As we get to the end of Old Testament history, we see how God never abandoned his people. They turned their backs on Him, but He continued to be gracious and merciful. They were unfaithful but He was always faithful. He kept all of his promises. And that is just what they needed to lead them to trust his BIG promise – sending Jesus into this world. During the Advent season, we need this same confidence that God will come as He promised. He always does, always shows mercy, time after time. He doesn’t abandon his people. He guides us. He provides for us. And He is always ready to forgive. He proved that when He kept his promise to send Jesus into our world.
As we get to the end of Old Testament history, we see how God never abandoned his people. They turned their backs on Him, but He continued to be gracious and merciful. They were unfaithful but He was always faithful. He kept all of his promises. And that is just what they needed to lead them to trust his BIG promise – sending Jesus into this world. During the Advent season, we need this same confidence that God will come as He promised. He always does, always shows mercy, time after time. He doesn’t abandon his people. He guides us. He provides for us. And He is always ready to forgive. He proved that when He kept his promise to send Jesus into our world.
Full disclosure, when I first saw that this week’s worship theme would be “Time After Time,” my mind instantly went to Cindy Lauper and her 1983 hit single of the same name. The rough part about that is once that song is in your head, it might take therapy to get it out! If you haven’t heard the song, the basic storyline is about a young woman leaving her lover behind. She talks about her “suitcase of memories,” and as the song goes on you can see the inevitable break-up coming. Finally, the song gives the saddening news, “After my picture fades and darkness has turned to gray, watching through windows, you're wondering if I'm okay, secrets stolen from deep inside and the drum beats out of time.” Out of time. Love over. When asked what the deeper meaning behind the song was outside of her real-life break-up with a boyfriend, Cindy Lauper said there was a “spiritual” meaning: “It’s really about testing love.” It reflects one of our greatest fears as people: To be found unlovable by the people we care about the most. Thoughts like “What if, after this mistake, she won’t want to spend a minute with me? “What if God won’t forgive me again?” “What if this time, it really is over?” “Does God’s love have a limit?”
A time of doubt was the moment God’s people were in. It’s the 500s BC. About 60 years before the events in Nehemiah chapter 9, God’s people had come home from exile, but for these refugees what they found was heart-breaking. The Israelites came back to desolation. Their homes charred and overgrown after years of neglect. The temple rubble filled with weeds and moss. This didn’t feel like home. We can only imagine how the words of prophets echoed in their ears. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Where was the Lord? Nehemiah was focused on answering that question. He leaves a plush position in the king’s court in Persia, comes to rebuild Jerusalem, specifically the walls, but he doesn’t just find broken bricks, he finds broken hearts. People who even still after everything they been through, even after the miracle it was that God’s people even got to come back to Jerusalem, they still didn’t get it. They started doing the same old things that got them exiled in the first place. It tears Nehemiah up as their leader, he goes all-in, trying to fix their behavior, to reform the unreformed and it doesn’t work. Why didn’t it work? Because their hearts didn’t change. Even after everything they’d been through, the Israelites went back to their doubting God routine. It’s the same pattern we’ve seen since we began this Old Testament journey in the Garden of Eden. God makes a promise, people doubt, people sin, people hide, God steps in, God renews his promises, God saves. God is faithful, and so often his people are faithless.
Do you think we have the same weakness as the Israelites? Do we unknowingly react to life’s adversity with doubt, not faith? We may not be coming back from exile, but sometimes when we feel exiled by God, how often is our first response “Why God” and not “I trust you, God.” Why is it that we try external solutions to our problems instead of running to the Lord? We forget Him, and we feel the immediacy of the moment and we put it on ourselves to alleviate, or we feel God takes too long, if God doesn’t deliver me this way, he’s failed.
Nehemiah watched this unfold with his beloved people. He had left an amazing job working for the king of Persia but then God put it in his heart to restore the once beautiful city of Jerusalem, and now the people he served were going back to their old ways. The temptation for Nehemiah was there: It’s on me to deliver the people I love. I can’t trust God’s timing. It’s on me.
Time after time, we fall into that faithless fallacy with those we are responsible for. We focus on changing their actions, and not focusing on heart work, pointing them to the Lord who alone gives new hearts, who alone gives life. It all comes from the dark dungeon of doubt, trapped in fear, lost in logic, and failure of faith. Time after time, that’s where sin leads. It’s been that way since the origin story of tragedy, the first sin in the Garden of Eden.
As I was reading Nehemiah 9 wasn’t it a little depressing? Israel’s history is this cycle of frustration for the reader. God does something amazing, and people mess it up. God creates a beautiful world, we ruin it. God breaks the chains of his people, and we put them right back on. God gives us his Word, and we hide it away. God gives compassion and we turn to other “gods.” He gives us everything and time after time, we rebel.
It’s not just Israel’s story, is it? It’s yours and mine too. If you and I look back at our lives, our own history, we see the same pattern. The Lord has given us promises, but we search for more. The Lord says, “I’m enough for you,” but we don’t believe him. Our darkest times hang over us, and we feel the ticking of life’s clock, “Will God’s compassion, his love, his forgiveness, will it run out?”
But time after time, our God doesn’t let the drum beat out of time. The pattern stays true, even when we are faithless, God will always be faithful.
Nehemiah looks at his hurting and struggling people and he does something radical. He gets a choir of Levites (pastors and teachers) together to shout poetry. Yes, to solve these deep heart struggles, he gets a rap group together. Okay not really, but he puts these talented artists together for one purpose: To tell a story. To tell a story to people who had forgotten time after time. To do exactly what we’ve been doing the last two months, looking back so that we can look ahead. Nehemiah 9 is packed with the greatest grace moments in Israel’s history: The Exodus, Mount Sinai, the wilderness, and entering the promised land. It’s a strange comfort, as predictable as Israel’s fall was, God’s promises are shockingly as predictable. Israel makes a mess, and God delivers. The promise of the Savior seemed in doubt SO MANY TIMES because Israel messed up so much, but God never let that happen. There is no knot so knotted that he couldn’t weave his plan together. He wouldn’t let the plan he put in motion before the universe began, be halted. Jesus would be seen. Jesus would enter our story. We see him bright and visible here in Nehemiah. Look at all the words of “mercy,” “compassion, “gracious,” God’s grace is real and true and forward-pointing to when Compassion himself would take on a human body, speak in human language, and die for you and for me.
God stays faithful. Unlike in the song “Time After Time,” God doesn’t walk away. He doesn’t stand there saying, “I’m here for you but to earn that love you must accomplish these impossible expectations.” No. He came to you freely with no strings attached. That’s what Advent is all about. Jesus coming down to you and to me. Jesus isn’t after behavioral compliance. He’s after hearts. He knows by nature our hearts will always be darkened by sin unless his light enters through the lamp of the Word. This is why God has so many of these historical novels in the Bible. He knows we struggle with doubt and he knows hindsight is 20/20. The past strengthens us. If God kept his greatest promise to save us from Satan, sin, and death, even after all the mistakes his people made and he did keep that promise, do you really think he’s going to fail in his promise to come back again one day and make right all the world has made wrong? Do you really think he will fail in his promise to forgive you through Jesus or fail in his promise to work all things for your ultimate good so one day you can stand in glory with him? He won’t. He’s made a promise. He’s given his Word, capital W.
We keep reading his Word, the Bible, because the more we do the more shocking God’s salvation is. The more we see how if it was up to us we would have messed the whole thing up, but it never has been up to us, that’s not just generalized salvation history, that’s your personal history too. Your life has always belonged to someone else. Your story is written biographically, not autobiographically. It’s been written by the Author of Life, The Word, Jesus. His story is one of responding to your doubt with compassion. He remembers you as we heard Mary speak. He never forgets you in your trials. He’s there as you drink your cup. When all hope is lost, Jesus comes near. When with eyes closed, body trembling, you step back in time to those dark rooms of your heart, feelings of emptiness, loss, and abandonment, you don’t walk through them alone. Remember Jesus. Remember his promises. He remembered you when he came into his kingdom. He rules in your heart. Do you see how the Bible isn’t merely some dusty old history textbook? It’s a book bursting with life, and meaning in a world searching time after time. His faithfulness affects how you experience the adversity of life, the cup of pain we each must drink for our good.
Nehemiah hoped that this history lesson would change people’s hearts and change how they viewed rebuilding and processing. For you and me in our time, remembering God’s faithfulness gives you a gut instinct of faith not to doubt, but to trust. When we face a problem, by faith we remember God’s faithfulness first, not ourselves. Often our initial reaction to pain is doubt or putting it on ourselves to fix it, but the Lord has proven that he is our best first resort. We remember how he always delivers. We remember how he takes evil intent and transforms it into eternal blessing. We remember what the end will be. That’s what Advent is all about. That’s what the Christian life is all about. It’s hopeful waiting. When we face adversity, your first response isn’t “why did you do this to me, God” but rather, “I’m excited to see how you’re going to get me through this, God. You brought me here, I know you’ll deliver me through it.” Like we sang, “Our souls in stillness wait” time after time.
Time after time, your God comes through. He wins. He delivers. He loves. The darker things get, the more we must look ahead by remembering. Our hope is in Jesus. Our times are in his always-faithful hands. The time is coming. He’s coming soon. The second and final Christmas will come. Just wait, remember, see Jesus and hope is all you’ll know. Time after time, he remains, and all God’s people said, “Amen!”