Nehemiah - Chapter 7 + 8: Ezra Reads the Law
SERMON TRANSCRIPT
This morning, we're gonna jump through two chapters of Nehemiah. Hopefully you don't have lunch plans, and you'll be here to this... No, I'm just kidding. But Nehemiah chapter 7 and 8, the reason we're gonna do two chapters is Nehemiah chapter 7 is actually just the details of the census. Just the details of what's going on, so we're not really gonna focus in on that. We're gonna hone more in on chapter 8, but if you would, with me, I know we've prayed a lot already. If you would, just pray with me one more time before we get into God's Word. Jesus, thank you for this morning. God, we're so grateful to be here in your presence, in the presence of our family. Jesus, we are here to hear your Word. God, you have something for us today. I wholeheartedly, 100% believe that you have a Word for us this morning. So God, I pray open our hearts, open our minds, open us up to hear that this morning so that we would leave this place different than when we came in this morning. Jesus, we're here to worship you. We're here to give you praise, honor, and glory. And we are so excited to hear from your Word this morning in Nehemiah. We love you, Jesus. We thank you. Amen. Amen.
Well, in college, I really started getting into photography. And that's when I kind of bought my first camera, and I wanted the best of the best. And you probably, every week, you see Pastor Andre walking around with a camera. I'm going to take this from him this morning. And all cameras, no matter how fancy or expensive they may look, are basically the same. Every camera is—the technology is basically the same. It hasn't changed in forever. It went from film to digital, but the concept is the same. And that is that deep down inside of this fancy machine here is a sensor. And this sensor collects light. The sensor collects light. So everything that this lens does and what they call the body, there's different aspects to how much light the sensor is exposed to. So you have aperture. It means how wide the lens is. You have your shutter speed, which meant how long the barn doors are open before they close. You have ISO, which means how sensitive your sensor is to light. And everything is essentially the same. So you can have basically an old school camera, and it can take just as good pictures as a brand new, right off the shelf, top of the line, thousands and thousands of dollars equipment. You can take the exact same photo, sometimes even better photo with old equipment, if you have good light. When I started getting photography, I would go out and I would take photos, and I would just practice just walking around with my camera in my hands, just trying to learn how to take photos. And I realized quickly that it all depended on the light. You can have the best of the best, but if you don't have light, you're gonna have a bad photo. If you have really, really, really good light, but maybe you got a camera that's 10, 15, 20 years old, doesn't matter. You're gonna have a really good photo. Without the proper lighting, something just isn't right about your pictures.
And for Nehemiah and the Israelites in Jerusalem right now, everyone is getting settled in. In chapter 7, they finish the wall, they complete the job, the task, they're pumped. They did it, 52 days, they pulled it off, everybody's celebrating, and then it's kind of like, "Now what?" So Nehemiah gathers everybody together and says, "Okay, now that we're a city, we gotta act like a city." And so Nehemiah goes through and takes a census of everybody so he can kind of get an accurate count of what's going on, 'cause he's had people come to Jerusalem literally just to work on the wall. They don't even have a house yet, they haven't even been settled, maybe their family hasn't come yet, they went ahead to just build. And so Nehemiah says, "Okay, we're gonna get settled. We're gonna get settled, and we gotta have our people, we gotta have our temple workers, we have to have our priests, our Levites, our musicians, our gatekeepers, we gotta have security around the wall." And Nehemiah says, "Okay, everybody, now let's get settled. We're here, we did it, the wall's fixed. Awesome job, everybody, way to go. Now let's kind of get back to city life. We've kind of been living it out there, we've been in tents, we've been camping at our work site just to be able to hit it right at dawn." Nehemiah's like, "Get settled." So people go out and they start finding homes, and they're getting settled in their families. And everything seems to be going good, but then after a while, things just aren't right. Israel thought that if they just fixed the wall and they had the fixed temple, like everything was gonna be perfect. But they quickly began to realize that this isn't perfect. See, Jerusalem was a light to the surrounding nations, to the entire world. Jerusalem was this city, this physical presence that represented their spiritual identity. Remember Nehemiah talking about that at the beginning of the chapter of the book? And Jerusalem was this like physical manifestation, representation of God, the relationship of God with humanity, and specifically with God's chosen people, the Israelites. They were a light in the darkness. It says in Isaiah 60, verses 1 through 3, "Arise, Jerusalem, and shine like the sun. The glory of the Lord is shining on you. Other nations will be covered by darkness, but on you the light of the Lord will shine. The brightness of his presence will be with you. Nations will be drawn to your light, and the kings to the dawning of your new day." The problem with Israel, and Jerusalem specifically, the city, was they didn't have light. They didn't have any light.
See, the walls and the temple and the priests and the Levites and everybody are really representations. They're tools. They're catalysts. They're assistants to the main show, which is the light of God. And Israel thought, "Hey, if we just fix what we knew, what was broken, what we could see with our eyes what was broken, everything will go back to the way it was. God will come and dwell among us in the Holy of Holies. Like everything will just be perfect. It'll be like it was before the exile." But they didn't have light. I think for us, we can have it all in life, right? We can have the house, the car, the retirement plan. You can have the latest phone or Google Pixel, the smartphone with the latest AI technology. You can have the best TV, clothes, shoes, purse, watch. You can go on the best vacations. You can have the stock portfolio, the investments. You can have all the money in your bank account. You can have whatever you hope and desire and wish to have, and then some on top of that. But something would still be missing in your life. You'd still have just something still, this God-shaped hole inside of us that the world tells us we can fill with all this other stuff. But we would still be missing. I love what it says in Psalm. In Psalm, it says, "The Word of God," this Word, "is a lamp to our feet." It's the light to our path. Without God's Word and the light, you all be walking around, you're going to stub a toe. You're walking in darkness. You don't have the light of God. Something inside of us is missing. And for Jerusalem, there was something missing. Something just wasn't right, and something had to be done to fix it.
So it says, Nehemiah 7:73, it says, "When the seventh month came," so they've been settled now for seven months, "the Israelites had settled in their towns. All the people came together in the square before the water gate. They told Ezra, the teacher of the law," the priest, the pastor, "to bring out the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded for Israel." If we don't take a moment here and pause, we miss something really, really big. This is huge. This is huge for the Israelite people who just a short chapters ago, they had been fighting with each other. They had gone ripping each other off with loans, with exuberant interest. There was anger, hatred, cruelty, conflict. But after they get all this stuff done and they think, "Okay, this is how it's going to work, and God's going to come, and everything's going to be perfect, it's going to be great," and then there's seven months in, they're like, "Something ain't right." And they have the maturity. I don't know who was kind of the catalyst to this. It doesn't say in Scripture who started this, but the group of people came together and said, "Something's missing. We're missing something. We need to go back to the law. We need to go back to the Bible, and we need to double-check what's going on." They say, "Hey, pastor, come read us God's Word. That's pretty amazing.”
Continue on, verse 2. "So on the first day of the seven months, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, which was made of men and women and all who were able to understand. He read it aloud from daybreak till noon, as he faced the square before the water gate in the presence of the men, women, and others who could understand." God begins to move in powerful ways among the people who have gathered together to hear God's Word. I want you to hold on to that, okay? And they don't just come together for a quick 20-minute sermon, a service for about an hour, four songs, announcements, offering, and then a benny real quick, a benediction. I'll call it a benny. They don't gather together real quick and go like, "That was it. That's what they needed." No, they gather together for four to six hours of just hearing God's Word read. How small is our attention spans today? There ain't no way. If I came up this morning, I was like, "All right, we're going to read God's Word for the next four hours." You would stand up, turn around, and walk out, be like, "Peace. See you, pastor. Enjoy that, buddy. I'm getting lunch." Right? But they gather together. They begin to hear the God's Word. They open up their Bibles or their scrolls and begin to hear Scripture read to them. We have a priority here at Spring Valley for the Scripture, for the Word of God. That's why you hear it read during worship. Our sermons are Bible-based in God's Word. We make it a priority to hear Scripture being read among us every single Sunday by having the words on the screen that we do, to the Bible in the row in front of you under the chair, to having handouts ready for anybody who wants to know more, to having our teaching of God's Word for our children, for our youth. The Word of God is a top priority for us here at Spring Valley. It's one of our core values. So why? Why the Word of God? Well, we believe that this book is more than a book. We believe that God's Word is divinely inspired and infallibly written. What does that mean? Well, it's a big fancy term that means we believe that it's directly from God through man for us today. And that God's Word instructs us and it changes us.
I love what it says in 2 Timothy 3, 16. It says, "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness." There's this big term called hermeneutics, which means the study of God's Word. When we gather together and we read God's Word, something amazing happens. There's something special that happens when we collectively together as a family open up God's Word and say, "Jesus, teach us. God, give us your words, not man's words, not my neighbor's words, not my friend's words, not some words I read on social media, not some political figure words, but give me your words, God. Your words." And it's this beautiful picture of unity coming together of reading God's Word with one another. When we look throughout the Bible, there are times when people gather together to hear God's Word read. They didn't have the technology to print and to duplicate yet, and so what they had to do was they had to have somebody read the Word of God so that people could hear it. And then they could work on memorizing it. They could have it deep in their hearts. "I've hidden your Word in my heart, God, that I might not sin against you." There's something special about this reading, and when we look at Scripture, when God's people come together to read His words, something miraculous happens every single time. Every single time when they make it a priority to read God's Word together in community, God shows up. And He shows up in powerful, powerful ways, and there's nothing different here.
It says in verse 3, "All the people listened attentively to the book of the law." Another translation from the Hebrew might be, "They listened carefully." They were eager to hear. They were inclined to the Word of God. God's moving in this moment in Jerusalem. Verse 4, "Ezra, the teacher of the law," the priest, the pastor, "stood up on a high wooden platform built for the occasion." Nehemiah gets up so that he can be seen, he can be heard, and I think there's something, this beautiful illustration of just God's Word being read over the people and just like coming over them, covering over their hearts and their minds and their soul, and just God's Word just coding them in who He is. I think it's important and interesting here that God's Word is elevated. Something there we could learn right there itself, right? God's Word being elevated, a physical representation of its importance in people's lives.
Verse 5, it continues on, "Ezra opened the book, and all the people could see him because he was standing above them. And as he opened it, all the people stood up." This is not just a book. It's not just words on pages. There's something about God's Word that's different. We talked about this this morning in our huddle as all the volunteer teams come together. We were talking about how this book is different. It's different than something you could walk into Barnes & Noble and just buy off the shelf. It's different than anything you could order off Amazon. It's different than what you could go in in the most vast libraries and try to find something that could replace this. You're going to come up short 100% of the time. God's Word is special. It's powerful. It's divine. It's supernatural. And so they open up and they start reading. And this would have been traditionally a scroll that they would have opened up. And probably all the temple helpers are helping Ezra hold this up. And they just begin reading Genesis 1, verse 1, "In the beginning." And Ezra just starts reading. And it probably would have been a little laborious or tedious to have the scroll and try to move it. And then when they finished one, they hand it over and then they bring out the next one and they continue to read on. This is what they would call the original OG just scrolling. Just Ezra was just scrolling, man. And we read in this Hebrew going line by line and they had to be patient. This wasn't like they had somebody like really cool like voiceover and there was like visual effects as we hear the scripture and like the lined up so you could follow right along. The people had to, I can imagine people just their eyes closed, just like leaning in just trying to hear Ezra read the scriptures.
And I find it interesting that the people stand up. Anybody been to old school church? Yeah, you've been to old school church when we will read the word of the Lord, all rise. And everybody's like. This wasn't just a thing. This wasn't just an old school thing. I mean, this is where we get it in scripture, but the people are changing their physical presence to show reverence to the word of God. I think sometimes it's something that we've lost in church. We might call it high church where there is a physical change in our bodies when we begin, we show reverence. We go, oh man, that's the word of God. We're going to stand. We've, I've been guilty of it. We've watered it down and sometimes you don't like read all the scripture at the beginning of the sermon. And so like if we were to do this, you'd be standing up and sit down, stand up. But this is also a reason why we invite everybody to stand when we begin to worship through singing together. There's a physical change in our demeanor and our presence to go. We are worshiping God. We're not just here doing karaoke on Sunday morning together. Like we are worshiping the Lord Almighty. You never thought about that before that we just do karaoke every Sunday? It's basically what we do. If you think about it, you pull God out, we're doing karaoke. There you go. But we're worshiping God. We're changing our physical demeanor to say, Jesus, you, God, you are holy. You are deserving of our respect and our response. And so we rise to get, and it's a community thing. We get up and we stand together with one another, locked arms saying we are worshiping God. That's what the Israelites are doing. They're being moved. They're showing this reverence.
Verse 6, "Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted their hands and responded." They're starting to worship. They're getting their praise on here right now in front of the Watergate. They're like, come on, Jesus. They're like, amen, amen. And then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces on the ground. Everybody hears God's word. They stand up. They raise their hands. They start praising God. They're getting a little charismatic up in here, right? Even these old stiff Israelites, man. The good, bad, bad, bad Israelites. I just picture this, some old grumpy people. And then like they start hearing God's word and they're like, oh, I'm going to stand. I'm going to praise God. Amen, amen. I think we can raise our hands and worship, right? If the old stiff Israelites can worship God with their hands up, we can raise our hands, right? Amen. Come on. I want to hear it this morning. But they raised their hands. They're worshiping God. They're in this moment when they hear the words of God come over them, they change. Not just in their minds and in their hearts, oh, quiet, God, I'm changing. But like their physical being changes. They shift. Not only have they been standing up since sunrise till noon, they raised their hands, but they're also moved to a place of bowing down, kneeling, and putting their heads down. I assume they don't have nice, mopped concrete to bow down on. They're probably sticking their faces in some dirt, but it don't matter. Why? Because they're worshiping God Almighty. They understand what is happening. The Holy Spirit, God, is just swirling and moving in this place. But it doesn't stop there.
Verse 7, "The Levites," I'll let you read those names, "instructed the people and the law while the people were standing there. They read from the book of the law, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understand what is being read." Not only is God's Word being read, but it's also being explained. It's also being broken down by the Levites to explain to the people, this is what God's Word means. This is the original exegesis, where they're digging into God's Word, and then they're explaining what it says. This is foundational. I think in our world, in our society, we may have been to three or four Bible studies, and we've heard a dozen sermons or so, and you're like, "I got to figure it out. I understand. I got it." But I could tell, I would bet all the money in the world that even the smartest, most educated person in this moment, God is giving them supernatural understanding. Through His Word, through the Levites, God is bestowing down upon them, a little old school right there, bestowing His grace and His mercy through God's Word and through the Levites in this moment. This is where we learn the fundamentals of who God is, right here. His Word. Everything that we need is right here. And when we dig through it, sometimes it gets hard, right? Sometimes you start reading a verse, and you're like, "God, I don't like that verse. That one's telling me I'm not living right. I'll just skip over that one. I'll keep moving. I want all the nice verses, the ones that feel, just give me the tingles inside. I want the easy stuff, the fluff, the nice verses." But that's not the Bible. That's not the Bible. The Bible is filled with stuff that's great. Yes, and encouraging, uplifting, gets us through hard times, reminds us of who God is, how He's moving, how He's acting, His character. But it also reminds us of ways that we're not living right. And there's hard stuff in there, but it doesn't mean we skip over it. The Israelites dig deep into God's Word. And you see what happens here? Something happens here.
Verse 9, "The Nehemiah, the governor, Ezra, the priest, the teacher of the law, and the Levites, who were instructing to the people, said to them all, 'This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.' For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law." They found this place that they began to hear the Scripture read that they weren't living right. As they began to hear God's Word, they understand that their life did not match up with the life that God was calling them to. They were coming short of the expectation of God for His people. Scripture says this is the standard. This is God's Word. He tells us this is the standard, and you're down here. This is what they would call plumb line. This is true right here, and you're down here somewhere. Some of you are right here. Some of you are way down here. But you're not meeting the standard. And what happens? They're moved. They're weeping. They're crying. They're being convicted. They're realizing, "Man, I have so much to grow in. God loves me so much. God has this life for me, and I'm not living it. I'm wasting my life because I'm not living the way that God wants me to. The Word of God should cause us to pause. The Word of God should cause us to reflect, to take inventory of where we're at and to understand where we need to change and where we need to grow. And sometimes this comes with weeping and repentance and mourning for our shortcomings. And this is good, guys. This is good. Sometimes we don't want to go there because we're just like, "Ah, it's just too much. I don't want to go that far. I want God to just remind me of how true and faithful and He has a purpose and calling for my life." But in that, we have to change into His calling, right? We have to get in line with His purpose. This is that part of transforming. Remember 2 Timothy 3:16? His training, rebuking. "Oh, we don't like that word. Just tell me where I'm doing good, and I'll just keep doing that. Don't look over here." No, it's training in righteousness. I started working out again, praise Jesus, a little bit ago. There was one day where I was working out, and I was like, "I'll throw some air squats in." Oh. I limped around for probably three days. My daughter, who just turned one, was walking better in the house than I was. Sometimes our training hurts. I'm thankful for the bar here in the bathroom to be able to help myself up sometimes. Man, toilets are short. But it's training, and I'm getting stronger, and I have more endurance, a little bit. But I'm getting better. This is God's Word. Sometimes it causes some pain, but when we get through that, we realize, "Oh, okay. I can do this. Start doing this. Start growing. Start getting better." This is God's Word. And I love what Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites tell the people. It's like, "It's great that you realize you're sinning. It's great that you realize you're not doing good, but don't stop there." Sometimes we just get in that rut, and we're like, "I'm a horrible person. I'm a terrible Christian. I can't follow Jesus." God doesn't want that. God wants us to realize we got our shortcomings, where we're not doing good, but He wants us to move on. And everybody there tells them, "Replace your sorrow with God's goodness." Yes, be convicted. Yes, realize where you need to change. Do that. But then let the goodness of God come fill that in and wash that junk out. Let His grace and His mercy overcome us to get that out of our system so that we don't go back to it, and all we can think about is, "Man, I want more goodness of God." Right? Let the goodness of God come into your hearts, they say. Let His grace, His mercy, His love bring joy and celebration. There's a turn here in the story. Verse 10, Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food, sweet drinks, and send them to those who have nothing prepared." Share what you got with everybody. We're going to party. "This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." The Levites calmed all the people, saying, "Be still, for this is a holy day. Do not grieve." Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that have been made known to them. Sometimes in life, we just want to dismiss all of Scripture, because you're like, "It's just going to tell me how bad I am. It's just going to control my life. It's going to hold me back. It's just going to give me a bunch of rules I got to follow, and it's just going to push me down and control me." But I love the Scripture right here, because the Word of God brings life. It brings gladness. It brings hope. It brings deep, deep joy. And they celebrate together in God's Word. They bust out and start partying.
Verse 13, "On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the teacher to give attention to the words of the law." They're like, "We've been partying. We want more Word of God. We just want more of it. We want more of his goodness. We just want it. Just keep bringing it into our lives." "They found written in the law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses," going old school here, "that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month." Huh? Celebration breaks out, and then they start reading God's Word, and they realize, "We're supposed to be doing something special right now." And this is what we call the Festival of Booths, or the Festival of Tabernacles, or Sukkat. It is commanded by God through Moses in Leviticus 23, that in this time of the season of the harvest, okay, that the Israelites to celebrate and to pause, to reflect on what God had done through Exodus and beyond. And what they were to do is that sometime around the beginning of October, so where we are right here, see? God, this is so beautiful. Right here, they were to gather together their family and their crew, and they were to go out and to make tents, tabernacles, booths. And by booths, I mean like a booth at the fair, like our pop-ups out there, four poles and a covering. Super simple. But this was a camping celebration trip, and it was for them to pause their lives, their busyness, or whatever they were doing in their life, their hustle and bustle, and for an entire week, they were to take time and to live in a tent, to remember and to reflect back on how God brought them out of Egypt and brought them through the wilderness, in tents, in booths, and brought them to their promised land of where they are in Jerusalem with their city and their walls. And they realized, "We need to celebrate this. This is what we need to do right now. Now is the time." And so as they were beginning the harvest, they were focusing in and remembering what God had done and to remind them that in the midst of them right now, God was doing something special. God was moving a celebration to bring together, along with their physical harvest, God bringing together, harvesting His people as one, united for God and by God. I see each Sunday as a mini festival for us, a mini time for us to pause our lives, to come together, to reflect on what God has done, to encourage one another. Sometimes that's included in meals. We're going to have one at the end of October, like chili cook-off, let's go. Have a meal together, share food, celebrate, laugh. Just be in the presence of God with one another. And when that comes together, and when we share in God's Word with one another, our light shines collectively brighter. Our light shines brighter, and we're reminded of where the source of our light comes from. That's God's Word given and blessed, handed down to us. And we're reminded of our lightness. I don't know if it's a word, I just made it up. But we're reminded that God's Word, as it says in Psalms, is a light into our path. We're reminded of the priority of God's Word, and then he says, "When you hide it in your heart, "the light now comes into us when we accept Jesus. "The light shines in us." And that ultimately we are the light of the world. That wherever we go, we shine bright for Jesus.
Jesus actually talks about this in Matthew chapter 5. He says, "You are the light of the world." Everybody who calls on the name of Jesus, accepted Jesus in their heart, is following being a disciple. "You are the light of the world. "A town built on a hill cannot be hidden." You've been in darkness, and you can see a light just like miles and miles away, just faint in the distance. It cuts through all the darkness. "Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. "Instead, they put it on its stand, put it up high." So they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. Ezra, standing up, reading God's word, going up high, light. "And in the same way, let your lights shine before others "that they may see your good deeds "and glorify your Father in heaven." This is what we're called to. We are called to dwell on God's word, to let it penetrate our hearts, and let that light shine in us so that then we can carry that light and go out and shine with the world and where we go, to bring this light wherever we live, learn, work, and play. This is our calling. Shine your light for the world. Shine your light for God, but it starts with us in God's word. Individually, yes, but also collectively, corporately, in community. And then the more that we are in the word of God, the more the light for God can shine, amen? The more that we're in this, the more that it lights us up, and then we start shining brighter and brighter, and people in our lives start looking at us and going, "There's something different about you. "What is that? "There's something, you're not the same "as this guy over here. "You're a different kind of person. "Why is that?" A camera is only as good as its light. The world wants a picture of who God is. The word of God has to be the light in our lives to light us up so that we can show him off effectively and effectually to the world.
Let's pray. God, thank you for this morning. Jesus, we thank you for this moment in time where you moved in the hearts and the lives of Israel. And for this season, God, there was praise, there was worship, there was honor, there was celebration, there was joy. The light of Jerusalem lit up like a Christmas tree. And it showed everybody around them, inside and outside Jerusalem, who you were and who you are, God. So Jesus, I pray that we would let our light shine by getting it lit up by being in your word, to let your word penetrate us first in our hearts, and then we can take our light into the world around us. We love you, Jesus. We thank you. We praise you.