God's people are being rebuilt as a community that belongs to him. They gathered on the first day of the month to listen to God's word being read and applied to them. They responded to it with humbled conviction and with comprehending joy.
This passage begins with the next day, presumably when most of the people have gone to their homes to prepare food and to send some to those without. But the instruction continues, with the heads of the families (v.13). They were responsible before God for training their families and it was vital that they had further teaching which would then be passed on to others.
1. Doing the Word of God
What is very conspicuous in this passage is that the people immediately obey the word that the hear. That comes out very clearly when you compare vv.14,15 & vv.16,17. They did not merely listen to the word, they did what it said. James would have been proud of them!
And, in contrast to earlier generations, they kept the feast as God meant it to be kept. Not since the days of Joshua had that been done. At other times, the actual pracitce of living in booths was treated quite lightly. The people kept the feast but more by way of token gesture.
God's word, rightly understood and applied to ur own day, is to be followed in all its detail. We must not be content with token gestures but with genuine obedience. To obey is better than sacrifice; really doing what God has said scores highly over going through the motions.
It is a precious thing, both to God and to us, when we read his word or hear it preached and respond to it straight away and do as it says. It quickens desire and resolve to live for him.
Which raises the question, Why do we so often fail to do what God says? Let me make the following suggestions:
- We've lost the connection between God's grace and our obedience - gratitude is to be a prime motivation for obedience in the Christian life, gratitude for the grace of God that saves.
- We've misunderstood the connection between God's grace and our response, thinking that grace means we can live as we please ("God forbid").
- We forget how holy God is and how much he hates sin; we would owe him obedience simply because he is God, even were there no grace.
- We are hardened through sin's deceitfulness and presume we can flaunt with sin at no cost to ourselves. We can't.
2. The Blessing of Doing the Word of God
The fact that they obeyed is very important but what they did is also crucial. God's commands are not aimless or simply there for the doing but rather form part of his purpose for us and for our good and blessing. That works out here in at least 3 ways:
i) Past & Present - The feast that they were to celebrate as a community linked the present with the past in a way that was intended to strengthen their faith and encourage them in their present day experience in difficult days.
It reminded them of the great events of the exodus and the time that the people lived in booths in the desert. Though so much had occurred since, culminating in the trauma of the exile, they were so clearly still God's people with a great heritage in the covenant promises of God.
To be stable people with maturing faith, we need to know our link with the past. As Paul told the church at Rome, "Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of hte scriptures we might have hope". We're to come to scripture with that perspective.
ii) Past & Future - The link to the past gave them "strength for today"; it was also to give them "bright hope for tomorrow". God's purposes for his people didn't terminate with them. The city of Jerusalem was to remain significant in the Lord's plans as the people awaited the Messiah and the true exodus in him.
In Luke's writings we see something of the significance of the city. He of all the NT writers uses the word most often - 60% of all its occurences are in Luke-Acts which form 26% of the NT. So you can see how interested Luke is in the city.
But why such interest? Because it is where the Messiah will come to die to save his people (movement in Luke) and it is to be the place from which the gospel will be taken into all the world (movement in Acts). The people of Nehemiah's day couldn't have known the detail but this feast would have contributed to their sense of God's purposes for his world being focussed in this place.
And so it gave them hope for the future, a hope that we share in the gospel. The meal we share, which reminds us of those awesome events that took place just outside Jerusalem, points us with hope to God's glorious future, when Jesus returns.
iii) No Continuing City - But they were not to be complacent in that hope. Keeping the feast in all its detail reminded them that "here we have no continuing city". In their situation, having just completed the walls, the feast would warn them not to put their faith in walls but in the God who promised to be a wall of fire around his people, the builder of a better city. It would speak to them of the transitory nature of their life in this world.
We need similar reminders. We can live comfortably in this world and in essence that's ok, we ought to receive God's blessings with gratitude. But we must be careful; in this world we are "aliens and strangers".
We no longer belong to the world in its rebellion against God. We must be careful therefore to make sure that we put our trust firmly in God and not in the gifts he gives. This life is very transitory; only God and his kingdom will last. It is in him that we find our "solid joys and lasting treasures".
I'm sure they were proud of their achievement in rebuilding the wall in such a short time and we may be too of some of the things we've done. But we must be careful. Our achievements are not a solid basis of hope for the future; God's faithfulness alone is.
3. The Joy of Doing the Word of God
The people obeyed God's word, straight away, and would know the blessing of doing so. But notice that their obedience was accompanied by great joy (v.17). That is how it should be in the Christian life. John reminds his readers that God's commands are not burdensome to us; rather, they are to be a delight for us, as they were to the psalmist in Ps.119.
That's not saying that obedience is not sometimes hard and costly. Invariably it is; we shouldn't expect it to be otherwise. But it is precisely as we embrace the demands of discipleship that we are able to share the joy of our Lord Jesus who "for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, scorning its shame" (Heb. 12:2).
And where is Jesus now? That verse in Hebrews goes on to say that he "sat down at the right hand of the throne of God". He entered glory as the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He calls us to walk the same path of discipleship, not simply with those of Nehemiah's day and other great heroues of the faith, but following him and with him as our sustaining guide.
We've heard God's word together. Will we be "doers also" of it? May he help us to honour him and to know his blessing and joy.
