Lesson 15 - Nehemiah 10

[Music] we concluded chapter 9 last week and we're going to study in the mi a chapter 10 today now we're going to deal with some interesting nuances that continue to connect some dots so we're gonna weave around a little bit today now the last few verses of this long prayer of repentance that characterizes chapter 9 made a statement that we discussed last time but I want to emphasize it to begin our lesson because I think it's important to our faith it comes from verse 32 of chapter 9 it starts like this now therefore our God great mighty fearsome God who keeps both covenant and grace let not all this suffering seem little to you that has come upon us our King our leaders our priests our prophets our ancestors on all your people from the time of the kings of Ashur until this very day I want to focus on the clear statement of fact and truth that God keeps both covenant and grace not one or the other and the reason is that there is this unfounded erroneous destructive doctrine that has crept into Christianity it is that in times past God kept only covenant but now since the advent of Christ he keeps only Grace and thus believers are asked to choose covenant or grace covenant which is referring to the covenant of Moses the law or grace usually referring to the free gift of salvation offered by Christ now naturally this false doctrine leads to yet another false dichotomy that says we must also choose between the old with its foundation of Covenant or the New Testament with his foundation of grace we must choose one or the other as our Bible because this doctrine sets up a premise that is rigid uncompromising it's an either/or matter bottom line much of Christianity Today says covenant is wrong grace is right yet here we have a biblical statement that God keeps both covenant and grace that is it's not an either/or matter it's not even an issue of choice the two governing dynamics of covenant and of grace operate together in God's hand so should we be startled by this statement I mean is this the first time that we've heard in the Old Testament about God's grace being an operation pre Christ actually the first mention of God operating his grace is found far earlier in the Bible in the book of Genesis in Genesis 6 7 and 8 we read this I don't I said I will wipe out humankind whom I've created from the whole earth not only human beings but animals creeping things and birds in the air for I regret I ever made them but Noah found grace in the sight of adenine so here we have the first recorded act of God directly scripturally described as Grace and it is with Noah before the Great Flood the Hebrew word used as hen hen and it means favor or grace it has no other meaning and so of about 20 English Bible versions that I researched all use the word grace there's no disagreement so why is it insisted upon that grace is an exclusive New Testament dispensation that place the Old Testament dispensation of Covenant thus the Levites recitation of this prayer of Nehemiah 9 proves that they fully understood the concept of God's grace is not only being active in their lives but also active right alongside the law covenant and since the Levites had just a few days earlier concluded reading the law the covenant of Moses to the people it is no wonder that they chose to include this statement of confession about the Lord keeping both covenant and grace in their prayer of repentance because of all places in the Bible we also find mention of active grace in the law itself in Deuteronomy 7:9 from this you can know that Adonai your God is indeed God the faithful God who keeps his covenant and extends grace to those who love him and observe His commandments to a thousand generations so we find God extending grace during Noah's day before the law was created we find him extending grace as a principle contained within the law itself and now in Nehemiah we find grace as a fully understood characteristic of the Lord nine hundred years after the law but four hundred years before Christ was born I intend this not only as a faith builder for you but as instruction that you can use to challenge what must be challenged in our day the false law versus grace doctrine that is so weakened the church and placed an impenetrable and intentional wall of separation between Jewish and Gentile worshippers of God well after a long confession and statement of repentance chapter 9 ended with the request of God to once again save the Jews from their predicament and their predicament is that even though they're back living in Judah Judah at this time is nothing more than a Persian province and their King is not a Jew of Davidic descent but rather is a Gentile pagan a Persian so in their minds they remain as slaves of a foreign power let's read Nehemiah chapter 10 together Nehemiah chapter 10 if you have a complete Jewish Bible it is page 1145 Nehemiah chapter 10 in view of all this we are making a binding covenant putting it in writing having it sealed by our leaders our Levites and our priests on the sealed document were the names of Nehemia the tearsheet ah the son of ahalya Sedaka Sariah Azaria you're Mia posh core amariah malkia fattoush Shyvana maluca harem me remote Ovadia Danielle Gynt own Baruch mashallah la mía mean Messiah bill guy and shamea these were the Kohanim these were the priests the Levites were Yeshua the son of a zania Ben we a descendant of henna dad Cod Niall and their kinsman Shevin yah ho dia que la playa Hannon mica Rahal javea Zach or Sheriff yah Shyvana ho dia Bonnie and Ben we the leaders of the people are Perosh pocket mo of alarms a - Bonnie boonie as god Bev I adonia big V Dean a tear his Kia Azur hagia Hashim bits aha reef onit old navy McBee ash mesh alam hazir massive massive meshes a veil sorry Zod oak Zod waa Plataea anon anon yah Oh Shia Haniyeh eschew hallow Heche peal Keshava sha whom Mushaf na ma say ah ah ha anon anon ma Liu Kareem and Bona the rest of the people the priests and the Levites the gatekeepers the singers the temple servants all who had separated themselves from the peoples of the land to the tour of God and along with their wives and sons and daughters everyone capable of knowing and understanding join their kinsmen and their leaders and swearing an oath accompanied by a curse a curse of non-compliance as follows we will live by God's Torah given by Moses the servant of God and will perform and obey all the commandments rulings and laws about and I our God we will not give our daughters as wives to the people of the land or take their daughters as wives for our sons if the peoples of the lands bring merchandise or food to sell on Shabbat we will not buy from them on Shabbat or on a holy day we will forgo planting and harvesting our fields during the seventh year and collecting debts then we will impose on ourselves a yearly tax of one third of a shekel for the service of the house of God for the showbread for the regular grain offering for the regular burnt offering for the offerings on Shabbat on Rosh Hodesh at the designated times and other holy times for the sin offerings to make atonement for Israel for all the work connected with the house of our God we the priests the Levites and the people will cast lots in connection with the wood offering so that it will be brought to the house of our God according to our fathers clans at specified times year by year and then be burned on the altar of Adonai as prescribed in the Torah every year we will bring the first fruits of our land and the first fruits of all fruit from every kind of tree to the house about an eye we will also bring the firstborn of our sons and of our livestock as prescribed in the Torah and the firstborn of our herds and flocks to the house of our God to the priests administering in the house of our God we will bring the first of our dough our contributions the fruit of every kind of tree wine and olive oil to the Kohanim the priests in the storerooms of the house of our God along with the tents from our land for the leva aim the Levites since they the levy the Levites take the tents and all the cities where we farm the Kohen the priests the dissent of aaron is to be with the Levites when the Levites take tents the Levites will bring the tenth of the tenth to the house of God to the storerooms for supplies for the people of Israel and the descendants of levy are to bring the contribution of grain wine and olive oil to the rooms where the equipment for the sanctuary the ministering priests the gatekeepers and the singers are we will not abandon the house of our God the opening words of this chapter are typically described as a covenant renewal ceremony however the word covenant is not really used here it's only assumed even though our complete Jewish Bible on and almost all other English versions say in verse one and view of all this we are making a binding covenant or something similar the word that it's being translated into covenant is Amana and it is not the customary word for covenant which is they read now Amana more means a statement of faith an agreement many scholars say that used in the way that it's used here that Amana and bay wreath are virtually synonymous I don't agree at all with that they are two quite different words used for quite different purposes a careful reading of the terms of this agreement doesn't allow for this being a covenant renewal ceremony further and Amana doesn't carry the weight of a bay read a covenant and so we don't see any of the standard covenant making procedures that usually involve salt and/or blood so what we have here is not a renewed covenant per se but rather a man-made agreement among the Jewish people backed up with signature seals and a vow to a newly written statement of faith and that statement of faith is expressed beginning at verse 28 it concludes at verse 38 now it's become customary in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah to refer to the people the leaders the Levites and the priests as various parts that together form a group and this is in order to signify that every level of Jewish society is participating so in verse 1 we see that this written document was signed it was sealed by the leaders meaning the lay leaders the Levites and the priests and together they represent all Jewish society at least the part that resides in Judah please note that 95% of Jewish people living in that day did not live in Judah but rather they lived in various parts of the Persian Empire today they're known as the diaspora and they had no representation in this agreement now the first signatory mentioned is nehemiah he has given his usual Persian title of tear schita which roughly translates as governor now he is given the honor of being the first to sign but then what immediately follows is a list of priests this presents us a bit of a head-scratcher define Nehemiah listed in the same list as the priests and especially so when we find that Ezra's name is nowhere mentioned as a signatory to this document see some scholars say that whoever wrote this section was a poor historian and they mixed up Ezra with Nehemiah in other words Ezra's name should have been here instead of nehemiah's especially since he was a priest however Nehemiah is here specifically called the tear sheet ah a title that can't ever be ascribed to Ezra so whatever the purpose of putting Nehemiah here and omitting Ezra was on purpose it was not accidental and then we're not going to speculate about why next the Levites are listed and then starting in verse 15 the lay leaders of the people are listed then in verse 29 were told that the rest of the lay people and the priests and the Levites gatekeepers singers and temple servants who had separating themselves separated themselves from the peoples of the land joined in swearing and oath to the terms of this statement of faith so why aren't these other Levites and priest named instead of just lumping them all together as the other ones and we can't know for sure but since this part of the book of Nehemiah is obviously written by later editors who took documents and information formulated some kind of a summation of what went on they apparently didn't have everyone's name and or maybe found no reason to include everyone as perhaps the list would have been far too lengthy perhaps the names we do find recorded or just the most well-known or perhaps the most senior lay leaders in priests and Levites however by saying that all the rest of the people and the religious leadership participated in the vow kind of ties up loose ends to make it clear that this was unanimous decision F everyone present not just the leadership wasting something upon the people without their consent but now we're reminded of a statement that has caused so much heartburn among Bible Translators and pastors and rabbis that it's hard to quantify verse 29 speaks of all who had separated themselves from the peoples of the land this is referring back to chapter 9 of Nehemiah there we read starting at verse 1 on the 24th day of this month the people of Israel wearing sackcloth with dirt on them assembled for a fast those descended from Israel separated themselves from all foreigners then they stood up and confess their own sins and the iniquities of their ancestors now this heartburn revolves around what is seen as a forced division of people that is purely along racial lines that is hereditary Jews can participate but all others cannot further it is almost universally assumed by Bible scholars many rabbis even Rashi and pastors that this is essentially a repeat of what happened in Israa chapters 9 and 10 let's revisit that for just a few minutes I want you to turn to Ezra chapter 9 Ezra chapter 9 just go back one book Ezra chapter 9 if you have a complete Jewish Bible its page 11 28 we're just gonna look at the first four verses after these things had been done the leaders approached me and said the people of Israel the Kohanim and the leaven eeem have not separated themselves from the peoples of the lands and their disgusting practices the Canaanites the Hittites perizzites Jebusites ammonites Moabites Egyptians and Amur they have taken some of the women from these nations as wives for themselves and their sons so that the holy seed has assimilated to the peoples of the lands moreover the officials and leaders have been the main offenders in this treachery when I heard this I tore my robe and tunic I pulled hair from my head and beard i sat down in shock all who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled around me when confronted with the treachery of these exiles and I sat there in shock until the evening offering so here is Raya is said to have found out that many of the wives of the Jews living in Judah were foreigners not Jews this news caused Ezra to become unglued and fall into despair because he understood the gravity of the situation from both a spiritual and a Torah perspective now notice that at the in diverse one it speaks of the foreign peoples and their disgusting practices in other words these foreign wives that the Jews married did not give up their pagan beliefs or their false religions and make Yehovah God of Israel their one and only God they were not at all like Ruth who has a Moabite and Moab is one of the listed people groups that these illegitimate foreign wives were taken from said in her famous pronouncement of conversion back in Ruth 114 through 17 again they wept out loud then or POC histor mother-in-law gabbai but Ruth stuck with her she said look your sister-in-law has gone back to her people and to her God you go back after your sister-in-law Russa don't press me to leave you and stop following you for wherever you go I will go wherever you stay I will stay your people will be my people your God will be my god where you die I will die there I'll be buried Miette and I bring terrible curses on me and worse ones as well anything but death separates you and me so completely unlike our situation in Ezra chapter 9 the foreign women that the Jews married did not make the Jewish people their people did not make the Jewish God their God they did not become Jews what to do well we read about that in Israel after time a chapter 10 so let's go back and take a quick peek at that to refresh our memories just one page over 1129 we're gonna read the first six verses chapter 10 of Ezra while Ezra was praying and making confession we being frustrated before the house of God a huge crowd of Israel's men women and children gathered around him and the people were weeping bitterly Chicana the son of yael one of the descendants of a LOM spoke up and said to ezra we have acted treacherously towards our God by marrying foreign women from the peoples of the land but in spite of this there is still hope for Israel we should make a covenant with our God to send away all of these wives along with their children and obedience to the advice of a denying all of those who tremble at the mitzvah the commandment of our God let us act in accordance with the Torah stand up do your duty for we are with you take courage and do it and Ezra stood up and he made the chief priests the Levites and all Israel swear that they would act according to what had been said and they took the oath Ezra then left his place in front of the house of God and went to the room of Yohanan the son of Elias Eve and after going there he neither ate food nor drank water because he was mourning over the treachery of these exiles the lay leaders of Judah here in Ezra decided there was no choice but to divorce these pagan wives but this wasn't really divorce in the technical sense because it was not considered a legitimate marriage in God's eyes for a Jewish man to marry a foreign woman who refused to convert nonetheless this was painful beyond imagination it would have created hardships some cases very severe for these cast-off women and their young children that went with them some commentators say that this was a matter of choosing between the lesser of two evils to remain married and ungodly marriage or to divorce both of which of course God hates I don't fully agree because this would not have been a true legal divorce because there was never a true legal marriage however it certainly violates the fundamental God principle of loving your neighbor as yourself I mean that is loving your fellow human beings and treating them well as a recognized the Jews had put themselves at an impossible predicament because of their sinful choices but if they were gonna move forward away from their rebellion and in back into obedience to the Lord what choice was there but to separate themselves from their pagan foreign wives who were not God worshippers now is that what's essentially happening again in Nehemiah chapters 9 and 10 many Bible scholars say yes that's exactly what's happening I say no unequivocally no it's not what's happening there's no divorce happening here first in Ezra this matter was specifically concerning marriages it directly speaks of wives and their children being separated from their Jewish husbands and fathers no such mention of wives is present in Nehemiah 9 rather those descended from Israel a general group are to separate themselves from all foreigners another general group because of what happened a few years earlier with esra and the sending away of these foreign wives we can safely assume that there were no foreign wise president here in nehemiah chapters 9 and 10 and if they were at one time these wise were no longer considered foreigners but they've converted even so these converts would not have been descended from Israel meaning biologically descended from Jacob and there is no mention of anybody being sent away it's only that those participating in these ceremonies had to be separated from foreigners the foreigners including non-hereditary Jews didn't have to leave Judah they just couldn't participate in the prayer of repentance of Nehemiah 9 or in the vow ceremony to adhere to a new statement of faith which is what we read in the Amaya 10 now let's take a look at the statement of faith that the Jews are making from a broad perspective what they seem to be doing is picking out certain elements of obedience to the Lord as based upon torah law and then highlighting them why these particular things why not something else probably because these are things they had not been doing recently or historically and thus they vow to reverse that trend and also because this list consists of foundational behaviors needed in order to live they believe the lifestyle of a redeemed people and there is a third angle to this as well they are adapting the nine hundred year old Torah to a much more modern life under a set of circumstances that weren't necessarily contemplated by the law more on that later here is the list of subjects addressed by this statement of faith obedience to God's Torah as the source of law and truth marriage Shabbat Micah the sabbatical year supporting the temple and the priesthood providing for the altar and firstlings in their minds these were the most important subjects that made for faithful service to God and because of their Exile to Babylon and all the changes that their culture and religion had undergone as a result just what constituted proper observance of each of these seven subjects that define their behavior and their faith is addressed now notice that in in a sense the first subject obedience to God's Torah is broken down into the next six subjects that follow it now we're gonna go through these one by one but be aware none of this is new law the Torah regulated each of these subjects already rather this is about spelling out matters of the law where the community had fallen down severely or simply disregarded them and I see this as fundamentally about dealing with the question that I'm asked nearly daily and I pondered endlessly how do we do the law in a 21st century Western civilization outside of a Torah based society and in the light of the advent of Messiah Yeshua how do we do it things have changed drastically for these Jews since those awesome days of at Mount Sinai at that time they were a new nation of people who governed themselves they saw the Lord as their actual king by definition all or at least almost all of their leaders were Hebrews they lived in a primitive society in tents they didn't even farm most weapons were still Stone Age made a flint but by Nehemiah's time the world had evolved and advanced dramatically the Persians were the lone superpower they held the largest empire the world had ever known tools were now made of iron cities were advanced engineering allowed higher and stronger defensive walls crop irrigation from canals and rivers was becoming commonplace money was now in use and it was becoming standardized as the way that trade took place pagans and Hebrews lived together in a multicultural society but most importantly for the Jews their former homeland of Judah was just another of many Pervin Persian provinces they bowed to a Persian king the Jews of Judah were Persian Jews even their local governor Nehemiah was that who was a Jew by birth was nonetheless Persian by nationality and he too was a servant of the Persian king he was a king's cup bearer the Jews were allowed much religious freedom so long as their religious laws didn't impede upon the Persian laws then just how much of the Torah could they strictly obey just how might they observe those laws these things had limits boundaries governed by their everyday circumstances and their political realities over which they had no control and yet their stated goal was to obey the Torah as stated in verse 30 we will live by God's Torah given by Moses the servant of God we will perform an abeyance vote rulings and laws of ad and I our God now take notice not a new and revised Torah not a series of new Jewish traditions that they would just real able as Torah but rather as it says the Torah given by Moses was to be their guide they would be devoted to the original pora the actual Torah but how shall they do this given their present circumstances first as verse 31 they intend on keeping marriages pure and this is defined as not giving their daughters to the peoples of the land um arrests um arrests peoples of the land or taking the daughters of the arm arrests as wives for their Jewish sons now let's be clear no doubt on the surface this is speaking of a kind of racial purity and segregation that when viewed through a modern Western race sensitive lens seems bigoted not ugly but 21st Western 21st century Western society is not the context and in this era race here this race was always indicative of religion okay this had nothing to do with skin color hair tight no shape even language by definition each rate different race represented a certain nationality and each nationality worshiped their own set of gods I want to give you an example what I mean though it isn't as much so today but it was a mere 30 or so years ago in America the terms American and Christian were at one time functionally synonymous I can remember when I went into the military it's pretty good memory as a long time ago I was in the mid 1960s that never were you asked if you were a Christian because it was assumed the matter was only about which denomination of Christian you were specifically I can also remember some of the inductees having no idea how to answer the question saying that they didn't have a denomination fact they'd never been to church they didn't know the first thing about Christianity but they still automatically considered themselves a Christian because they were an American now of course this wasn't a hundred percent but it was pretty close so at the time of Nehemiah if one was a Moabite you of course weren't a worshipper of the God of the Jews if one was an ammonite you naturally didn't worship the gods of Moab or the God of the Jews and so on and so on thus the term um Eretz which is a very general term that here means anyone who's not Jewish was by definition anyone who didn't worship Israel's God and that was because guess what they weren't Jews however it went without saying that if a young man found a non-jewish girl who wished to become Jewish then by definition she was no longer on arete a people of the land a foreigner she became a Jew so her marriage to a Jewish boy was acceptable so the bottom line to verse 31 is that one of the statements of faith is that worshipers of Jehovah will only marry another worshipper of you Hoving and isn't that a very good and pertinent statement at faith for any modern believer in Yeshua anyone who's a believer this married a non-believer can tell you about the challenges and sometimes the heartbreak that they've had to face because they made an unwise choice it's discouraged in the Bible Old Testament and New Testament well the next statement of faith is in verse 32 and it regards Sabbath or better some important elements of observing Sabbath the issue is not whether to observe it that's a given rather the issue is twofold on Shabbat what could a Jews contact with a pagan involved and also what activities must not be done or it's a violation of Shabbat law here the stipulation is that no Jew should buy or sell to a foreigner and moretz on Shabbat now notice the AMA retz are not prohibited from buying and selling goods in Jerusalem or anywhere else in Judah it's only that Jews can't do business with them on the Sabbath day so this is not seeking to control the behavior of non-jews rather its Jews to control themselves now in reality this buying and selling prohibition is somewhat of a new wrinkle on the Sabbath law we don't find this admonition in the Torah or anywhere else prior to Nehemiah so what this is is an interpretation of Exodus 28 through 11 and Deuteronomy 5 12 through 15 here's what it says in Exodus 28 through 11 remember the day Shabbat to set it apart for God you have six days to labor and do all your work but the seventh day is a Shabbat for Adonai your God on it you are not to do any kind of work not you your son or your daughter nor your male or female slaves not your livestock not the foreigner staying with you inside the gates of your property for in six days odd and I made heaven and earth the sea and everything in them but on the seventh day he rested that is why ad and I bet blessed the day Shabbat and he separated it for himself there is nothing here in Exodus not in Deuteronomy either that directly addresses the issue of buying and selling either as regards Hebrews or non-hebrews however the implication is quite heavy that this shouldn't occur because it would certainly seem that buying and selling is the result of normal work and thus shouldn't be done obviously this was not a matter of universal agreement in Nehemiah's day or before you know what I can tell you it still isn't even among religious Jews today however probably as interpreted by Ezra it was determined that buying and selling was normal work and that it had been a usual practice for Jews to buy from and sell to non-jews even on Shabbat now however this deemed to be a violation of the Torah law concerning Sabbath you know today in Israel it is common for a religious Jew to buy at an Arab market or to eat at an Arab restaurant or to ride in an Arab taxi on Shabbat because some see buying and selling as only applying to transactions between Jews in the West is gonna hurt your head where leisure activities are a huge part of our lives then should we regard going to the movies on Shabbat as a violation because we buy a ticket how about driving your kids to a sporting an event and buying gas all that hurt didn't it and then maybe buying a cold drink after that how about going out to eat on Shabbat we may not be cooking but somebody else is but if that's someone else isn't a believer and or they don't observe Shabbat does it change the decision I'm not here today to instruct you on Sabbath do's and don'ts the point is that here in Nehemiah the issue at hand was whether Jew should buy from or sell to pagans on Shabbat even if the pagans regularly buy and sell to one another on Shabbat and their official determination is no this should not occur well next at the end of verse 32 there's another interesting one the issue of shmita Sabbath year that is the seventh year of each seven-year cycle of years Shmi top means a release and it regards to each seventh year it means to release the land from work and to release people from paying their debts that year essentially this is only reaffirming the validity of the tour on the matter here is what we read in the law about the Sabbath year in Exodus 23 verses 10 and 11 we read this for 6 years you are to sow your land with seed and gather in its harvest but the seventh year year you are to let it rest in life a low so that the poor among your people can eat and what they leave the wild animals in the countryside can eat do the same with your vineyard and olive grove then in Leviticus 25 1 through 7 we read this I don't I spoke to Moshe on Mount Sinai and he said tell the people of Israel when you enter the land I'm giving you the land itself is to observe a Shabbat rest 4 out of night 6 years you'll so you're filled 6 years you'll prune your grapevines and gather their produce but in the seventh year is to be a Shabbat of complete rest for the land a Shabbat for odd and I you will neither sow your field nor prune your grapevines you are not to harvest what grows by itself from the seeds left by your harvest you're not to gather the grapes of your untended vines it is to be a year of complete rest for the land but what the land produces during the year of during the year of Shabbat will be food for all of you you your servant your maid anyone living near you yours livestock and wild animals on your land everything your land produces may be used for food Deuteronomy 15 one through three at the end of every seven years you're to have a Smita here is how the shemitah is to be done every creditor is to give up what he's loaned to his fellow member of the community he's not to force his neighbor or relative to repay it because a denies time of remission has been proclaimed you may demand that a foreigner repay his debt but you were to release your claim on whatever brother owes you now what you may have noticed is that in Exodus and Leviticus it's all about giving the land rest but when we get to Deuteronomy the element of death repayment is added to the mix but then a question has to be asked does this mean that all debt is to be cancelled in total does it mean that every seventh year all bondservants are to be totally permanently released see because that sounds exactly what's like what's to happen in the year of Jubilee something that only comes around every 50 years not every seven listen to Leviticus 25 8 through 13 you were to count 7 Shabbat some years 7 times 7 years that is 49 years and then on the tenth day of the seventh month on Yom Kippur you were to sound a blast on the shofar you are to sound the shofar all throughout your land and you are to consecrate the fiftieth year for claiming freedom throughout the land to all of its inhabitants is to be a yo Vail a jubilee for you you will return everyone to the land he owns everyone is to return to his family that fiftieth year will be a Yeovil jubilee for you in that year you're not to sow harvest what grows by itself or gather the grapes of unattended vines because it's Jubilee it will be holy for you whatever the fields produce will be food for all of you in this year of your veil every one of you is to return to the land he owns so there have been various interpretations over the centuries of what's to happen every seventh year especially as regards debts and bondservants in general but not universally the belief is that the intent of the law is to cancel the debt payment due that year not the entire debt and those bondservants may go home for the seventh year but they have to come back the next year if they still owe debt and in fact that is what we seem to see in the stipulation of the fourth statement of faith here in Nehemiah will forego planting and harvesting our fields during the seventh year and collecting debts then notice not canceling debts but rather collecting debts in the sabbatical year thus Ezra and the Jews of Judah during Nehemiah's day have interpreted the law of the sabbatical year to mean no planting and harvesting and no collecting debts during that year so we see this pattern of trying to figure out how to obey God's laws as he intended them but under evolving circumstances in the spirit they were meant and I maintain that this is a never-ending task for God's believers and it applies to all believers of Yeshua even in the 21st century yes it is certainly a lot easier to just declare that all of God's laws are null and void that solves the whole problem of course that was something that you schewe emphatically said we don't do then if we on our own you see can't solve God's laws if we can do whatever we want and whatever we do we declare righteous but that's wrong and it's sin it's rebellion our job is to constantly think upon how to apply God's laws to our lives within our evolving culture and within our changing circumstances next week we'll conclude chapter 10 please rise [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you see yes [Music]

Channel: Torah Class

Views: 425

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Nehemiah, Prophet, Jerusalem, Old Testament, Torah, Seed of Abraham, Torah Class, Tom Bradford, Bible Study

Id: p53xyt356O4

Length: 52min 13sec (3133 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 14 2019