4 So it was, when I heard these words, that I sat down and wept, and mourned for many days; I was fasting and praying before the God of heaven.
5 And I said: “I pray, Lord God of heaven, O great and awesome God, You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments, 6 please let Your ear be attentive and Your eyes open, that You may hear the prayer of Your servant which I pray before You now, day and night, for the children of Israel Your servants, and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned. 7 We have acted very corruptly against You, and have not kept the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses. 8 Remember, I pray, the word that You commanded Your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the nations; 9 but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name.’ 10 Now these are Your servants and Your people, whom You have redeemed by Your great power, and by Your strong hand. (Nehemiah 1:4-10)
Our nation is in a time of great turmoil. A buildup of racial tension, fueled by several murders of black individuals, culminated in the unjustified killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Over the last week or two, the justifiable outrage over such a travesty of justice has increasingly given way to rioting, looting, violence, and anarchy in the streets of major American cities. Just this morning I read a story about 77 year old David Dorn. Dorn was a retired police officer in St. Louis who was murdered while trying to help defend a pawn shop from looters. He was also a black man. Apparently, if you get in the way of the bloodthirsty mob, your black life doesn't matter anymore.
A seemingly infinite number of voices have come forward with all sorts of declarations: solutions to problems, demands for recompense, even working toward the tear down and restructuring of our entire society. This post is not an attempt to add to the clamor. Somehow, as it seems to always be these days, everything comes back to politics. I don't think it's any coincidence that all these things come mere months before another election cycle. I think one of the best things Christians can do in a time like this is to be slow to proclaim solutions. As one fellow ARP pastor has recently put it, we need to relearn the process of lamenting.
That's what we see in Nehemiah's case. Nehemiah is in exile and receives a report from home: the walls of Jerusalem are broken down and the gates are burned with fire. In other words, the report ain't good! Everything seems to have fallen apart, perhaps even irreparably. But Nehemiah's first response is not to proclaim a solution. He does not suddenly become a self-proclaimed expert on how to restore the city. The first thing Nehemiah does is to sit down, weep, and mourn with repentance for many days.
Notice the progression of Nehemiah's prayer: first, he begins by remembering who God is, "You who keep Your covenant and mercy with those who love You and observe Your commandments." If we do not know who God is, and receive Him by faith, we will never truly understand the world around us. We won't even understand ourselves. "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." (Proverbs 9:10)
Second, Nehemiah confesses sins; both his sins and the sins of his people: "and confess the sins of the children of Israel which we have sinned against You. Both my father’s house and I have sinned."
In the midst of our current crisis, there has been discussion of injustice, wickedness, evil, perhaps even some have used the dreaded word, "sin." There are two things we need to remember about this: there is such a thing as societal sin; a people can be guilty of wickedness, even if not every particular individual has committed that sin. This is true about our nation with the guilt of abortion, pornography, and a host of other heinous sins. It may equally be true of something like racial pride or malice. Even though our hands may individually be clean, our nation's hands may be bloody with sins.
However, it is equally important to remember that God defines sin. Sin is the failure to live up to, or the transgression of, God's commandments. Sin is not whatever happens to upset the Zany Zeitgeist, the Sensitive Socialists, or the Craven Commies in our midst. Just because someone gets very mad about something does not mean that that "something" actually makes God mad. Nehemiah defines his sin as "not keeping the commandments, the statutes, nor the ordinances which You commanded Your servant Moses."
Is God angry over the unjust killing of a helpless, restrained man already in police custody? Absolutely. Without question. It was an egregious injustice and requires punishment for the offendor(s) (which, biblically, would be the death penalty). God is also mad about our pornography addictions. He's mad about our Sabbath-breaking. He's mad about our idolatry and our rejection of Jesus Christ as Lord. He's mad about the millions of babies we've butchered in the womb. He's mad about our horrendous treatment of our elderly. He's mad about George Floyd's killing. And He's equally mad about the killing of David Dorn. If you cannot give an amen to that, you aren't really concerned with God's justice, you just want your own way in the world. If we are going to deal with our societal sins, let's deal with them, according to God's true commandment and in God's ordained fashion of dealing with sin. Let's deal with them the way Nehemiah did: with true repentance from true sin, as defined by the true God.
And let us also look to a true hope for the future. Nehemiah looks to God with hope, reminding God of His own word, "but if you return to Me, and keep My commandments and do them, though some of you were cast out to the farthest part of the heavens, yet I will gather them from there, and bring them to the place which I have chosen as a dwelling for My name." There is always hope for the future, as long as Jesus is still on the throne. There is hope for greater racial reconciliation in this country, but only if we pursue it based on the finished work of the cross. The cross of Jesus has already broken down the middle wall of separation, reconciling us to God and putting the enmity to death (Ephesians 2:14-18). The only thing that remains for us is to live like that were true, by faith and obedience in Jesus Christ.
And so, reader, follow Nehemiah's example: remember who God is, for the first time or the hundredth; search your own heart for sin, confess it to God, and turn away from it to Jesus; and pray in hope of the glory of God. Perhaps our societal turmoil and trouble is only the birth pangs of a great revival of love, righteousness, and worship in our land. But it only comes as we seek it from Jesus Christ, the only King of kings and Lord of lords. May He be pleased to send repentance and revival to the shores of these United States again.
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