Nehemiah 9: Human Failure Redeemed
by Love

To know God is to have our heart’s greatest need met, deepest longing satisfied. A human soul can have every pleasure, luxury, the favour of peers, position, and success, yet not know God and therefore be destitute. On the other hand, a human soul can have all worldly success, favour, power and position stripped away, but know God and therefore experience fullness. This Sunday we continue our series in Nehemiah, reflecting on chapter 9. So much has happened. God’s servant Nehemiah has been granted permission by the Persian king to return and rebuild Jerusalem. All this around 500 years before Christ. Like us, the returned exiles great purpose was to know God. How could they? Does their record of sin & struggle disqualify them from ever knowing God? In chapter 9 we see that the Lord is known through human failure, in addition to Scripture and his mighty deeds. In our failure his love is magnified, satisfying our hearts.

Reflection Questions 

1. What has stood out to you so far in the book of Nehemiah? Take some time to review a passage that has been meaningful to you, and explain why you have been encouraged by it. 

 2. Discuss. What would the world be like if God were: (i) holy and opposed to evil but not loving? OR (ii) loving and forgiving but not holy? 

3. Read Nehemiah 9. List the key events in the history of God’s people that are noted in the Levites’ prayer of confession. 

4. How would you describe the Israelites moral and spiritual track record, according to this prayer?

5. Giving  verse references, list all the times God’s kindness, mercy, grace, love, or forgiveness are mentioned.

6. How does the Lord often respond to the Israelites’ failure?  

‘God is utterly transcendent, good, righteous, and opposed to all sin and evil. God’s love is holy, God’s holiness is loving, and the Lord Jesus Christ is the fullest expression of God’s whole character.’

To Be A Christian: An Anglican Catechism, 39. 

7. In the Levites’ prayer, where do you see God’s holiness, and where do you see his love? 

8. How does the cross show holiness and love simultaneously? 

9. Spend some time praying for the Lord to grant you a more vivid experience of his love, and a more lively sense of his opposition to evil, in the cross of Christ. 

10. For personal reflection in your own time: Is there a moral failure you felt was making you beyond God’s love? Take refuge in the holy love revealed in the cross. OR. Is there a moral failure you have been ignoring? Be convicted by God’s holy love revealed in the cross.