Covenant Particulars

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

Nehemiah 10 “A Firm Covenant in Writing: Holy, Restful, and Generous People” Reformation Bible Church, Karaka, New Zealand Date: May 3, 2026 (Evening Service)

We are turning through to the Old Testament again, through to the Book of Nehemiah. Nehemiah, as we continue journeying our way through this wonderful covenantal story of our own history. And so we’re turning through to Nehemiah, Chapter 10. We’ve been working our way through what I’ve termed the Revival in the days of Nehemiah, and we have been dealing with the covenant that the people of God enter into. Last week, we looked at the first 2 sections, which was the people of the covenant and the promise of the covenant, the people being the Old Testament people of God. There were heads and there was a body, which all got involved. And then of course, the promise being that we will keep the whole law of God. And that brought us up to verse 30. And so we’ll pick up there where we left off in verse 30. These are the particulars of the covenant.

“We will not give our daughters to the peoples of the land or take their daughters for our sons. And if the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day. And we will forgo the crops of the 7th year and the exaction of every debt. We also take on ourselves the obligation to give yearly a third part of a shekel for the service of the house of our God, for the showbread, the regular grain offerings, the regular burnt offerings, the Sabbaths, the new moons, the appointed feasts, the holy things, and the sin offering to make atonement for Israel, and for all the work of the house of our God. We, the priests, the Levites, and the people, have likewise cast lots for the wood offering, to bring it into the house of our God, according to our fathers’ houses, at times appointed, year by year, to burn on the altar of the Lord our God, as it is written in the Law. We obligate ourselves to bring the first fruits of our ground and the first fruits of all fruit of every tree, year by year, to the house of the Lord; also to bring to the house of our God, to the priests who minister in the house of our God, the firstborn of our sons and of our cattle, as it is written in the Law, and the firstborn of our herds and of our flocks; and to bring the first of our dough and our contributions, the fruit of every tree, the wine and the oil, to the priests, to the chambers of the house of our God; and to bring to the Levites the tithes from our ground, for it is the Levites who collect the tithes in all our towns where we labor. And the priest, the son of Aaron, shall be with the Levites when the Levites receive the tithes, and the Levites shall bring up the tithe of the tithes to the house of our God, to the chambers of the storehouse. For the people of Israel and the sons of Levi shall bring the contribution of grain, wine, and oil to the chambers, where the vessels of the sanctuary are, as well as the priests who minister, and the gatekeepers and the singers. We will not neglect the house of our God.”

Amen. May the Lord bless His Word to us, and as we come to consider it, let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we thank You for Your holy, infallible, and inerrant Word, and we do pray that You would strengthen us as we listen to it. We’ve had a rich day of fellowship, and so we pray, would You grant us strength and energy to listen again, to feed upon Your holy Word, to be nourished and built up in our faith. pray that You might grant us, by faith, to hear the Word of Christ reverberating within us. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

One of the temptations of the devil is to convince us that what we do is divorced from who we are. What we do is divorced from who we are. In other words, it doesn’t really matter what or who you are as long as you produce something good. It’s a very despicable temptation because it’s what enables men and women to be acting godly in a church while committing all manner of ungodliness in another sphere of life. They can be tithing. They can be making both church services, being at the prayer meeting. They can be doing works of service, the first at the funeral, the first to put out the chairs, and meanwhile, be committing corrupt abominations to God and justifying it by the fact that I’m doing the good things. And God’s really only concerned with what I produce. And the devil will seek to convince us of that. But what we must come to realize is that the Lord passionately cares, not just about what we produce, but about what we are. He is not building a factory production line in a church. He’s producing people. He’s making men and women of God. So that when the New Testament addresses the people of God, it does not call them do-gooders or holy workers, but saints, a royal priesthood, a holy people, right? God passionately cares about what we are, and the reason that’s so important is because what we produce is intimately connected to what we are. So that Paul would say, “If you are of the flesh, you will produce works of the flesh. But if you are of the spirit, you will produce spiritual things.” It’s like the analogy of the rotten fruit tree. You might staple good fruit on it, but at the end of the day, you will always end up with diseased fruit, won’t you? So we need to understand that as we come to look at these particular covenantal commitments of these Old Testament people, that ultimately they’re not actually committing themselves just to mere obedience, mere action, but they’re devoting themselves to being a particular type of people.

And so in case you’ve forgotten from last week, I told you that we would look at a holy people, a restful people, and a generous people.

So firstly, we see that they covenant themselves to be a holy people, and we see this in verse 30. In verse 30, we read, “We will not give our daughters to the people of the land or take their daughters for our sons.” They covenantally commit themselves to not enter into what is called interracial marriage. They will not marry with the people outside of the people of Israel.

Now, why would they do that? Why would they take this covenantal commitment on themselves? Well, firstly, because they knew God’s law, and God’s Old Testament law forbade giving your daughters to foreigners or you yourself marrying the daughter of foreigners. Now, it’s important for us to understand this is not because God’s a racist. This is not because Israel were to be a, a monolithic ethnic tribe. Well, we saw this morning, who became part of the Israelites? Well, Rahab, she wasn’t an Israelite, and guess who she married? She married a Jew. And she was included in the household by faith. So we know that God is not a racist, which would be an absurd conclusion. But what’s going on here is the Lord is setting up laws to preserve his covenantal people. Why did God forbid the people from marrying the surrounding nations? Because it would lead them into sin. You see, these people knew that their history was a history of sin because of interracial marriage, because they were marrying outside of the faith. And so when you turn to the Book of Ezra, you see in the previous generation this great commitment to, to get rid of all of their foreign wives and to, to purify themselves and make themselves holy. They had sinned, and it had brought with it idolatry. I mean, the great example of this, of course, is the wisest man that ever lived outside of Jesus. I mean, what a gift, the wisest man to ever walk the earth outside of Jesus Christ, and he wrote proverb after proverb and chapter after chapter on guarding your heart against adultery and idolatry. But what happened? He married, married Pharaoh’s daughter, and he built her a special house, and he built her a special place where she could worship her gods. “Oh, well, I’m not doing it. She’s doing it.” But then we find out later in the story that Solomon also married other foreign wives who brought him things like sacrificing children to Molech, and burning sinful fire to Chemosh, and building Ashtoreth totem poles. His love of women led him into sin. And do you know what’s striking? It’s not until Josiah, King Josiah, just before Babylon, that his abominations are destroyed. Solomon himself led the whole nation into sin because he refused to obey God’s command. These people knew that history, and so they said, “No, we are going to be a holy people, a people of God’s own choosing. And so we will obey his law to marry within the faith so that we won’t get dragged away from the faith.”

You see, because they knew that the people of God are to be exclusively his, and his children are to be exclusively his. You might ask yourself the question, “Well, how does that apply to us? We’re no longer under the Old Test- Testament stipulation.” I mean, we have mixed marriages in this congregation, don’t we? So, uh, is it Are we doing wrong here by having interracial marriages? No. The covenant people of old, the house of faith was limited to a geographical nation. And so when they were told not to marry outside Israel, it wasn’t the national thing, it was the faith. And Paul takes up this very thing, doesn’t he, in 2 Corinthians 7 when he says to the people of Corinth, “Don’t be unequally yoked.” What does Christ have to do with Belial? “Don’t you understand,” he says in 1 Corinthians, “that when you go and sleep with a prostitute, you are joined to her? What are you doing?” So how does this apply to us? Well, it means, obviously, brothers and sisters, and this almost doesn’t need to be said, but we need to marry Christians. God has given you If you are unmarried, God has given you incredible freedom. He has said you can marry anyone as long as they’re a believer. You don’t have to look for this magical, special person. You know, people talk about the soulmate that you have to track down. No, you can marry anyone as long as they are a believer. And that gives you freedom. It’s good for you to be married. It’s not good for you to be alone. Find a believer, someone who loves the Lord, and be free to enter into holy matrimony. Yes, there’s much more we could say about principles when it comes to finding a spouse, but that has to wait for another sermon.

But I think there’s a second principle here which is bigger than just marriage, and that is the reality that, uh, being God’s exclusive people is also related to how we function in the world. We are to be exclusively his as people of God, so we are to have nothing to do with the world. And I think this is very clearly seen in the Book of Ephesians. In Ephesians chapter 2, the Apostle Paul writes to the church there. Sorry, not 2, 5. In chapter 2, th- in chapter 5 We’ll get there. Chapter 5 verse 7, Paul writes these words: “Do not become partners with them,” speaking about the sons of disobedience, “for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light, for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true, and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret. But when anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible, for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’” We, brothers and sisterth, brothers and sisters, have been brought out of the light, haven’t we? sorry, out of the darkness into the light. We bore testimony to that this morning as a family, has stood up and said, “I take the name of God upon me.” Now, when you do that, what are you simultaneously saying? You’re simultaneously saying you’re not part of the world. It’s like the Apostle John says, “Friendship with God is enmity with the world, and enmity with God is friendship with the world.” So who are we friends with? Now, I’m not saying you can’t have friends that are unbelievers. But I think it’s important to recognize every relationship is going to be positive or negative for us. And so if you’re going to have very close friends, invest yourself into the lives of another person, do it with people who will commend you to the Lord. Do it with people who will spur you on and not drag you into sin. It’s much easier to drag someone down than it is to lift them up, isn’t it? And when we’re surrounded by bad company, what happens? The Apostle Paul says, “It ruins good morals.” We must recognize that. In order to be a holy people, we must cut ties with that which is unholy, and devote ourselves exclusively to the Lord.

So the people commit themselves to be a holy people, but they also commit themselves to be a restful people. And so in verse 31, they say, “If the peoples of the land bring in goods or any grain on the Sabbath day to sell, we will not buy from them on the Sabbath or on a holy day, and we will forgo the crops of the 7th year and the exaction of every debt.” They covenant themselves, the second particular here, they covenant themselves to keep the Sabbath, they covenant themselves not to trade on the Sabbath, and they covenant themselves to keep the Sabbath year.

Now, if you can’t remember, in the Old Testament law, there was this special 7th year. And in the 7th year, you were not allowed to plant, you were not allowed to harvest, you basically just had a year off. I mean, that sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? You take a whole year off, and you just go out in your fields and eat. And if you’re a poor person, you go into someone else’s field and eat. And the Lord says, “I will bless you twofold on the 6th year so that there is more than enough to cover the 7th year.” And on that 7th year, it was to be a special year of rest and worship to their God, and they covenanted themselves to do it. It was probably one of the most neglected commands in the Old Testament, was the Sabbath year. But they take it up, and they say they’ll do it. Why? Well, because they understood that s- the Sabbath, in a special way, was a special sign of covenantal faithfulness. And so the prophet Isaiah writes to Israel, and he says to them, “If you would just delight in the Sabbath, I would bless you.” In fact, almost exclusively, if I’m remembering rightly, almost exclusively, every key reformation in the scriptures and outside the scriptures leads to a honoring and delighting in the Lord’s day. And every decline, one of the first things to go is the honoring of the Sabbath. So they knew that this was a special covenantal aspect of life, and the reason it was such an important covenantal aspect of life was because the, the Sabbath, in a way unlike almost anything else, demanded complete trust in God. Why do people work 80 hours a week incessantly? I mean, you see these people, right? Businesspeople. I remember reading, I think it was Elon Musk, who works, like, 120 hours a week. Man, I don’t even know what working 120 hours a week looks like. It’s insane. Well, I, I’ve, I’ve been in a job before, working, working 60, 70, 80 hours a week. It’s exhausting. Why do people do it? Well, A, because they need or want more. B, fear that they won’t have enough. What happens if you go to a person who works 7 days a week and you say to them, “You need to take Sunday off.” What’s the first thought they have? If I do that, I won’t be able to pay the bills. I mean, you think about it from the Old Testament people’s perspective. Take a year off? Are you insane? Do you know how much work goes into being an agricultural life? I mean, I used to be a dairy farmer. If you just did nothing for a year, your cows dry up. What happens to your fields? Well, the weeds overtake everything. The crops don’t yield in the same way. But what was God saying to his people? “Trust me. Just trust me. Take a year off and I will bless you. I will look after you. I will ensure that you have everything you need. My dear child, trust me.”

But it was also, it was also, and this is the other thing they knew, the Sabbath was a picture of something greater to come. You see, the people of old had entered into rest, haven’t they? They entered into the Promised Land, and it was called their rest, but it wasn’t rest. Because just like you and I, they were waiting for a greater rest to come, weren’t they? And so entering into the Sabbath was a foretaste of the greater Sabbath rest to come at the return of Christ. You see, the people of God recognized that, that as God’s covenantal people, they were to be marked by a restful trusting in their father.

And I wonder if you can see how that applies to What’s the principle here? We’re no longer under the Levitical law. We don’t have to keep a Sabbath year, nor would I suggest you do so, unless you don’t want to feed your family in a month’s time. How does this apply, this principle? Well, firstly, just like them, we are to be marked by a restful trust in God and everything. I think on a large scale, this even applies to our faith, doesn’t it? We don’t strive and work for salvation, but as believers who understand the gospel and trust in Christ, we rest for salvation. But in a particular scale, it means keeping the Sabbath. Now, the Sabbath day has changed at the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s in the New Testament. As soon as Christ was raised from the dead, he met with his people on Sunday, the day he was raised from the dead, and then a week later he met with them on Sunday again. And the New Testament believers all the way through the A- Book of Acts, they meet together on the Lord’s Day, it starts to be called, the Day of the Lord. And then when you get to the Book of Revelation, we saw it in chapter one, John is in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. All of a sudden, the Lord’s Day has shifted from Saturday to Sunday. And so now the people of God in the New Covenant continue to keep a Sabbath, but they keep it in honor of a resurrected savior, and now they rest on the first day of the week rather than the last. You see, the Old Testament people, they worked up till their rest as they waited for the coming king. But now that salvation had been won, the people of God rest on their first day of the week and then work with what remains. But it’s not just resting for me and myself, is it? It’s striking. The emphasis here is actually not on me observing the Sabbath, it’s on me facilitating everybody else also observing the Sabbath. So we will not buy or sell on the Lord’s Day, they say. When traders come in, we will not do that because we trust God to enable us to be able to buy on the other days. And so later on in the book, they’re gonna bar the doors and refuse the traders allowance in. Nehemiah is gonna threaten to beat them with sticks and rip their beards out. It gets real nasty. Why? Because they’re committed to honoring God.

Now, let me ask you, how are you doing on Sabbath observance? Now, when I say that, what I mean is, how are you doing at resting? Are you tempted to go home and mow your lawn or go home and do your groceries? Are you tempted to go home and do the things that you ordinarily do on the other 6 days when God in His goodness and fatherly care and love for you has said, “I’m giving you a whole day where you can just worship and rest, where you can be fed in your soul so that you can go out and do another 6 days of work”? You see, it’s not a burden, brothers and sisters, it’s a gift. It’s a love gift from our God so that we might be nourished and fed and refueled because God who created the universe knows that human beings need 6 days of work and one day of rest and worship, otherwise they will shrivel up and die. And there are some great examples throughout history of governments that have sought to change the work week to 12 days, as an example, and people have shriveledup because it’s not how God organized it. So let me encourage you, brothers and sisters, next week on the Lord’s Day, find ways you can rest together as a family. Find ways you can rest with the others in the church, like today. It’s a joy fellowship Sunday. It’s much easier, ’cause you don’t have to go home. You stay here and fellowship. But don’t, don’t go shopping. Spend the day worshiping. Read a book. Do something that will build up your faith. Encourage one another. Visit someone. Spend the day well so that you’re rested by faith in your God.

And so they commit themselves to be a holy people, and they commit themselves to be a restful people, but then thirdly, they commit themselves to be a generous people. This goes from verse 32 down to the end of the chapter in verse 39. We, we won’t read it again, but the, the particular commitment they take here is effectively to be a generous people that give to God’s house and to God’s workers in order to ensure that God’s worship would be m- maintained. They had a, a passion for the worship of God, which drove them to give not just directly to the temple, but also to the Levites and to the priests and to the high priest so that each part could do their thing, so that the temple of God might flourish and God’s name might be glorified. They provided for the servants of God. But notice also, they went, they went above and beyond. They were called to tithe, that was in the Old Testament, but here we find them giving wood and shekel and bread and every- And they’re going above and beyond what is required of them because they are desirous to ensure that God doesn’t have the bare minimum, that God has the best. God has the abundance of their provision. Why? Well, it’s related to the previous chapter. You remember when we were looking Or same chapter, I guess. When they wereNo, it’s the confession. Previous chapter. When they were looking at, uh, the fact that God had dealt so well with them and they, their heritage, had constantly rebelled. You w- led us through the wilderness and yet we made a golden calf. You defeated our enemies, yet we served their idols. You were gracious in provision, loving and kind at all times, and we repaid you with sin and rebellion. It’s connected to that. What are they recognizing here? They’re recognizing the words of the New Testament. “Freely you received, freely give.” You see, they recognized that by God’s graciousness, they had been able to return from Babylon, hadn’t they? They didn’t deserve it. They’d been cast out by God into Babylon, and He could have left them there to die, and He would’ve been perfectly just, but He didn’t. In His generosity, and His kindness, and His love, He lavishes mercy upon them and He brings them home. And so they recognize, “We have received so much from God. The very fact that we sit here with wood and flocks, herds, cattle, sheep, bulls, the fact that we have oil and grain and offerings, it’s all because of God’s grace, God’s goodness, God’s love in restoring us to the Promised Land again. So it’s a very small thing for me to give back.”

You see, they recognized that as the people of God, everything they had came from God, and that they should be marked by generosity in return. And it’s not hard to apply that to ourselves, is it? Now, what have you earned, brothers and sisters? What do you own in your house that did not come to you because of God the Creator? Is there anything you can truly put your hand on and say, “This exists and is in my ownership because of me”? Your very life and existence is owed to God, isn’t it? Your ability to work is a gift from God. You could’ve been born paralyzed, and you’d never da- work a day in your life. You could’ve been born, blind and deaf and dumb and, and, and unable to do anything. But God, in His goodness to you, has provided for you in a myriad of different ways. We owe God everything. And so what should we be marked Generosity. And I think we should be marked by generosity generally, shouldn’t we? N- I’m not talking about giving to the church here. I’m talking about just giving in general, that when you hear of a need, you should be quick to be generous. Why? Because it’s all God’s. He gave it all to me. It’s a small thing to give a gift to a brother or sister or to a needy neighbor, to facilitate those around us and love them and welcome them and care for them. It’s a small thing to make a meal and share or host someone in your home or give a bed to someone in need when you realize that every bed in your home is given to you by God, and every object of food in your home is there because God has lovingly given it to you.

But it does apply particularly to the house of God as well, doesn’t it? We should be generous in our tithes and offerings, not because someone has said to us, as happens in some churches that you may know of, “Give me your account details. I’ll give you a direct debit form, and we take 10% of your account, and we take 10% of your s- pay packet immediately. You don’t get an option.” It’s not because some minister’s stood at the front and said to you, “I need money,” and waved a bag around. Rather, you give to the church because you realize everything came from God and because you’re passionate for the worship of God. You’re passionate to have the Word of Christ deep and rich and a shepherd of the sheep who’s set free from the cares of the world.

And let me encourage you, praise God for how He has provided in this church. We are a small flock, and the session has consistently been amazed that the gifts and offerings have always gone up. Our numbers haven’t increased drastically, and yet, for some reason, it keeps going up. And the tithe of the tithe keeps growing, and we can give away more to other places. And random people contact us. I had a friend who’s just loosely connected with the church. He’s been here, like, maybe twice. And he just rang me up and said, “I’d like to give two and a half thousand dollars to the church.” Well, thank you. Why? “He said, “Well, I just wanna support the work.” Well, he’s got a generous heart, because he had freely received from God, and so he freely gave. And we are to be marked by that, to ensure that the worship of God’s house goes forth with strength and vigor so that we would have resources in years to come to train up new ministers, to train up students, to send them out to be preachers, as we talked about this morning, to support other church plants, to help Dargaville or whatever need might be there, that we can step into the frame and support the kingdom of God.

And so we as God’s people, just like them, we’re to be committed to being a holy people, a restful people, and a generous people.

But it’s important now to recognize that this is not meant to be a flash in the pan. You know what I mean by that? Just a, a fleeting start. You know, the, the people of God here are notthey’re not saying, “We’re gonna do this for the next week,” or, “We’ll do it for the next 7 years. When we get to the first Sabbath year, after that, we’re gonna give up.” They’re committing themselves for their life, aren’t They’re making a covenant. They didn’t put a, a time period on the covenant. They didn’t say, “We’re making a covenant for the next 6 months.” They said, “We’re doing this for life.”

And it’s important for us to realize, brothers and sisters, that we’re in the same boat. These principles apply to us till death, and in the new heavens and the new earth, because this is Christ-likeness. This is godliness.

But there’s something absolutely terrifying, not in this passage, but in the Book of Malachi. The Book of Malachi, the prophet Malachi, is around about, it’s debated, but around about one generation after Nehemiah. Now, we’re not gonna turn to it and flick through it and look at all the passages. Go home and read it. But do you know what’s really striking? The next generation, Malachi stands up and prophesies and rebukes the people because they have forsaken the house of God, they have married foreign wives, they have committed divorce, and pretty much every single one of these particulars, they’ve broken.

Does that concern you? Does that trouble you? That should trouble you, that here is a whole generation, everybody’s there, right? And the whole nation says, “We will serve the Lord,” and their children forsake the entire covenant.

Why do I raise that? The reason I raise this is because covenantal faithfulness is not individualistic. It’s me and my house. It’s me and the children, me and the grandchildren. Calvin had a very striking comment. can’t remember where he made it, but I remember reading it once. He had a very striking comment where he says, “If we do not pass on the heart of the Reformation to our children, we will lose the Reformation in 2 to 3 generations.”

Has anyone been to Geneva before? It’s a liberal wasteland. And do you know what? In 2 to 3 generations, the Reformation by and large was lost. Why? Because the Reformational people passed on the theory of the Reformation, but not the heart, and the children conducted themselves in keeping with the theory of the Reformation, and the children looked at it and said, “Hypocrisy. Legalism.” And they rejected the faith. A- and I think this is a solemn warning to us, brothers and sisters. It is not enough for me to make sure I obey the Lord. I must strive to make sure these little ones walk in the Lord, that these little ones have the same covenantal heart that you and I have, that they have the same passion for the house of God that you and I have.

And that’s when you see a covenantal community serving, not as holy people individuals, but as a holy people, as a restful people, as a generous people.

And here’s the thing, brothers and sisters, it’s actually really easy to do this when you consider what Christ has done for you. Did the Lord Jesus Christ not become sin so that you might be a holy people? He who knew no sin became sin so that you might become the righteousness of God. He became sin so that you could be a holy people. Did He not enter into unrest in this world? He left rest, didn’t He? And took on human form, and was despised and afflicted by men. You remember Him saying to the disciple, “The Son of Man has nowhere to lay down his head. I have nowhere to rest.” He would come home exhausted. What would He find? A host of people demanding His time. And what would He do? “Go home. I need sleep.” What would He do? “They are like sheep without a shepherd. I have compassion Disciples, feed them. Let’s feed them.” He entered into unrest so that you might be a restful people. And did He not give everything? He gave up everything. He who was highly exalted in the presence of God became poor so that you and I might become rich.

Consider our Lord, brothers and sisters. Consider our captain. Consider Christ the King. This is not a matter of spiritual elitism or the role for extra holy people. This is just covenantal living in the presence of our God and King.

May God grant us to live like it.

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