From Babylon to Jerusalem - (Nehemiah) ch.9 & 10 — Zac Poonen

And chapter 8, Nehemiah chapter 8, we were looking at these last few verses of chapter 8 in our last study, where we saw how Nehemiah and Ezra led these Israelites into obedience to God's word in keeping the Feast of the Tabernacles.

Nehemiah 8 and the Exact Keeping of God's Word

And it's an amazing statement we see there in verse 17 of chapter 8, that the sons of Israel had never done that for a thousand years from the time of Joshua, the son of Nun. Now I just want to show you one thing in that connection, that if you turn to Ezra and chapter 3, Ezra chapter 3, we see the record of something that had happened just about 90 years or so before Nehemiah's day.

Ezra chapter 3 verse 4, it says when Joshua and Zerubbabel came back with the first batch from Babylon, they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles. As it is written, Ezra 3 -4, offered the fixed number of burnt offerings daily, according to the ordinance, as each day required.

And then the question comes in our mind, if they celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles just 90 years earlier, what does this verse mean in Nehemiah 8 -17, that the sons of Israel had never celebrated this, had never done it like this from the days of Joshua.

I think the only thing we can understand from that is, that in the time of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles described in Ezra chapter 3, all the details of the commandments God had given Moses were not kept exactly.

For example, it says here they brought branches from various trees and built booths. We don't know whether they did that exactly in the days of Joshua and Zerubbabel described in Ezra 3. Perhaps there was a celebration, but it wasn't an exact keeping of God's commandments.

And so we find in Nehemiah chapter 8, an advance on what we see in Ezra chapter 3, that in this sense, that they took every single detail that God had given through Moses and kept it exactly in a way that was not even done in Ezra chapter 3.

And that's one of the things that God is seeking to do in these days. We saw that the building of the wall is a keeping of all the commandments of Jesus exactly as it is written. And we find that spirit through the book of Nehemiah.

And we find it even here, that it's not enough that there is a keeping of the commandments generally, but exactly, exactly as it is written. And so we see here, further in chapter 9, on the fourth, on the twenty-fourth day of this month, the sons of Israel assembled with fasting in sackcloth and with dirt upon them.

And the descendants of Israel stood from all foreigners, separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. Here was separation and confession of sin.

And then they stood up and began to pray. And we noticed in our study of Daniel and Ezra, how there has been this emphasis on fasting in this movement from Babylon back to Jerusalem. And this emphasis on confession in Daniel chapter 9, in Ezra and here again in Nehemiah chapter 9, we see this emphasis on confession of sin.

Repentance, Separation, and the Purity of Jerusalem

And this is a very important thing that we must bear in mind if we are to preserve the purity of Jerusalem as it is supposed to be. There must be in the church of the living God a continuous spirit of repentance, a continuous spirit of repentance.

And that is the emphasis, that is the meaning of these three prayers of confession that we find in Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah. And so we see here, fasting verse 1, separation verse 2 and confession of sin, this emphasis on a clear conscience.

In the church of the living God, as I said, there must be a spirit of continuous repentance because there is always something that we can find in ourselves to cleanse ourselves from until the day comes when we have become like Jesus Christ.

Now when a person is not living in a spirit of continuous repentance, he is actually saying, whether he says it with his mouth or not, what he is implying is that he has become like Jesus Christ already.

Now we may think that is blasphemy, and it is, because none of us have become like Christ. But when a person is not living in a spirit of continuous repentance, he is assuming there is nothing more that I have to repent from.

The Bible says judgment begins at the house of God. And there is no place in the Old Testament where there is so much public confession of Jerusalem. And that is what built Jerusalem finally. This spirit of repentance that was found in the leaders.

And that is how the devil has penetrated so many movements that have started out well. But pharisaic pride and arrogance came into the leaders. They did not live in a spirit of self-judgment and cleansing and continual repentance.

And therefore what started out as the building of Jerusalem very soon ended up as another Babylonian denomination. And so that is a very important lesson that we have to learn from these three books. Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah.

This public confession. And that is what we see here in chapter 9. While they stood in their place, verse 3, they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of the day. Now the day was twelve hours, so fourth of the day means for three hours they read the word of God.

And then for another three hours they confessed and worshipped the Lord their God. They had a six hour meeting. That is another thing we see in the book of Nehemiah, that they really had long meetings.

They were willing to deny themselves. They were not like the comfort loving Christians of our generation. They were willing to spend six hours in a meeting and they did not think the meeting was long.

Three hours listening to the word of God and three hours in prayer and seeking God. And no wonder God moved in revival and blessed them. And no wonder that God does not move in revival and fill with the spirit and make strong in the spirit believers who seek a comfortable easy way through life.

And that is a tremendous challenge to us what we see there. And then it says here, on the Levites platform, verse 4, stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebanai, Boni, Sherabai, Bani and Chennai and all of them together cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God.

Just picture this in your mind. They were all praying together. They were not praying one after the other. They were all praying together. And they didn't whisper. It says they cried with a loud voice.

They prayed aloud and jointly together. It's a good example for us to follow. And then the Levites, all of them said, now let's stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever. These Levites, they prayed together, praise the Lord.

And then they said to the congregation, let's all stand up now and praise the Lord. And then follows from the middle of verse 5 onwards till the end of the chapter, the longest recorded prayer in the whole Bible.

And this prayer is primarily a prayer of praise to God, of honoring Him and of confession of sin. It's a very good prayer for us to look through, an example for us to follow. We see here, first of all, they begin with praising God for who He is.

O may thy glorious name be blessed and exalted above all blessing and praise. It's good to begin praising God. Thou alone art the Lord. Thou hast made the heavens, the heaven of heavens, with all their hosts, the earth and all that is in it, the seas and all that is in them.

Thou dost give life to all of them, and the heavenly host bows down before thee. First of all, they begin to praise God for who He is. And then from verse 7 onwards right down to verse 31, they begin to praise the Lord for what He has done.

Two things we have to praise the Lord for. One is for who He is, and the other is for what He has done. First of all, they praise Him for what He has done for them, for the Israelites in the past. Now here we see, right down from verse 7 on down to verse 31, it's really a recounting in prayer of all the wonderful things that God had done for the Israelites in past days.

And that's a very, very good thing for us to do in prayer because that is what stirs up faith in our hearts. When we remind ourselves of what God has done in previous days, that stirs up faith in our hearts concerning the matter we are praying about now.

Whenever we find ourselves weak in faith, when we come to the Lord in prayer, here is a good example to follow. Go over in your mind and repeat before the Lord and say, Lord, You are the one who did this and this and this and this and this and this in these past years of my life.

That's what they did there. Thou art the Lord God who chose Abraham. They started right at the beginning of the nation of Israel. They said, You are the one who brought him out of Ur of the Chaldees and gave him the name Abraham, meaning father of the great multitude.

And here we are part of that great multitude. And already faith was beginning to come in their hearts that God was going to listen to them and that God was going to answer their prayer. Because they have a request now at the end.

We'll come to that in a moment. But first of all, they are stirring up faith in their hearts so that they can ask God in faith for that request that they have to ask him for. And here we read in verse 8, Thou didst find his heart faithful before thee and didst make a covenant with him.

And that teaches us the reason why God made a covenant with Abraham. As far as I know, there is no other verse in the Bible that tells us the reason why God made a covenant with Abraham. God did not make a covenant with Abraham without any rhyme or reason.

He is not a God of partiality. He is no respecter of persons. If he made a covenant with Abraham, there was a very good reason for it. And the reason is given here. Thou didst find his heart faithful before, not before men, but before thee.

Therefore, thou didst make a covenant with him. And that is the basis on which God makes a covenant with any human being, anywhere, at any time. When he looks into the hearts of men, men look at the outward appearance, but God looks at the heart.

And when he sees in the heart of any human being, anywhere across the face of the earth, a faithfulness in the hidden life, a faithfulness before God, God's face, where other people cannot see, God even today makes a covenant with such a man and brings him into a life with God, brings him into a ministry in his church.

And that's the way any one of us can enter into a life in God and enter into a ministry from God. Thou didst find his heart faithful before thee. Therefore, thou didst make a covenant with him. That's a challenge for us.

And the covenant was that God would give to Abraham the land of the Canaanite, Hittite, Amorite, Perisite, Jebusite, and Girgashite, to give it to his descendants. Thou hast fulfilled thy promise, for thou art righteous.

And that's the covenant God's made with us, too, to give us all the land that there is in our flesh. Every one of the lusts in our flesh are going to be our slaves. That's a covenant. If he finds our heart faithful before him, he will fulfill that promise in our case, too.

Thou didst see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt. And it's a description of what God did for the Israelites at the Red Sea. Thou didst perform signs and wonders against Pharaoh, against his servants.

Thou didst know that they acted arrogantly, and thou didst make a name for thyself. Thou didst divide the sea. You see, they are recounting all the wonderful things God has done for his people in the past.

They passed through the midst of the sea, and their pursuers sank in it. With a pillar of cloud, thou didst lead them, and a pillar of fire by night. Then thou didst come down on Mount Sinai, and didst speak with them from heaven.

And thou gavest them, look at the attitude these people had to God's commandments. Notice how they describe God's commandments. The way a man describes God's commandments from his heart is a pretty good test of whether the man knows God or not.

They describe God's commandments as righteous ordinances, true laws, and good statutes and commandments. Lord, all your commandments are for our very best. It is only for our good that you gave us all these commandments.

None of those commandments are burdensome. That is the spirit that takes people out of Babylon and puts them in Jerusalem, when they see God's commandments as not only righteous and true, but also good, the very, very best for us.

And so thou didst make known to them thy holy Sabbath, and didst lay down for them commandments, statutes, law through thy servant Moses. Thou didst provide bread from heaven and water from the rock, and thou didst tell them to enter into the land which thou didst swear to give them.

But, verse 16, and here is self-judgment, Lord, our fathers acted arrogantly. Arrogantly means in pride. And it was the pride of their heart which prevented them from entering the promised land. Here's the reason given for it.

Not just unbelief, we know it was unbelief, but here we are also told it was because of their pride. They acted arrogantly. They became stubborn and would not listen to thy commandments. They refused to listen, did not remember your wondrous deeds, and they became stubborn and appointed a leader to go back to Egypt.

But thou art a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and didst not forsake them. Even when they made for themselves a calf of molten metal and said, this is your God, verse 19, thou didst not forsake them.

Yes, God did not. The pillar of cloud did not leave them. The pillar of fire to light them on the way did not leave them. And not only did God give his good commandments, here's another good that God gave, and thou didst give thy good spirit to instruct them.

The manner, thy manner thou didst not withhold from their mouth. God has given us good commandments and a good Holy Spirit, and it's the combination of these two through which he leads us out of Babylon into Jerusalem to build the church of the living God.

Thou didst give them water for their thirst, and the Holy Spirit is described here as a teacher. The Holy Spirit was given to them to instruct them, and we must always see that the Holy Spirit has been given to us to instruct us, not primarily to do miracles, but to instruct us.

That's a great necessity, particularly for those who speak about the baptism and the fullness of the Spirit these days, to realize that the Holy Spirit has been given primarily to instruct us. He's a teacher of righteousness.

Indeed, verse 21, forty years thou didst provide them the wilderness, and they were not in want. Thou didst give them clothes. Their feet didn't swell kingdoms, peoples. They took possession of lands.

Thou didst make their sons numerous, verse 23. And then finally, verse 24, their sons entered and possessed the land. Thou didst subdue before them the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites. Verse 25, they captured fortified cities and fertile land.

They took possession of houses, and they ate and were filled and grew fat and reveled, verse 25, last part, in thy great goodness. But, and this is the sad story that's repeated again and again in the history of Israel.

God does all this good to them, but they are not faithful. Then they repent and come to Him, and again He blesses them. Then they get puffed up. The history of the children of Israel teaches us one thing, that it's very difficult for a man to stand God's blessing.

When God blesses us, if we want to learn something from the Israelites, our biggest danger is spiritual pride. When God begins to use us, our biggest danger is spiritual pride. But they became disobedient and rebelled against the, cast thy law behind their backs.

And there are two things they rejected. Notice this, whenever God's people have the spirit of rebellion, one, they will reject God's word. They cast thy law behind their backs. Secondly, they despise and rebel against God's prophets.

There are two ways through which God speaks to His people. One is through His word, and the other is through His prophets. And when there is a spirit of rebellion in a person, it is identified by two things.

One, a despising of God's word, and second, a despising of God's messengers. They kill thy prophets who had rebuked them and corrected them, so that they might return to thee, and they committed great blasphemies.

Therefore, because they rejected God's word and God's messengers, God delivered them into the hand of their oppressors. But they repented, and they cried, and again thou didst hear from heaven, and thou didst give them deliverance to deliver them.

Now notice, this is just what I said, verse 28, but in trouble, as soon as they had rest, when they were blessed, they did evil again. You see the history of man? Therefore thou didst abandon them again to the hand of their enemies, and when they cried again to thee, thou didst hear from heaven, and many times this was repeated.

That's a warning for us, to be careful when God blesses us. Many times thou didst rescue them, and how did God warn them? Again, through God's word. But, they, and admonished them, in order to turn them back to the law, but, verse 29, middle, they acted arrogantly, they did not listen to God's word.

Which, if they had listened to, they could live. And secondly, verse 30, they despised the prophets. Notice the emphasis again, they rejected God's word, and they despised His messengers. And admonished them by their spirit through thy prophets, they would not give ear to the prophets.

And when God's word is rejected, and His prophets are rejected, then again God gave them up to the people of the land. Nevertheless, in thy great compassion thou didst not make an end of them or forsake them.

You see, here is a group of people who are praising God for His faithfulness, in spite of the utter unfaithfulness of the people of Israel. That is repentance. Repentance is not saying, Lord, but we had a reason why we did like this.

Those who justify themselves do not have the spirit of repentance. They say, Lord, you are absolutely right in what you did. We deserve this judgment. Now, therefore, our God, the great, the mighty, awesome God who does keep covenant, don't let all this hardship seem insignificant before thee.

Their request is so small. Lord, just think of this hardship we are going through, which has come upon us and our kings and our prophets and princes and fathers and all that. However, and here is what I was saying, verse 33, you are righteous in all that has come upon us.

You have dealt faithfully, we have acted wickedly. The way that we can know whether we have got a real spirit of repentance or not is when we can say that, Lord, you are absolutely righteous in what you have done.

We deserve this. We deserve this chastisement. We deserve this chastening. We deserve to reap this because we have sown this in the past years. You are absolutely righteous, O Lord. The trouble with lots and lots of believers is this, that they think that they deserve something from God.

Now, I'll tell you something, brothers and sisters, as to what we deserve from God, and I hope none of us will ever forget it till the end of our lives. There is one thing and only one thing that you and I deserve from God.

You know what that is? Hell. Hell. Hell. If you want to get what you deserve, it's hell. And if I've got anything better than hell in my life, I've only got to be thankful. And we've all got millions of things better than hell.

And think of the spirit of grumbling and complaining that is found in so many believers. When we grumble and complain, we think we deserve something. Oh, God, I've been going to the meetings and I've been doing this.

Why have you allowed this sickness to come into my home? You ever sense that spirit in us? That's the spirit of grumbling. There's no spirit of repentance in such a believer. No, he's a million miles from repentance, even if he talks spiritual language.

A truly repentant person will say, Lord, you are righteous in everything that you have done. Verse 33, you are absolutely faithful and we deserve this. We deserve this punishment. We deserve this reaping of what we have sown in past years.

We have no complaints. You're absolutely righteous in punishing us like this. And then God does something. And we have hope when we come to that place of repentance. It is impossible to build a church with people who do not have the spirit.

It is impossible to build a church with people who think that God owes them a living. Oh, God, they deserve to get some blessing from God. It is impossible to build a church with such unrepentant people.

The most important requirement in the church is people who have a poverty of spirit, a mourning, a brokenness that has come because they see that they deserve nothing but hell. And therefore, they are thankful for every little thing and big thing they have in their lives.

And their complaining and murmuring has disappeared from their life altogether because they, just because of one reason, that is, they haven't gone to hell. That's all. Let's never forget that. Thou art righteous.

Nehemiah’s Covenant and Wholehearted Leadership

And no wonder God used these people who had the spirit to do a fantastic work in that day because they were so exact. Saw how they kept the Feast of Tabernacles? They saw something that Joshua and Zerubbabel had missed out in their time and they said, we're going to keep it more exactly.

And the Holy Spirit records it that they did it in the best way for 1 ,000 years. There was never a group of people that obeyed God's commandments so exactly as them. Just think of that, brothers and sisters, if God can write that about you and me, that in 1 ,000 years, God couldn't find people who took God's word so exactly.

There were people who did it sort of 80%, 90%. But here were a group of people who wanted to obey it 100%. They were not these interdenominational compromisers and diplomats who just left out a few commandments saying they're not important.

They had a spirit of repentance because they feared God, respected His word, submitted to His prophets. Therefore, God blessed them and built Jerusalem and the walls of Jerusalem through them. And they say in confession, our kings, our leaders have not kept thy law or paid attention to thy commandments.

But, verse 35, with thy great goodness thou didst give them this broad rich land. They did not serve thee. And now, Lord, verse 36, we are slaves. Twice, we are slaves. If only believers, instead of saying, yeah, yeah, we cannot have victory over sin in this day.

If only they would stop saying that and say to God, Lord, we're slaves. We're defeated by bitterness. We are still losing our temper after being believers for so many years. We get irritated, Lord. So difficult to forgive some people.

We have all dirty thoughts in our mind. We're slaves. We're slaves. You never meant us to be slaves. You called us to be kings. We're slaves. In the spirit of repentance, God would be able to do something for them.

But as long as they justify themselves and pride themselves on all their religious activity and going for meetings and their Bible knowledge and don't realize that God wants to free them from sin in their daily life, God wants to bring them to rest in their life, in their home situations.

If they're not willing to confess that they're slaves, Lord, is ruled by heathen kings. Verse 37. Kings whom you have set over us because of our sins, they rule over our bodies. Verse 37. Anger rules my body, Lord.

Lust rules my body. Bitterness rules my body. The spirit of gossiping rules my tongue. I tell lies when I'm found in a tight spot in my office. When I'm in a difficult situation, I'm willing to tell a lie to get out of that difficult situation because lying rules over my body, Lord.

The love of money rules over my body. So what? Well, these people, it says in verse 37, because of that, they were in great distress. Lord, because of this, we are in great distress. Those are the type of people God is looking for.

Those who are in great distress because sin is ruling over their body. Who are not just sitting back and say, oh well, as long as we are in this world, we have to be like that. No, they are in distress.

There's a spirit of mourning in them because they are defeated by sin in their daily life. They're not just content to live the substandard life of the believers around them. They're not bothered by the fact that they have a good reputation in the church they go to.

They live before God's face and they see that God sees that sin rules in their bodies and they are distressed by that. If God can find a few people like that in any part of the world, he'll build Jerusalem all over again today.

And therefore, they said, because verse 38, now, because of all this, because of what? Because you are faithful, Lord, and because we deserve this, we acknowledge our bodies are ruled by sin. Therefore, we are making a new covenant now in writing, and on the seal document are the names of our leaders, our Levites and our priests.

And the first person to sign this, here's a good example for us to follow, was the leader of the whole lot. On the seal document, right at the beginning, the first signature is Nehemiah. He says, that's me.

That refers to me, first of all. Think of that spirit. Think of that spirit. Think to be able to find leaders who say, I'm number one there. I'm the one who sees my need more than anybody else in this area.

You see, the tragedy in Christendom is it does not have leaders like that, who see their own need first of all. It doesn't have leaders like that. No wonder God could use Nehemiah. Yes, he was a strong man.

You read later on how strict he was with people who disobeyed God's word. He pulled out the hair from their face and all, but he was a broken man before God. The confession of sin, he was standing right at the head of the list and saying, I'm the one in need.

Yeah, Lord, that's true of me. And that's the spirit of the leadership that is found in Jerusalem. It's the type of leaders God's looking for all over the world, even today. And we see here, after he signed, all the other leaders signed there.

We read in verse eight, the priests, they were the leaders, they signed. Then the Levites, verse nine, they were also leaders and the brothers of the Levites, verse 10. And then finally, after this big list of all the leaders, right down to verse 27, says in verse 14, the leaders of the people, all the leaders names are listed right up to verse 27 of chapter 10.

And then the rest of the people, they also signed. It was the leaders first. It was the leader who judged themselves first. And no wonder God could do a work. And it must always be like that in the house of God, that the leaders are the forerunners in judging themselves, in cleansing themselves, in confession of sin, in humbling themselves.

As we have often said, if two people have a difficulty, the one who is most spiritual has to humble himself first and confess his failure first, always at the principle. And we see that principle down there in the book of Nehemiah.

And then the rest of the people we read here. And I want you to notice here what they did. It says, first of all, it says the people who signed were, who are the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, singers, temple servants, and all those who had separated themselves.

And here we see what separation is. I want you to notice here that separation has got two sides. And here we see the two sides of separation mentioned very clearly in verse 28. First of all, a separation from the peoples of the land.

And secondly, a separation unto the law of God. Always separation is not one-sided. It is from worldliness to obedience to God's word. Now, you may think, yeah, that's a very simple thing. But there are many people who, when they think of separation, they say, we're going to separate ourselves from these unbelievers and all that.

They think only of separation from. They come out from some dead denomination, and they have separated themselves. Then what do they do? There's no separation to obedience, total obedience to God's word.

And so this group ends up as another Babylon, Babylon the second. And then another group comes out of there and says, we are separating from this corrupting and build Babylon the third. And it will keep on becoming Babylon the fourth, fifth, sixth, until we have those who separate from something unto, also unto, the other side of the coin, total obedience to the law of God.

That's what we see here. Why isn't there something all those with knowledge and understanding, right? They're joining with their kinsmen, their nobles and are taking on themselves a curse and an oath.

The Seven Commitments of the Covenant

Now here is a further description of what all these leaders and the Levites and the priests and the people and all those who separated themselves, the covenant they made. And I want you to, I want to just go through this covenant, which is described in verse 29 to verse 39 here.

There are seven things they stated in this covenant. And it's very interesting to see these seven things that these people made a covenant with God in that time. Number one, verse 29, we make a covenant and an oath to walk in God's law.

In other words, to walk in obedience, in total obedience to God's word. Not just to listen to it, but it says here to observe the last part of verse 29, to observe what? And there's a very important word there, a word which many Christians ignore.

It's a small three-letter word. You know what it is? All. To observe the last part of verse 29, all the commandments. That is the walls of Jerusalem. All the commandments of God, our Lord and his ordinance and his statutes.

Do we want to build a church of Jesus Christ today? Observe all the commandments. There's no other way. The number one thing of the new covenant, they signed it. They said, Lord, we're taking this seriously.

And when Jesus passed the bread and cup around, he said, this is my blood of the new covenant. That's the only time he spoke about the new covenant. And that breaking of bread, people don't realize what the seriousness of it.

It's a serious covenant we are entering into with God. It means I want to keep all of God's commandments and I'm willing to pour out my blood like Jesus poured out his blood in order to keep the commandments and never to sin.

That's number one. We're not interested in just studying the word. There are people who want to study the word and preach the word. They didn't talk about studying and preaching here. They said, we want to keep the commandments.

That's our covenant. We're not interested in Bible study. First, we're interested in Bible obedience. We want to have Bible obedience meetings, not just Bible study meetings, Bible obedience. That's what they did.

Number one. Secondly, verse 30, they made a covenant to separate themselves from all worldly alliances. They said, we will never give our daughters to unbelievers in marriage and we will never give our sons to unbelievers in marriage.

In other words, we're not going to just see a heathen person who says, I'm a Christian by name and comes to church. Is he really born again? Has he repented of his sins? Has he turned with his whole heart to the Lord?

If not, we will not give our daughters to those people. Even if our daughters are to remain single, that's quite all right. We will separate ourselves from all worldly alliances. We don't want any worldly alliances for our sons or our daughters.

It's amazing how many believers become first rate compromisers when it comes to the marriage of their children. Marriages and funerals are the time when you see even people who appear to be wholehearted become absolute first rate backsliders and compromisers, lowering the standards of God's word because we've got to get our daughters and sons married.

Nevermind God's word. We'll compromise it a little bit here and there. No wonder Babylon is built by such Christians. No, they said we will never give our daughters or our sons to any unbeliever. No, our daughters and sons are going to be wholeheartedly in Jerusalem and we're going to find wholehearted Jerusalemites for our sons and daughters, not Babylonians.

Now, we don't want any Babylonians for our sons and daughters. I tell you, we may think that's easy to take a stand when our children are small. Just wait till our children grow up and come to marriageable age and then we'll find how costly a thing it is to take a stand like that.

It really is costly. It really is. But they've made a covenant. Lord, if they go and do that on their own, that's their business. But I will never give a sanction to any of my children to be married to Babylonians.

And that applies to all types of worldly friendships that lead us away from God. It may not be marriage, maybe all types of worldly friendships, gossip clubs, sitting around with other people just sitting gossiping, worldly friendships.

Instead of seeking the friendship of holy men and women of God, we waste our time in useless club type of meetings, forsaking of all that because we want to be wholehearted for God. And then thirdly, verse 31, they said, we are going to respect the Sabbath day.

The people of the land who bring their wares or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or a holy day. Now, you know, in the Old Testament law, in the Ten Commandments, there was a commandment which was specially given to the Israelites.

The Sabbath was a covenant God made with the Israelites. It is not with all people, as we read in Exodus 31, the last five, six verses of that chapter. There we read that God told them, you must not do any work on the Sabbath day.