A Promise and a Dedication

Nehemiah 10 · 2026-03-08 · Jason Wolin · Nehemiah | From Rubble to Revival

Nehemiah 10 · Commitment, Discipleship. A Promise and a Dedication — sermon from Cypress Bible Church on BibleSlides.

A Promise and a Dedication Nehemiah 10.1-12.47 A Promise and a Dedication Today our message has three parts. Part 1: We want to talk about Commitment. Part 2: Dedication. Part 3: is a Testimony. Let’s start with the first part. Commitment. Commitment follow Repentance. Last week we read Nehemiah’s prayer of repentance. And the structure of the prayer was very clear and very simple. The prayer first recounts the GOODNESS of God in creating the world and creating a nation and giving that nation many good things. It describes how he listened to the cries of that nation and delivered that nation and protected and fed and nourished that nation. God was so, so good. But Israel rebelled. Israel disobeyed and ignored and acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks against God. And Nehemiah in his prayer acknowledges all the ways in which they REBELLED and all of the ways in which God was patient and slow to anger, abounded in steadfast love in the midst of all this disobedience and how he was merciful and gave them more chances and did not forsake them. But despite all of this kindness, they would not ultimately return to him; God was just and righteous to discipline his people as he said he would. He allowed them to be taken into captivity and Nehemiah acknowledges, we deserved it. It was our choice. You warned us and we spurned your commandments. You are a just God for delivering us into the hands of our enemies. And that was pretty much how the prayer ended. The summary of the longest prayer in the Bible is this: You are so good and we are not. Now at the very end of last week after this long prayer of repentance and confession there was concluding phrase, “Because of all this…”. Because of what? Because they saw the goodness of God. They saw the joy of the Lord. What is the joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is to forgive sinners. He loves to forgive sinners. It’s his favorite thing to do. And so it was out of that love of the Lord and seeing his mercy and steadfast love that they make a firm covenant in writing on a SEALED document. And then for the next 27 verses we have this flow of names. These are people who said, I want my name to be associated with that document. Why do we sign documents? What is the point? Well, the point is to connect our words to our future actions in a way that is binding. I invite you to smear my reputation, if I don’t follow through on these words. I invite these penalities down on me if I don’t do what I say I’m going to do. That’s what you are doing when you enter in to a mortgage agreement. I promise to pay you, but if I don’t you can unleach a legal firestorm upon me and make my life miserable until I pay. Verse 29 Says. They are BINDING THEMSELVES vi…

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