March 21, 2018 - Suggested Reading 2nd Service Nehemiah 1

“Then I said: LORD, the God of heaven, the great and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love with those who love him and keep his commandments,”

Nehemiah 1:6 (NIV)

The whole story of Nehemiah, his work, and his life started right here with these words in a prayer. This gives us Nehemiah’s view of God, and it gives us his basis for expecting God to help him as he approached the king. Interestingly enough there is no description of Nehemiah’s obedience, or pledge by Nehemiah to obey. Nehemiah prays back God’s Words in verse 8 & 9 - God’s promise to restore -spoken to Moses on the basis of the people’s repentance, but there is no mention of Nehemiah’s godly life, which gave him grounds to claim God’s promise to restore -is it assumed? God only keeps His covenant of love with those who love Him (keep His commands) If we gloss over this truth- and pretend that God keeps His covenant of love with those who hate Him and disobey His commands - we miss the Gospel. The Gospel is that Jesus our Lord loved His Father and kept all of His commands, died in our place and rose from the grave (on the basis of God’s covenant of love) to ascend to the right hand of God. So that all who believe in Him would be brought into spiritual union with Him through the Holy Spirit and would then benefit from our Lord’s obedience. He is our life- He is our obedience - He is our love.
May we fix our eyes on Him today!