblical holy day, the Lord's Day, Sunday. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The Lord's Day, and in a more limited way, I would suggest days like Christmas and Easter, are to be days of feasting and joy. Eat the fat. That means cook the big piece of meat. Nothing wrong with vegetarianism, but I warn you that you will eat meat at the resurrection. Drink sweet wine. Likewise, nothing wrong with not drinking. But some of you, some of you should avoid alcohol, except at the Lord's Supper. We're not dogmatic and nasty about this, and I don't think it's wrong for churches to use grape juice. but there is significance to wine. There was no grape juice in the biblical era. If you're an alcoholic, I encourage you to drink wine in communion, even if you drink at no other time. Send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. Giving gifts and showing hospitality are right on holy days. This is a time for generosity. Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. We didn't teach her to do this, but on Saturdays when we ask my three-year-old what tomorrow is, the answer is always celebrate day. That should be our answer. Sunday should be the best day of our week. Now, following this holy day, another assembly happens. This one is smaller. Only the heads of fathers' houses, the priests and the Levites, gather to study the law with Ezra and his faculty of scribes. And this sets a good example for us, actually. Although we want to have churches where everyone knows and studies the scriptures, there are people for whom it must be a higher priority, namely, those who have responsibility to teach others. One question that's come up a number of times in this church is, who is responsible for teaching God's word? Heads of household or pastors and elders? The answer is yes. Both the heads of household, fathers if there's a Christian father present, or mothers if there isn't, and the ordained elders of the church are responsible to learn and to teach the word of God. So if you are a head of household, or effectively a head of household, this is on you. Discuss scripture with your children. If you can read, read it to them. Pray with them and pray for them read it yourself alone for the sake of your own soul and also for the sake of your children and When you have questions go to your elders and ask that's what we're here for Studying the law, the Jews discover that it is time to celebrate the Feast of Booths. And this they do for the first time in many, many years, apparently since the time of Joshua. This feast celebrated the final stages of the harvest. The people cut leafy branches and build shelters out of them, which they would dwell in for a week. Remember the psalm, turn again our captivity, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." God is keeping His promises to Israel. The harvest of grain and wine and oil, but much more the harvest of His people is coming into His land. Now as soon as the Feast of Booths is over, another solemn assembly is held. Possibly this had been intended for an earlier day, but the discovery that it was time for the Feast of Booths put it on hold. In any case, they waste no time. Judah and Benjamin gather again, and this time they focus on confession of sin and repentance. Now chapter 9, and we didn't read very much of it, but chapter 9 recounts the great confession of sin, which was led by the Levites but reflected the heart of the whole people. It included the whole story of Israel, from God's choosing Abraham through his rescuing them from slavery, his raising up of David, and so on. Along the way, they don't shy away from their sin and rebellion against God, including the infamous golden calf, and later, killing and ignoring the prophets of God sent to turn them away from their sins. They understand something that modern Westerners don't understand, that we are not merely individuals. We are shaped by our fathers, and we shape our children. Traditional people find it very easy to believe that God visits the iniquities of the fathers upon the children. The astonishing thing about this is that God only visits the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate Him, yet shows loving kindness to thousands, to those that love Him and keep His commandments. So the ancient sins continue to affect the people of Nehemiah's day, even though they themselves may not have participated in them. And here is the very powerful summary that they give of their situation. Even after they have returned from exile in Babylon and Persia, behold, we are slaves this day in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. Behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress." And last week we looked at some of that distress, that people had been so heavily taxed that they were selling their, they were mortgaging their, their lands, their homes, and some of them were even having to sell their children into slavery. Again, even as they rejoice in God's goodness in returning them to the land, they know that they are not completely free people. Their bodies and their goods are ruled by a foreign nation. Its rich yield, they say, goes to foreign kings. Things are not as they should be. Now some weeks ago I said that I believe that both the exile and the return from exile paved the way for the spread of the gospel in important ways. This is one of them. The people of God in the old covenant were at their height an independent and even a powerful nation, wealthy and strong. But the people of God in the new covenant, Christians, will never be identified as a separate political nation. Yes, political nations can be Christian in some sense, but no one nation can say, we are the people of God. If you are part of this nation, you are one of God's children. If you are not, you are not. And for that reason, God's people will always, until the day of Christ, to some extent, live as slaves in the land. What I mean is this. God's people are promised the earth. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth, says Jesus, echoing Psalm 37, which says, the meek shall inherit the land. Those blessed by the Lord shall inherit the land. The righteous shall inherit the land and dwell upon it forever. The promises of the old covenant were tied to this specific land, which is why here in Nehemiah, the people mourn and confess sin. The promises of the new covenant concern the whole earth. Do you not know that we will judge angels, Paul says, but that promise is not yet. We are resident aliens living in a land which our king lays claim to, but which does not yet recognize him. We are called to love and serve and usually even obey people who have no ultimate claim over us because our true king commands us to do so. We are slaves in the land. So acknowledging their sins against God, they enter into another covenant before him, a curse and an oath, meaning that they call a curse upon themselves if they don't keep their oath. They promise to keep God's law. They promise to support the temple with an annual tax of a third of a shekel of silver. They promise to bring in the first fruits of their crops and the first born of their livestock in keeping with the law of Moses. And in the first few verses of chapter 11, we see that not only do they tithe their goods, they tithe people. One of the problems mentioned more than once is that the city is still almost entirely empty, despite the fact that the walls have been rebuilt. It's simply not a nice place to live. The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses have been rebuilt, Nehemiah 7.4 says. In response to this problem, they seem to do two things. First, 10% of the people in surrounding towns are chosen by lot to move into Jerusalem. And second, the people blessed all the men who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem. And I think this means that some sort of reward was given to those who volunteered to move into the Holy Ruin. I think we need to learn from this, that not only should we be cheerfully giving our first fruits, our tithes and offerings, or in Swahili, yakumi and sadaka, we also need to readily give our best people to the work of God. Do we encourage our children to think about missions, about the ministry of the gospel, about the helping professions, medicine and social work and so on? For the sake of the kingdom, we should. Now over the next few chapters, we're given more lists. Those who signed the covenant, chapter 10, verses 1 through 26. Details of the covenant, 27 through 39. Leaders among the Jews who came to live in Jerusalem, chapter 11, verses 3 through 24. The villages around Jerusalem, chapter 11, 25 through 36. And the priests and Levites in chapter 12, the first 26 verses. Later in chapter 12, we come to our third assembly. the joyful dedication of the walls of Jerusalem. I won't go deep into the details here and part of it is I just can't keep track of all the walls and gates much better than you can. But the gist is this, Ezra and one group of Levites and leaders go to one side of Jerusalem while Nehemiah and another group of Levites and leaders go to the other. They sing and praise God and rejoice in his goodness to them. The physical arrangement of the people allows Levite choirs to sing from the walls antiphonally, that is in a call and response pattern. While Nehemiah doesn't say this, we have seen this kind of thing before. Addressing Israel at the edge of the promised land, Moses said, see, I am setting before you today a blessing and a curse. The blessing if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you today, and the curse if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn aside from the way that I'm commanding you today to go after other gods that you have not known. To reinforce this choice that is before them, Moses commanded that once they entered Canaan, the people were to stand on two mountains facing each other and repeat to each other the blessings and the curses of the covenant. In Joshua chapter 8, this is exactly what happens. On Mount Gerizim, the people recite the blessings of the covenant, and on Mount Ebal, facing them, they recite the curses. Two groups facing each other, confirming the covenant. The difference here, in Nehemiah, is that there is no curse. There is no curse. Here, it is all joy. The two choirs are rejoicing, encouraging each other by recounting what God has done and singing his praises. Now, if we look at these three assemblies together, we see something pretty cool, I think. Two patterns emerge. First, there's a confession sandwich. In the first assembly, the Levites teach the law and encourage the people not to be sad, but to rejoice, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The people are weeping when they shouldn't be. In the Second Assembly, the tone is very different. They should be weeping. They are confessing sin before God. But once that's over, the Third Assembly is joyful again, this time without a mixture of tears. When you see three items in the Bible and the middle item is different, it's often being emphasized. And I think that's what's happening here. The key to joy is that sin is confessed and forgiven. Second, there is progression. Until sin is confessed and forgiven, joy will be mixed with sorrow. Further, the people in the first assembly are exhausted, still under threat, shamed, slaves in their own land. In the third, their eyes and their consciences are clear. Their circumstances aren't much different, but their spiritual situation is very different. And I think what's happening is this. Confession, confessing sin, lets us sort out guilt from shame. They're not the same thing, not exactly the same thing. Guilt, not just the guilt feeling, but real guilt is our actually having done something wrong. Shame is feeling like we have done something wrong. Sometimes we're guilty without feeling shame. This happens when we've gotten used to sin, when our consciences are seared as with a brand, as Paul puts it in 1 Timothy 4. Scar tissue on our souls can make us insensitive, beware of that. But sometimes we feel shame when we're not guilty. This often happens to victims of abuse, especially when others reject them or treat them as damaged goods. We feel like we are wearing filthy clothing, even if we did nothing wrong and were simply hurt by another person. usually both go together in a messy way. Our guilt makes us feel shame, but so does the harm done to us by others. How do we sort these things out? How do we deal with them without simply falling into depression and despair? We examine ourselves and confess and repent and place ourselves in God's hands. When we do, we know that guilt has been removed. Though we may continue to deal with the effects of our sin, the most important thing has been dealt with. We have been reconciled to our Lord and God. John said, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Paul said, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come. That means that when we have confessed, the barrier is gone. We are no longer estranged from the one we love. What is old is over. What is new has come. This is the good news. This is the gospel, and it is the basis of our joy as Christians. Let me put it another way. God loves us so much that He will not ignore our sins. If a woman said to her husband, I don't care if you run around, would we think that she loves him? Of course not. If a doctor told his patient, I don't care if you keep using cocaine or heroin, I'll just keep treating your track marks and your hepatitis, would we call him a good doctor? Of course not. Neither will God stand by while we destroy ourselves. More to the point, neither will He stand by while we separate ourselves from the one our soul desires and needs above all else. He loves us too much to let us do that. He gives us ways, therefore, to deal with sin and shame. And the greatest gift that He gives is confession. When we have fallen into sin, we must fall over ourselves to confess sin before God. Often the Bible speaks of human beings as being on trial before God, like we are defendants in a cosmic court case. And this rings true. We each have a sense of ourselves as people who act in the world, and we have a sense that what we do somehow affects our future forever. One of the earliest places we see this is in the story of Cain and Abel. Remember Cain, the first child of Adam and Eve, that he grew jealous of his brother and killed him. And when he's confronted by God, God asks Cain where his brother is. He then says something chilling. The voice of your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. Apart from the grace of God received through Jesus Christ, we are all in the position of Cain. We stand before God with no defense, with the blood of our sins against one another and Him and the world crying out against us. That is why when they heard the law, the people wept. But in Christ, the trial is ended and we are free because of the testimony of another witness. The nameless author of Hebrews writes that we are no longer at the mountain of the law. but have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. The blood of Jesus speaks of us that we are forgiven and just in the eyes of God. That is why, though they didn't know it yet, the choirs sang from the walls of Jerusalem. That is the joy of the Lord. Let it be our strength. Let's pray. Lord, we often have to come before you in our guilt and our shame. our guilt because we are sinners. None of us can say otherwise. Sometimes, Lord, one of our greatest sins is being dull and dead to our own sinfulness. So we pray that where we have seared our consciences, where scar tissue has built up on our souls, we pray that you would remove it so that we can feel again. We often come to you likewise, Lord, in shame, both shame for what we have done and shame for what others have done to us. We pray, Lord, that you would make us quick to confess. We pray, Lord, that you would help us to be honest with you, that we would no longer try to hide the things which we have done from you, but that we would lay them before you at your feet. We would cry out to you and we would receive your forgiveness. And Lord, we pray that when that has happened we would not continue to dwell crushed by what we have done, but that we would see your grace and your glory, and that the joy of the Lord would be our strength. We thank you for your great work in the days of Nehemiah and Ezra. We thank you for renewing your covenant with your people. We thank you for their confession before you. So much honesty, Lord, that they were slaves in the land. They were still bearing the effects of their father's sins. And Lord, to some extent, we must say the same. But we rejoice along with them that the greatest reality, the most important thing about us, is not what we have done to You, but what You have done for us in Jesus Christ. Lord, be always before us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.