A Look Into Nehemiah: Part 3
I would venture to guess if you asked most Christians what first comes to their minds when they think about the book of Nehemiah, they would say that a wall was built. And that would be true of course. But unless you’ve had the opportunity to study the book in greater detail, you may miss the fact that God was rebuilding more than just a wall.
The idea of restoration is a major theme in Nehemiah. As mentioned in my first post, the book of Nehemiah is about a remnant of God’s covenant people, Israel, returning from exile in Babylon back to the Promised Land in order to reestablish the Jewish community and reconstruct Jerusalem after its destruction by the Babylonians 70-ish years prior. The exile was God’s judgement against Israel for their continued disobedience and failure to keep their covenant with Him. But God wasn’t solely interested in bringing His people back so they could rebuild a wall and restore Jerusalem; He was more interested in rebuilding and restoring His covenant people, because to God, inner restoration is more important than outer restoration.
In my second post I talked about all the ways Nehemiah was a positive example of a good and faithful servant. While this was true of Nehemiah, we can’t necessarily say the same about God’s covenant people as a whole at this time. They had forsaken and rebelled against God’s commands. Because of this, God placed Nehemiah, Ezra (the priest) and other men in leadership positions in order to help the people understand they needed to repent and recommit to the God of their fathers.
One of the traits of being a good and faithful servant that I mentioned seeing in the person of Nehemiah was a desire to read and obey Scripture. Needless to say, probably the most effective way God brings about inner restoration in Christians is through the Holy Spirit convicting our hearts and minds with the living and active Word of God (Hebrews 4:12).
REALLY DESIRE THE WORD
If you are a Christian, you would probably agree that one of the most common struggles a Christian has is finding time to read his or her Bibles. If you’ve ever been a member of a small group, you know this is a frequent prayer request. As Christians, we know we should read our Bibles.
I love this quote from Charles Spurgeon:
“There is nothing like the truth of Scripture. Last, the Scriptures reveal Jesus: “They are they which testify of me” (John 5:39). No more powerful motive can be urged upon Bible readers than this: he who finds Jesus finds life, heaven, and all things. Happy is he who, searching the Bible, discovers his Savior.”
If we are honest with ourselves, one of the main reasons we don’t find time to read our Bibles is because, really, we don’t truly have a huge desire to read our Bibles. We know this because we always seem to be able to find time for the other things in our lives that we really care about.
Chapters 8-9 of Nehemiah are some of my favorite chapters in the Bible. Why? Because it’s in these beautiful pages of Scripture that we get to see a real-life picture of what it looks like for God’s people to have a renewed desire for Scripture and the lengths they will go to know and understand it.
In Neh. 8:1, as the people are in the process of rebuilding the wall and recommitting to the Lord, we are told that “all the people came together as one...and they told Ezra the teacher of the Law to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded for Israel.” The people took the initiative, and THEY told the priest to get the book they knew they were supposed to understand and obey.
Then get this. Ezra the priest brings out the Book of the Law before an assembly of men and women and he “read it aloud from daybreak til noon” and “all the people listened attentively to the Book of the Law (8:3).”
Daybreak until noon! One can even argue from the text that the people may have been standing the entire time. Most of us today, after about an hour and fifteen minutes into any given church service, if communion hasn’t even been served yet, are looking at our watches (OK, our phones) and getting a little antsy (I don’t know this from personal experience of course). Notice the people weren’t squirming in their seats or thinking about what they were going to eat for lunch that day, but they were listening “attentively.”
Psalm 19:10 tells us that God’s law, testimonies, commandments, rules, and precepts are
More to be desired are they than gold,
even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
and drippings of the honeycomb.
So, even if you’re struggling with making time to read the Word, do you at least have a desire to? Do you desire the Word more than you desire Netflix? If not, pray for a desire to read the Word! This is a prayer that lines up with God’s will for you, and therefore, I believe, a prayer God will surely answer.
THE WORD CHANGES HEARTS
We should desire to read the Scriptures for many reasons. One of those reasons is that we can trust the Holy Spirit to use the Word to convict and change our hearts to become more like Christ.
The people of Israel were greatly affected by hearing the Scriptures read out loud to them, so much so, that Nehemiah, Ezra and the other priests had to tell the people not to mourn or weep because “all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law (8:9).” The leaders even had to “calm the people (8:11)” and tell them to “not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength (8:10).” Have you ever been so convicted by the Word that it grieved you, making you mourn and weep out loud over your sin?
After the people were exhorted that the joy of the LORD was their strength, 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 had been made known to them (8:12).”
Reading and understanding Scripture brings both great conviction AND great joy. And great conviction and great joy, together, bring about great change. Charles Spurgeon said, “The truth is the sanctifier, and if we do not hear or read the truth, we will not grow in sanctification.” Scripture changes us by reviving our souls, making wise the simple, rejoicing the heart and enlightening the eyes (Psalm 19:7-8), just to name a few.
CHANGED HEARTS ARE DOING HEARTS
Hearts that are truly changed by Scripture are hearts that desire to put their convictions into action. Having Scripture opened and read convicted the hearts of the people so much that they immediately started obeying what they heard and were taught. The people learned about an appointed festival they were to carry out in that exact month, so they started making preparations (8:13-18). The result of their obedience was that “their joy was very great (8:17).” So not only does reading and understanding the Word bring joy, but so does obeying it.
In chapter 9 we see more obedience to God’s Word as the people fast, separate themselves from foreigners, and confess their sins as well as the sins of their ancestors. There again they showed their renewed desire and recommitment to God’s ways as “They stood where they were and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for a quarter of the day, and spent another quarter in confession and in worshipping the LORD their God (9:2-3).”
The priests then led the gathered assembly in corporate repentance and all the people recommitted together and agreed to faithfully follow the LORD and obey “carefully” all the “commands, regulations and decrees of the LORD our Lord (10:29).”
This is the key. Do your convictions turn into active obedience?
“But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”-James 1:22
“He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it.”
-Luke 11:28
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock.”-Matthew 7:24
For me, personally, this is where I struggle the most. I don’t struggle to find time to read, but I struggle with actually obeying what I read and following through on my convictions. This is where I need a lot of help from the Holy Spirit!
Where do you struggle? Or maybe the better question is...in what ways do you need to recommit to God?
WE NEED THE WORD
Towards the end of the book of Nehemiah, we see the obvious imperfection of the people. Nehemiah leaves town for a little while, and the last chapter of the book ends on a somewhat dire note as we learn that some of the people struggled in their continued obedience and fell back into old, sinful ways. This reflects the up and down path of progressive sanctification that all believers know too well because, like the Israelites, we all fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:22) and won’t live perfectly sinless lives until we are in Heaven.
For believers, it’s important to remember that inner restoration is Spirit-empowered and Spirit-led. And the fact that we need inner restoration points to our need for Jesus. In the end, we need the Word (John 1:1) to change us by His Word.