Nehemiah 1:8-10 English Standard Version (ESV)
8 Remember the word that you commanded your servant Moses, saying, ‘If you are unfaithful, I will scatter you among the peoples, 9 but if you return to me and keep my commandments and do them, though your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there I will gather them and bring them to the place that I have chosen, to make my name dwell there.’ 10 They are your servants and your people, whom you have redeemed by your great power and by your strong hand.
In Nehemiah’s prayer he asks God to remember what God commanded Moses. Immediately after recalling those words Nehemiah proclaims that these are His redeemed people. Now we are in the church age and have a far better witness of His redemption power. Jesus Christ has redeemed us by faith in His work on the Cross.
So this issue still remains about returning to God by promise. How do we return to a place we have never been before? The wilderness tribes followed God in the cloud by day and the fire by night. They had a sure guide. They also had Moses who spoke to God face to face as if God were a man.
Now having spiritual ears and eyes we walk by faith. It is not as clear for us as it was in the days of the Exodus. The children of the Exodus never entered into the promise of God but we did. Christ is the promise and God has returned to us by great power and His strong hand.
What do we know about the One who abides in us? Nehemiah had the ancient scrolls to know who God was and what God said. We have the completed works in order to not only know who God was and what God said but we have the Holy Spirit to tell us who God is and what He says to us today and tomorrow.
Accept that God does not changed. We do.