Nehemiah 9:17-21
(V. 16-17a) We often fail. Presumptuously assuming the grace of God to cover our sins. When we do what we don’t want to do. When the sin looks more beautiful than our Savior. You know that feeling. You know it well, don’t you believer? When, God, in your mind doesn’t compare to the gleaming computer screen or the bottle of cheap beer.
We are capable of saying everything is worthless compared to knowing Christ Jesus our King but we are more inclined to love the worthless nothings more than we’ve ever love our King. This is the battle of the Christian life! Refusing to obey and not being mindful of the wonders which God has preformed and continues to perform in our lives!
That we are alive and know his love, that we feel the rapture of his love and the enthrallment of his glory, that we are able to, with a breath, glorify him and, with a tear, praise him. These miracles that he continually works in our hearts and brings to our senses, seeing and hearing and smelling his creation, touching a tasting beauty, these are indeed miracles!
We were once dead but yet we live; we were once deaf but now we hear; we were once captives to our sin but now we are free in his grace, this life we live, this sound we hear and this freedom we know are wonders which God has preformed in our sight but still we turn back to our sinfulness. Like a dog returning to his vomit we go back to our sin.
We do not love him the way we should. We do not listen to him the way we ought. We continue groveling in the dirt rather than understanding we are adopted children of the King. Turning our backs on him and leaving him. Doing our best to run from his voice.
(V. 17b-21) But our God is an extravagant God. Look at verse 17; He is a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and he does not forsake those who are called by his name.
Though we never deserved to know the wonders of God’s works, he revealed them to us. Though we could never earn the ability of glorifying God rightly he created us anew to do just that. Though we could never warrant his love, he made us his children. Though we could never satisfy his wrath, he poured it out on Jesus.
We are a rag-tag group of individuals, idolatrous, adulterous, murders, thieves, boastful, and proud we are a wretched group deserving the worms that would eat our flesh for all eternity, but yet, by the mercy and grace of God, we get God!
The history of Israel is a direct mirror to our own Christian lives. Continually were they forgiven their sins and continually were they reminded of the covenant promise God made with them. Though they spit it the palm of the Giver they were held up and supported by that same hand.
It is the same with believers now, while we are in our sin, he does not leave us there. Like the Israelites in the desert we are not left to wander for all eternity. Though it might be his good pleasure to see us matured from our failings it is not his pleasure to see us die in our sins.
As God lead Israel through the desert with a pillar of smoke and a pillar of fire so too will he not abandon us to torment and death within our own fallen depravity. He will guide and will lead us out of these dangers; indeed he guides us and leads us in his Scripture.
And so it is true, though we are shattered by the fall we are not devastated. Though we are totally depraved in our nature, those affects are being pushed back with every breath breathed because of the beautiful grace of God. The fall, though it once was our only nature is not so any more.
We were incapable of picking ourselves up. Our bootstraps were broken as it were. But because of Jesus the fall is being pushed back. In the lives of believers the affects of the fall are being slowed, stopped and reversed.
They are being slowed because we have the mercy and grace of God displayed before us. They are being stopped because the Gospel of God is being believed by God-given faith. They are being reversed because the faith God gives and gave us is changing us from one degree of glory to another.
So though our wretchedness runs deep, God’s mercy runs deeper. Though our treachery runs deep, God’s grace runs deeper still. Though every fiber of our being has and does struggle against his rule his love will and does captivate us.
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