We've Failed...but God - Part A

We've been infected with this in nature. Jeremiah said the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it. So our problem is failure. This prayer brings that grand truth to the surface. Here's the second lesson and that is that may be true failure is our problem but forgiveness is our provision.

We've all messed up at some point in life. We're sinners and failure is a part of the package. But today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Skip explains that failure isn't the end of your story and you can have a brighter future in God's grace. Now we want to tell you about a resource that will help you build your knowledge of who God is and inspire you to follow Him more faithfully. The best biographies make you feel like you personally intimately know the person you've read about. From Mozart to Mother Teresa, Sojourner Truth to Steve Jobs. It's exciting to learn the details of influential people but one biography stands out above the rest, the biography of God.

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Call 800-922-1888 or give online securely at connectwithskip.com slash offer. Okay, we're in Nehemiah chapter 1 as Skip Heitzig starts today's study. Mourning is a sign of maturity. There's something about acknowledging failure that demonstrates spiritual progress. Jesus said it this way, blessed are those who mourn, they will be comforted. When I first read that it sounded to me like a contradiction almost, it just didn't make sense.

Blessed are those who mourn because blessed I found out means oh how happy, so it does sound like a contradiction. Happy are the unhappy but there is something greatly comforting when you make a confession. In Proverbs 28, Solomon said he who covers his sins will not prosper but whoever confesses them and forsakes them will find mercy. There's something comforting even cathartic about admitting need and admitting guilt in order to be cleansed from it. That's what confession essentially is. There was a man who was dying and he brought his wife to the bedside. He said sweetheart I'm dying but I need to confess something to you.

I have not been as faithful to you in this marriage as I should have been and through her tears she said I know that's why I poisoned you. It kind of serves him right. He should have confessed that years before and he could have seen forgiveness and restoration but he didn't. Well Nehemiah chapter 9 is essentially a worship service. It is very untypical of a worship service. First of all it's very long.

It's probably one that would not be tolerated today. It's very long you'll see in a moment and it is filled with confession. Essentially it is a record of fasting, repentance and prayer followed by a covenant and that covenant is made in chapter 10. Let's just look at the first few verses to get the setting.

Nehemiah chapter 9 verse 1 says now on the 24th day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting in sackcloth with dust on their heads. Verse 3 and they stood in their place and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God. Watch this for one fourth of the day and for another fourth they confessed and they worshipped their God.

So just try to imagine this standing three hours as the word of God is being read and after the scriptures are read another third of the day confessing sin and worshiping God. By the way this is the longest recorded prayer in all of the Bible. There are many recorded prayers but of all of them this is the longest.

It may have even been longer but this is what is recorded. I counted the words 1,177 words in this prayer. You can thank the Lord that we're only going to look at a few. It's a long prayer but this prayer illustrates a truth found in 2 Corinthians 7 where Paul said godly sorrow produces repentance. Godly sorrow produces repentance.

You're going to hear the godly sorrow that fills the voice of the one who utters this prayer that has brought repentance to the nation. When my wife was at the stage of conversion she grew up in an atheistic home, didn't know anything about God, was never told about God and so when she was coming to faith she came across a tract that showed that you put God on the throne of your life and the way she read it everything sort of falls into place so she assumed if I ask God to sit on the throne of my life I'm going to get what I always wanted. That's about all she knew conversion was so she prayed this simple prayer really not knowing what she was doing. About a week or so later she was in a church service and the whole time she felt convicted she felt something wasn't right something was desperately wrong so at the end of the service she walked forward to the prayer room of that particular church and said to a pastor look I said this thing and I guess I believe but I'm very confused and the pastor who was in the prayer room at the time a buddy of mine from England said to her in that great English accent have you repented of your sins and she said have I what of my what she never what I never heard what is repent I've never even pented let alone repented.

She knew none of that. So he explained what repentance and faith is all about that mourning over sin that recognition that faith is turning from something to someone that is the salvation process. Leonard Ravenhill once said the self-sufficient do not pray the self-satisfied will not pray the self-righteous cannot pray. This prayer is the opposite of all of those things it is filled with remorse humility and hope all at the same time and we learn something from this prayer that we're going to lightly examine and the main lesson is that failure doesn't have to be the end of your story. This prayer shows us that you can have a bright future in spite of a dark failure or to put it in that television commercial language you've fallen but you can get up. This prayer shows us that God meets our failures with his forgiveness and his faithfulness and so there are four words that have emerged from this prayer as I studied them that I want to share with you because they take us through the stages of the human condition and the divine solution and those words are failure, forgiveness, faithfulness, and then following which is our response.

We're going to begin with the first and that is a recurrent theme in this prayer and that is simple failure is our problem failure is our problem. We don't have time to go through it all but if you look at verse 15 oh and by the way we don't know who's praying this prayer the text does not say but there is one translation of the Old Testament that we're going to read. There is one translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint version which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew into Greek and in that version it says Ezra said these words so that's the only clue we may have so I'm going to take it that Ezra wrote this or said it and Nehemiah wrote it down.

So I'm going to have you begin in verse 15. Ezra speaking perhaps you gave them God you gave them them being his own people the Jews you gave them bread from heaven for their hunger and you brought them water out of the rock for their thirst you told them to go in and possess the land which you had sworn to give them. Something noteworthy as Ezra is making this prayer he is praying historically.

He essentially covers just about every period of history up to that point from creation to captivity and he's obviously speaking here about the wilderness wanderings for 40 years in the desert. So you provided for them during that time verse 16 but they and our fathers acted proudly hardened their necks and did not heed your commandments they refused to obey and they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them but they hardened their necks and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return to their bondage. Verse 26 takes them to another period of their history nevertheless they were disobedient and rebelled against you cast your law behind their backs and killed your prophets who testified against them and turned them to yourself to turn them to yourself and they worked great provocations.

Look at the 28th verse this is after they're now in the land of Canaan but after they had rest they again did evil before you therefore you left them in the hand of their enemies so that they had dominion over them yet when they returned and cried out to you you heard from heaven and many times you delivered them according to your mercies. Over and over again and there are many more verses that point this out the theme is the same Ezra in his prayer is saying there's one thing we've been really good at God and that is sinning. We are really good sinners over and over and over again we keep blowing it. Well what he mentions here happens to be the problem of all generations of all human beings.

The human landscape is littered scarred by marked by failure. Summed up in one little verse in Romans 3 verse 23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. All have sinned not some not a few all have sinned.

That is our problem. Our problem is failure or as the Bible calls it sin. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Some of you even know that in the New Testament that word sin is the Greek word harmatia which means to miss a mark or a standard. It was a term among other things used in archery for missing the target. So think of it this way you've got 20 arrows I've got 20 arrows you fire off those arrows and 19 of them you're such a good shot 19 of them go right in the bullseye but the 20th arrow and I'm looking at somebody who's a hunter with arrows the 20th one goes into the bushes guess what you're a sinner you miss the mark you miss the mark I have 20 arrows I fire 19 of them in all directions because I can't aim very well but I happen to hit the last one the 20th arrow right in the bullseye. I too have missed the mark. I too am a sinner. I'm a better sinner than you are because I miss the mark more times than you have but all have sinned. Miss the mark.

Miss the standard. Fallen short of the glory of God. That's the history of humanity. The history of humanity is the history of sin. The Bible records sin entering and then spreading out in all directions.

In fact though your Bible if you have a real Bible probably says holy Bible on it. It could just as easily say the history of sin. Sin that begins in Genesis and then culminates in Revelation. The Bible is essentially a journal of human failure.

Paul he's good at summing these great themes up in Romans 5 said by one man sin entered the world and death through sin and thus death spread to all men because all have sinned. In other words sin entered through Adam and it's been hanging around ever since. Adam is like the kid who can't help himself when he goes up to a pristine lake in the mountains showing that perfect reflection of the mountains on the other side. He can't help himself.

I did this once. He took the rock and he throws it on there to Skip the stone and the image is marred on the surface of the mirrored lake. Adam was the kid in history who threw the first rock and ever since that moment the image of God became distorted in every single human being. If you try to avoid the concept of sin if you really want to avoid that concept you must never read your Bible. I know people don't like the word they try to marginalize the idea of sin it is not popular in too many circles but you cannot read the Bible without coming across the word. In fact the word sin in all of its forms sin sinners sinning sins shows up no less than 629 times in the pages of scripture because the Bible knows the reality that is our history. We have a nature of sin Paul put it in Ephesians 3 we were by nature the children of wrath even as others or we all have a sinful nature. You may have heard of the tale of the scorpion and the turtle scorpions can't swim but one very clever scorpion was wanting to get across a pond so he found a very unsuspecting turtle and he said Mr. turtle would you give me a ride across the pond the turtle said you got to be kidding right you're a scorpion you're going to be on my back and I'm going to make it part way across and you're going to sting me and I'm going to drown I'll die and the scorpion said well there's not much logic in that if I were to sting you and kill you and you drown I'm on your back I'm going down with you and the turtle said well you got a point there hop on so that turtle started venturing across the pond about halfway across that scorpion reared that tail and zapped the turtle right in the neck as the turtle started losing muscular control and felt the poison going through its body and started sinking down into the pond drowning he reared its head back and said do mind if I ask you a question scorpion said go ahead he said didn't you just say that there's no logic in stinging me so why did you do it and the scorpion said it has nothing to do with logic dear turtle it's just my nature this is the nature of humanity we were by nature the children of wrath or the objects of God's wrath even as others we were born with an evil nature it's important to grasp that I know it's a basic truth if we don't grasp that the world doesn't make sense to us once we grasp that the world makes more sense I mean why is it that after thousands of years we still have so many of the same problems plaguing the human race how come with all of our advancements and technology and education we haven't been able to solve basic problems on earth who do we blame for that do we blame the liberal media or the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or we all like to do that but the real problem is all of us are to blame we've been infected with this in nature Jeremiah said the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it so our problem is failure this prayer brings that grand truth to the surface there's the second lesson and that is that may be true failure is our problem but forgiveness is our provision God has a solution for that look at verse 17 Ezra praying again says of his people and their failure they refused to obey they were not mindful of your wonders that you did among them but they hardened their necks and in their rebellion they appointed a leader to return back to their bondage but you are God there's the pivot there's the but God moment but because it's in the first person but you are God ready to pardon gracious and merciful slow to anger abundant in kindness and did not forsake them now now our failure meets God's forgiveness and that's what the solution is our failure meets God's forgiveness our penchant for sin meets his pardon for sin but you are God we are failures but you are God we have sinned but you are God we've blown it over and over and over again and all of our history but you are God and as God he is so much bigger than your failure in fact get this he anticipated your failure you know God has never once stood in heaven with his hand over his mouth when he sees people on earth do something I can't believe what I just saw don't you know that he expected and anticipated that his own people would fail the times they did here's how I know that years before this when Moses gave the law from Mount Sinai he gave a list of blessings and cursings there's the two chapters Deuteronomy 28 and 29 filled with things like if you obey me says the Lord here's all the blessings are going to follow but if you disobey me here's all the cursings that are gonna follow and the cursings by the way are a chapter and a half of those two chapters there's more bad things that are gonna happen if you blow it and disobey them than the good things that's what it looks like so blessings and cursings at the end of that little section on the cursings God says this when all these things come upon you when what things all the cursings not if when so he says if you obey me this will happen if you disobey me that'll happen and when all these things come upon you and you return I will bring you back so God knew from the beginning what they were gonna do not only that but fast forward some years when Solomon builds a temple in Jerusalem and he also has a public prayer with the people gathered around first Kings chapter 8 now listen to what he says and when they sin against you for there is no one who does not sin and you become angry with them and give them over to the enemy who takes them captive into his own land far away or near then from heaven your dwelling place hear their prayer and their plea and uphold their cause and forgive your people who have sinned against you see God knew even Solomon knew and in his prayer reflects that knowledge when they blow it now they blown it and now they're back from the captivity that was predicted and Ezra is standing there in this prayer all of that to say this your sin and your failure never surprises God he's ready for it he's ready for it in this verse but you are God now look at the description ready to pardon or forgive gracious and merciful slow to anger we covered that last week in another passage abundant and kindness and it did not forsake them the very first words uttered by Jesus when he was put on the cross or father forgive them they don't know what they're doing of all the things you could have said why those words because forgiveness is our greatest need that Skip Heitzigs it with a message from the series but God now we want to tell you about a unique opportunity to take your knowledge of Scripture to a new level Calvary College is now open for registration Calvary College is offering select online classes as an opportunity for individuals to take their life's calling to a whole new level with an educational emphasis in biblical studies with our unique 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