0061S Nehemiah 9–10: Repent, Recommit, Reengage

The wall stood tall, but the people were still cracked inside. That’s the tension we unpack as we walk through Nehemiah 9–10: a city secured by stone and a community finally brave enough to face its sin, tell the truth out loud, and sign their names to real change. We trace how public confession, fasting, and the reading of the Law uncovered the true breach—hearts divided by compromise—and how God’s steadfast mercy became the ground where courage could grow.

We revisit the arc from exile to rebuilding and show why renewal always follows a pattern: hear the word, confess the breach, pledge obedience. From intermarriage that pulled affections away from God to Sabbath neglect and debt slavery, the issues feel uncomfortably current. The turning point comes when leaders lead: a written covenant, sealed with names, that commits the community to purity in marriage, Sabbath discipline, worship in order, financial first fruits, and accountability that actually loves people toward holiness.

Then we bring it home. We map those ancient vows to seven modern battlefields—faith, family, fitness, fundamentals, finances, fellowship, and fidelity—and get practical about what obedience looks like this week. Read and pray with purpose. Lead your home with confession and courage. Train your body to serve others. Sharpen skills that make you useful. Tithe and budget to dethrone greed. Lock shields with faithful friends. Keep your word when it costs. Finally, we challenge you to write a household covenant: what ends now, what begins today, what you will guard and build, whom you will serve, and how you will honor Christ—signed and posted where you live.

If this moved you, subscribe for more warrior-minded teaching, share it with a friend who needs strength, and leave a review so others can find the show. Your wall may be up; now let’s rebuild the heart and stand our post together.

CWM Intro with Drums

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CWM Outro with drums

Chapters

• 1:31 Mission, Setbacks, And Purpose
• 2:29 Forging Christian Warriors
• 3:52 The Seven Battlefields
• 4:51 Disciplines For Daily Warfare
• 7:06 From Walls To Hearts
• 8:08 History Behind Nehemiah’s Renewal
• 10:38 Why External Wins Aren’t Enough
• 11:59 Rapid Review: Nehemiah 1–8
• 15:45 Repentance As A Battlefield
• 18:32 God’s Mercy Over Our Failures
• 20:56 Signing The Covenant In Chapter 10
• 23:39 Purity, Sabbath, Worship, And Giving
• 26:34 Accountability And Courage
• 30:20 Mapping To The Seven Battlefields
• 33:00 Write Your Household Covenant
• 35:50 Prayer And Closing Orders

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 1:04

Welcome. Happy Tuesday to you. Um, and welcome to Warrior Church. I know we're a little bit late today. It has been a crazy technology uh past four days. We've had no internet from a windstorm and then cell troubles as well with that. So we've kind of been in a technological black hole and trying to climb out of that. We're so far behind, losing four basically four days of work um due to all this stuff. So I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be here for Warrior Church. I'm hope glad you hope glad you guys are here. Let me tell you what we do here if this is your first time. And again, you're like, wow, this clown show. Yeah, that's what it's been. So I do see myself on YouTube. That's good. And I'm gonna assume I'm gonna go. So tonight, welcome to Christian Warrior Mission, a discipleship ministry, a home-based warrior church, and a working farm where faith is lived, forged, and fought for. We are not here to be not here to build fans of Jesus Christ. We are here to train soldiers of Jesus Christ. We exist to come alongside local churches, not compete with them, not replace them, but to strengthen the lines, reinforce the walls, strengthen the homes, and equip believers for the daily battles they face. This world is collapsing under the weight of its own rebellion. But God has not called us to sit, sulk, or surrender. We like to say we are forging Christian warriors for today's challenges. It's not a slogan, it's a mandate. We don't gather for comfort, we gather for commitment, we gather for transformation, we gather because Christ is king. The war is real and the stakes are eternal. This is where men and women are trained to lead with courage, protect without apology, provide with conviction, and disciple with authority. In a world determined to unmake everything God has created. Every Tuesday night we stand shoulder to shoulder and train across the seven battlefields because the enemy is not just attacking your mind, he's attacking your home, your marriage, your discipline, your purity, your fellowship, your finances, and your readiness. So, lock in, lock shields with us, stand firm, open your heart, brace for conviction, and prepare for orders. The war is real, the king is victorious, and tonight we train. The battlefields of faith, family, fitness, fundamental finances, fellowship, and fidelity. We deliberately pursue God in each one of those battlefields every day. All right. Okay, we do that through Bible study, through, you know, which is reading of his word, prayer, and catechism, understanding what you believe and being able to defend it. You must deliberately pursue good relationships with your family. Okay, you're not gonna accidentally have a good marriage or a good relationship with your kids. Fitness, you're not gonna accidentally be fit unless you have the hardest, one of the hardest jobs out there, right? Fundamentals, we must pursue sharpening our skill set and always growing in knowledge, being useful, useful to God, useful to the kingdom. We must deliberately pursue wise finances, avoiding the slavery of debt and the pitfall of debt, as well as the sin of materialism. We must deliberately pursue godly relationships with other brothers and sisters in Christ, investing in relationships that pull you to heaven instead of trying, you know, lift you to heaven rather than pull you down to hell. And fidelity, we must, we must deliberately pursue purity, purity of heart, purity with our eyes, purity with our ears, purity in our soul. Be a man of your word. Okay. Make sure what you what your eyeballs are seeing is what's something that you would watch with Jesus in the room. Because he is. Same thing with what you're listening to. And boy, is this hard today. Trying to find good workout music is one of the greatest challenges that I face on a daily basis. Trying not to go back to old playlists and deleting songs and all these other things because, well, they're straight from hell. So those are the seven battlefields, and that's pretty much where your entire life fits if you think about it. Today, well last week was Veterans Day, and we talked about that. The week before, we talked about you know what a warrior is, what a Christian warrior is and why God loves them. But prior to that, we've been working since Charlie Kirk's assassination, we've been working through the book of Nehemiah. Today, we are in Nehemiah 9 through 10. I'm going to finish it. There's only 13 chapters, and then we'll finish it before we get into some topicals, okay? So I'm gonna do a quick review on things because it's been weeks and um, well, it's been thinking it's almost been a month. Um, and then we'll drive on. So the wall is built, but what about the heart? The book of Nehemiah is often celebrated for its account of rebuilding Jerusalem's wall, a feat of leadership, courage, and communal effort. Yet as Nehemiah 9 and 10 reveals, the true spiritual battle begins after the stones are set. The external wall, though essential for securing identity, is not enough. The internal walls of the heart, compromised by sin, apathy, and divided loyalties, must also be rebuilt. For the Christian warrior and for every believer, these chapters offer a clarion call. Repent, recommit, and re-engage. We're going to explore Nehemiah 9 and 10 as a spiritual battle for a moment, drawing on historical, theological, um, and pastoral insights to equip Christian men and families for spiritual warfare leadership, household discipleship, and kinetic warfare. So the historical context, covenant renewal after exile, the road to Nehemiah 9:10. The events of Nehemiah 9:10 are set against the backdrop of the Babylonian exile and the subsequent return of the Jewish remnant to Jerusalem in about 586 BC. Okay, Jerusalem fell to Babylon. You know, Jerusalem had been conquered many times, and Judah's elites were deported. Seventy years later, as prophesied by Jeremiah, Cyrus II of Persia issued an edict permitting the exiles to return and rebuild their temple, a policy confirmed by Cyrus Cylinder, an archaeological artifact known in the British Museum. This return unfolded in waves, first under Shesh Bazaar and Zerubbabel, rebuilding the altar and the temple, and under Ezra, Torah reform, and finally under Nehemiah, rebuilding the city walls. The Persian period was marked by both opportunity and challenge. While the second temple was rebuilt in 516 BC, remember we count down BC and up A.D. The people struggled with spiritual lethargy, intermarriage with pagan neighbors, Sabbath neglect, and economic exploitation. Prophets like Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi confronted these breaches, preparing the way for the covenant renewal described in Nehemiah 9:10. The wall and the word, a sequence of revival. Nehemiah's 52-day wall project from 445 to 444 BC transformed Jerusalem from a symbol of disgrace to a defensible city, restoring a sense of identity as a kingdom of priests, as mentioned in Exodus 19.6. Yet as the narrative shows, physical security created a space for spiritual reflection. When they weren't fighting for their lives and trying not to get victimized and slavery and rape and everything else, they had a moment to breathe and then reflect on their current predicament as a soul, as a people. The public reading of the Torah and the seventh month in Nehemiah 8, which we'll cover, triggered deep conviction and tears amongst the people, leading to a period of confession, fasting, and ultimately covenant renewal. The socioeconomic and the spiritual pressures of the time, the need for renewal is not merely spiritual, but also socioeconomic. Intermarriage threatened doctrinal purity, usury, and debt slavery slavery. So that's the charging of interest for loans. And debt slavery violated Mosaic compassion. Sabbath commerce undermined God's sign of creation and redemption. These infractions mirrored the sins that had led to exile, and leaders feared a repetition of judgment. We see this in Jeremiah 16, sorry, 17, 19 through 27. So we see a repeating covenant uh pattern of covenant renewal in his Israel's story. In Nehemiah 10, which is what we're going to finish with, fits a well-established biblical pattern of covenant renewal. Sinai, Exodus 24, the planes of Moab and Deuteronomy 29 and 30, Sheshem under Joshua and Joshua 24, and later reforms under Pesa, Hezekiah, and Josiah. Each renewal renewal involves public reading of the law, confession, and a solemn oath, often sealed with written documentation signatories. I don't know if you guys can hear my son. It sounds like he's right next to me, but I swear he's not. He's rums away. He's just got some lungs. Archaeological and textual corroboration. Archaeological finds, such as the Yehud coin series, seals bearing the names of Nehemiah's officials and per and Persian period fortifications corroborate the historical setting of Nehemiah 9.10. This is not fantasy. The Bible is not fantasy. Manuscript evidence from Qumran confirms the textual stability of these chapters. In summary, the historical context of Nehemiah 9.10 is one of return, rebuilding, and the urgent need for spiritual renewal. Covenant must be the oh, sorry, spiritual renewal. The external wall is up, but the internal covenant must be restored. A pattern with deep roots in Israel's history and enduring relevance for the church. Nehemiah 9:10 doesn't happen in a vacuum. Like I said, the wall is finished, the gates are set, the enemies have been pushed back. Jerusalem finally looks secure from the outside. But inside, the people are still spiritually fractured. This is the moment that every warrior must understand. You can win the external battle and still learn and learn, uh lose eternally or internally. A rebuilt wall means nothing if sin still rules the heart. And we see this horribly in our veteran community, our first responder community was suicide. You can win wars, you can win battles, you can come home, and still sin can take you. Show us the external mission. Now in chapters nine and ten, God turns their eyes inward. Before God advances his people, he purifies his people. Before he gives new orders, he restores their obedience. Nehemiah 9:10 is the turning point. Repentance for past failures, recommitment to future obedience, re-engagement with God's mission. This is the same turning point every warrior faces. Tonight, we step into it. So let's review Nehemiah 1 through 8. Before we enter the covenant renewal of chapters 9 and 10, we need to grasp the battlefield of the first eight chapters. Nehemiah 1, the burden. Nehemiah hears Jerusalem's walls are broken and its people disgraced. He is cut to the heart, fasts, prays, confesses the sins of Israel, takes ownership of them, and asks God for favor before the Persian king. This is where every warrior mission begins with a burden from God. Nehemiah 2, the mission. God answers the prayer. The king says Nehemiah with authority, letters, and resources. Nehemiah inspects the ruins at night and rallies the people. Let us rise up and build. The mission is born. Nehemiah 3, the teams, families, craftsmen, priests, nobles. Every household takes a section of the wall. Ordinary people doing extraordinary work. Warriors building side by side. Nehemiah 4, the enemy attacks, mockery, threats, plots, fear. Nehemiah responds with prayer, vigilance, and sword in one hand, and tool in the other, readiness. Fight for your brothers, your sons, your daughters, your wives, and your homes. That's where this ministry, that verse is where Nehemiah 414 is where this ministry was born. Nehemiah 5, internal corruption, financial oppression, and internal injustice. Nehemiah rebukes the nobles, he curses them, restores the people, and models sacrificial leadership. The wall is nothing if the heart is corrupt. Nehemiah 6, psychological warfare and information warfare, and the first like documented case of fake news. Distraction, deceit, slander, fake news, assassination attempt, assassination attempts. Nehemiah refuses to be baited, to come off the wall. I am doing a great work and cannot come down. The wall is finished in 52 days. A miracle. Nehemiah 7, repopulation and records. A city, a secured city must be filled with faithful people. Nehemiah re-establishes order. Genealogy, roles, leadership, and structure matters. Nehemiah 8, the word is restored. Ezra reads the law to the people from morning to midday. Understanding returns. Worship returns. Joy returns. They celebrate the Feast of Boose for the first time since Joshua. Revival begins. Now, Nehemiah 9. I'm only again, these are two pretty long chapters, so I'm only going to read select verses. Um so again, when we go back through and we pick this up and we're able to take the time to go verse by verse, we will. But right now, we're going to just do kind of a summary of these two chapters. Now you got to remember that one of the longest prayers ever is in chapter 9, all right, in the Bible. So it's worth, again, the whole book of Nehemiah. I find it fantastic. Um, it's one of my favorite books. So now on the 24th day, the people of Israel were assembled with fasting and in sackcloth, lived further down, and they stood and confessed their sins and their iniquities of their fathers. Verse 9, 1 and 2. But you live further down, but you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. Many times you delivered them according to your mercies. Nevertheless, in your great mercies you did not make an end of them. Chapter 10 is recommitment, sealing new orders in writing, one without the other collapses. The warrior who repents but doesn't recommit stays weak. A warrior who commits without repenting becomes a hypocrite. The people of God do both, and now we walk with them. In Nehemiah 1 through 5, we see repentance is a battlefield, not a feeling. No comfort to it at all. It's itchy and coarse. They put ashes on them to not to show that they are suffering. They separate this and they do a separation from compromise. All the sins they were doing before. Standing for hours under the word. Warriors don't hide sin, they drag it to the light. There's only one way to deal with sin, and that's to bring it into the brightest daylight you can, own it, and move on. You can't fight the enemy outside if you're compromised inside. Real men repent. Real women repent. Weak people make excuses. And verses six through thirty-one, that's a pretty big gap. Remembers Israel remembers this long history of failures. They name their failures out loud: stubbornness, idolatry, ignoring God, complaining, rejecting his word, killing his prophets, loving Egypt more than freedom, loving slavery more than freedom. A lot of those sound like us today, do they not? A warrior doesn't pretend he's better than he is, he tells the truth and stands before God without spin. We must own our faults, see them clearly, and repent of them. It's the only way to get free of them. And then we see in verses 17, 19, 28, and 31, God's faithfulness is greater than their failure. God stays, God rescues, God restores, God refuses to quit on his people. Repentance only works if you believe God's mercy is greater than your mess. Part of our problem as a people, as a human, as a as a as a human being, is that we either think too highly of ourself, I'm a good person. I'm not Hitler. Well, way to go, choosing one of the most evil people on the planet, everyone's better than Hitler, except for Stahl and Emmal. Right? You just pick three of the most evil people ever walked the planet Earth. When your comparison to them, of course not. But when compared to God, you're vile. When you're compared to his standard, you are vile, sin incarnate. And only you can only be cleaned by the blood of Jesus Christ. Accepting him as your Lord and Savior. Not Jesus, bro, not Hug Ital culture, not you know, hippie Jesus. He is your king. And that word king can't be big enough because he's the creator of the universe. Let us continue on. Nehemiah 10. Because of all this, we see in 10, this is a 1038, because of all this, we make a firm covenant in writing. On the sealed document are the names. We will not neglect the house of our God in 1039. Transition from repentance to recommitment. Chapter 9 exposes the heart, but God never leaves his warriors on the ground. He raises them to their feet and calls them into action. Repentance clears the field. Recommitment establishes a new formation. Now we move from confession to covenant. Nehemiah 10. Real repentance produces real commitment. Israel signs their names. Leaders go first. Men commit their families. Priests, Levites, gatekeepers, worshipers, everyone joins. This is the battle roster. This is a warrior covenant. This is the accountability in writing. Warriors put their obedience in ink. What do they commit to? First thing they commit to is purity and marriage. This is so important, and it's very important to us in the church now. It is supremely important in our church now. You want your sons and daughters, and if you are single, you want to marry a godly kingdom spouse. Okay. You don't want your daughters marrying an atheist or a pagan or any other religion. Okay, because the odds of her getting sucked into that are pretty high. We are called to marry Christians, as were the Jews, called to marry Jews. Because you become one with that flesh. Now, if you get saved and you're married to someone, you shouldn't leave them. You should work on them and pray with one. But before you do that, before you get married, marry a godly man, a woman, please. For your own sake. A marriage that isn't under Christ's rule. Where do you go to resolve your problems? When Lauren and I have a problem, which is rare, the Bible decides. Chapter and verse. Where am I wrong? Show me. Show me where I'm wrong. Or I'll show you where you're wrong. And then it's not her arguing with me, or me arguing with her. It's the person who's wrong arguing with God, and good luck with that. I've been in a marriage before where um You don't have that. And it's constant strife. It's horrible. It's darkness incarnate. I wouldn't wish that on anyone. Godly marriage. God will not bless a marriage that is not under him. You're gonna need in this world, you're gonna need every blessing you can get from God. Every blessing and more. The next thing they commit to is Sabbath discipline. Okay? Not working on the Sabbath, resting for a day. This is good news. You don't have to take your Sabbath on Sunday or Saturday as the Seventh-day Mists do, or the Jews. Just make sure you're taking your day of rest to focus on Him and recharge. On worship order, they commit to worshiping God the way they know they're supposed to, the way God told them to. Financial faithfulness. They commit to tithing. They know that God is not gonna bless them if they don't give him his offering. The first fruits. And I don't like churches beating that brow, whatever. And I'm not saying you gotta give to a church, but you better be giving to somebody that needs it. The worst thing you can do is send it overseas to someone who you'll never know and you can't follow up with. Invest in someone you'll know and someone who you can follow up with and help stay on the track. All right? The help and the aid that you're giving them is one step that may open their heart or solve a problem that really drives home. Wow, God really does love me. This Christian came over and helped me, and I wasn't looking for it. God really does love me. And now you're there to follow up. And then community accountability. And this is what we suck at. And well, it's what Christian light sucks at. Oh, you just God just loves you as you are. He just don't you're all sad. Nope. God doesn't send sin to hell, he sends people to hell. He told you how to get to heaven. He won't force you to do it. You go to hell willingly. You go to hell willingly. You choose it. You know what you're supposed to do. And guess what? And even if you say you don't, you know where you're supposed to go to find out. But it's written on your heart. You know what's a sin and what's not. But you can find compromised churches out there with rainbow flags that will. Deny this very book, the book that they're supposedly preaching from, which they're not. Warriors say, no, not my home, not my children, not my marriage, not my walk. And they put God's house first, 10, 32 through 39. We will not neglect the house of our God. Warriors don't give God leftovers, they give him first fruits. So Nehemiah 10 is not ancient paperwork, it's a warrior's covenant. The people didn't just acknowledge truth, they bound themselves to obedience. Every battlefield in your life must reflect the same seriousness. Their covenant commitments map directly to our seven battlefields. The applications across our seven battlefields. Faith, clean your weapon, return to the Bible, prayer, worship, and catechism. Family, lead from the front, confess failure, protect, provide, disciple. Fitness, discipline your body, repent of neglect, and rebuild your strength. Fundamentals, sharpen your skills, trust God, don't test God. Preparedness, protection, medical, firearms and combatives, master them all. Finances, steward for the kingdom, honor God first, kill consumerism inside you. Fellowship, lock shields, engage with one another, invest in one another, train together, no isolation. We are a part of a body. The enemy wants you to cut yourself off, cut your thumb off, and you're in the thumb and put it over there and away from the body. After enough time, it'll rot. And it'll die. And that's what you do. Fidelity. Purity is warfare. Repent of lust, porn, compromise, lies. Be a man of your word. Or a woman of your word. Integrity is everything. Rebuild walls, renew hearts, restored mission. The flow of Nehemiah 9:10 is the flow of every Christian warrior. Repent clears the debris. Recommitment establishes new orders. Reengage, get back on the wall and fight. What Israel wrote in ink, you must write in your life. So we must repent, recommit, and re-engage. This week, make a written covenant for your household. Do this. Write down what you will stop doing that is against God. Write down what you will start. Write down what you will protect. Write down what you will build. Write down who you will serve. Where you will train, and how you will honor Christ. Put your name on it. Put your family under it. Put your life behind it. Christian warriors, the wall is up, but the battle for the heart continues. Let Nehemiah 9:10 be your guide. Repent of compromise. Recommit to God's covenant and re-engage in the fight for your soul, your family, and your community. For the God who restored Jerusalem's walls is the same God who in Christ rebuilds the broken places of our lives and calls us to be living temples of his presence. We are called to be temples of his presence. Let us pray. Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of King, cleanse us, restore us, renew us, strip away excuses, break chains, ignite obedience, strengthen every marriage, guard every child, purify every heart. We say together, we will not neglect your house. We will not abandon our post. We will not come off the wall. We belong to you and we will obey in your mighty name. Amen. God bless you, and I'll see you tomorrow for Bible study. Bye.

SPEAKER_00: 38:31

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