*This letter was written last week- but due to computer issues is only being sent out today!!
Dear Church family,
It’s over half a week since we gathered around God’s Word, and I still pray that the joyful message of Nehemiah 8 still resounds in your hearts and radiates from your lives. I loved the bookends to that passage of Scripture (vv1-12).
1. At the beginning of chapter 8’s Church event is God’s people asking Ezra to read from the Book of the Law, instead of Ezra telling them, ‘you need to listen to God’s Book!’ And then they listened and learned for 5-6 hours! Their demands should represent our Church’s desires as a unified whole. Like them, ‘as one man,’ may we come to gather around God’s Word every Sunday with the desire to understand His Word and His law to us. May we come together willingly, not because we must, not out of tradition or mere routine, but because we are hungry for the Word of God.
Remember the reason that God’s people (50,000 of them) all came unanimously together because they wanted to learn God’s Law: They had experienced a famine of the Word of God for 70+ years through Babylonian captivity. As Psalm 119:71 says, “it is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes” and that is exactly what happened to them.
They needed to be emptied of idolatry through severe discipline in order to make room for a renewed hunger for the word of God’s law. Often that needs to happen in Churches too, even ours, where we simply don’t love or desire God’s Word as we should because we are incredibly comfortable and potentially idolatrous (Hosea 10:1-2).
It’s interesting to compare what led God’s people to ruin and what reversed them to Nehemiah 8’s rebuilding:
In Hosea 4:6, leading to the first wave of God’s discipline, God says “my people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” and that is what led them to Assyrian & Babylonian captivity. But what’s leading them to rebuilding and life? The knowledge of the Word of God and understanding as depicted in Nehemiah 8.
Jeremiah 3:15 says, “‘And I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.”
And in Nehemiah 8, God is giving his people knowledge & understanding (used 6x) through the ministry of these Levite shepherds (8:7-8). It’s essential that we too, as a Church, receive this kind of nourishment. If we as a Church digress, it’s because a good knowledge of God’s Word declines. And if we want revival, it’s because God’s truth is preached and the Spirit of God grants us a newfound hunger to listen (compare Neh. 8:3 & Acts 16:14!), understand and obey His words (see Neh. 8:13-17 concerning the obedience of this revived congregation).
If we as a Church remain healthy and true to God’s design, then we will continue to feed off of God’s Word with shepherds and teachers leading the charge (Eph. 4:11-12) so that we will continue to grow up in love (Eph. 4:16). But what remains essential is that we continue to gather together as one man to demand that God’s Word be read, preached, explained, and obeyed. That defines a Church and we see the most basic outline of that in Nehemiah 8.
2. Now I love how Nehemiah 8’s worship service ends. God’s Divine Book is read, understood, God is worshiped through it (v6), and the people go away rejoicing because the ministers/Levites says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.” (v10) Then everybody goes home to their homes and eats with a joyful spirit.
That should describe what happens every Sunday and one of the primary purposes for why the Word of God that’s opened up to WOL Chapel every Sunday. It leads us to joy which we take with us through the week.
In the words of 2 Timothy 3:16, the purpose of God’s breathed out Scriptures handled by Pastor Timothy is so that teaching (Neh. 8:7-8) leads to rebuke (‘the tears’ of Nehemiah 8:9), but the rebuke leads to correction/restoration (the people went away rejoicing, vv10-12). And this should be the outcome of a sermon which hinges on God’s Word Sunday by Sunday.
What I love about the rejoicing in Nehemiah 8 is how it stems from God’s law but finds it’s completion in the phrase, “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” The people aren’t merely told, ‘go away and be glad, find this inner sense of joy deep within you.’ No, they’re told that the power behind their rejoicing is in God’s joy and refuge. “The joy of the Lord is your strength (it’s the word “refuge.”)’ This should remind us of the Gospel. Our joy can only be found in the perfect joyful life of Jesus which God is pleased with. And He is our refuge so that our joy is found in the fact that even through God’s law is wonderful, yet we break it (see Rom. 7:7-12). And for breaking God’s law, we are doomed to Hell. But God in His love has sent Jesus to be our refuge and perfect propitiation for our law-breaking souls. So it’s only in Jesus, discovered through His Word, that we can walk away from the Bible rejoicing!
From my understanding, this should be the way that I preach sermons and the way that you listen and respond. There are exhortations and standards that we meet in God’s Word that we need to follow and obey. Running through God’s entire Word are laws that we must obey. Sermons should apply God’s Word in that kind of way (See Titus 2:15). However, we as Christians need reminded that we do not walk with dependence on God’s law, we walk in dependance on God’s Spirit and the grace of Jesus (See 2 Tim. 2:1-2, 8, Heb. 13:9). We always need to remember the Gospel, since it actually gives us joy to keep God’s law, not out of fear, but out of freedom that we’re already cleansed, forgiven, and we dwell in God as our refuge. He is our righteousness, not our track record, but His (Phil. 3:8-9). And that is a reason to rejoice in Him!
With that being said, I pray that you would all enter into Sunday morning gatherings with a hungry desire to hear God’s Word for the sake of listening to Him (Psalm 119:72 says “the law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces.”) just as the people of Nehemiah 8 asked that Ezra read from “the book of the Law that the LORD commanded Israel.” And the result is that I pray you would walk away from listening & understanding God’s Word into your local areas rejoicing because you’ve been reminded of the “unsearchable riches of Christ” (Eph. 3:8) which are yours. We should walk away from every sermon rejoicing just like we just found spoil again. Like squirrels who hide our acorns but forget where we hid them are we as Christians who forget the hidden treasure that we found in Christ. We need reminded each Sunday where that hidden treasure called Jesus is, nestled in His Word. It is the job of the pastor to dig Him up and remind the Church that they have great reason to rejoice again.
So I pray that joy would be yours through the ministry of God’s Word here with WOL Chapel. It’s my desire for myself and for you, that though God’s Word can be bitter, you will taste its lingering sweetness because of our Savior who took on our sin!
With love in Christ,
Aaron
