God Provides and Cares Which Demands Our Worship - Nehemiah 5-9

 Nehemiah 9:16-21 (ESV)

“But they and our fathers acted presumptuously and stiffened their neck and did not obey your commandments. They refused to obey and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them, but they stiffened their neck and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and did not forsake them. Even when they had made for themselves a golden calf and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies, you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness. The pillar of cloud to lead them in the way did not depart from them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night to light for them the way by which they should go. You gave your good Spirit to instruct them and did not withhold your manna from their mouth and gave them water for their thirst. Forty years you sustained them in the wilderness, and they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell.

Perhaps one of the greatest stories in God’s Word is what we read above.  Nehemiah, to call those who returned from exile, to worship, outlines the past.   Remember what God did in the past can be motivation for worshiping God in the present and the future.   God has given us a His love and care.  Here we read about the wandering in the desert.    It is amazing how God guided them and protected them.   Even though they rejected God and even worshiped an idol, God continued to love them and protect them.    The cloud that guided them on their journey also protected them in the desert from the hot sun.   The light that guided them at night would give them both light and warmth in the dark and cool nights.   The Holy Spirit was present among them.   He instructed them.   He gave them manna every morning.    He gave them water from rocks.   In their wilderness traveling for forty years there would be no Walmarts or Kohls to purchase clothes.  Instead God would make sure their clothes would not wear out.  All that walking each day for forty years should make their feet ache and swell.  But, not so with this nation.  An act of God was to keep their bodies in shape.   God is a God who cares for His people.  He watches over even the most minute details of our lives.   Even in our rebellion He cares for us.   Our worship is due His righteous acts toward us.