06 Becoming People of the Book: What Nehemiah Teaches About Revival (Nehemiah 7-8)

Speaker: Krisan Marotta, welcoming you to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. This is our series on the Old Testament book of Nehemiah. It's the sixth talk in our series, and we'll be covering chapters seven and eight. You can find links to everything mentioned in the talk by going to our website, wednesdayintheword.com slash Nehemiah 6. Glad to have you along. Krisan Marotta: Good morning again, then. We are in um chapters seven and eight today. Is anybody interested in genealogy? Anybody? My dad has in his retirement gotten very interested in genealogy, and he spends hours and hours with this family tree maker. And this is one of the his things he sent me. This is my mother's side of the family. And it traces the descendants of this man. Oh, I had to bring the picture because I like it so much. This is Bill Bishop, William Bishop, and he was the chief of police in Springfield, Missouri in 1898. And he was also my great-great-grandfather. And this is his picture, you see, he's wearing his chief of police badge. And somehow, out of all the descendants, I got the badge. I ended up with it. So I had it restored a few years ago at a jeweler's, and they cleaned it up and put this together. So he was chief of police in Missouri at the time of Jesse James. How do you like that? My claim to fame. So this is him up here on the chart. And this goes down to my children. Oops, I keep hitting the mic, which is over here somewhere. So roughly, let's see. He was born in uh 1862, and my son was born in 1988, so you've got a little over a hundred years of descendants going on. And I bring that up because what we have in chapter 7 is a genealogy of the people who came back from exile. So the first exiles were from the northern kingdom went, uh were taken by Assyria in 722, and then the southern kingdom fell in 526 BC, and we're now at approximately 446 BC, or it's about 80 years later. So this is not too far off. If you went, if you locked off one generation, you'd probably have about 80 years of a family tree. And uh let me just review where we are in the book. Nehemiah has returned from Persia to help rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He's found extensive rubble and debris and broken-hearted people who've lost their faith. And he's motivated them to re to build the wall, and now we're at the point where the wall is finished. And what we get in chapter 7 is a list of all the families of the, what would you call them, the repatriates, the people that came back in their origins. And the question I want to ask is, why would he include this list of names? Nehemiah was a governor, so he was probably used to keeping records for the Persian king. So it could just be this was part of his training of keeping records. But then the question is, why did he include these records and not some of the others? I mean, there are probably lots of lists and documents he could have included. Why would he include the names? So turn to chapter seven, and let me start with um where are we going to go to? One through five. Now when the wall had been built, and I had set up the doors, and the gatekeepers, the singers, and the Levites had been appointed, I gave my brother Hanai and Haniah, the governor of the castle, charge over Jerusalem, for he was more faithful and god-fearing, a more faithful and god-fearing man than many. And I said to them, Let not the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot, and while they are still standing guard, let them shut and bar the doors, appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, some at their guard posts, and some in front of their own homes. The city was wide and large, but the people within it were few, and no houses had been rebuilt. Then my God put it into my heart to assemble the nobles and the officials and the people to be enrolled by genealogy. And I found the book of genealogy of those who came up at first, and I found written in it, and then there's this long list of people. Skip down to verse 66. The whole assembly together was 42,360, besides their male and female servants, of whom there were 7,337, and they had 245 singers, male and female, the horses were 736, their mules 245, their camels 435, and their donkeys 6,720. And then at the very end, he says, When the seven month came, uh the people of Israel were in their towns. So what you have is this whole list of people that came back. And think about what it took to compile this list. My father has spent thousands and thousands of hours to get this list together. And this is just my mother's side of the family. He's done his, and he has photographs, marriage certificates, birth certificates, uh, computer records. He uh my parents used to live in Salt Lake City, so I don't know if you know the Mormons have this huge database, computerized database that's open to the public. It's like this monster library, and you can go in and use their computers, and they have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of records you can search through. Plus, you can go and get newspapers, you know, and on microfish, and they have like births announcements and death announcements. So he's got all this information available, and it's taken him, I don't know how many hours he loves it. It's a hobby for him, but it's taken him thousands of hours to do one little family. And um, you know, he has people he can talk to, he calls, he's called everybody that's you know, distant cousins and and anybody we were vaguely related to and asked them for their information. And what did me and Maya have? Nothing. I mean, they had no photographs, they had no written records. If they had like any scrolls or tablets or papyrus or that kind of thing, it would have been lost when they went into exile. None of that would probably have been taken with them. So it would have either been destroyed or left behind. And they didn't have, you know, government-issued social security numbers, so you could uniquely identify each person. They didn't have any, you know, computer databases or records or libraries, and remember they often repeated family names, so you'd have fathers and sons and grandfathers named after each other, which would have made the task even more difficult and confusing. And yet, when he goes through this list, he says only two families, it's noted in verse 61 and 64, only two families were unable to prove or trace back their Jewish history. So what does that tell us? I think the main point of this is that God is a God of individuals and details. That there were 42,000 people that returned from exile, and they were not just this nameless mass of uh Israelites or or just a tribe of people. They were individuals whom God cared for and allowed them to keep their family identity even through all those years of exile. And I don't know how they did it. I don't know where if it must have been an oral tradition in some way. But even during the exile, it shows God did not abandon them. He knew each one of them by name. He did not let them lose their connection with their past, even though they were dragged off into this foreign land. And he kept, he let them still remain known that they were his chosen people, they still had a calling, they still had a place in his family, and so the details of their family history and their role in that line was not lost. So I think in some ways we ought to chapter 7 as this monument to God's care and God's calling, and how he takes care of us down to the individual details so that 42,000 people could come back from exile and know where they came from, know who their father was and their father's father and their mother's father and so on. Let me just make a couple other observations. I'm not going to go through all the list of names before we move on to chapter 8. But as an aside, we have a list of names of people who were carted off into exile. And sometime when you're, you know, it's a rainy Saturday and you don't have anything else to do, look at the names of the people that left and then compare them to the names here of the people that came back and how they translate. Because it's very interesting. The names of the people that left were things like the strength of my hand is great. The names of the people that came back are God is a merciful God, when you translate them. And you see that pattern repeated over and over, which is kind of um not uniformly, it's not a hundred percent, but there are a lot awful lot of names that translate uh kind of prideful and self-righteous of the people who left versus the people who came back. So it's very anyway, that's another fun things to do on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Okay. Um let me make a couple of other observations before we move on. Notice chapter two. I put in charge of Jerusalem my brother Hanai, along with Hanaya, the commander of the citadel. Oh, I switched translations on you. Because he was a man of integrity and feared God more than most men do. That's another note on leadership. Nehemiah puts his brother in charge, and some people think, uh-oh, nepotism. But he tells us why. He says, because he feared God more than most people. And that's, I think, probably the supreme qualification we want to look for when we're picking leaders. Um, you know, we tend to nominate for elders and deacons people who are successful businessmen and would bring expertise from their specific area, like finance or construction or business or whatever, and that's good actually. I'm not I'm not putting that down. But we don't want to overlook the fact that there may be people who are, I don't know, gas station attendants who are men of integrity and who fear God more than others. So we tend to get caught up in the way the world measures status, and we want to look at how God measures, and often he measures who's following me. Now, I'm not saying that people who are successful businessmen do not also have a heart for God. So don't that would rule my husband out right there, and he's an elder and a businessman, so I'm I'm not I just want to say we need to look at education is not the only qualification, and from the imbias point of view, look for the people who are fearing God. Okay, one more observation. In verse three, he tells them about opening window, open, and close the gates and setting up the guards, and then he notes in four, there were few people in the city and the houses had not been rebuilt. So that raises the question: what are they guarding? Why would he set up all these guards and nobody's living there? They're not guarding their homes. They haven't been rebuilt yet. So, what's so important that they they are setting up all these guards? I was thinking about this and trying to figure it out, and I happened to hear Rush Limbaugh tell the story of a trip he went on to Jerusalem, and it was about, I don't know, 93 or 95. And during part of the tour, he met a 21-year-old Israeli soldier who was on guard duty, and he's standing, they were standing up on this hill, and Russ began talking to the soldier and asked him why he was doing what he did, and the soldier stood there and he said, he pointed to the various points of the compass and said, See, that's whatever country this is, they're trying to kill us, and this country is out to get us, and this country would like to see us wiped off the map. And then he pointed south and he said, That's my house, right there. So from my his house he could see borders of other countries that would like nothing more than to wipe Israel off the map. And he said, That's why I'm standing guard. I can from where I live, I can see four nations that want to kill me and my family. And it strikes me, not much has changed since Nehemiah's time. The Jews in his time were surrounded by people who wanted to wipe out Jerusalem, and uh there's not much difference. So, what are they guarding if their homes aren't there? Um they had a temple, and that's one possibility. They had rebuilt a temple during the time it's recorded in the story of Haggai, and it's not this wonder, wonderful, splendid temple that was there in the time of Solomon, but it was a temple. And yet no one lives there. I think what they're guarding now is their identity as a people, that they have been used by God and called by God, and they've been brought back to their land, and this is their homeland, and it's their identity as the people of God. And we're gonna see as we go into chapter eight why I think that, that um that that's what they're they're guarding their place as the people of God, essentially. So, chapter eight, this is one of my favorite chapters in the book, um, it records a revival, and it's a remarkable occasion because there's this kind of spontaneous overflow of people wanting to know God and to learn more about God. I've often wondered what it would be like, you know, to win the Pulitzer Prize, or if you were an actor to receive an Oscar, or, you know, the Medal of Honor, the Congressional Medal of Freedom, or something, or maybe you know, be on a soccer team that wins the World Cup. What is it like if you, whatever field you're in or profession or hobby, you can reach the pinnacle of it? Um, I think those must be the high points. And I think for a Bible teacher, chapter 8 is the is Oscar night. This is what it must be. This is a day you'd remember the rest of your life. This is kind of the response every teacher wants to see. So, you know, it's kind of the Pulitzer Prize for teachers. If you'd have this whole community drawn together and they say, Teach us the Bible. And we get to meet Ezra now for the first time. He's probably been here all along during this process, but this is the first time we have him recorded in the story. So let me just introduce you to him. I'm going to read from Ezra chapter 7, 6, uh, chapter 7, verse 6. Then Ezra came up from Babylon. He was a teacher well versed in the law of Moses, which the Lord, the God of Israel, had given. The king granted him everything he had asked, for the hand of the Lord his God was on him. So the first time we meet him, we learn he's well versed in the law, and the hand of God is on him. Some of the Israelites, including priests, Levites, singers, gatekeepers, and temple servants, also came to Jerusalem in the seventh year of King Artaxerxes. Ezra arrived in Jerusalem in the fifth month of the seventh year of the king. He began his journey from Babylon on the first day of the first month, and he arrived in Jerusalem on the first day of the fifth month. For the gracious hand of his God was on him, twice we're told that. For Ezra devoted himself to the study and observance of the law of God and to teaching its decrees and laws in Israel. So, twice we're told God's hand is on him, twice we're told he he devotes himself to the study of the law. So where Nehemiah was a governor and an administrator, Nehemiah was a priest or a scribe. He was a student of God's word. And I suspect from what we know of him, he probably Nehemiah probably had the more charismatic personality of a leader. Nehemiah probably had the more quiet, introverted personality of a kind of professor or an academic. But for Ezra, I think chapter 8 must have been Pulitzer Prize night for him. I mean, if you're a Bible teacher, it doesn't get any better than this, to have everybody in the whole community come and say, Teach us, and teach us for hours. And they built a special platform for him and asked him to teach hour after hour after hour. Okay, so let's read chapter 8, verses 1 through 8, and notice how many times the word understand or learn shows up. It's very anxious, understand, instructed. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate, and they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they had heard on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate, from early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and the women, and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for this purpose, and beside him stood Tom Dickenherry, and on his right hand, and on his left hand Bill, Paul, and Peter. I'm not going to try to pronounce all those names. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it, the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. And then we have another list of the Levites who helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. They read from the book, from the law of God, clearly, and they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading. So what you have here is now the walls are done, and they say, We want to learn about this God, and they build this special platform for Ezra, and they all stand in the square for hours as he reads. So it was a revival, but I think it was a revival that came from the hand of God. There was no indication that Nehemiah or Ezra or anyone tried to, you know, whip this up or bring it about. It was something that seemed to come from the people. So they assemble and say, ask, they ask Ezra to teach. So I want to make a couple of observations about revivals. The first one I think is the one I just said, revivals are a gift from God. When they happen, they happen, and they come from God moving in people's hearts and minds. And I'm not sure there's anything we can do to reproduce them. We can't, you know, there's no perfect circumstances that we can lay down that will guarantee God will give us a revival. Notice it says there were men and women and all who were able to understand. Implies they were all ages. Anyone who was old enough to begin to listen and understand was there. If it had been a formal learning environment, the men and women would have been separated from each other, but it looks like he just brought them here, young and old, both genders, all mixed together to learn. And they have this passionate understanding. Notice how many times it says, in two and three, seven, eight, and twelve, we're told they wanted to understand, they wanted to know, they wanted to be instructed, and they wanted the meaning. So it's not just learning to learn, it's learning because they genuinely want to understand. Okay. And notice from chapter seven, we know the city's been rebuilt, but it's not alive yet. The walls are up, the gates are hung, there's something there, but there's no homes yet, there's no people living there. So I think God is now beginning the prom process of bringing the people back. He starts with a revival, galvanizing them to learn more about them, and then they will move back in and repopulate the city. So it's interesting to see where we've come with the people. When we first, when Nehemiah comes back in chapter 2 and we first see them, the glimpse we get of the people that were living there is despair and brokenness. And they're repeating the words of their enemies of we can't do it, and the task is overwhelming, and it's too hard. And there we kind of get this picture of a broken people with broken hearts and a broken faith who think, oh, my efforts are too feeble, there's nothing I can do, God's forgotten me. There's no we have no city, we have no walls, we have no place. And now we see them moved from that kind of despair to this kind of joyous celebration of we want to know God, we've accomplished this great work by the gracious hand of God, and we want to learn more about Him. So you have the rubble cleared, the walls are built, the openings are closed, the gates are hung, the locks are in place, the guards are there, they have leaders, and now they've they've seen this great work and they say, We want to know the God behind this. Okay, why? That's the interesting question. Why would that be the response? I think one thing we can learn is that they long for God because they've been used by Him. They stepped out and said, I'm gonna do what I think God is calling me to do, and that produced in them a greater desire to learn and to know their God. And I think that's something we can learn from. If you're feeling like, oh, God is so far away, he's forgotten me, I'm just going through the motions of life, and it's you know, there's nothing, you've kind of lost that spark. Step out and just do what you think God is calling to. Pretend, you know. Do what you think is right, and I think the more you step out in that, the more God will bring back that desire. So God used them and made them part of his plan, and that left them wanting more. That left them, now they've been his servants, now they wanted to be his worshipers. So they'd been used by him, and now they wanted to see his face, if you will. And I think that pattern is repeated. When we are used by God, then we want to know him more. So when we exercise our gifts, I think it produces in us a longing for the author of those gifts. So the people assembled as one man and they call it. Ezra teaches the Bible, and this I think is what they're guarding. They don't have homes in there yet, but they have the law. They have this place as God's people, and that's what they're protecting. They don't want Jerusalem to be overrun again because they don't want to lose this chance to learn from God and to learn about his law. And it's interesting, at this point, Israel becomes a people of the book or the Torah. Most scholars look back at the history of Israel and say this was the turning point. That before this time, Israel was marked by a people who had a temple. And that's where they met God, and that were the so that's where they worshipped God. But at this point, they become a people of the Torah, a people of the law, and the scrolls, the law become the most important thing to them. And most commentators, if you look back, will s will point to this chapter of Nehemiah and say, this is where they changed. And it's interesting they had a temple. So it wasn't the great splendid temple of Solomon's Day, but they had a temple, but they didn't go there for this reading. They go to not even to the temple court. Instead, they go to the Watergate, which would have been one of the kind of mundane centers of daily life. Everybody had to go to the watergate. That's where the water was. So when now you see them when they're hungering for God, they don't go to the temple, they go to the book, and that marks a change, I think, in the history of Israel. And this reading and explaining goes on for days. All right, I think I said all that. And notice the temple that's there in Nehemiah's day will be torn down again. It will be raised by the Romans. But they will never lose the law. God never takes that away from them. From this, from all through their history, they will lose the temple, but they will never lose the Old Testament or the books of the law. And that's what marks them. So, and that's what they're but their desire is not just to know the Bible as the Bible for some academic pursuit. I think they really want to know its author. So that's why they say over and over again, we want to understand, make it clear, give us the meaning. They want it explained to them. Now, I want to look at some of the kind of ideas we have, some conventional wisdom of our day that I think is refuted by this passage. And conventional wisdom, you know, is kind of a flighty thing, it turns over every few years. You know, whether it's politics or government or cultural affairs, we have these ideas of how things ought to be done and how they work. You know, and the latest poll then overturns that and we s run some other direction. Um but I think there's some things that we take for granted that this text challenges. So the first one, I'll call myth number one, is the Bible is too hard to understand. Everybody thinks, oh, Old Testament, particularly too old, too different, we can't get it, the culture's too different. Um so we have all these talks, you can read all these articles about how do we reach, you know, Generation X and Generation Y, and all the ones that came after that, and you know, everybody says, oh, we need multimedia, you know, informal kind of 30-second sound bites, and we want to slip in the Bible kind of in the back door. Um, but you can't just teach from the book because it's too old, too dry, and no one would understand it. But think about the day, the Jews here at this day. They were not biblically literate. They had not grown up with the Bible because they'd grown up in exile. Most of them were not raised Jewish openly Jewish, so they wouldn't have had the traditions. And later on, we're going to be told that they required translators. They didn't understand Hebrew. So for them, the Bible was a thousand years old. It was in a language they didn't know, in a culture they no longer had because they'd grown up in exile. They required translators, and many of them are hearing it for the first time when Ezra teaches it. And yet they are touched by what they hear. It's clear that both Ezra and the others in the crowd helped them understand and made it known, and they could receive the words and understand them and apply them. So I think we can learn from that because we think, oh, the Bible's too old for us. Yet Nehemiah took place, what, 2,000 years ago? I don't know how long, 450 BC, so about 2,500 years ago. How could we learn anything from Nehemiah? It's this, you know, crusty ancient kind of story of some Jews who are long since dead in a temple and a wall that's already turned to rubble. So how could we possibly learn anything from that? Well, look at how much we've learned, and there's even more to come. And I think the Jews of Nehemiah's Day were in the same place because Abraham was a thousand or so, eighteen hundred years before them. It was all old to ancient history in a language they didn't understand. So we can't understand it. Yes, sometimes it takes some work and some study, but it's not. God makes the main events clear. You can get the gospel. That's not obscure. There may be some obscure passages, but the basic message of redemption and resurrection and the story of Jesus are pretty clear. Okay. The other thing to notice from this is notice in verse 2, Ezra praise the Lord, the great God, and all the people lifted up their hands and responded, Amen. I think the other myth we have today is that there's one physical expression of worship. You know, there's one best. And we disagree what it is. Some people, um, you know, we we debate, should you stand, should you sit, should you raise your hands, should you kneel, should you bow down, or fall on your face, should you have lots of physical activity or no physical activity? And um some people say, oh, well, you ought to dance before the Lord, and others say, no, you ought to be quiet before the Lord. What do you do? Notice in this text we see everything. The people start out seated on the ground, then Ezra steps up before them and they and begins to read and they stand up. Um, and by the way, there are churches that always stand when the when the word of God is read. It comes from this passage. They're basing it on this text, this tradition that they stood when when the word of God was read, and so churches have continued that. So we see them seated, we see them standing, we see them raising their hands, we see them bowing down and putting their faces on the grounds, and at one point it suggested they're lying prostrate. So you kind of see everything in this text. Um and I think you could make a case that there isn't one right response, that um we ought to respond as God leads us. Notice none of it seems to be coerced. There's no indication that it was planned or that orchestrated by the Levites or by Ezra, the people were acting because they were moved by God. Um and I think we can learn from that that God doesn't have a favorite way for us to act and worship. And the issue is is it a genuine response of our heart? Go for it. So I think we ought to be generous with each other and not judge and say, oh, that person never raises their hands and they ought to, or oh, that person raises their hands too much and they shouldn't. But just say, God is doing whatever he's doing, and if that's their genuine response to worship, then amen. And be generous with each other. Okay, so the Bible is not too hard to understand. There is no one best physical expression for worship. The third one is that we have to have the right kind of music present for worship. That's kind of taken as for granted today. If you ask most people what is worship, they'll give you some definition that involves music. Now, you certainly can have worship with music. In fact, when we get to chapter 12, we're going to see an incredibly worshipful event that has only music. There's no teaching whatsoever. But here in chapter 8, we have this incredible picture of worship, and there's no music whatsoever. So I think we ought to be open to the fact that mus worship can happen without music. And here you have people, they're all coming together, they're outside, they're in the hot sun, probably, they're listening while Ezra's teaching, and you have this overwhelmingly passionate response to God. We're told how joyful they are, and there's this electrifying response. So, now I'm all for music. I'm musically challenged, I'll admit. So you don't want to hear me sing, but I love to hear other people sing, and um I think we would be fools if we didn't think that God used music. In fact, oh, is Courtney here? I'm gonna get in trouble here. I have this uh don't tell Greg. Well, actually you can tell him, but don't let him take it away. I have in my possession this MP3 of Greg Thompson singing Jesus Lord of Life and Glory. And I it's kind of I wonder how many people have it, because I think Greg made this. It's just him very simple and a guitar and and you know, no fancy arrangements or anything. And I think he recorded it for Dorian to to teach this brand new song to Dorian, and somehow it was on the computer, right? So somebody got it from Dorian, who got it from somebody else, who got it from somebody else, and my husband got it, and he said, Oh, you have to listen to this, this is so great. And I everyone who hears it, I think, says, This is this is special, I don't want to delete this. So about every day, you know, when I am having a bad day, I I put this on my computer and I listened to Greg singing the song, and it's just so soothing, and the words are so wonderful, and and it's oh see, Greg doesn't even know probably that this song is like going with osmosis through the church. Um, God can use you in ways you don't even re no, he probably thought he was just making this recording so Dorian could have the chords or whatever, and he didn't know that all these people would be blessed by it. So uh all that is to say, music can be a wonderful, worshipful experience, um, but it's not required. We can have worship without it. And before we start debating, you know, we have to have drums, or we can't have drums, or we have to do choruses, or no, we have to do hymns, or we have to do uh folk tunes, or no, we have, you know, we debate what kind of music is best and right, realize we can have all kinds. So we have to have something to offend everybody with our worship style. Um okay, the other myth I think we see in here is that Christians are a miserable lot. You know, that's how Christians are always portrayed in Hollywood. Look at um verse nine. Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the pri the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them, The day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep, for the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law. Nehemiah said, Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. The Levites calmed all the people, staying, Be still, for this is a sacred day, do not grieve. Then all the people went away to eat and drink, and to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they understood the words that had been made known to them. So the response, the initial response, is the grieving over your sin and the ways we've we have failed, and yet the ending response is this incredible joy based on what God has done for us and the story of the gospel. So a lot of people think, you know, biblical Christianity, that they're just a joyless bunch, you know, we have to go stamp out any kind of fun and any kind of uh anything that's seems exciting and take all that out. And yet I think what we see from the Bible is there ought to be this great response of joy based on the story. Have you ever seen uh the movie Amistad? It there's a particularly interesting scene where it's the story of a group of Africans who rebel on a slave ship and then they take over the ship, and so when they arrive in young America, they are essentially in charge and free. And and what do we do with now these people who were supposed to be slaves but who arrive in charge? But they don't speak the language and they don't know what's going on in the courts. And throughout the movie, there's this group of Christians who are always dressed in black and they're always frowning, and they're always, you know, looking dour and like they're gonna strike down the Africans, you know, for some reason. And the Africans refer to them in their own language as the miserable people. And that's Hollywood's impression, I think, of what Christianity is, and it's just wrong. It is not Christians are not kind of this sad huddled group that tries to stamp out all enthusiasm, but we ought to be the exact opposite of having the only real and lasting joy that comes from understanding who God is and what he's done for us. And I think if we understand the words of Scripture, then we hear that great news, then we respond with this kind of infectious, lasting joy that doesn't get wiped out based on your circumstances or you know how bad the day can be. So the story doesn't end with our guilt. Once we understand the whole story, they go away joyful because they understand. Okay. All right, let's go to the last part of this. 813. On the second day of the month, the heads of all the families, along with the priests and the Levites, gathered around Ezra the scribe to give attention to the words of the law. I think what's probably going on here is Ezra realizes he can't teach everybody, the Levites can't teach everybody, so they are now teaching the heads of the families who will spread out into the community and continue the teaching. So this is kind of a training the trainer to train, and so on. And so, particularly since some people might have different dialects or different languages, he's teaching the heads of the families who will then spread out and teach the rest of the people. Okay. So verse 14, they found written in the law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in booths during the feasts of the seven months, and that they should proclaim this word and spread it throughout their towns and in Jerusalem. Go out into the hill country and bring back branches from olive and wild olive trees, and from myrtle, palms, and shade trees, to make booths, as it is written. So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves booths on their roofs and in their courtyards, and in the courts of the house of God, and in the square by the water gate, and the one by the gate of Ephraim, and the whole company that had returned from exile built booths and lived in them. From the days of Joshua, son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this, and their joy was great, and I think they hadn't celebrated it with such great joy is the implication there. Day after day, from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the book of the law of God. They celebrated the feast for seven days, and on the eighth day, in accordance with the regulation, there was an assembly. There's wonderful irony here, I think. They've rebuilt the city, they've rebuilt the walls, and what's the first thing they do? They build tents. Essentially. God says, hmm, look, it's the feast of booths. So they build booths. Let me just um if you don't know what that feast was, this is from Leviticus 23, where he sets uh sets up this uh festival. Basically, it was to celebrate, well, here let me just read it. Leviticus 23, verse 39. So beginning with the fifteenth month of the seventh day, after you have gathered the crops of the land, celebrate the festival of the Lord for seven days. But the first day is a day of rest, and the eighth day is also a day of rest. On the first day you are to take choice fruit from the trees and palm fronds, leapy branches and poplars, and rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. Celebrate this as a festival to the Lord for seven days each year. This is to be a lasting ordinance as for the generations to come. Celebrate it in the seventh month. Live in booths for seven days. And then here's the reason: all native-born Israelites are to live in booths, so that your descendants will know that I have the Israelites live in booths when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. So you have this remarkable juxtaposition that for the first time in two or three generations, the walls of Jerusalem are standing, the city has protection, the walls are up, the gates are hung, and they might have a right to say to themselves, Ah, we're home again, this is our land. And what does God say? Remember, this is not your home. You're living in booths. I brought you out of the land of Egypt, I brought you back from exile, but this is not the final destination. Don't count on the walls, count on the God behind the walls. Don't count on your houses, don't count on this life, count on the God who is your God. So, if you think about it, the city must have looked really silly to have these great walls and then lots of little kind of leafy structured tent things all over the city. It must you wonder what their enemies will, you know, they probably looked over the walls and thought, what are they doing? Um, because essentially they're camping out and they're living in this like tent in situation for seven days. And I think the what God is teaching them is don't count on the walls. Yes, you built the walls, it was a great work, he was behind it, but count on the God that is behind it, because that's your eternal home, not the city that you've just built. So the Feast of Booth took place after the harvest. It was the time when people would have been kind of naturally full of thankfulness and gladness and expectancy because all the hard work of planting and sowing was over, the harvest was done. And then you have the parallel here of the hard work of rebuilding the walls is over. They just like the work of the harvest, now the wall rebuilding is over, and it's evidence of God's providence and his care for them, and they've rediscovered their God and they're coming to know him. So the tents were to remind them that they were slaves and God redeemed them. And the harvest is over, but it's God who blessed the harvest, and now in Nehemiah's day the wall is up, but it is God who fought for them. The city is restored, but it's not the final city. It's not the city that God is ultimately going to give his people. Um, and this I think was one of the most joyous of the feasts, but it's a deeper joy saying, there's a deeper joy coming. All right, let me wrap up so we have time for announcements. Just a couple of conclusions. What should we learn about all this? I think the biggest lesson from chapter eight is if you want to know God, go to his book. And that's where the people went. Um in a short time they've gone from discouragement and sorrow and hopelessness to becoming a community of people who are learning to be committed to each other. They've accomplished this incredible work that they thought was impossible, and now they want to know God, and if you want to know him, you have to read what he wrote. And they went to the Bible that they had in order to find him, and I think that's what we ought to learn as well. Now, it's not the only place he can be discovered, but it is one of the best places. So if you're feeling like, oh, there's, you know, how do I get God back into my life? How do I serve him or want to be used in some kind of powerful way, go to his book and find him there. Um then I think the answer the second thing is that will bring us joy. Now, it's not necessarily feeling happy every day, but there is the comfort of knowing that no matter what God is in control, and that no matter how crazy life gets or how hard or how painful or how many things go wrong, the message of the scriptures is this may be the dark night of the soul, but there will be joy in the morning. There will be a day when God will wipe away every tear and every wrong will be made right, and that we see glimpses of it now, we see tastes of it now, but the full installment is yet to come. And that can produce the great kind of contentment or at least acceptance of all the the day to day kind of wear and tear on our faith that we go through.