Today, I am reading and commenting on  Nehemiah 9-10.

In today’s passage the returned Exiles (which is not an entirely true designation as many of those who gathered were second and third generation after returning) gathered to mourn and repent of their sins.  They separated themselves from those who were not part of their community of faith.  They praised God for the many wonderful things He had done for their ancestors and confessed that their ancestors turned away from God after receiving His blessings.  One could easily focus on their confession of their ancestors sins, but I believe that this recounting actually serves to focus on God’s mercy and forgiveness.  Time and again the people had suffered because they failed to obey God, only for God to show them mercy and bless them once more when they turned to Him and cried out for deliverance.  And the final point is that, after listing the ways in which their ancestors had sinned against God, they acknowledged that the troubles they were experiencing resulted from their own sins, not from the sins of their ancestors, or the sins of anyone else.   Then they entered into an agreement together to faithfully follow God’s commands going forward.  We need to follow their example by separating ourselves from those who are not God’s people and acknowledging that the troubles we face result from our sins, not the sins of the people around us who are not God’s people.  It is worth noting that some of those who were excluded from the assembly in this passage claimed to be worshipers of God, but they did not agree with those gathered as to what it meant to follow God.  Today, there are others who claim to follow Christ, but have a different view of what that means.  We must separate ourselves from them and follow Christ as He has revealed Himself to us.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.