Restored: The Books of Ezra and Nehemiah | Step 6: A Healthy Dose of Confession and Repentance

One of the final things the community of returned exiles we’ve been studying in Ezra and Nehemiah do is take time to confess and repent their and their ancestors sin to God. They admit the ways they had been arrogant, stiff-necked, refused to listen, and failed to remember God’s faithfulness to them in the past. They had wanted to do things their own way, and they’d seen the consequences of that need to control their lives at the expense of trusting God and relying on his wisdom.

This is central for us as followers of Jesus, too. As he began his ministry of the kingdom of God, Jesus called people to do something similar: to repent of their need to control their own lives, admit they were ultimately lost, and trust him. This is hard for people to do, especially in a world that encourages us to believe only we truly know how to live our own lives. But when we do, we are invited into the kingdom of God and a life far better than we could ever have found on our own. Many revivals have been founded on confession and repentance, and in this passage we see why.