The first three verses of Nehemiah 9 tell what finally happens: “Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, and with earth on their heads. And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for a quarter of the day; for another quarter of it they made confession and worshiped the LORD their God.”
We notice two important things about this movement of repentance. First, the confession of the people was once again linked to a reading of God’s Law. This had happened on the first day of the month (recorded in ch.8). It happened again here. It was after the priests had been reading from the “Book of the Law of the LORD their God for a quarter of the day” that the people spent the next quarter of the day (three hours) confessing their sin.
What I am pointing out is more than just an observation. There is a necessary link between the two. Let me explain what is meant by “sin.” The New City Catechism says, “Sin is rejecting or ignoring God in the world He created, rebelling against Him by living without reference to Him, not being or doing what He requires in His law – resulting in our death and the disintegration of all creation.” That is right: sin is defined by reference to God’s Law. This is what makes it sin, as distinguished from an act that is merely mean or offensive or criminal.
Mortimer J. Adler stated it well in his essay on sin: “The vicious act may be conceived as one which is contrary to nature or reason. The criminal act may be conceived as a violation of the law of man, injurious to the welfare of the state or to its members. Both may involve the notions of responsibility and fault. Both may involve evil and wrongdoing. But unless the act transgresses the law of God, it is not sinful. The divine law which is transgressed may be the natural law that God instills in human reason. But the act is sinful if the person who commits the act turns away from God to the worship or love of other things.”
Let me put this definition and the relation of sin to revival in a series of linked statements.
First, there can be no genuine forward moral progress for either a nation or an individual without an acknowledgment of, sorrow for, and a true turning from sin. In other words, nations move forward spiritually and morally only in times of revival.
Second, there can be no true sense of what sin is or a knowledge of why it is sinful without a hearing of and response to the Law of God. That is, we will never acknowledge sin to be sin or grieve over it unless we see it as an offense against God, and the only way we will ever see or sense that it is an offense against God is by seeing our actions as contrary to God’s written law.
Third, as a consequence, revival must be preceded by sound preaching of the whole counsels of God, particularly the Law of God, which we have violated.
The next thing we notice about the people’s confession of sin is that it was corporate as well as individualistic. The people not only recognized their own individual sin and confessed it but also understood that they were part of a people or nation and were therefore also collectively guilty. The text expresses this when it says that the people “confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers.”
This is the exact opposite of what most people do today. When the Jews of Nehemiah’s day confessed the sins of their fathers, they acknowledged their guilt for their fathers’ sins. Today, if people refer to the sins of their parents at all, it is to excuse themselves rather than to assume any personal share of the responsibility. They blame their wrongdoing on their genes or their upbringing.
“I know I have a bad temper, but I inherited it from my father. There is nothing I can do about it.”
“If you knew the kind of family I was raised in, you would understand why I break my commitments and think of no one but myself.”
“Where I come from, everyone steals to get by.”
Some forms of psychiatry encourage this kind of thinking. Many Church pulpits wallow in it. But when revival comes, people stop trying to excuse themselves by what others, even their parents, have done and instead confess their sin and wrongdoing openly. Like Isaiah, they cry out, And I said: “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts! [Almighty]” (Isaiah 6.5).
Maranatha!
(mar-uh-nath-uh – “Our Lord Comes”)
Pastor Steve can be reached at PastorSteve@MaranathaBibleChurch.org