Today I am
going to begin with a completely non-theological point of amusement. I read through the first paragraph of
Nehemiah 10 – well, I skimmed it, at least – and I got to the end of the
paragraph and began the next one only to realize that I was already reading
verse 28. Nothing like a paragraph of
the Bible having 27 verses because it is predominantly 3 names per verse! Anyway, I was amused at how quickly the first
27 verses of this chapter flew by and I figured I would share.
Curse And An Oath
On a more
serious note, having come off of my amusement of the first 27 verses I was hit
by a ton of bricks by verse 29. These
people understood that they are entering a “curse and an oath” with respect to
God’s ways. Wow, that’s a pretty bold
proclamation right there, and it is times like this that I am really cognizant
and grateful for the way that the Old Testament talks about walking in a
relationship with God. They get it:
- Follow God’s ways and live in the promise.
- Disobey God’s ways and be cursed.
There are
days when I get so tired of shallow and senseless Christianity: people who
proclaim to love Jesus on Sunday but who seem to have no evidence of it in
their life except that they show up to church for an hour a week, people who
claim to be in a relationship with God but when asked to pray they clam up and
seem to have no ability to talk to Him, people who claim to know God’s Word but
never come together and talk about what they know and how God can use them to
teach what they know to others, etc. Don’t
get me wrong. I am pointing the finger
right at me when I make that comment. I
spent the better part of a decade in my life living that life. I get frustrated because I know how easy it
was for me to live like that and “feel like I was still a good Christian.” The Christianity that I had surrounded myself
with enabled me to feel like I was okay because I was “doing the church thing
and I could articulate that I believed in a God.”
In
actuality, I was living under the curse and didn’t even realize it. I had convinced myself that I was in a
relationship with God but I was under the curse of following my own
desires. I was not spiritually
connecting with my wife – our marriage was good from a worldly perspective but
not really “connected.” I was focusing on
my own technological gaming pursuits and not being a good husband or caretaker
of the house. {A video game was more important to me than God’s Word!} Since I was going to church once a week – and
even worse, was enrolled full-time in seminary! – I had the belief that I was
doing just fine spiritually. But I
wasn’t. God was letting me experience
the curse of this world while I was convincing myself that I was pursuing
Him! I was cursed by storing up my
treasure in the wrong place, and I thank God that a few very important people
came along and challenged me to see that God wants something better than what I
was giving Him.
I think it
is important to realize that when we come to God we enter into a contract of “blessings
and curses.” If we follow His ways, He
will bless us by drawing us closer to Him.
If we don’t follow His ways, He will curse us by allowing us to pursue
our own desires. Notice I didn’t say
that those who follow will be prosperous and those who don’t will not be
prosperous. God’s blessing does not
equal material prosperity. But rest
assured, I know what it is like to be convinced I was living under God’s
blessing but in reality I was living under the curse of pursuing the world’s
desires.
I think
that there is another important point to understand here. The Hebrew people had no issue with
understand God as a God of blessings and curses. They didn’t see God as a Santa Clause that
was only blessings. God is a God of love
and wrath. He is a God of grace and
judgment. The Hebrew people have no
problem accepting it. They have a much
easier time accepting it than we do today, certainly.
What Comes From Blessings and Curses?
As we move
through the rest of Nehemiah 10 we get a clear sense of the expectation that
comes out of the idea of “blessings and curses.” The people understand that God has
expectations. The people understand that
God wants more of a relationship with us than being known as “the guy whose
forgiveness is unmatched.” God wants to
take us, mold us, shape us, be generous to us, and show us what He can do
through us. He wants us to be obedient
to Him so that when He works through us we won’t miss it. He wants to be the focal point of our life so
that life makes sense.
The
reality is that while God’s work may begin with forgiveness, our work begins
with obedience to God. God has
expectations, and those expectations are designed to draw us into a
relationship with Him. That’s what the
rest of Nehemiah 10 is all about. God is
gracious, we need to respond obediently.
When we respond obediently, we are preparing ourselves to see the glory
of the Lord at work in our lives and the lives of the faithful around us. When we are obedient, we set ourselves up to
live in the blessing of the Lord.
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