The People Confess Their Sin
9 Now on the twenty-fourth day of this month the sons of Israel assembled with fasting, in sackcloth and with dirt upon them. 2 The [a]descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners, and stood and confessed their sins and the iniquities of their fathers. 3 While they stood in their place, they read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the Lord their God. 4 Now on the Levites’ platform stood Jeshua, Bani, Kadmiel, Shebaniah, Bunni, Sherebiah, Bani and Chenani, and they cried with a loud voice to the Lord their God.
5 Then the Levites, Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah and Pethahiah, said, “Arise, bless the Lord your God forever and ever!
O may Your glorious name be blessed
And exalted above all blessing and praise!
6 “You alone are the Lord.
You have made the heavens,
The heaven of heavens with all their host,
The earth and all that is on it,
The seas and all that is in them.
You give life to all of them
And the heavenly host bows down before You.
7 “You are the Lord God,
Who chose Abram
And brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees,
And gave him the name Abraham.
8 “You found his heart faithful before You,
And made a covenant with him
To give him the land of the Canaanite,
Of the Hittite and the Amorite,
Of the Perizzite, the Jebusite and the Girgashite—
To give it to his [b]descendants.
And You have fulfilled Your promise,
For You are righteous.
Recently, our Pastor preached about the covenant with Abram (later Abraham), and how it did not depend on anything Abram could do. Unlike that promise, God also told the Israelites that if they followed His ways, that they would live long in the land of promise. But if they didn’t, they would be carried away into captivity (or worse). All of these individuals had seen and experienced that firsthand.
But when it came to giving God glory, they sang of the original promise, as it shows the mercy of God, which is what they were also experiencing. Though they had strayed from God’s law, He brought them back to the promised land, and restored their inheritance.
Just as the Israelites saw, we can always trust God to keep His promises. No matter what we do, God does not change, and we can count on Him to be faithful. Wherever we are in our lives today, we can seek Him and we will find Him.