March 23, 2025 Nehemiah

Part 9 | Confession is Good for the Soul

From Nehemiah 9

📖 Nehemiah 9:33 ESV Yet you (God) have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.

God is . We are .
He can .

Our world is of and .

Health in my relationships depends on my to when I’m & when I’m .

📖 Colossians 3:12–13 ESV Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, 13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

1. takes and .

📖 Nehemiah 9:1 ESV 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.

📖 Nehemiah 9:2-3 ESV And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 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.

📖 1 John 1:8–9 ESV If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

is with God about .

📖 Psalm 139:23–24 ESV Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! 24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

2. reminds us of God’s .

📖 Nehemiah 9:5 ESV Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah, said, “Stand up and bless the LORD your God from everlasting to everlasting. Blessed be your glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

📖 Nehemiah 9:6 ESV “You are the LORD, you alone. You have made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their host, the earth and all that is on it, the seas and all that is in them; and you preserve all of them; and the host of heaven worships you.

📖 Nehemiah 9:16 ESV “But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments.”

📖 Nehemiah 9:18 ESV Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies,

📖 Nehemiah 9:19 ESV you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go.

📖 Nehemiah 9:21-22 ESV Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell. 22 And you gave them kingdoms and peoples and allotted to them every corner. So they took possession of the land of Sihon king of Heshbon and the land of Og king of Bashan.

3. is God’s path to a .

📖 Nehemiah 9:26 ESV Nevertheless, they were disobedient and rebelled against you and cast your law behind their back and killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you, and they committed great blasphemies.

📖 Nehemiah 9:27 ESV Therefore you gave them into the hand of their enemies, who made them suffer. And in the time of their suffering they cried out to you and you heard them from heaven, and according to your great mercies you gave them saviors who saved them from the hand of their enemies.

📖 Nehemiah 9:28 ESV But after they had rest they did evil again before you, and you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies, so that they had dominion over them. Yet when they turned and cried to you, you heard from heaven, and many times you delivered them according to your mercies.

“You, Lord, stirred me to remember how I had gone astray… that I might confess to You my sins and be cleansed by You.”

– St. Augustine

In our times of , God says:

“You come , I’ll come .”

📖 James 4:8 ESV Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

📖 Psalm 103:14 ESV For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

God can what I —but not what I in .

4. strengthens our on God.

📖 Nehemiah 9:32 ESV “Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, and the awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love, let not all the hardship seem little to you that has come upon us, upon our kings, our princes, our priests, our prophets, our fathers, and all your people, since the time of the kings of Assyria until this day.

📖 Nehemiah 9:38 ESV “Because of all this we make a firm covenant in writing; on the sealed document are the names of our princes, our Levites, and our priests.”