If you would please take your Bibles and turn with me to Nehemiah, Nehemiah chapter 9 as we finally return to our study of the book of Nehemiah. We're in the ninth chapter. Now and while you're turning there, just a reminder that today we have our churchwide fellowship meal immediately after the service and tables will be put in the back and there's tables around the building. And if you're a guest visiting with us today, we really want to welcome you and give you a warm welcome. Hope you'll be able to stay with us after the service and enjoy the meal. And because this is the first Sunday In the month, we don't have our normal evening worship service, we will have an afternoon worship service immediately after lunch, which we will observe the Lord's Table. Just want to make sure everyone is aware of that. So we're going to be reading a fairly large portion of Scripture today. We pick up in chapter 9, we looked at verses 1 to 3 and part of 4, I think, the last time, but we're going to pick up with verse 4 and read the entirety of this chapter. It's a long prayer. It's the longest prayer, in fact, that's recorded in the Bible. So follow with me as we read. I'm going to pick up where the prayer begins in the middle of verse 5. Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of the heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that is in them, and you preserve them all. The host of heaven worships you. You are the Lord God who chose Abraham and brought him out of the Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, and the Gergesites, to give it to his descendants. You have performed your words for you are righteous. You saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry by the Red Sea. You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants, against all the people of the land, for you knew that they acted proudly against them. So you made a name for yourself as it is this day, and you divided the sea before them so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land. and their persecutors you threw into the deep as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover, you led them by day with a cloudy pillar and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the road which they should travel. You came down also on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven and gave them just ordinances and true laws, good statutes and commandments. You made known to them your holy Sabbath and commanded them precepts, statutes, and laws by the hand of Moses, your servant. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger, and brought them water out of the rock for their thirst, and told them to go in to possess the land which you had sworn to give them. But they and our fathers acted proudly, hardened their necks, and did not heed your commandments. They refused to obey, and they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them. but they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage. But you are God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them, even when they made a molded calf for themselves and said, this is your God that brought you up out of Egypt, and worked great provocations Yet in your manifold mercies you did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of the cloud did not depart from them by day to lead them on the road, nor the pillar of fire by night to show them light in the way they should go. You also gave your good spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness. They lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. Moreover, you gave them kingdoms and nations and divided them into districts. So they took possession of the land of Sihon, the land of the king of Heshbon, and the land of Og, a king of Bashan. You also multiplied their children as the stars of heaven and brought them into the land which you had told their fathers to go in and possess. So the people went in and possessed the land. You subdued before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites, and gave them into their hands. with their kings and the people of the land that they might do with them as they wished. And they took strong cities and rich land and possessed houses full of all goods, cisterns already dug, vineyards, olive groves, and fruit trees in abundance. So they ate and were filled and grew fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Nevertheless, they were disobedient. and rebelled against you, cast your law behind their backs, and killed your prophets who testified against them, to turn them to yourself. And they worked great provocations. Therefore you delivered them into the hand of their enemies who oppressed them. And in the time of their trouble, when they cried to you, you heard from heaven. And according to your abundant mercies, you gave them deliverers who saved them from the hand of their enemies. But after they had rest, they again did evil before you. Therefore you left them in the hand of their enemies. so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they returned and cried out to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies and testified against them that you might bring them back to your law. Yet they acted proudly and did not heed your commandments, But send against your judgments, which if a man does, he shall live by them. And they shrugged their shoulders, stiffened their necks, and would not hear. Yet for many years you had patience with them and testified against them by your spirit and your prophets. Yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercy, you did not utterly consume them nor forsake them, for you are God, gracious and merciful. Now therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy, do not let all the trouble seem small before you that has come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers and on all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day. However, you are just in all that has befallen us. For you have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly. Neither our kings, nor our princes, our priests, nor our fathers have kept your law. nor heeded your commandments and your testimonies with which you testified against them. For they have not served you in their kingdom, or in the many good things that you gave them, or in the large and rich land which you set before them. nor did they turn from their wicked works. Here we are, servants, slaves today, in the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its bounty. Here we are, slaves in it. And it yields much increase to the kings you have set over us because of our sins. Also they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." May God bless the reading of his word. Let's pray together. Our great God and Heavenly Father, You tell us in the Holy Scriptures that on this man, this person, this woman, this young person, I will look on him who is poor and of a contrite spirit and who trembles at Your Word. Indeed, grant to us that we might in such manner approach the Holy Scriptures this morning And may Your name be exalted. May we be caused to worship You. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, as I said this morning, we finally returned to our study of the book of Nehemiah. I took a break from it for a while, and then I was also away on vacation for a couple of weeks. So it's actually been about two months since the last message. And therefore, because it's been a while, let me begin this morning with a brief review to bring us up to where we left off. I know that reviews can be a bit tedious, so I'll try to be brief, but some of you may not have been here. Some of us may have forgotten where we are in the story, so just a brief review. I remind you that Nehemiah lived during that period in history in which the people of Israel were in exile. And they had been carried into exile by the conquering Babylonians. And after the fall of Babylon to Persia, they were now under the rule of the Persians. who served as the cupbearer to the Persian monarch. Earlier, in God's mercy, some of the Jews had been allowed by the Persians to return to Israel to rebuild and to resettle there. But Nehemiah, back in the palace in Sushan, he receives a report that the state of things in Jerusalem is very bad. and that the walls are broken down and he's devastated by this news and after much prayer about this, he takes the risk of asking the Persian king for permission to return to Israel to oversee the rebuilding of the walls and amazingly, His request is granted. And then in the first half of this book, we have the story of this great building project. The many enemies that Nehemiah faced who attempted to stop the work, and yet how the work was eventually completed. But there's still more work to be done. The rebuilding of the walls was not an end in itself, it was but a means to the greater end of rebuilding God's people themselves. and preserving God's pure worship in the world until through these people, the Christ would come as God had promised, the Savior of the world. Well, I remind you now of what began to be described in the last chapter, chapter 8 and continues to be described in this chapter and the one to follow, there is this wonderful reformation and revival that began to occur soon after the walls of Jerusalem were completed. Initially, after the building work was completed, many of the people had left Jerusalem and returned home to the surrounding towns and villages. But as we came to chapter 8, we read, now all the people gathered together. They returned to Jerusalem and why did they gather? Well, this was clearly a planned event where there was a platform, you remember, a pulpit that had been constructed beforehand for the occasion. It's safe to assume that Nehemiah was the planner. And perhaps as the workers left for their homes, he and Ezra announced that this meeting would occur, and he encouraged the folks to come and to learn from God's Word. Nehemiah understood that the first step to rebuilding God's people was to bring them back under the teaching and authority of the Word of God. But it's one thing to announce a meeting, as we know, to encourage folks to come. It's another thing for people to actually come. But what happened? Well, it was wonderful. Chapter 8 verse 1, now all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the water gate. And this was the beginning and indeed the first sign of this extraordinary work of God that was about to occur and had already begun to occur in the hearts of these people. Indeed there are several things in we see in chapters 8 through 10 that always accompany true reformation and revival. You may remember that back in chapter 8, we saw that there was an extraordinary hunger for God's Word. And there was a whole-souled believing reception and obedient response to God's Word. They stood for hours listening to the Scriptures being read and expounded, and they understood the Word that was preached to them. We saw that they were deeply moved by it. It produced heartfelt worship, grief over their sins, the joy of sins forgiven, and they also acted upon it by reforming their lives. and their religious practice. Then as we turn our attention to chapter 9, this is what we continue to see. Once again, the people of God are gathered to hear the Word of God in verses 1 to 3 of this chapter. There continues to be this extraordinary hunger for God's Word. In fact, we have the record in the beginning of this chapter of a six-hour long worship service. in which the people confess and express their deep sorrow over their sins, they listen to God's Word being read and expounded, and they worship the Lord their God. And we looked at those verses carefully in the last message. Well, this brings us now to where we take up this morning. All of this leads to this long prayer, this public corporate prayer. of the people, a prayer we might call it a prayer of repentance. It's a very interesting prayer. And again, it's a very long prayer. As I said, this is the longest prayer recorded in the Bible. And it's very interesting and instructive for several reasons. First, as we read this prayer, we're given a window into what was really going on in the hearts of these people. In this prayer, they're giving vent. to the inner workings of their souls, what they were thinking, what they were feeling, what was moving them, what was affecting them so powerfully in the previous passage as they had been listening to God's Word. And what was it? Well, did you notice when we read this that what we actually have here is an overview of the great events of biblical history. leading up to this time. You remember, what have they been doing? They've been listening to the reading and the teaching and the opening up of God's Word. Well, this prayer is a reflection of what they've been reminded of under that reading and teaching and how it has affected them. And what is it that they were reminded of and that so humbled them in repentance? Well, it's a long prayer. There's a lot here. But I think it could all be summarized in this way, they have been reminded of the goodness of God. The goodness of God. More than one person I read in my study of this text drew attention to this as one of the themes of this prayer, and I would argue that it is indeed the major theme of this prayer. That the major theme of this prayer, it can all be summarized in this way, the goodness of God. These people have a renewed sense of how good God is and how good God has been to His people and to them. And then it's in light of God's great goodness that they've been caused to see how awful and terrible their sins really are. And this comes out in this prayer so clearly. I think of what the Apostle Paul said in Romans 2 verse 4, you remember? He tells us that the goodness of God leads us to repentance. Now perhaps you might think that it's the threats of God that lead to repentance. No, it's the goodness of God that leads to repentance or is intended to lead to repentance. The law of God and the threats of God, they certainly have a very important place. They convict us of our lost condition. They awaken us to a fear of judgment and to our need. for salvation, but the law of God with its threats and punishments will never produce repentance. True repentance is produced by the gospel, by the revelation of God's great goodness. and love to sinners and giving Christ for us in spite of what we are and in spite of our sins and in order to rescue us from our sins. That's what breaks the heart with the godly sorrow of repentance. The thought that I have sinned against such a good and gracious God. Now, the goodness of God, the goodness of God is a large subject. The great Puritan author Stephen Charnock in his classic two-volume work on the existence and attributes of God, he gives roughly 147 pages to the theme of God's goodness. And if you've got that book, it's 147 pages in very, very small print. And Charnock writes, all the acts of God are nothing but the effluxes of His goodness. You say, what in the world does that mean? He fluxes. What does that mean? Well, look it up in the dictionary and you'll find it means the outpourings of. He says, all of God's acts, he says, are nothing else than the outpourings of His goodness distinguished by several names according to the objects it is exercised about. And then he explains. It says, all are streams from this fountain, this fountain of God's goodness. When it confers happiness without merit, it is grace. When it bestows happiness against merit, it is mercy. When he bears with provoking rebels, it is long-suffering. When he performs his promise, it is truth. When he meets with a person to whom it is not obliged, it is grace. When it commiserates with a distressed person, it is pity. When it supplies an indigent person, it is bounty. When it suckers an innocent person, it is righteousness. And when it pardons a penitent person, it is mercy. All summed up in this one name of goodness. Now, perhaps you remember when Moses pleaded with God. to show Him His glory. Remember what God said to him? He said, I will make all my goodness pass before you. My goodness is my glory. I will cause my goodness to pass before you, Exodus 34, 6, and the Lord pass before him. and proclaim the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth." Well, as we read through this prayer, we find that this really is the theme of this prayer. God's goodness and God's goodness against the backdrop of their sin and the awfulness of their sins and of the sins of their fathers in light of God's goodness to them. Now again, it's a long prayer. I'm not going to attempt to open up every detail. I'm going to attempt to do something today that I don't normally do. I'm going to cover the whole prayer in one sermon. And I think we can get at the main lines really of thought under three simple headings. So I want to just give an overview of the prayer under these headings. First, the affirmations of God's goodness. Second, we have the confession of their sinful abuse of His goodness. And then finally, an appeal to God's goodness and mercy in their present situation. All right? So it begins with affirmations of God's goodness as we begin to work our way fairly quickly through this passage. First of all, His goodness as the creator and preserver of all things in heaven and earth. Picking up at verse 5b. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise. You alone are the Lord. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and everything on it, the seas and all that are in them, and you preserve them all. The host of heaven worships you." So this is where they begin. They begin with God's goodness in creation. Now consider that our God, the triune God, is self-existent. He is not created or made. He ever exists. He is self-existent and He's also self-sufficient, which means He doesn't need anything. He doesn't need this glorious, amazing universe or this beautiful earth with all of the creatures upon it to somehow fulfill something that is lacking in Him. So then why does this universe exist? Why does the earth exist? The answer is because God is good and He created it to show forth His glory and His goodness for our delight and amazement. Psalm 33 5, the earth is full of the goodness of God. And God has created us with the capacity to behold and to enjoy the goodness of His creation. He's given us eyes to see the tremendous variety of His creation and the beauty of all of the various shades of color. He's given us ears to hear the singing of the birds and the breeze as it blows through the trees. He gives us a nose to enjoy the fragrances of the flowers and of the soil. He's given us taste buds to delight in the many flavors and the wide variety of vegetables and fruits and meats He has given for our food, indeed the earth. is full of the goodness of God. He didn't have to do this. He didn't have to create the world, and having created it, He could have just made us creatures who have none of these capacities to enjoy it. Creatures with no aesthetic sense at all. Sometimes my wife, I think, thinks I don't have any aesthetic sense at all when it comes to clothes. She helps me out there, but But He could have created us with no aesthetic sense at all or creatures who have no eyes or ears or taste buds. But He gave us the privilege and the capacity to know Him and to enjoy Him as He has revealed Himself in this marvelous world He has made. And this is one of the wicked things about the demonic doctrine of evolution. It's an attack upon the goodness of God. When I was a child, I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina, out in the country, 12 miles from the closest town, lived on a little Christmas tree farm, and I spent a lot of my time as a child playing in the woods, hiking and exploring the ridges and creeks and the mountains and the outdoors. grew up enjoying those things and I can still remember as a young man sitting out near one of the barns next to the house on those beautiful summer evenings and just sitting there and looking out across the fields and across the mountains and marveling at the beauty of God's creation. I can remember being very affected by that. And I still am affected by that. Some of you know I just got back from a trip there, a hunting trip, and being out in the mountains and sitting there early in the morning as the sun comes up and the squirrels begin to move about and the birds begin to sing and the world comes alive and it's beautiful to see the glory of God in creation. I read something some time ago that put into words a concern that I have felt for a while I was reading a blog post by Albert Moeller and he was commenting on a recent secular diagnosis of a problem among children. It's been called nature deficit disorder. It's the problem of a generation of children growing up with very little contact with nature or with the outdoor world in general. And it's argued that this has serious consequences for their health and well-being. Well, Moeller kind of pokes fun at the therapeutic classification of this problem, but at the same time, he argues that it is a real problem. However, not a therapeutic problem, but a theological problem. He writes, there is great loss here, and not just to a child's sense of well-being or knowledge of nature. Christians celebrate the fact that God created the cosmos as a display of His glory. A child who experiences the sense of wonder in the face of creation is learning not only about nature, but about the glory of God. Well, all of this is to say that creation itself is intended to teach us about God's goodness. Secondly, we have in this prayer an affirmation of God's goodness, not only in creation, but in election as the electing God. Not only the creating God, but the electing God. The electing God who has chosen to enter into a covenant relationship with His people. Verses 7 to 8. You are the Lord God who chose Abraham and brought him out of the Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the, chose Abram, and brought him out of the Ur of the Chaldeans and gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before you and made a covenant with him to give him the land of the Canaanites and so on, and you have, and to give it to his descendants, and you have performed your words for you are righteous." Here is God's sovereign election. He chose Abraham. You know, it's not that Abraham was sitting up against a tree one day while he was still living in the year of the Chaldeans and the thought came to him, you know what, I've decided that I'm going to worship Yahweh, the one true God alone, and I'm going to become the father of a great nation who will be given this land of Canaan, a great nation through whom all the nations of the world will be blessed by the coming of Christ into the world. No, none of it was Abraham's idea. It was according to God's sovereign electing choice. And it was God who took the initiative to call Abraham, to make a covenant with Abraham, to give to his descendants the land of Canaan. And how does that relate to us? Well, remember, in God's covenant with Abraham, he also gives the promise that through his seed, the promised seed, the Christ, all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And this was the promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus who would spring from those people and is the Savior of the world. If you're a Christian this morning, you owe your salvation to God's sovereign, gracious choice and covenant commitment to Abraham. He's not merely the father of the Jews, he is the father of all who have faith in Jesus Christ. Galatians 3.29, and you, if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Creation, election. Thirdly, they affirm God's goodness in redemption. His goodness in redeeming them from Egyptian bondage. Verse nine, you saw the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heard their cry by the Red Sea. You showed signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against all his servants. And they go on to describe the things that happened when God delivered them out of Egyptian bondage, how he threw their persecutors into the deep as a stone into the mighty waters. And brothers and sisters, the redemption of the people of Israel from Egyptian bondage, it was but a necessary foundation too. And it was a prelude and it was a picture of the greater redemption that we who are believers have received in Jesus Christ. And not by the blood of a lamb spread upon the doorposts of our homes as in the exodus from Egypt, but by his own precious blood that was shed for us to deliver us from the power of Satan and from the guilt and punishment of our sins. Fourthly, they praise and affirm God's goodness in providing for them. He didn't redeem them and deliver them from bondage and then just leave them to fend for themselves. He provided for them everything they needed. He provided guidance for their journey, verse 12. Moreover, He led them by day with a cloudy pillar and by night with a pillar of fire to give them light on the road which they would travel. He also provided them with directions on how to live. And this was for their good and for their flourishing as a people. He says, you came down, verse 13, on Mount Sinai and spoke with them from heaven. You gave them just ordinances and true laws and you made known to them your holy Sabbath, your statutes and laws and so on. He also provided for all their physical needs, verse 15. You gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought them water out of the rock for their thirst and told them to go into the land which you had sworn to give them." He guided them, gave them guidance, he gave them directions on how to live, he provided for all their physical needs. Dear brother or sister, has God not also provided for you in these ways? directions from His Holy Word for living, the provision of all of your physical needs throughout the entire course of your life. Think about it. Think over your life and consider how good and faithful God has been. As the hymn says, all I have needed, thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness, O God unto me. Now, this emphasis on God's goodness to them, it continues throughout the rest of this prayer, as they continue to review the history of God's dealings with his people. His goodness to them in the wilderness. Verse 19, in your manifold mercies, you did not forsake them in the wilderness. They describe how God continued to guide them and provide for them. Verse 20, how he sustained them in the wilderness for 40 years. Verse 21, they lacked nothing. They said their clothes did not wear out. Their feet did not swell. He subdued nations before them. Verse 22, he multiplied their children as the stars of the heaven. He brought them into the land. The Lord had promised to them, and he blessed them and prospered them in the land of promise, so that, verse 25b, they ate and were filled and grew fat and delighted themselves in your great goodness. Your great goodness and they go on to recount God's goodness to his people and then they open up the whole period of the judges the time of the judges throughout from there all the way to their To the present day in their history ending with these words in verse 31 be for you are God Gracious and merciful and brothers and sisters if these people had so many reasons to praise God for his goodness to them do not we as individuals Have even more reasons We have many of the same reasons, but even more. Think of God's goodness towards you simply with respect to the temporal blessings of this life. Think about it. Take time to think about it. I wanted this morning just to make us think about it. Just go on and describe and describe and describe in each of these categories, but that would be, you know, we would be here for five hours. But it's good for us to get down on our knees at times and to reflect and to think about how good God has been to us in terms of temporal blessings. Think about God's goodness in terms of outward religious privileges. You've been given the unspeakable privilege of living in a land where the gospel is preached. Millions of people in the world don't have that privilege. We're given the privilege to come to a church like this. Those of us who are saved, think of how good God has been to you. He sent His very own Son to die for you. He spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up to the just punishment that your sins deserve as your substitute. He endured the divine wrath and hell that we deserve. God the Son, in His goodness, in His kindness, in His mercy, He came into this world. He took to Himself a true human body and soul. He lived for 33 years upon this sin-cursed planet. He suffered heartache and pain, ridicule and slander. He humbled Himself. And he took upon himself the form of a servant, and was obedient unto death, even the suffering and death of the cross. And this he did for you, that you might be saved. And then in due time he saw to it in his providence that you heard the gospel. And by His Holy Spirit, He opened your ears and your heart to the gospel. And He drew you to Himself. And having believed upon Christ, He is part in all of your sins. They have all been cast into the sea of God's forgetfulness, as far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered against you again. The sting of death has been removed. Death for you is but a passageway to glory. And because of what Christ has done, you have a glorious future of eternal happiness in the new heavens and the new earth, surely. Think over all the temporal blessings, all the religious privileges, all of the spiritual blessings. God has poured out upon us, and surely, brothers and sisters, God is good, and he has been good to us. Psalm 3119, oh, how great is your goodness. Psalm 107, oh, give thanks to the Lord, for he is good. Oh, that men would give thanks to the Lord for his goodness. So this is what we see in this prayer, these repeated affirmations of God's goodness. But then we also see secondly, the confession of their wicked and sinful abuse of His goodness. And here is where we see the great evil and the great perversity of sin. God had been so good to them, and yet in the very face of that goodness, they have repeatedly sinned against Him, and yet still though He has chastened them, He has not forsaken them, and He continues to be good to them. And this is what breaks their hearts. Quoting Wallace Benn in his commentary, the recounting of the sheer goodness of God threw into sharp relief their persistent sinfulness through the generations that they now confess with a heavy heart and painful honesty. Now did you notice how often we see the words but or nevertheless when we read through that After recounting God's goodness and delivering them from Egyptian bondage, bringing them into the land of promise, we read beginning in verse 16, but they and our fathers acted proudly, hardened their necks and did not keep your commandments. Verse 17, they refused to obey and they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them. Were mindful of, didn't think about, they didn't consider them as they should have. But they hardened their necks, and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage. And yet, though God chastened them and He humbled them for their rebellion, still He did not destroy them or forsake them, verse 17b. You are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness, and did not forsake them," verse 18, even when they made a mold and calf and so on. It goes on, yet, verse 19, in your manifold mercies, you did not forsake them in the wilderness. So did they learn their lesson? How did they respond? to God's mercy and goodness to them. All the good things He continued to do for them that they describe in verses 19b to verse 25. How did they respond? How did they learn their lesson? Verse 26, nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you. And here they begin to describe the time of the judges, the period of the judges. We have this continuing cycle. Described in the verses that follow, they would rebel, they would give themselves again over to sin and idolatry, and God would chasten them by delivering them up to their enemies, but then they would cry to him for mercy. And what would he do? Verse 27b, when they cried to you, you heard from heaven, and according to your abundant mercies, you gave them deliverers who saved them from the hand of their enemies. But not very soon, soon after that, they go right back to their old ways. Verse 28, but after they had rest, they again did evil before you. Again, God would give them over to their enemies and chasten them and they would cry for mercy and they would repent and he would hear from heaven. Verse 28b, and many times you delivered according to your mercies. Verse 29b, yet they acted proudly and did not heed your commandments. Verse 30, Yet for many years you had patience with them, and testified against them by your spirit and your prophets, yet they would not listen. Therefore you gave them up into the hand of the peoples of the lands. Nevertheless, in your great mercy you did not utterly consume them, nor forsake them, for you are God, gracious and merciful. So this is the repeated pattern. God was good to them. He was so kind to them and merciful to them. But in the face of all of that goodness, they would give themselves up to sin and idolatry. God would discipline them. They would feel grieved and sorry and repent and cry to God for mercy. And God would forgive them and restore them. And then before long, they were sinning again. You say, what was wrong with these people? Were they stupid? Well, perhaps we should be asking ourselves, what's wrong with me? Is it not true that we are often just like them? Someone has said, we don't need a textbook on reformed theology to prove to us the doctrine of total depravity. Just look at your own heart, at your own experience. Have we not been just like these people? Perhaps some of us more than others, but my friend, do you not find yourself at times repeating the same sins again and again in spite of how good God has been to you and continues to be to you? Is this not a description of every unconverted sinner in this building this morning? And to some degree, even of those of us who are Christians. Perhaps even now there's some sin, some idol, some evil in your life that you keep holding on to and making excuses for. Be ashamed, my friend. Consider God's goodness to you. Reflect on how kind He has been to you throughout your life. Most of all, look at the cross and see God's goodness. in the blood-soaked, agonizing body of God the Son, suffering for you. Suffering for your sins, that you might be forgiven and saved, and be grieved, my friend, over your sins against such a good and gracious God and Savior, and turn from them." This is true repentance, not merely being afraid of God's judgment. No, we should be. Not just being disappointed that we have failed to live up to the high standards that we've set for ourselves or we've embarrassed ourselves before other people. No, true repentance flows from a heart that is stricken with grief and sorrow for ever sinning against such a glorious, gracious, and good God. A bleeding Savior I have seen, and now I hate sin. As the Catechism puts it, repentance unto life is a saving grace whereby a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and apprehension of the mercy of God in Christ." In other words, an awareness, a true heartfelt understanding of how good and merciful God in Jesus Christ is to all who look to Him. It's with that awareness, this sense of sin, this awareness of the goodness of God, His mercy, goodness in Jesus Christ he does in grief and hatred of his sin turn from it unto God with full intention and endeavor to live a life of obedience and this brings us to the third line of thought in this prayer that I want to draw attention to we consider the affirmations of God's goodness the confession of their wicked abuse of God's goodness. And then thirdly, we have an appeal. The prayer ends with an appeal to God's goodness and mercy in their present situation. And this brings us down to verse 32. And this section begins with the words, now, therefore, our God. And at this point, they leave off with historical review, and they move now to their present situation. And one commentator has helpfully divided this section into three headings, and we'll use those three headings because it will be helpful little crowbars to open this up. First of all, their cry, verse 32. Now therefore our God, the great, the mighty and awesome God, who keeps covenant and mercy, do not let all the trouble seem small before you that has come upon us, our kings and our princes, our priests and our prophets, our fathers, and on all your people from the days of the kings of Assyria until this day." And they're asking the Lord to look upon them. "...upon all that has happened to them since the time when the kings of Assyria held dominion up to this present day. The Assyrians were followed by the Babylonians, and now the Persians. And all this time they have suffered under the hands of their enemies, including the destruction of Jerusalem and the carrying away of the people into exile. And they ask God to look upon them in their hardship and distress." and that it would not seem small or trivial in His eyes. Secondly, we have their confession. Verse 33, however, you are just in all that has befallen us, for you have dealt faithfully, but we have done wickedly. They acknowledge that the Lord is just. He's acted rightly in punishing them and disciplining them in the way that He has. They deserved it. All the distress that He has brought upon them, as they continue to underscore in verses 34 to 35, we deserved it. You are just, O God, in all of these things. This is one of the marks of true repentance. There's no secret grudge against God. There's no attitude or feeling that God is being a bit too hard upon them, that He's being too severe. No, this is the language of a true penitent. There's the self-abasing acknowledgement that we deserve these judgments that have come upon us. God's judgments against us for our sins are right. You see, where there is repentance, the sinner justifies God and bears all the blame for his sin. And this is what we see these people doing. You see, brothers and sisters, when we ask God, we ask for God's blessings upon our nation or upon our church. or upon ourselves. We must never ask with an attitude that God in any way owes us the blessings that we ask for. We must never come to God like the Pharisee in our Lord's parable who said, Lord, look at all the good things I've done. I'm not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers. I fast twice in the week. I give tithes all that I possess. I go to church. I even go to a Reformed Baptist church. Surely, Lord, with all of these good things I've done, you ought to be kind and merciful to me. You ought to hear my prayer." My friend, God will never hear the prayer of anyone who comes to Him thinking that God owes me something. Even at our best, we deserve nothing from God as a nation, we deserve nothing from God as a church, and every one of us has deserved nothing from God as individuals, but eternal wrath and judgment. And if we would come to God and be heard, instead of coming with the attitude of the Pharisee, we must always come like the tax collector in our Lord's parable who said, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. Here is their condition at the present moment. Now, thirdly, they said before, God, their condition. Their confession, now their condition. Here's our condition. Notice, twice with heart-rending grief they describe it. Verse 36, here we are servants. Literally, that's a weak translation. Here we are slaves today. And the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its bounty, here we are slaves in it." You see, even though they had been restored to the land, they're still under the dominion and the taxation and the government of the Persians. They're slaves. Here we are, verse 36, servants today in the land that you gave to our fathers to eat its fruit and its bounty. Here we are, servants in it, and it yields much increase to the kings you have set over us because of our sins. Also they have dominion over our bodies and our cattle at their pleasure, and we are in great distress. Verse 38, I believe, is connected to chapter 10. We'll look at that next week. But here's something I want you to notice here. Did you notice that they don't end their prayer by asking anything? Isn't that a little odd? It's just they end the prayer descriptively. They simply describe their awful state, their pitiful condition. They don't ask anything really. Other than up in verse 32 when they ask God not to look upon their trouble as a small and trivial thing, otherwise they don't really ask anything. They don't try to argue with God, they don't try to debate with God, they don't make any excuses whatsoever for their condition, their sins. They don't say, but God, yes, we've messed up, but at heart we're actually good people. At heart, we're not good people. We're bad people. Sinful people. They don't make any excuses. They don't make any claims of deserving anything from God at all. All they do is they just go to Him in their miserable condition, and they describe before Him how bad their situation is. But you see, still that description of their condition is at least by implication an appeal to God's goodness, God's mercy. We have nothing to offer, no arguments. Our only hope is who you are. and how you have revealed yourself throughout all of these centuries of our history that they've described in this prayer, what they've mentioned repeatedly. Verse 17, but you are God, ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abundant in kindness. Look upon us in our pitiful condition. Verse 32, our God, the great, the mighty and awesome God who keeps covenant and mercy. Davis gives an illustration about a man in a church where he and his family used to worship. He was an elder in the church by the name Mr. McDiarmid. And he was also the source of weekly treasures. What do you mean? Well, all the children knew that Mr. McDiarmid always seemed to have an endless supply of candy or gum to parcel out after church. Well, one day Davis's youngest boy, who at that time was about four years old, went up to Mr. M., stood in front of him, did nothing. He simply looked up. all six feet of him. He didn't say anything. He just stood there before him and looked up. Of course, Mr. McDiarmid understood this is a petition. So there was no request spoken. Well, Davis points out in a similar way, verses 36 to 37 are an implied and silent petition. in light of the whole prayer. Here at the end, God's people are asking, have your great compassions altogether ceased? Have your mercies completely dried up? You will not forsake what you have refused to forsake so far, will you? We deserve it if you do. All that has come upon us is our own fault. But are you not still a God of mercy and grace? After so much goodness passed, will you let us sink at last? And brothers and sisters, as I bring this message to a close, how is it that God can do that? How is it that God can remain just and holy and still forgive us when we confess our sins and we look to Him for mercy. Is it because sin doesn't matter? Is it because God just simply, He just sweeps our sins under the rug and He says, oh, well, it's no big deal. I forgive you. I know that at heart you're really a good person. No, God is just. holy and sin must be punished in every sin against our infinitely good and worthy God deserves an infinite punishment the punishment of eternal hell the only way God can remain just and yet forgive sinners who repent and look to him for mercy is because of Jesus Christ and that was just as true for Old Testament Saints as it is for New Testament Saints God was able to forgive these Old Testament believers because of what Christ would do for them. by dying on the cross, and he's able to forgive you and to forgive me because of what Christ has now done for us by dying on that cross. He paid the debt that we owe to the justice of God as our substitute, so that any sinner in the consciousness of his sin and his ill-deservedness repents looking to him by faith for mercy. God will forgive him. and save him and reconcile him to himself. This, my dear friend, is the goodness of God. Don't despise God's goodness. Don't reject His goodness by determining to go on in your sin and rebellion, your indifference to Him. Turn to Him this day. Come to Him, confessing your sins, believing 1 John 1.19, that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, for we have an Advocate with the Father. Jesus Christ the righteous, and He Himself is the propitiation, the wrath-appeasing sacrifice for our sins. And having received that forgiveness, let us resolve and endeavor to live and to walk in new obedience. Again, quoting the Catechism, repentance unto life is a saving grace. who is a sinner out of a true sense of his sin and a believing apprehension of the great goodness and mercy of God in Christ, does with grief and hatred of his sin, turn from it unto God with full purpose and endeavor after new obedience. That's what these people do. And as we're going to see next week, God willing, they make a covenant. They write it out. and they publicly commit themselves anew to walk in God's ways. There is indeed a full purpose and endeavor to live a life of new obedience, not to earn God's goodness, not to earn God's forgiveness, but in response to God's goodness revealed in all of these ways that they've described, but to us most of all in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Father, we thank you for this prayer and for the principles that we see elucidated in this prayer. Lord, we pray that you'd help us to take them to heart. We pray, O God, that you would forgive us for how we do not like them, often we do not consider. Your great goodness to us. And we sin against Your goodness. What a grievous, awful thing it is. Pardon our iniquities for Christ's sake. Give us grace, Lord, that we might walk in new obedience. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.