God’s Word Forms God’s People

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Introduction

Have you ever been around an important person whose joy was contagious, a person who loved you and told you so?

When I was in college I worked at a place called Kanakuk, a non-denominational Christian sports and adventure camp for kids. The place had zip-lines and ball fields, jet-skis and motorboats. It was high impact, high energy, all the time.

There was also a canoe class, which was considerably less exciting than the kayak class. Kayaking on a lake might not sound like fun, but you do have the under-water exit procedure, where they tip the kayak over, with you in it, and you have to get out of the thing underwater, upside down, before you drown.

The canoe class didn’t have under-water exit procedures. The lake didn’t have waves like an ocean. So, in comparison with everything else going on at camp, canoe class promised to be boring. We were in for a huge surprise.

There we were the week before the campers arrived, and we who worked at the camp were being trained in how to lead all the various classes. Somehow a buddy and I wound up in canoe class. We didn’t think it was going to be very exciting.

It turned out to be the best class I ever took, better than tubing behind the ski-boats, better than the ropes course up through the trees, better than the zip-line down the long hill. We showed up for canoe class, and Joe White was there to teach us how to lead it.

Joe White owns and operates Kanakuk Kamps, and I’ve never met a more intense, more positive, more energetic, more compelling person. We showed up for canoe class and Joe announced to us that this was the best class at Kanakuk, and he seemed so convinced of it himself that we 151started to wonder if he knew something we didn’t. And then we played the name game. Joe learned every one of our names. He looked us in the eye. He showed interest in us as individuals.

Then when canoe class started, he taught us by example that the joy of the one in charge is more important than the activity. He showed us that the enthusiasm and zest and happiness of those doing the teaching could make the most boring activity at camp the most exciting. It was amazing.

Joe’s joy was infectious. It carried us. I’ll never forget it.

Need

Have you ever experienced that kind of joy from one in authority over you, maybe a teacher or a supervisor of some sort? Have you ever been around someone who convinced you—by the way that he cared for you and showed interest in you and sought to help you enjoy life—that he loved you?

Do you think that God loves His people like that?

Context

Both Ezra and Nehemiah begin with building projects that, once completed, allow the focus to shift to the rebuilding of God’s people:

• Ezra 1-6—Rebuilt Temple
• Ezra 7-10—Rebuilt People
• Nehemiah 1-6—Rebuilt Wall
• Nehemiah 7-13—Rebuilt People

In Nehemiah 8:1-12, Ezra read the law, and the people responded to it in humble repentance. This passage is like a new celebration of the Torah given at Sinai, and when God spoke the Ten Commandments from the fire on the mountaintop the people responded with humble commitment, as the returnees do here. Then in verses 13-18, the people celebrated the Festival of Booths. The Festival of Booths was about the way God sustained His people while they dwelt in tents, sojourning through the wilderness. When the Festival is celebrated in this chapter, it is celebrated by people whom God has sustained through a sojourn back to the land of promise and through their efforts to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem.

Ezra Reads The Law

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Nehemiah 8:1-12

God’s word formed the world. God’s word formed Israel at Sinai. God’s word promised a new exodus and return from exile. God’s word set the people free from Babylon. Once free, now returned to the land with the walls rebuilt, the people look to God’s Word to form them anew. This is what we see when the people ask Ezra to bring the book:

The people want Ezra to bring the book. He set out to change the world by studying Scripture (Ezra 7:10), and look what the Lord has done! The walls are rebuilt and the people want the Bible. Ezra has been serving the Lord faithfully in the land since he returned in 458 bc. Now Nehemiah arrives in 445 bc, and the fruits of Ezra’s own preparation and faithful ministry begin to be seen.

Are you persevering now so that when the time comes and people want you to open God’s Word to them you will be ready?

The word that the HCSB renders “given” means “commanded,” and it very well could refer to the command in Deuteronomy 31:9-13 that the Israelites do exactly this:

Deuteronomy 31:10 calls for the people to do this at the Festival of Booths. The first day of the seventh month was a holy convocation 153(Lev 23:24), the tenth day of the seventh month was the Day of Atonement (Lev 23:27), then the Festival of Booths began on the fifteenth (Lev 23:34).

Nehemiah 8:2 tells us the date when the people requested the law:

Ezra has been teaching the Torah for 13 years, and his teaching probably included instruction on the meaning of Israel’s Festivals and the requirements for their observance. When the wall is completed near the end of the sixth month,8 the people who have learned the law from Ezra recognize that the seventh month, full of Festivals, is upon them, and they want to establish the law of God in the newly walled city. Now that the people are safe from their enemies, they want God’s Word to direct their lives.

When you get free time, do you view it as an opportunity to drink the living water of the Word? Do you relish the chance to taste what is sweeter than honey from the comb? God’s people love God’s Word.

We have reached an opportune time to observe a number of literary parallels between Ezra and Nehemiah: Ezra 2 and Nehemiah 7 present virtually the same genealogy (see the previous chapter for its function). Then Ezra 3 recounts events that took place in the seventh month, just as Nehemiah 8 does. There was a focus on doing things in accordance with the law of Moses in Ezra 3:2 (also 3:4), as the people rebuilt the altar and celebrated the Festival of Booths. Similarly, Nehemiah 8 will present a reading of the Torah followed by the celebration of the Festival of Booths. It is as though the celebration of that Festival in Ezra marked safe passage through the wilderness in the return to the land, whereas the celebration of Booths here marks the end of the un-walled time in the wilderness that the land had been made to resemble after God’s wrath fell.

Again in Nehemiah 8:1 we meet with a statement that reflects Nehemiah’s understanding of the Pentateuch. Behold the profound 154simplicity of the statement: the Torah of Moses that Yahweh gave Israel. Moses wrote it; Yahweh inspired it.

Deuteronomy 31:12 described who should assemble to hear the law, and it included reference to the little ones, and then 31:13 spoke of how the children would learn the law on these occasions. In Nehemiah 8:2 an awareness of this seems to be reflected as Nehemiah notes that men and women and all who could understand would hear the teaching.

It’s not a bad thing for children to sit in church with their parents and hear the Word of God. In fact, it might be good for them to learn to sit still and quiet in church, for them to see their parents worshiping, and for them to hear the Scriptures read and preached. Just because children are young does not mean they cannot understand. If you have young children who can understand, do you keep them in the worship service with you or send them to children’s church? Have you considered the benefits of having them in the service with you?

Nehemiah describes the scene for us in 8:3-4:

The “high wooden platform” was probably not constructed that day in response to the people’s request that Ezra read the Torah. We noted above that Ezra had been teaching the Torah to the people for 13 years, and that teaching bore fruit in this scene. The fact that the wooden platform was “made for this purpose” tells us that Ezra and Nehemiah have been planning ahead for this day. They have been building the walls, and someone has also been building this platform. They have been building the platform, Ezra is prepared with these 13 men to stand with him, and down in verse 7 we will see another 13 men who are prepared to explain the Torah to the people.

So I think it’s safe to suggest that Nehemiah and Ezra had prepared to have the wall built by the beginning of the seventh month, and perhaps they also shared this goal with the people, explaining the significant Festivals of the seventh month. This might also inform the people’s 155request for Ezra to bring the scroll. The text does not give us all these details, but it does say that the high wooden platform had been built for this purpose.

What we are going to see in this passage is a revival of repentance that comes from a revival of concern for God’s Word. The day of revival comes upon Ezra and Nehemiah, and when the people call to hear the book, they are ready with the platform, the assistants, and the Levites. Ezra and Nehemiah were good leaders.

When pastors stand to preach today, we don’t do exactly what Ezra does in this scene, but this scene is a kind of model for what pastors do when they stand at a pulpit on a raised platform before a gathered congregation to preach God’s Word. This scene in Nehemiah probably also influenced what happened in the synagogues in the intertestamental period, aspects of which are reflected when Jesus reads the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue in Luke 4.

There is biblical warrant for preaching. Some people think preaching is negotiable, but Moses and the prophets preached, Ezra did something like preaching here, Jesus and Paul preached, and Paul commanded Timothy to preach the Word (2 Tim 4:2). What Ezra did in Nehemiah 8 is a little different from what preachers do today. For one thing, most sermons today don’t go from daybreak to noon! With that, Ezra has these 13 men assisting him, six on his right, seven on his left. We are not told everything they did, but they might have helped with large, bulky scrolls, or they could have been facilitating the large crowd’s hearing of the Word in various ways.

Verse 3 says, “the people listened attentively.” Do you do that? Let me encourage you to listen attentively to the reading and preaching of the Bible. Honor the Lord by your close attention to His Word. Listen closely for the sake of your own soul. And here’s another reason to listen closely that may not have occurred to you: as a preacher standing before people and speaking God’s Word, it is encouraging to see the faces of people who are locked into the message. Here are three good reasons to listen attentively to the reading and teaching of the Bible: (1) to honor God, (2) for your own soul, and (3) to encourage the preacher.

We see the people rise to their feet out of reverence for God’s Word in verse 5:

156This is a description, not a prescription. That is, this verse describes what these people did to honor God’s Word. This verse is not a command that when the Bible is read in church, all the people should stand to their feet, nor does this verse indicate that where that isn’t done people have not shown due reverence. You could stand to your feet and be dishonoring God by not listening to the reading. The point is not the external action. The point is that we must recognize the importance of the Bible and act accordingly by listening closely and repenting of sin and obeying the Lord and trusting Him to save us.

Note, however, that the reverence does not hinge on the Bible but on the Lord, as we see in verse 6. We love the Bible because it reveals God to us. That’s what makes the Bible precious—that it makes God known. We don’t worship the Bible. We worship God.

Verse 7 describes another set of 13 men, Levites, who explained the Torah to the people:

We are not exactly sure how the logistics worked, but verse 8 gives us a bit more about the scene:

So in verse 7 the Levites “explained” the Torah to the people, who stood in their places, and in verse 8 the HCSB says they were “translating.” The NKJV renders this “they read distinctly,” and the ESV has “they ... read ... clearly.” Nehemiah 13:24 describes children who “could not speak the language of Judah” (ESV), which the HCSB takes to mean that they could not speak “Hebrew.” The HCSB’s rendering in 8:8, “translating,” assumes that the people need the Hebrew translated into Aramaic. This may be the case, but if the situation in 13:24 was a later development, if the people could understand Hebrew at this point, then the term rendered “translating” could mean something like “read distinctly.” The point is that they did what they could to make it so the people would listen to the Word.

In addition to reading clearly, some exposition seems to be implied by the phrase “giving the meaning” (v. 8). So there were 13 men standing with Ezra, and then there were these 13 Levites who were helping 157the people understand. Were they stationed throughout the crowd? We don’t know what the scene looked like, but we can see that Ezra and these 26 men were serving the people so that they would be able to hear and understand God’s Word.

Do people read the Bible aloud in the worship services at your church? If not, why not? Paul did tell Timothy to be devoted to the public reading of Scripture (1 Tim 4:13). Assuming that your church is obeying the Bible and reading the Bible aloud in your public services of worship, are the readers reading well? Are they reading distinctly? Are they reading in such a way that people understand the passage more clearly? If you’re a pastor, have you considered how your reading of the Bible—with appropriate pauses, according to the grammar of the text, with fitting volume and pace—can cause people to understand what the words on the page say? Have you given instruction to others who read the Bible aloud in the church you serve so that they too will be used of the Lord to cause understanding of His Word?

Good leaders serve the people so that they can understand the Word. In verse 9 we see the people’s response to their understanding the Word that has been read:

The understanding of the Word provokes weeping, which is the right response, suggesting repentance. Paradoxically, the right response of weeping opened the way to freedom to rejoice (v. 10):

The weeping will be postponed until after the Festival of Booths, to the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month (9:1). The people will deal with the conviction they feel for their sin in chapter 9. The appointed days of the Festival of Booths are upon them, so the people should rejoice at the Festival. Not to do so would be to add more transgression to the disobedience that has them weeping.

158They are told not to grieve, “because the joy of the Lord is your stronghold” (8:10). What does “the joy of the Lord” mean? This phrase refers to Yahweh’s joy, Yahweh’s good pleasure. What has Yahweh’s good pleasure been? It has been to move the heart of Cyrus to allow them to return to the land to rebuild the temple, and it has been to bring Ezra and Nehemiah back to the land to lead the rebuilding of people and wall. Yahweh’s good pleasure is for the people. Yahweh has taken delight in restoring them to the land, causing the rebuilding of the temple, and completing the project on the walls.

What is their stronghold? Their stronghold is God’s joy in saving, restoring, and protecting them. Yahweh’s joy is what protects them. Yahweh’s joy is their stronghold.

Who is more important than God? Who could be happier than God? Who could more effectively protect His people than God?

But what of their sin? The reading of the Word has caused them to feel the guilt of their sin, and they are weeping. Yes, they are sinful, but look at what Yahweh has done for them. How do they know that Yahweh is joyfully disposed toward them? They are in the land with temple and wall rebuilt.

The joy of the Lord is more potent and powerful than even the joy of Joe White, as good a man as Joe is. Can you imagine what it would feel like to know someone was taking almighty joy in you?

Would you believe me if I told you that God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ takes almighty joy in those who put their faith in Jesus?

Would you believe me if I told you that God is pleased with you? How do we know He’s pleased with us? He tells us in His Word.

What is probably the most famous verse in the whole Bible?

God loves His people. God takes delight in His people. In Ephesians 1:18 Paul speaks of the riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the saints.

Nehemiah 8:12 shows that the people were made strong by the knowledge of God’s joy in them:

159They rejoice because they have understood Scripture.

Do you?

Have you considered what a gift it is to understand the Bible?

Praise God for the Bible. Hallelujah! Blessed be the One who has revealed Himself. To Him be thanks and praise, world without end.

The Festival Of Booths

Nehemiah 8:13-18

I have suggested above that Ezra had engaged in significant teaching and that he and Nehemiah had planned and prepared for the event we have just read about in verses 1-12. That they were teaching and planning does not mean that everyone was fully on board with the program or fully informed of all that the law of Moses required. Some, however, had to have been convinced for the preparations we have observed to have been made. Then the event of the reading of the Torah was probably designed to win the hearts of the rest of the people to the Lord and His Word.

We have seen that it was a success, and that success then led to the people needing to know more, so verse 13(my trans.) tells us,

After the assembly on the first day, recounted in verses 1-12, on the second day9 the “heads of the fathers’ houses” gathered with the priests and Levites before Ezra for Bible study.10 In Ezra 7:10, Ezra set his heart for this, to study and do and teach the Torah to God’s people, and he was commissioned to teach God’s law in Ezra 7:25. In Leviticus 10:11 Aaron was instructed to teach the people God’s commands, establishing teaching as a priestly role (cf. 2 Kgs 17:27). In addition to the priests teaching, fathers are commanded to teach the Torah to their sons in 160Deuteronomy 6:7. So the “heads of the fathers’ houses” are going to be the fathers who come to study the Bible so that they can teach it to their families.

Ezra knows what time it is. He knows it’s the seventh month; accordingly, he teaches the people what the Torah requires in the seventh month:

The passage to which Ezra took the fathers was the one the families needed to obey in the immediate future. The fathers then took the message to their families, as we see in verse 15:

With the leaders of the families on board, verse 16 describes how the people obeyed God’s Word and prepared to celebrate the festival:

Israel’s Festivals commemorated what God had done for them in the past. As they celebrated Passover, Booths, and Weeks year after year (see Deut 16), they re-enacted what God had done for them at the exodus from Egypt, in the sojourn through the wilderness, and upon their entry into the land to enjoy its fruits. Re-enacting the past in this way would shape their view of the world, and this no doubt contributed to how the Old Testament authors constantly compare the way God will save His people in the future to the way He saved them in the past.

By celebrating the festivals every year, the narratives of what God had done for His people in the past became paradigmatic constructs, schematic models of the type of thing God does for His people. Those who had been preserved through the return from exile and the effort to rebuild the wall would naturally think of what God had done for them 161in the present in terms of what God had done for previous generations in the past.

Nehemiah 8:17 communicates what I am trying to describe:

By noting that they had “returned from exile,” Nehemiah invites his audience to compare the journey made by the returnees to the journey celebrated at the Festival of Booths. By mentioning Joshua, Nehemiah invokes the way Israel conquered the land under him, and it is as though Ezra, a new Moses, has been joined by Nehemiah, a new Joshua, for a kind of new exodus and new conquest of the land.

I don’t think Nehemiah means to claim that this was the only Festival of Booths celebrated like this since the time of Joshua. I think, rather, that he’s being hyperbolic. His point is to link this celebration of the Festival with Joshua for the typological purpose described above. There are several hyperbolic statements like this one in the OT, none of which we should read in an overly literal fashion—of the Passover kept by Hezekiah in 2 Chronicles 30:26:

And of the Passover kept by Josiah in 2 Chronicles 35:18 (cf. 2 Kgs 23:22):

Pressed literally these statements could be in conflict with one another, but there is no conflict if the chronicler is speaking hyperbolically. The point that Nehemiah is making is the same point that the chronicler is making about the Passovers kept by Hezekiah and Josiah: these were times of magnificent fervor and the Lord’s blessing was evident.11

162The returnees worshiped according to the Lord’s instructions, and we see their devotion to Scripture in Nehemiah 8:18:

Conclusion

God’s Word makes known God’s good pleasure, and God’s mighty acts on behalf of His people show them that He loves them. Those mighty acts are then celebrated in the memorials that God gives His people so that they remember what He has done for them and how He loves them.

Have you felt the joy of the Lord? Do you believe His Word? Do you see what He has done for you? Will you be one who receives the Lord’s Word, feels His joy, and has that as your stronghold?

Reflect and Discuss

1. What benefits do children gain from attending a worship service of their own? What benefits from attending with their parents?
2. Should the congregation stand when the Word of God is read out loud? How do we show reverence for God’s Word without worshiping a book?
3. Have you known anyone whose joy was contagious, whose enthusiasm was infectious? Describe that person’s personality.
4. What evidence do you see that God feels that kind of joy for you? Is the joy of the Lord your stronghold?
5. What can you do to increase or decrease the joy that God feels for you? What can you do to increase your experience or appreciation of God’s joy?
6. What keeps you from believing that the death of Christ on the cross is sufficient to pay the penalty for all your sin?
7. 163How do you celebrate God’s provision for you as you sojourn toward the new and better promised land, the new heaven and new earth?
8. In what way are you metaphorically sojourning toward the new Jerusalem?
9. Do you have a tendency to interpret your life through the lens of the Bible or the Bible through the lens of your life?
10. What would change if you became convinced of the Lord’s joy in you—if the joy of the Lord became your stronghold?