We are continuing our trek toward and into confession. As I began the study for this series a while back, some words that jumped off the page at me when I reread them were these:

Nehemiah 1:6 I now pray before you day and night for the people of Israel your servants, confessing the sins of the people of Israel, which we have sinned against you. Even I and my father’s house have sinned.

What is missing? Something remarkable. What is plastered everywhere in people’s religion in our day, that is excluded from Nehemiah’s prayer?

The answer is the vast difference between inclusivity and exclusivity. Think about this.

If anyone had the right to take offense at others, wouldn’t it be those who were in captivity at the hands of others?

Nehemiah was a captive, his family torn apart – he like Daniel before him, was probably physically mutilated at the hand of his captor. His life completely altered because of the wrong doing of many people. It seemed the whole nation was at fault and thrust the captives into captivity without a thought of what would happen to those who came after them.

Governments, religious leaders, business owners, Fathers and mothers, everyone was at fault and the weight of the problem was being carried by this third generation of captives.

Nehemiah was mature and wise in his praying.

You might think that his prayer should sound like – “God, look what they did to us!” “God, we didn’t do this, why are you allowing this to happen to us?” “God, they…”

Nehemiah says – “we” “I” “my” Can we sit in that for just a minute?

Do you feel the anger and frustration welling? The injustice we experience? All of those who have cost us so much. Do you think that Nehemiah had a right to feel the same, he did. How could he do that? He seemed to identify (There is a word from our day) more with the oppressors then the oppressed. WHAT!?

It is as if Nehemiah was saying, “God we are more like the broken than we are like You.” “We are all the same.” “We are all sinful human beings needing a merciful God to act upon us.” “We cannot separate ourselves from the world, we are the world.”

Could it be that even in our salvation through Jesus Christ, even though we are transformed through His blood we still have more in common with the lost than we do with God? We are creature and He is creator.

Wow, this is going deeper than I thought, but it is important. We would like to think that we have more in common with God – but we don’t.

Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

Here is another side of this inclusive/exclusive study, Jesus bridged that gap for us so that we could include the lost in our confession and be joined in prayer together. Jesus went first by including us in His plan. The perfect God became the perfect Man and went to the cross with all of our sin.

Now we are included with Him as He included Himself with us. We are included with all who have sinned because we are perfectly joined with Jesus as we are naturally joined with the world.

Nehemiah understood this and prayed as though he himself committed the sin that cast him into captivity. WOW!

1 Timothy 1:15 (NLT) This is a trustworthy saying, and everyone should accept it: “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners”—and I am the worst of them all.

Notice carefully how Paul uses the word “am”, and not “was.”

Who does Paul identify with? He is inclusive of sinners. Changed though he may be through the blood of Jesus, Paul doesn’t leave the human race. Nor should we. Paul is in the world, not of it anymore.

Father, help us not to distance ourselves from the world except in our agreement with the sin and wickedness found in it. The people that You sent Your Son Jesus to save, let us love and identify with them the way that Jesus does. He took on the sin of the world one person at a time. He made restitution with You for our sin and now we are free from it. And yet, we are human, born of dirt, much lower than You – having more in common with the dirt we were created from, than You. How You love us and why You want us is beyond our understanding. We are so grateful and thankful for Your heart of love.

Blessings,

Pastor D