Nehemiah 9:16-31 – God is faithful

The Creator God has been faithful to His people since the day He called Abraham and made him and his descendants His very own. He has shown Himself not only as righteous but also merciful. Despite the multiple times they had failed Him, His loving-kindness toward them would remain. He would still pursue them relentlessly. The difficult times, He allowed them to go through, were never intended to destroy them but to bring them to the realization of His love and how much they needed Him.

Being a forgetful people the Israelites had failed Him ever so often. How often they would return to their old ways after God’s dealing. They would very quickly forget the gracious work of God’s redemption. These verses in Nehemiah 9:16-31 recall all the things the faithful God had done for them since the day He delivered them from their bondage in Egypt. But while God had proven Himself to be a gracious God repeatedly, they on their part had shown themselves to be ungrateful people just as often.

While they had left Egypt, the mentality they adopted and developed while there had never left them. They would often pine to return to the land of bondage though they were badly oppressed while they were there. They had stubbornly resisted God’s grace in so many ways even when they were unprovoked. Here we see a description of a compilation of them. They built the golden calves though told not to make God into an idol. They would provoke God and demonstrate their waywardness through the wilderness even though God unfailingly provided food and drinks for them for forty years. And for that duration, he did not allow the clothes and shoes to wear out. Through Him, they conquered great cities and possessed lands, but still, they would rebel and turn away from His law. They even killed the prophets whom God had sent to warn them. Yet in the times of their distress, they would cry to Him, and He would still graciously answer and deliver them without considering how they had spurned his gracious overtures repeatedly. God’s patience with them had been worn thin by their unfaithfulness, even then in His compassion, he never gave them up.

The loving-kindness of God is hard to comprehend. He would go to great lengths to demonstrate that. Ephesians 2:7 Paul tells us that he is so compassionately faithful “so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” And Titus 3:4-6 remind us that “…when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior….” Let us seek not to spurn His love toward us. Like the Psalmist, let us respond to Him in obedience and seek always to emulate His faithfulness!