Nehemiah 9 Chapel Preach

I preached in Oak Hill chapel (for presumably the last time) on Nehemiah 9:22-31 last friday. This is a brief outline of what I said.

Two points to aid our life of repentance

1. Grace is the context for extraordinary sin.

Israel’s chief sin across history, from the perspective of this prayer at least, was to take take take grace from God and yet return that with disobedience and rejection of his laws.

E.g. see use of ‘gave’ in 22, 24, 27, 29 & 30.

The contrast is seen most clearly there in the transition from 25 to 26. They gorged themselves on grace. Yet threw the law behind their backs. Hence v25. great goodness of YHWH, and v26. great blasphemies of Israel.

God’s grace highlights the heinousness and unwarranted nature of the sin.
To sin against a gracious God is a terrible thing.
To gulp down his grace and cast away his covenant instructions is a terrible crime.

If for them, how much more for us living AD not BC?

Interesting that it’s this sin of license that they chose to focus on. As they looked at Israel’s history this was the way they chose to epitomise the nation’s sins that had gotten them into the mess they were now in. This was the nature of their covenant-breaking.

That should lead us to consider whether it might not be the same amongst us, God's covenant people today. E.g. Liberalism. E.g. various forms of Evangelical antinomianism.

We would do well to consider whether we need to repent of the same sins as Israel. We must not think we can take grace with one hand and cast aside our Father’s commands with the other. It’s a non-starter. It’s a road that leads straight to judgment.

2. Sin is the context for extraordinary grace.

E.g. God’s patience: ‘Testified/ warned’in 26, 29, 30. Also 'many mercies/ times' in 27, 31, 28, 30.

Three cycles, (26-27, 28, 29-30/31). Sin – handed over – cry out – saved. First two cycles follow the pattern, but third only has no cry, and no salvation. Because this prayer is the cry (32-37). This prayer is expecting salvation. They were expecting God to complete the cycle, to act as he’s acted before.

As they looked back on their history Israel saw the need to repent, for taking grace for granted.
But they also saw the basis for that repentance. v31.

You could say that where sin abounded grace superabounded.

If for them, how much more for us living AD not BC? What extraordinary grace to send His Son to be all that Israel failed to be, to restore, resurrect Israel even and give to his people, Jew and Gentile, the gift of the Spirit.

Repentance is based on grace. We repent because we know God to be a gracious and merciful God. We repent in the expectation of forgiveness and salvation and blessing.

Puritan Preaching

Scattered thought arising from approximately four hours today spent discussing Puritan Preaching (material from a variety of sources).

1. Preaching puts forward the will of God from the word of God for the edification of the people of God.

2. Ministers must be bible experts, knowing the scriptures better than they know any other book.

3. Given the goal of edification, application is of most importance in preaching.

4. It is a sin to preach and have no application.

5. Application should be specific, direct, clearly arising from the teaching in question.

6. Application can console, exhort, admonish.

7. Exhortation involves spelling out the means of change as well as calling for such change.

8. Speech should be simple, and as unaffected as possible (the more affected the less effective - thanks Pete M).

9. Preaching should anticipate and deal with doubts and objections to the teaching in question.

10. Application should make listeners 'feel the word of God to be quick [i.e. alive] and powerful, and a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart' (Westminster Assembly Directory for the Publick Worship of God).

And a great quote (by a guy called Ryken, via a guy called Maclure) to round things off:

"For the Puritans, the sermon is not just hinged to Scripture; it quite literally exists inside the word of God; the text is not in the sermon but the sermon is in the text...listening to a sermon is being in the bible."

I have to admit to feeling rather like we are pygmies when we compare ourselves with these older brothers of ours. And I am a dwarf among the pygmies. Sometimes it feels like we are playing at sermons when we preach. Or half-starving the people. Or asking them to live off MacDonalds and Haribo. Or trying really hard to make the word of God boring.

But God is good, gracious, wise and sovereign. So, it must be time to pray more, devour more bible, think harder, graft longer, and focus more intently.

More on Jacob

Here's some stuff that didn't go into the chapel meditation on Genesis 29:21-30 (mostly inspired by or directly stolen from Wenham, Jordan and Cotter).

• Rachel's name means (apparently) 'ewe' or 'lamb' or something like that. This makes an interesting parallel between her and the flock(s) Jacob gains from Laban, and of course the flock Jesus snatches from the clutches of the 'strong man.'

• Rachel is therefore the bride of the heir, and as such is his flock/lamb, but also she is described as a Shepherdess (and is the only person thus designated in the scripture). Cue some thoughts on the church as the bride/flock/shepherdess of Christ the husband/shepherd. The Church both receives Christ's shepherdly care as well as partnering him in it.

• This also sets up an interesting parallel with Leah, whose name means 'wild cow.' Not sure what to make of that.

• The key to the whole Jacob narrative seems to be when the LORD wrestles with him and we find that all of Jacob's struggles have been divinely appointed as the means to his prevailing. Jacob's limp becomes a sign of victory-through-weakness.

• Jacob's question in 29:25 resembles the LORD's (to Eve) in 3:13, Pharaoh's (to Abraham) in 12:18 and Abimelech's (to Isaac) in 26:10. They all refer to occasions of deception.

• Also, there must be something in the fact that Jacob has to work seven years for each wife, and that the seven-day wedding feast is called a 'week' , especially given that this is Genesis - the book that begins with the first ever week. But what I'm not sure yet.

• The positive portrayal of Jacob flows in some senses from the somewhat more negative portrayal of Isaac. Given how much of the Abraham narrative is about the birth of Isaac in some way or another, given that he's the child of promise, his whole part in the story is a bit of a let down to some extent. If anything, we might have expected him to be the one who had lots of sons and gave birth to a nation. But in some senses his part in the story doesn't move the promises on to fulfillment very much at all. That is left rather to Jacob who plays a far more significant role in the founding of the nation, and whose sojourner experiences mirror the future experiences of Israel. Could this relate to the way that Jacob talks about Isaac in 31:42 where he says the LORD is the God of Abraham but the 'fear' of Isaac?

Jacob, Leah and Rachel

I had the privilege of preaching on Genesis 29:21-30 this morning in chapel. Here's the gist of it.

The passage is not really about Jacob getting a taste of his own medicine, but comes as part of a wider narrative which emphasises the hardship the LORD puts him through en route to promised blessing. Genesis is more positive than negative about Jacob - every time the LORD speaks to or about him it is to promise blessing. He has, after all, chosen Jacob over Esau, and Jacob is described as a 'blameless' or 'complete' man back in 25:27 ('quiet' in the ESV seems an odd translation).

The route to blessing in the land is paved with hardship as a sojourner and a servant (32:4) in a foreign land. Jacob faces exclusion from his family (Laban treats him as a hired hand), deception and exploitation, and has his claims to being heir mocked by Laban (in 29:26 Laban echoes God's choice of Jacob over Esau and says 'that's not how we do it round here mate!'). The one whom the nations were supposed to serve (27:29) becomes a servant himself.

Yet, this is the LORD's doing. In fact, the LORD uses the hardship instrumentally in his fulfilling of the Abrahamic promise. All four women mentioned in the passage feature in the very next section as mothers to Jacob's children- the patriarchs of Israel. Whatever we may want to say in another context about polygamy, here the LORD turns Laban's deception into Jacob's blessing. A similar pattern follows, such that when Jacob leaves Laban Exodus-style to head to the promised land he has wives, servants, children and sheep all in tow.

As such, Jacob serves as an echo of Israel's own experience in Egypt and eventually in exile too. Moreover, the heir par excellence to the Abrahamic promises undergoes treatment like that Jacob faced. He is the heir who takes the place of a servant, who submits to his enemies deception and exploitation in order to win his bride, is excluded from his family and has his claims to sonship mocked. Yet, this is all used by God to fulfill the promise to Abraham. The Son will have his bride, his children and his land. The nations will bow down and serve him.

As God's heirs we too should expect to receive the blessings of the covenant via hardship. Whether it is blessings we experience now or the final blessing in the new creation-land, the route there is paved with hardship. We know that, whatever hard times we go through, God has designed them to be our necessary route to glory and blessing. So, we must learn to be like Jacob by grabbing a hold of Jesus' coat tails and following him.

Oh Mercy!

I don't usually whine about translations (and I like the ESV), but in sermon preparation for this sunday I find myself asking;

Why has the ESV chosen to translate /hanan/ as 'mercy' in Psalm 123?

It seems so obviously connected to other uses of the word (and related) i.e.

Ex. 33:19 And he said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. (Note here how it is related to but distinguished from 'mercy')

Num. 6:25 the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;

Most of the time when translating the word the ESV goes for something to do with being gracious. Also, the few Hebrew wordy-books I've looked up always give a meaning more akin to being gracious than mercy. Mercy, certainly in our modern English usage, seems too narrow. It helpfully carries the idea of something being undeserved, but then so does 'graciousness'.

I suspect we usually associate mercy with 'not being punished even though you deserve it' rather than a broader concept of 'being shown undeserved compassion and favour' which is closer to /hanan/. Technically speaking 'mercy' can be used with this broader sense of an unmerited kindness (Sheila constantly performed small mercies for the poor in her neighbourhood) though I feel that's a little archaic and foreign to most people nowadays.

All of this makes the preacher's job harder.

Just say 'no'

"All preaching must be destructive as well as constructive."

The above is just one of the highlights from Dick Lucas at the (currently ongoing) preaching conference at Oak Hill. Dick encouraged us to preach the negatives as well as the positives, since without the negatives ('salvation is found in no-one else') the positives ('Jesus saves') make little sense. God's word demolishes the thought-strongholds of Satan as well as establishing the Kingdom.