Nehemiah 9:7 Commentary and Bible Study

Here the subject changes slightly; it moves from one thing to another, but it still objective and describing God. ‘Thou art the LORD the God, who didst choose Abram.’ This verse is about the grace of God, his condescension and his grace, and how he stoops to Abraham. Now begins thanks for redemption and for individual salvation. But you note, as with Paul in the New Testament, and other great prayers of the Old Testament, the thanksgiving begins with the plan of redemption itself, not with my salvation. ‘I thank thee, O Lord for my salvation.’ Yes, you must do that, but you don't put yourself first. You start with God’s great plan of salvation. So the prayers here go back to the selection of Abraham, bringing him fourth out of Ur of the Chaldees, out of the pagan place where there was only spiritual darkness, and giving him a name meaning ‘father of a host’. This was the plan of God, the initiative of God. Redemption didn't start with Abraham; it started with God. And he did something through Abraham, and started to implement the plan which led ultimately to the Jewish nation, and then to Christ coming into the world through them. So this great prayer begins with redemption, and praise and thank God for his mercy on sinful man. It considers his decree in eternity past: that, following the entrance of sin into the world, the world would not be ended and mankind utterly destroyed, but there would be redemption, and the Saviour would come. One day the world will indeed be burned up and re-made, reformed, reconstituted, but not till all the elects have been gathered in: the great plan of salvation that a Saviour should suffer and die. Thank God for that. Praise and thank Christ for his part in it, and then you come to more individual things. Verse 8 hints at justification by faith alone, ‘and foundest his heart faithful before thee.’ In those words you see that Abraham came to God – and it was the work of God that brought it about – by his faith, not by his works. The great thing about Abraham was his faith; his heart was faithful: through his faith, not through his deserving. ‘And madest a covenant with him to give the land of the Canaanites’, the great type of heaven for us, the covenant of God is leading towards the possession of an eternal place, and the Canaanites are there named. At the end of the verse the righteousness of God is exalted, ‘and hast performed thy words; for thou art righteous.’ We see here a plan for prayer, counsel and advice for us about an order implicit in prayer.