The Covenant in the Dock: Righteous God, Rebellious People
Introduction: The Lost Art of Confession
We live in a therapeutic age, an age of blame-shifting and victimhood. When things go wrong, our first instinct, drilled into us by a century of godless psychology, is to find someone or something else to blame. We blame our parents, our upbringing, our society, our economic conditions, our genetics. We are taught to see ourselves as the tragic victims of circumstance. The modern world has mastered the art of the excuse, but it has utterly lost the art of confession.
And because we have lost the art of confession, we have lost the path to restoration. You cannot be healed until you agree with the doctor's diagnosis. You cannot be forgiven until you admit your guilt. Our culture wants the comfort of absolution without the discomfort of admitting it needs any.
Into this world of self-justifying noise, Nehemiah 9 lands like a thunderclap. Here we have a people in "great distress." They are, for all practical purposes, slaves in the very land God had promised them. The fruit of their labor goes to foreign kings. They are a conquered people. By every modern metric, they had a right to feel victimized. They had every reason to shake their fist at the heavens and ask why a good God would let this happen to them. But they do not do that. Instead, they gather for one of the most remarkable prayers in all of Scripture. It is a masterclass in seeing reality as it is. They put themselves in the dock, they put God on the judge's bench, and after reviewing all the evidence of history, they declare a stunning verdict: God is righteous, and we are wicked. This prayer is the grammar of repentance. It is the only sane way to respond to hardship, and it is the only path that leads to true deliverance.
The Text
And the Levites... said, "Rise up, bless Yahweh your God from everlasting to everlasting! O may Your glorious name be blessed And exalted above all blessing and praise! You alone are Yahweh. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it, The seas and all that is in them. You give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down to You. You are Yahweh God, Who chose Abram And brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, And gave him the name Abraham. You found his heart faithful before You, And cut a covenant with him To give him the land... And You have established Your promise, For You are righteous...
(The prayer continues, recounting God's faithfulness in the Exodus, their fathers' rebellion, God's lavish forgiveness, the cycle of sin and deliverance in the time of the judges, and God's steadfastness through it all, concluding with their present state.)
So now, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness, Do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before You... However, You are righteous in all that has come upon us; For You have dealt in truth, but we have acted wickedly... Behold, we are slaves today, And as to the land which You gave to our fathers to eat of its fruit and its goodness, Behold, we are slaves in it... So we are in great distress.
(Nehemiah 9:5-37 LSB)
The Unshakable Foundation: God's Character (vv. 5-8)
The prayer does not begin with their problems. It begins with God. This is the first and most important lesson in the school of prayer. Before you talk to God about your circumstances, you must first talk to yourself about God. The Levites call the people to bless Yahweh, whose name is "exalted above all blessing and praise."
"You alone are Yahweh. You have made the heavens, The heaven of heavens with all their host, The earth and all that is on it... You give life to all of them And the heavenly host bows down to You." (Nehemiah 9:6 LSB)
This is the absolute presupposition. God is the transcendent Creator. This establishes the fundamental Creator/creature distinction, the bright line that separates God from everything else. He is not part of the system; He made the system. He is not a bigger, better version of us; He is another category of being altogether. This is a direct assault on every form of idolatry, ancient and modern. We do not worship the environment, or the state, or the self. We worship the One who made them all. All reality begins and ends with Him.
From Creator, they move to Covenant-Maker. God is not just a cosmic force; He is a personal God who makes promises.
"You are Yahweh God, Who chose Abram... And cut a covenant with him... And You have established Your promise, For You are righteous." (Nehemiah 9:7-8 LSB)
Notice the initiative. God chose Abram. God brought him out. God gave him a new name. God cut the covenant. Salvation and covenant history are always initiated by God. Grace is not a response to our goodness; it is the cause of it. And God keeps His promises not because we are faithful, but because He is righteous. His character is the anchor of history. This is the foundation upon which their entire confession will be built.
The Relentless Pattern: Grace and Rebellion (vv. 9-31)
Having established who God is, the Levites proceed to review the history of Israel's relationship with Him. It is a history with two alternating, clashing themes: God's relentless grace and man's stubborn rebellion.
First, they recount the overwhelming evidence of God's grace in the Exodus (vv. 9-15). Look at the cascade of divine action: You saw their affliction, You heard their cry, You performed signs, You split the sea, You led them, You came down on Sinai, You spoke, You gave them good laws, You gave them bread from heaven and water from a rock. God provided everything: deliverance, guidance, revelation, and sustenance. He is a good, good Father.
And what was the response to this flood of grace? It is summed up in one devastating word: "But."
"But they, our fathers, acted presumptuously; They became stiff-necked and would not listen to Your commandments." (Nehemiah 9:16 LSB)
This is the essence of sin. It is arrogance. It is a stiff neck that refuses to bow. It is a willful deafness to the commands of our loving Creator. They forgot His wonders and, in the shadow of the mountain where God had just spoken, they built a golden calf. And here we come to the heart of the prayer, the pivot point of history:
"But You are a God of lavish forgiveness, Gracious and compassionate, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness; And You did not forsake them." (Nehemiah 9:17 LSB)
This is Israel's creed, first revealed to Moses in Exodus 34 after that very rebellion. In the face of their treason, God defines Himself not by wrath, but by mercy. And He proved it. For forty years in the wilderness, a forty-year judgment, His grace was still relentless. He gave them His Spirit, He kept the manna coming, He provided water, and their clothes did not wear out (vv. 19-21). God's sustaining grace is present even when His people are under His fatherly discipline.
This cycle repeats itself over and over through the history of the judges and the kings (vv. 26-31). God gave them the promised land, full of goodness. They ate, grew fat, and reveled in His blessing (v. 25). And as soon as they had rest, they rebelled again (v. 28). They cast His law behind their backs and killed His prophets. So God, in His justice, gave them over to their enemies. But when they cried out in their distress, He, in His abundant compassion, heard them and sent saviors. This happened "many times." God's mercy has more staying power than our sin. His compassion is more stubborn than our rebellion.
The Righteous Verdict: Our Confession Today (vv. 32-37)
After this long review of history, they finally bring it all home to their present crisis. They have laid the groundwork, they have presented the evidence, and now they are ready to deliver the verdict.
"So now, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and lovingkindness, Do not let all the hardship seem insignificant before You..." (Nehemiah 9:32 LSB)
They appeal to God on the basis of His character, the very character they have just spent twenty-six verses describing. They don't ask Him to see their hardship as unfair. They ask Him to see it, to take it seriously, and to act according to His covenant love. And then comes the climax of their confession, the central affirmation of the entire prayer:
"However, You are righteous in all that has come upon us; For You have dealt in truth, but we have acted wickedly." (Nehemiah 9:33 LSB)
This is the turning point. This is bedrock sanity. There are no excuses, no rationalizations, no blame-shifting. They are not victims. They are rebels who have been treated with astonishing mercy. Their current state of slavery is not a sign of God's failure, but of His faithfulness. He did exactly what He promised He would do to a rebellious, stiff-necked people. God is righteous. God has dealt truthfully. We have acted wickedly. Full stop.
They confess that their kings, princes, priests, and fathers all failed to keep the law (v. 34). They confess that even while enjoying God's "abundant goodness" in a "broad and rich land," they did not serve Him or turn from their evil deeds (v. 35). The result is their present misery. "Behold, we are slaves today" (v. 36). This is not a complaint. It is a confession. It is an admission that their external bondage is a direct result of their internal rebellion.
The God of Lavish Forgiveness
This prayer is more than just a history lesson. It is a roadmap that leads directly to the cross of Jesus Christ. The endless cycle of sin, oppression, crying out, and temporary deliverance shows us the profound inadequacy of the Old Covenant to fix the central problem. The problem is the human heart, our stiff neck.
The saviors God sent, the judges and kings, were all temporary and flawed. Israel needed a better Savior. They needed a final Savior, one who could not only rescue them from their enemies but also rescue them from themselves. They needed someone to break the cycle.
The cross of Jesus Christ is the ultimate expression of everything this prayer confesses. At the cross, we see the full, horrifying reality of our wickedness. Our stiff-necked rebellion is what nailed Him there. But at the same time, at the very same place, we see the full, breathtaking reality of God's character. "You are righteous in all that has come upon us." God's righteousness demanded that sin be punished. And it was, in the person of His Son.
"But You are a God of lavish forgiveness, gracious and compassionate." At the cross, God poured out the judgment we deserved onto Jesus, so that He could pour out the lavish forgiveness we do not deserve onto us. The cross is where Nehemiah 9:17 and 9:33 meet. God is both righteous in His judgment and extravagantly merciful in His forgiveness. He is both the just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.
Therefore, our response today must be the same as Israel's. We must stop making excuses. We must agree with God's diagnosis of our condition. We must look at the history of our lives and our world and confess that He is righteous and we are wicked. And having done so, we must flee to the only one who can break the cycle of sin and bondage. We must cling to Jesus Christ, the perfect Savior, the fulfillment of the covenant, and the embodiment of the lavish forgiveness of God.