Our New Covenant reading is taken from the book of Hebrews, the 12th chapter. So turn in your Bibles, please, to Hebrews chapter 12. We'll read the first 17 verses of Hebrews chapter 12. Then we'll go back to the 10th chapter of the book of Nehemiah. Please stand with me as we show our respect to God, as we hear Him speak to us in His Word. Hear the Word of God. Therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him who has endured such hostility by sinners against himself, so that you may not grow weary and lose heart. You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin, and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons. My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you are reproved by him. For those whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. It is for discipline that you endure. God deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? But if you are without discipline, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them. Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits, and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, as seemed best to them. But He disciplines us for our good, that we may share His holiness. All discipline for the moment seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful. Yet to those who have been trained by it, afterwards it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness. Therefore strengthen the hands that are weak, and the knees that are feeble. and make straight paths for your feet, so that the limb which is lame may not be put out of joint, but rather be healed. Pursue peace with all men, and the sanctification without which no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one comes short of the grace of God, that no root of bitterness springing up causes trouble, and by it many be defiled. That there may be no immoral or godless person like Esau, who sold his own birthright for a single meal. You know that afterwards, when he desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for repentance, though he sought for it with tears. Now back to the book of Nehemiah, the tenth chapter. And actually we'll begin reading with the last verse of chapter nine, actually in the Hebrew text. Last verse, verse 38 of chapter 9, is the first verse of chapter 10. We'll begin reading then with 9.38. Recall, this is the end of the corporate prayer of God's people as they sought the face of the Lord. Verse 38 of chapter 9. Now, because of all this, we are making an agreement in writing, and on the sealed document are the names of our leaders, our Levites, and our priests. On the sealed document were the names of Nehemiah, the governor, the son of Hekeliah, and Zedekiah, Sariah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Melchizedek, Hatush, Shebaniah, Maluch, Harim, Merimoth, Obadiah, Daniel, Ginnathon, Baruch, Meshulam, Abijah, Mejamin, Maaziah, Bilgai, Shemaiah. These were the priests, and the Levites. Jeshua the son of Azaniah, Benue the son of Henedad, Kadmiel, also their brothers Shevaniah, Hodiah, Kalita, Peliah, Hanan, Micah, Rahab, Hashabiah, Zachar, Sherabiah, Shevaniah, Hodiah, Bani, Beninu, the leaders of the people, Perosh, Pahath, Moab, Elam, Zatu, Bani, Buni, Asgad, Bevi, Adonijah, Bigvi, Atr, Hezekiah, Azer, Hodiah, Hashum, Bezai, Harith, Anaphoth, Nebai, Magpiash, Meshulam, Hezir, Meshezabel, Zadok, Jaduah, Pelatiah, Hanan, Aniah, Hosea, Hananiah, Hashub, Halahesh, Pilha, Shobek, Rehum, Hashab, Hashabnah, Maaseah, Ahijah, Hanan, Anan, Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands in the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, all those who had knowledge and understanding, are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses, God's servant. and to keep and to observe all the commandments of God our Lord and His ordinances and His statutes, and that we will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. As for the peoples of the land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day, and we will forgo the crops the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. We also placed ourselves under obligation to contribute yearly one-third of a shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the showbread, for the continual grain offering, for the continual burn offering, the Sabbaths, the new moon, for the appointed times, for the holy things, and for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel and all the work of the house of our God. Likewise, we cast lots for the supply of wood among the priests, the Levites, and the people in order that they might bring it to the house of our God according to our Father's households at fixed times annually, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the law, and in order that they might bring the firstfruits of our ground and the firstfruits of all the fruit of every tree to the house of the Lord annually, and bring to the house of the Lord our God the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, the firstborn of our herds and our flocks, as it is written in the law. for the priests who are ministering in the house of our God. We will also bring the first of our dough, our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the new wine, the oil to the priests at the chambers of the house of our God, and the tithe of our ground to the Levites, for the Levites are they who receive the tithes in all the rural towns. And the priests, the sons of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive tithes, and the Levites shall bring up the tenth of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. For the sons of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of the grain, the new wine, and the oil to the chambers. There are the utensils of the sanctuary, the priests who are ministering, the gatekeepers and the singers. Thus we will not neglect the house of our God. thus far the reading of God's holy word. All flesh is as grass, and the grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of the Lord abides forever. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Please be seated. One of the distressing things about our day, as you know, is the loss of integrity and the loss of honesty in contracts, the demise in other words, of keeping covenant, because contracts are simply that. They're simply covenants. They're agreements between people that are to be kept. And we see this, of course, in the civil realm, the covenants. It's a distressing thing to hear modern politicians put their hands on a Bible and to promise before God to abide by it, to defend the Constitution, and then do just the opposite. It's a distressing thing to see the name of the Lord taken in vain that way. But it's not just there. It's also in the Church that men take their vows to subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith, and men seek to undermine it by their teaching or by their efforts. And we see it likewise in the family, and we have to guard it in ourselves. We have to remember that this very lack of covenant keeping was that which brought Israel into the Babylonian captivity. And that's what the people of Nehemiah had remembered. As you go through that prayer that we looked at the last time we were together, they were going back over the history, not just the recent history, but going all the way back to the seasons of disobedience throughout the history of the people of Israel. And they were remembering they were descendants of those who were covenant breakers and they were covenant breakers themselves. And so in the 38th verse, you can read there, because of these things, all of this has come upon us. And so they were recognizing these things, but yet God in his grace had brought about a great work of reformation. And so you have to read this, this 10th chapter in light of the previous chapters as well, chapters 8 and 9, the great things that God had done. The first thing that he had done that we saw in chapter 8 was there was a renewal and a resurgence of interest in the Word of God. The people said, Ezra, bring the book of the law and bring that book and read it to us. And they stood for the reading of the law of God for a long time and were instructed in it. And they weren't content. The next day they came again and they said, Ezra, teach us out of the book of the law. There was a resurgence in hunger for the word of God. And you say, well, wasn't that just something that people did to themselves? No, you have to remember what the Apostle Paul instructed his people about in Philippians chapter 2 and verse 13. It is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work. for his good pleasure. This was a great work of God. And so God produced a resurgence in the hunger for the hearing of the Word of God. But also there was renewed devotion to practice the Word of God, not just to listen to it. And so we see their worship was reformed in the meticulous observance of the Feast of Booths. Evidently, they had not built the booths. They had kept the feast, as we know, But evidently, they had neglected for many years the building of the booths to camp out, as it were. And when they heard that, they said, you know, we've been doing it wrong. Let's get back to what the scripture says about how we're to celebrate the feast of booths with all the rejoicing that that brought. Now, they also recognized that the days of feast were not for mourning. There was much to mourn about. But when they heard, no, this is not a day for mourning, this is a day for feasting, they said, we're going to do what the word of God has to say. And then we see a resurgence in prayer as we see in chapter 9. The people of God separated themselves from the people and they came together and they blended their hearts together in this prayer of confession and of intercession for the work of the kingdom. I'm going to pause again here and I'm going to say I am very grateful for the for the improved attendance in prayer meetings. It's a great blessing. I believe that God's at work when people gather to pray. I think when God gives a resurgence of desire to hear the Word of God, a resurgence of the desire to practice the Word of God in worship and in prayer, I think the Lord is preparing us for good things ahead, and we need to wait on Him. But I'm just very grateful for that. Well, now in the 10th chapter of Nehemiah, we see that God records for posterity a renewal of the covenant, a renewal of the covenant. And that's what we have here, renewed commitments. We've seen God stirring them up to all these things. We've been seeing it work, working out in their lives. They were practicing these things, but the people come together now and they are going to enter into a renewed covenant with the word of God. That's what we want to look at this evening. And the first thing that I want you to see is observe the nature of the covenant, and we really see that rehearsed for us in verse 38. We just mentioned it the last time we were together, but I want to look at this a little bit more closely this evening. And we find this covenant that they wrote, the covenant they cut with God, was a response to God's covenant faithfulness. They were not the originators of it. Rather, they were going back to something that preceded them. The covenant was a response to God's covenant faithfulness. Notice what it says here. Now, because of all this, or now in this, we are making an agreement in writing. Well, what's he referring to? Well, he's referring to God's covenant faithfulness. You say, well, how can you say that? Because it was a prayer of confession. They were confessing their sins. Yes, that is true. But why were they confessing their sins? Because God was faithful to his covenant, indisciplined. and judgment. He didn't let them go on in their sins. God is faithful in judgment. He does exactly what He says He will do. And so He had told the people of God if they forgot Him, if they began to worship idols, if they forgot the house of God and neglected those things, that they would indeed be taken into captivity. And God did exactly that. Now, I want to say to you both adults and children, Have you ever found yourself straying? This is not a call for hands, but have you ever found yourself straying from the Lord and found all kinds of difficulties coming your way? And especially, not necessarily external difficulties, but those internal struggles of a troubled conscience and a sense of distance from God? Thank God for His covenant faithfulness in discipline and punishment. It's God's displeasure if he lets you go and enjoy your rebellion and your sin. God is faithful to his people. Even as he took the people of God into captivity, it was miserable. No discipline for the moment seems to be joyful, sorrowful, but the end is much better. God was faithful to his covenant people by sending them into captivity. That's where they learned. to seek the Lord's face once again. So God is faithful. You've experienced that, and God will continue to preserve you. So when you find yourself straying from the Lord and you find the troubles of life, either the problems of the soul or the troubles of life coming upon you, it's not just accident or chance. That's God's faithfulness. And these people were remembering God's faithfulness in His covenant curses, in His judgments, But God is also faithful in his mercy and grace. Ezra and Nehemiah, those two books, those are the record of God's restoring his people according to his covenant promises. So after 70 years, he told them that he would bring them back. And so we see all these things. We see them restored from the Babylonian exile. And we see the rebuilding of the temple and the restoration of worship and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and God's protection. This was the peaceable fruit of righteousness that God was bringing from their discipline. And so where sin abounded, grace super abounded. And so I can say to you again, when you have returned to the Lord, when He has turned you back because of those disciplines and you saw His face, And you've been restored to that fellowship and that joy. You remember what that's like? We kind of go through cycles, don't we? We have those. But that's what God was doing here. And it was out of response to God's covenant faithfulness, they said, God has been faithful. He was faithful to discipline us. He's been faithful to restore us. Let's renew our covenant with him. The covenant was a response to God's covenant faithfulness. And the covenant expressed a commitment and a desire to commune with God. Why were they doing this? Because they wanted more. They wanted it to continue. They didn't want to lose that which they had gained. Greg Bonson's definition of covenant is this. It is a mutually binding compact between God and his people, sovereignly transacted by the Lord. wherein a promise is made by God which calls for trust on the part of his people and entails obligations of submission which are sanctioned by blessings and curses." And you say, well, where is this sovereignly imposed upon them? Well, it goes back to what I just said. It's a response to God's covenant faithfulness. God had established the covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and his descendants many years before, and they're coming back not to make a new covenant, but to renew the covenant that had been made with them as they see God at work in their midst. And so they recognized a previous obligation to the Lord. When God brought them out of Egypt and He brought them into the land of Sinai, how did He begin the Ten Commandments? I am the Lord thy God that brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. I am the Lord your God. This was the outworking of God's covenant. This obligation was sovereignly imposed upon them. It's sovereignly imposed actually upon all men. Whether you're a believer or you're not, you are bound by the covenant that God imposed upon you in the very beginning. You've been created in His image, and you are one that God holds accountable. You are one with whom He entered into covenant with Adam, and you're the descendants of Adam. So you are bound by the covenant of works, all of us are. And you will either pay the penalty for the violation of that covenant or someone else will, but all men are bound by covenant, by virtue of creation. You have no right to go your own way and not to serve the Lord your God, because He is God, there is no other. And not to do so is to live in rebellion, in cosmic rebellion And so they recognize this, they recognize themselves that by virtue of creation they were bound by covenant to be God's people because they bear his image and men know that. All men know that they're responsible to God and make every effort, those who are apart from Christ, make effort to escape the guilt that they feel and they sense because of that. But this obligation was also sovereignly imposed on believers by Christ's redemption And here it is, a different one, because we are no longer the ones who are paying the penalty for the violation of the covenant, nor are we the ones that are keeping the terms of the covenant, but it's kept by God's Redeemer. But we're brought with a price, right? We've been redeemed by the blood of Jesus. We're not our own. We've been bought with a price. And the people of God here are recognizing that. They are recognizing Not only are we yours by virtue of creation, but we are the people that you've brought out for your own possession, and you've done all these things for us in your covenant faithfulness. We belong to you, and we want to acknowledge that." They recognized then their previous obligation to the Lord, and they recognized they had violated those obligations. That's what this prayer was all about, and they determined to renew and to restore their commitment. It was in response to God's covenant faithfulness that they come back and saying, yes, Lord, we will do as you've told us to do. That's what they were doing. And the covenant was recorded in writing. It's interesting here. Now we are making this agreement in writing. Now, you might say, well, why? Well, for one thing, because the covenant of Sinai was in writing, it was written on stone. God made certain that it wasn't going to disappear. It was permanent. But here they weren't going to write it on stone, but they were going to reduce it to writing. And we might ask ourselves the question, why the written document? Couldn't they just verbally affirm these things? They did. And the response to that, of course, is it was written to record what was promised. what they were promising to do in response to God. They were making promises. They were making vows. They were saying, these are the things that we promise to do in response to your covenant faithfulness. The rule is, get it in writing. It's gone now. I was very disturbed. I used to go to the city lock shop, but now they've got the big condominiums downtown, so my lock shop is gone, but I used to go in there to get my keys made, because when I got them made there, they always worked. When I got them elsewhere, they rarely worked as keys, but they had all these little signs up there that I always enjoyed, and one of them said, in God we trust, everybody else pays cash. Okay? In other words, get it. in writing. And I can remember again, I've told you this before, but when we were raising our children, we would try to negotiate and say, okay, these are the obligations that you have. And it may be the case, but I remember the children would say, well, you never told us that. And of course, when you have five children, You can't remember who you told what. And that was always, that was always the out. You never told us that. And we say, okay, did we, did we tell them that? And we tell somebody else that and settled it. We all sat down. We wrote it out. And we put it up on the refrigerator, and every time somebody said, you never told us, we'd simply point up on the refrigerator and say, don't tell me we didn't tell you. It's right there. Get it in writing. It helps you to remember what you've promised. And so they put it in writing. And it was good for them to remember It was good because we couldn't remember either. Now, that's not God's problem. That's our problem. God remembers, but often we don't. And so they may have forgotten the things that they had promised. And it was also written to pass on to succeeding generations because the covenant was made not only with them, but with their children after them. That is the nature of God's covenant throughout the generations. When God made his covenant with Adam, it was with Adam and with his seed, wasn't it? And when God made His covenant with Abraham, it was with Abraham and his children. It was to be passed down. And the psalmist and the other portions of Scripture say, this is the thing that we need to do. We need to pass it down from generation to generation so that it doesn't get lost in succeeding generations. And so they determined to do everything they could, not only to bring to their own remembrance, but to see that it was passed on to succeeding generations. The promise is to you and to your children after you. What a blessing. And so we're to tell our children, this is the way of life. You, you follow us as we follow the Lord. And then the covenant was a solemn, legal document. It wasn't just something that was frivolous. It was a very solemn thing that was done. It bore the seal. Notice it says here, and on the sealed documents, are the names of our leaders, our Levites, and our priests. It bore the seal that authenticated it as being a legal document, not just something off the wall. And it was legally binding. Notice in verse 29, all of us are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in the way of God. What they were doing there was they were saying, we are going to follow you and keep this covenant, so help us God. It was a self-maladictory oath. It was a blood oath. Lord, we are saying that you will be perfectly just in wiping us off the face of the earth if we don't keep covenant with you. It was solemn. It wasn't something frivolous. It was something that was very critical. In fact, they saw it as a matter of life and death. Well, the nature of the covenant in verse 38, you say, wait a minute, we've gone this long and you've just done one verse. We look at all the verses that we have left. Well, we'll see what we can do. Observe the signatories of the covenant. No, I am not going to go through and identify every one. I had enough trouble pronouncing their names. We aren't going to do that. But I do want you to see generally the signatories of this. By the way, what's happening here is these people were subscribing to that which was written. To subscribe means to write under. They are putting their names at the bottom of the document saying, this is our agreement. We are subscribing. The big issue in denominations, in the PCA in particular, is subscription. What is the nature of subscription? We subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith. It's the best expression of Christian doctrine. We put our names under it. That is being fudged and fussed about quite a bit. We now have good faith subscription, which means, well, I think the Westminster Confession of Faith says this, and I subscribe to what I think it is, not what it is. That's very troubling to me. It's a very troubling thing. I think it's one of the things that we're seeing within the church that we no longer take covenants seriously, but that's another story. Isn't it interesting that you can still go into Washington and you can still see the names of those who subscribe the Declaration of Independence. You can still see the names of those who subscribed, signed under the Constitution of the United States. You can see that. You can go back and you say, this is what they agreed to. This is what binds us. And that's what was happening here. They subscribe to these things. And so the covenant was signed by the leadership. Every sphere of human activity was bound by covenant. There was not this notion, well, you have this sphere over here that's subject to God, but this over here, that's left up to man. No, you have the civil leadership committed to the covenant. You have the church leaders subscribing to the covenant and you have the family leaders subscribing to the covenant, heads of families, every sphere. There was none of this notion that somehow civil leaders are exempt or the church leaders are exempt, this only binding the common people of the covenant. The covenant was signed by the church leadership and every sphere of God. Every sphere was under the rule of God. These are things we commit to doing. But also understand the subscription of the leaders engaged those they represented. And here's the concept again of representation. These people signed not just for themselves as a limited number of names here. But you'll notice if you go down to verse 28, you see this. Now the rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the law of God, their wives, their sons, and their daughters, all those who had knowledge and understanding are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath. to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses. You see, it wasn't just those who subscribed. It was all those they represented as well. And that's the principle of representation as well. It shouldn't surprise you. We talked about this at the funeral for Jan's mother. Representation is one of those things that's very common to us. Your representatives in Washington, what they do affects you, whether you like it or not. what they do affects everybody that is under their jurisdiction. And so this was the case here as well. These were all those that had separated themselves from the people. And if you go back to chapter 9 and verse 2, you can see who that was. And the descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. So all the people that came out and lamented their departure from the Lord and were pleading with him. So this was the whole people of God, the whole community that identified themselves with the Lord. Those were the signatories of the covenant. What about the terms of the covenant? There are terms to the covenant. There are agreements, those that were imposed upon them. But these were the particular things that were listed in the covenant, what they committed to do. And the first we see is a rather general one in verse 29. We are joining with their kinsmen, their nobles, and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath to walk in God's law, which was given through Moses, God's servant, and to keep and to observe all the commandments of God our Lord and His ordinances and statutes. That covers the basis, doesn't it? covers all the bases. They were going to be governed by the will of God, as it is expressed in His Word. And so they bound themselves to be governed by God's law, to take God as their God, and that's really all that it is. For God to be God, He must be the one who governs every facet of life. If you will show me what regulates your life, I will show you your God. Show me what determines your course of action, the way you talk, the way you dress, the way you live, what you do, what you don't do. Show me what motivates you to do that, what rule you're following, and I'll show you your God. And it doesn't matter what you profess, that's the way that we determine who our God is. And so they bound themselves to be governed by God's law, that is, to take God as their God. And interestingly, in following God's law, they bound themselves to two things with regard to this. And you see that in that verse, to keep or to guard and to observe all the commandments of God, our Lord, and his ordinances and his statutes. They bound themselves to guard God's law. You see, they were well acquainted with the fudging that had been taking place in their ancestry where the law of God had been abridged, altered, ignored, etc. They covenanted themselves to take the law of God in its original intent and according to its full meaning, and they were not going to allow it to be abridged or modified or added to. They were going back to Deuteronomy 12.32, whatever I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to nor take away. from it. We're going to do it all. And they were going to guard it. They were going to see that that treasure was passed down to their descendants without alteration. And they bound themselves then to practice God's law, whatever it says explicitly, and its good and necessary consequences also. Not only the law of God, the Ten Commandments, but it says all of the particulars as well, the statutes, and the ordinances that are given to us. They bound themselves to be governed by God's law. But they not only bound themselves generally, they bound themselves to particular duties within that law of God. And I think the reason they did these was because they were remembering that these were the areas that they had failed, which led to a more wholesale disregard for the law of God that led their ancestors to be taken into captivity and their are several of these. They bound themselves to particular duties. Sometimes general duties can be just dismissed and fudged over, not paid much more attention to, but rather they went back and they tried to review those things which had led to the apostasy and the resulting captivity from which they had been delivered. These were the things that were most threatening to them, the things that threatened their identity as the people of God. Well, what were they? Well, they bound themselves, first of all, to preserve their families for the Lord, in verse 30. We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. They were going to preserve the families. No doubt, had in mind Solomon and the wives of Solomon, the unbelieving wives of Solomon that turned his heart away from serving the Lord. I believe that Solomon was brought back. I think the book of Ecclesiastes is the book whereby he remembers the folly of that and he returns to faithfulness. But they remembered all of those things that had come back and they remembered all of the heartaches that had come about from the intermarriage with the nations. And so they bound themselves to reserve their families. They understood that if they did not guard their families that there would be no future for them because the family is the nursery of the church. And so they bound themselves to that there would not be corruption in the family. You have to remember that Ezra had already dealt with this or the people of God had dealt with this previously and they'll deal with it again. They'll deal with it again in the book of Nehemiah. This is a threat that faces us every day. The assault that we are seeing today is an assault on the family, and it's not just on the family, just as the family. It's an assault upon the Lord himself who ordains the family. If we let the family go, then the kingdom of the Lord is going to suffer for it as well. They bound themselves to keep the Sabbath holy. Again, The Puritans said this is probably the most important of all the commandments because they viewed it as central because they said, if you don't keep the Sabbath holy, then you forget to keep all the others. We've lost that. The church has lost that in our day, but they bound themselves to keep the Sabbath holy. All of the Sabbaths that were given to them, we have one, we have the Lord's day. They had many, but they understood that this was the very heart of the preaching and the teaching and the building up of the saints. They were going to keep the Sabbath holy. They were going to honor him with their time. One day and seven belonged exclusively to the Lord. And they were not going to neglect the worship of God for anything. They were devoted to that because they understood God sent them into captivity because they neglected the Sabbath for 70 years. And he said, I'm going to have you in captivity for 70 years. You don't think it's important? It's vital. It's vital to the well-being of your family, your soul, and of the Church. As much as they were able, you'll notice what they say here in verse 31. As for the peoples of a land who bring wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day. And we will forgo the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt." Well, they didn't have full authority because they were still vassals of Persia. But they said, as far as it lies with us, the Gentiles may practice their commerce, but we're not going to practice their commerce. We're not going to buy from them. Now, you'll see they have trouble with this later on, too. This is something that every generation has to struggle with, and I just beg you all, take seriously the Fourth Commandment. It's not a burden, it's a joy. It's a delight, and it's for the preservation of your soul and of your family and of the Church. They bound themselves to the preservation of property. It's a little obscure, but I think this is what they're getting at because the last part of that say, we will forgo the crops of the seventh year and the exaction of every debt. They were going to be those who would not permit oppression and theft in their midst, and they would do everything they could to deal with those who were being oppressed and afflicted. And so you had the provisions in the old covenant. of the provision for the poor, enabling them to labor and work hard with their hands, but they could glean from the fields and they could participate in the bounty that God had given to them and they would give of their property. So oppression was not permitted. Remember how in Nehemiah they had said many of the people had been afflicted by their own members and by their own fellow citizens. And there were people who couldn't pay their taxes. There are people who are starving to death because people who had returned from the captivity before Ezra were oppressing them. And they said, we've seen what this has done. We're not going to do it again. We're not going to allow oppression and theft to take place in our midst. In other words, what they were doing there was they were preserving life, liberty, and property because those three are bound together. If you don't have property, if you don't have the possessions, if they are taken from you, then it's very difficult to sustain life and it's very difficult to sustain liberty as well. So they bound themselves to preserve preservation of property. And they bound themselves to support the work of the church as it was then. And the bulk of that is given to us in the remaining verses, verses 32 through 39. providing for the temple service. They had to have bread for the table of showbread. They had to have oil for the lampstand. They had to have sheep and goats and bulls for the morning and evening sacrifice. This all took a great deal of resources, but they promised to give of themselves to provide for the worship of the church, the things necessary for the regulated worship of that day. We don't have that any longer, but it was necessary to provide for all of these things. They had to have wood on the altar. You'll remember that God's precept for the altar was that the altar was to be kept burning day and night. The lamps were to be kept burning day and night. That takes a lot of wood. It takes a lot of wood. And it had to be collected. And so they made arrangements for us that were going to support the work and worship of the church, the things necessary for regulated worship. And they were going to support the servants of the church as well through the tithes and offerings and the other things that were necessary they gave themselves. And I'm going to submit to you, if God's people, if God's people in the United States would simply tithe and give There would be no lack of resources for anything necessary for the work of the church. Wouldn't be anything necessary. I don't remember what it is. And by the way, I believe I'm thankful for you all that are diligent in your tithes and offerings. But I know that is something of a rare thing for people to tithe in the church. And they think it is, many of them think of it as being legalistic. And the result is that it's very difficult to raise the resources there are. Those are the things that were pressed upon them. We find that they were giving, they recognized the resources they had belonged to the Lord and they gave to the work and worship of the church and support of the servants of the church according to the statutes that were given to them in the law of Moses. Well, those are things that they did. Those were the particulars because they also remember how in the days of the kings of Judah, those evil kings of Judah, how the temple came to be neglected and was in disrepair. The sacrifices fell into disuse and everything was corrupted so that Josiah, when he is restoring the temple, They came across the book of Deuteronomy, and they didn't even know they had the book of Deuteronomy. It had been lost to them. Isn't that amazing? Because the people of God neglected the house of God. Well, let me just conclude with this. Evaluate your relationship with the Lord. It's good to rehearse our sins and its consequences, to remember God's faithfulness in judgment and discipline. We can look back and we can see those times and seasons and events where we have been negligent, where we have been rebellious and stubborn. And we ought to remember the consequences. God is faithful in discipline and he will be. Never forget that. And thank God for it if you're a believer. Tremble and become a believer if you are not yet, because God will be faithful to his covenant. But remember also God's covenant faithfulness in blessing and in cursing, in deliverance and in conviction. But evaluate, where are you now? What's your relationship with the Lord right now? And what's the cause of that? If you're distant from Him, this is the season to remember and to ask God to do, to renew a work. And so renew your commitment to keep covenant. We make vows as church members. We ought to review them from time to time. The Lord's Supper provides occasion, regular occasion, to evaluate and to renew our commitment to renewed obedience. It is not something that is done once. Every generation has to do it, and I think everybody in life. And if there's a heart for the Lord, we ought to be doing this day by day, evaluating and renewing our commitment to be the Lord's. And especially, renew your commitment to those things that are most threatening to your walk with the Lord. You know, it's easy to commit to the things that are easy for you. It's more difficult to commit to the things that are troubling you, right? That's what these people did. These people said, these are the things that have been troubling us in the past. These are the things that are plaguing us now that we're wrestling with. These are the things that will plague us in the future. We're going to renew our commitment in these areas and renew our obedience by the grace of God. Let's pray together. Lord, we thank you again for this word that you've given to us. We thank you for the example. And yet we know, even as these folks had troubles in the not-too-distant future, so we will as well. And so therefore, we recognize that our well-being does not rest and rely upon our performance, but it does rest and rely upon performance of the covenant keeper, our mediator, the one who kept covenant for us, the Lord Jesus. We pray that you would pour out your Spirit upon us, that we might enjoy more and more of that sanctifying work of your Spirit, where more and more we resemble the covenant keeper. Enable us then, Lord, to preserve our families. Give us joy and delight in keeping the Sabbath holy. Establish us, Father, as we seek to preserve property and to resist oppression and enable us, O Lord, to support the worship and work of the Church to the best of our ability. We pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, people of God, receive the benediction of our God. And now may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord lift up the light of His countenance upon you and give you peace. Amen.