Spiritual Temperature

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"Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." Nehemiah 8:10

Main Readings: Acts 2 & Nehemiah 8

Supporting Readings: 2 Timothy 3:14 - 4:5 & Deuteronomy 5:22-33

Spiritual Rebuilding Time

Almost every time the architectural firm I work for completes a swanky new house, we think about photographs for our website. But there is, nearly always, a tangible sense of uneasiness about sending the photographer in too soon.

That’s not a reflection on the finished state of the house. It is finished. All the tiles are laid. All the paintwork is dry. All the lights are on. No – it’s not that the house isn’t finished. Rather, it’s the knowledge that, until somebody lives in it, there is an emptiness about it.

It feels almost too pristine to be natural; or somehow normal. It feels like it needs someone to lightly scuff a wall. It needs a coffee cup leaving on the table. It needs a little pile of books stacked inconveniently on the kitchen worksurface. [I don’t know if there’s anybody who does such a thing in your house. There might be one in ours].

In short, in needs signs of life. And until it’s been occupied for at least a week or so, it just doesn’t have that feel. And so, we want to hold off with the photographer. 

And then we end up not photographing it at all. Meaning that, in the end, we have nothing for the website. That’s typically how it goes.

You see building a house is so much more than laying the bricks and mortar, isn’t it? It’s really about living. And here in Nehemiah we’ve been on a journey with Nehemiah for seven chapters now. We’ve been seeing the city walls, and all they represent, coming back into existence. 

The city of God is now rebuilt. And therefore, it has presence and a meaning too – something it had lacked for so long. 

If you remember, it’s been Nehemiah’s zeal for God’s name, and for his people, that has driven him to lead the people to complete the walls and the gates in record quick time! Just 52 days! A quite stunning feat!

But now comes the moment where we, the reader, are left wondering: what is the point of an impressive city - a place with real presence and gravitas – if the people within its walls are not for the God of the city?

Surely if the city is going to be about God, it must be so, not just in name, but in spirit too. 

So, we ought not to think that the project is completed, simply because the gates are now finally in place. Far from it - there is yet more to do. And what is left to be done specifically concerns the people.

And this is very apt for us. Precisely because churches are places where programmes get done – and rightly so. 

But they are also places defined crucially by people. 

And uniquely, in all the world, it is in the church that we’d expect to find people with zeal for their God. That is to say, a truly spiritual people – distinct from all other kinds of people on earth.

Now, if we think carefully about Nehemiah’s vision and the time that elapsed between the return of the first exiles and his arrival, then it was the condition of the walls, more than anything, that highlighted the spiritual state of the people who had already returned. 

Nehemiah was simply perplexed, and then deeply saddened also, that somehow zeal for the Lord amongst the exiles, who had already returned, was at such a low ebb that somehow, they had neglected the derelict condition of the city – the very place God had made his dwelling place. 

And that, for what is now approaching a hundred years. An inconceivable thing – and surely a reflection of their love for him.

And that is why a spiritual reformation - besides the bricks and mortar-type rebuild already completed - remains to be done in Jerusalem. And that’s where we are, as we come into chapter 8.

You know, sometimes, this is where the church is at though. The letters from Jesus to the early churches confirm it: ‘I know your deeds – that you are neither hot nor cold’.

‘Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first’. 

And so on. 

Therefore, it will always be necessary for the church to take its own temperature, if you like. To see whether it has collectively become cold to the God whose name it owns. 

Pray God, that we would never find ourselves, as a church, to have become cold towards him! 

Now that begs the question how would a church take their own temperature? To know if they were growing lukewarm in their zeal for God? 

And the answer is: the same way any person takes their temperature! With a thermometer! 

What is a thermometer? Well, it’s a reliable, unchangeable device that measures temperature. 

And, in the case of God’s people they also need a reliable, unchangeable measure of their spiritual temperature. And that measure is nothing less than God’s Word.

The Word of God stands, then, as a constant and unchangeable revelation of what God is to his people, and what he expects them to be to him. 

To that end it shows us what we are like. 

It shows us the lengths he has gone to make sure we are his. 

It shows what he will continue to be to us. 

And it shows us what he wants us to be like towards him. 

It is, in short, a lamp onto our feet, and a light on the pathway of our lives.

For some time now in Jerusalem, there had been a famine – not of food – but of the hearing of the word of God. That’s what accounted for their lukewarm attitude towards God; and for, why their zeal for his name had gone cold enough to neglect the rebuilding of the walls for so long!

The Gospel Question

But now as we come into chapter 8 - no doubt spurred on by Nehemiah’s zeal - there seems to be something of a spiritual awakening amongst the people. Such that they are eager to hear from God anew.

And so, this chapter is all about the Word of God, and the impact it has on the people of God. 

But before we go to the chapter, I would like to ask this searching question for us all: on what basis did you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins?

And I hope you have an answer for that question.

But maybe, you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I have no idea what you’re even talking about at all’. Well, I’m to tell you now! 

This book, we call the bible, tells everybody, in the world, their one great and common need – and that is the forgiveness of their sins.

It shows us that our crimes against God make us enemies of God. 

With no hope of reconciliation and peace with him ever. No hope of meeting him face to face and finding him to be for us. Only, in fact, an expectation of his raging anger against us. In that respect it’s very sobering.

But thankfully, it doesn’t stop there! It tells us also that God, in his great love for people, has made a way for them to be reconciled to himself in spite of their rebellion against him. A simply amazing thing! Far more impressive than Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza!

It says that the all-powerful God of the universe cares to make a way for us to be at peace with him when he could rightly punish us for ever. 

It is the wonder of all wonders in the world! And that’s why it’s called good news! 

The book then tells us that he sent Jesus – his own son – into the world to accomplish that plan. 

That, by laying down his own perfect life – wherein God punished him for all our sins – he bore away the consequences of our sin and gave us peace with God. 

The bible tells us, that it is by faith in Jesus’ work on the cross for you personally, that you receive the gift of forgiveness and new relationship with God. 

That’s the main message of the bible in a nutshell.

Now there’s nowhere else in all the world that you can find that content. 

It cannot be discovered in creation. It cannot be discovered in your heart. It can only be found in the truth of God’s Word.

Granted something else could deliver that message – google, a friend, a street preacher, a pamphlet – but the original source was and always will be the bible.

So that, everyone who has found it and believed it, and has received what it promises, says ‘amen and hallelujah for your Word, O God, that revealed that glorious truth to me!’

Now here’s the thing. In case you hadn’t noticed, the bible is not a pamphlet. Some might wish it were! And the measure of that is deepened further, when we think that the bible is a need-to-know book also. 

It by no means exhausts all that God could tell us or indeed has to tell us. 

Everything it contains is necessary – there are no throw away words; there are no expendable phrases. 

So, what I’m saying is this: if you have confidence this morning that Jesus is true: that he died for you; that he rose for you; and even now intercedes for you in heaven, how could you possibly play fast and loose with the rest of the bible? 

It is upon the unchangeable reliability of God’s word that you have hope that God is for you in the first place. 

Therefore, that hope is only as real as your embrace and acceptance of all of God’s word as truth – and binding for your life. 

All scripture is God breathed, Paul says, and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in what? In righteousness.

So, God’s word then is either all good and all vital for spiritual life, or none of it is. 

But you can’t have any confidence in the parts you like, if the parts you find harder, you’re going to have a take-it or leave-it attitude towards. It must be all taken, if the gospel of Jesus is going to be dependable in any way, shape or form. 

When we’re confronted with the stark realities of God’s revelation - when we’re bristling in the face of the truth we’re reading – that’s the time to remember that it is the revelation of this very book, upon which, our hopes (our very real hopes) of heaven depend!

Desire: Hungering for the Word

Now, the thing that is most striking here at the beginning of chapter 8 is their appetite for the hearing of God’s word. 

And that is signified most clearly in the fact that, it was the people who asked Ezra the priest to bring out the book of the law of Moses, not the other way around.

One of the most encouraging things any church leader, worth their salt, enjoys in the life of their church, is when Christians get giddy about God’s word. And that was the case here. Ezra, Nehemiah, and the others, didn’t need to encourage the people, because the people themselves were ahead of their curve. They wanted to hear it. And so, they asked for it.

What is more, it wasn’t one or two who had this inclination – do you see that? It was ‘all’ the people who collectively wanted to hear Ezra read God’s word. 

And that’s why this high platform had to be built so that everyone standing in the square could hear.

There is a sense, then, in which the collective hearing of God’s word is a vital way in which God intends for his word to be received. 

In acts 2, the early church, full of fervour for God, resorted to the same thing – they collectively ‘devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles’. 

When we hear collectively like this, God shapes us collectively. And if we are going to have unity and strength of corporate conviction, it will be as we listen to God’s word collectively and receive it faithfully. 

As did these people.

Not only was it collective, but the desire kindled in the hearts of this people is also evident, in the fact that, men and women gathered, along with ‘all those who could understand’.

By any measure of those times, we’re looking at men and women being counted adults from around their mid-teens. So, in all likelihood, ‘all those who could understand’, encompasses a group that were really pretty young.

What we see in our day, is a church that has become given to the idea that the public worship of God needs to be geared to the lowest common denominator. We’ve started to adopt this notion that nothing less than 100% comprehension is acceptable for 100% of the congregation. 

But in reality, the book of Moses was nowhere near straight forward enough so that every detail of nuanced Hebrew could be understood by every person in the crowd. 

The expectation was not that the crowd, en-mass, would understand each and every word, like Ezra the priest did, but that they would understand enough to get the sense of what was being conveyed. 

That means that the reading of God’s word actually stretched some quarters of this congregation more than others. 

What it means is, that the main stream of what was being read could be understand by all, and that the stretch that it created in some quarters of the congregation would be good. 

It would, in fact, create the added benefit, that a trickle-down effect would begin, first within the leadership and then in the wider congregation itself, so that, those who understood more could wisely and carefully explain the less understandable things to those who understood less.

In reality, the church is always going to have a mixture of people. Who, whether by virture of age, or education, or capacity, understand more or less of what is being said or heard. 

That is no grounds though, for dumbing down the message. Nor is it grounds for fragmenting the congregation on a Sunday morning.

All of these people stood and listened together. And then subsequently, as can be seen in verses 7 & 8, the Levites amongst them trickled down the meaning and clarified the things that were not understood.

And that’s how it needs to be in the church also. Collectively we gather on Sunday morning to hear God’s word – not differentiated (or whatever the contemporary term in education currently is) - and then we get together in small groups (or if you’re the size of church we are – A group) and talk about what’s been heard, so that, everybody understands better the meaning of God’s word. 

That’s what’s on display here. 

If we do not take that approach, before we know it, we’ll be switching Holy Bibles for comic bibles; and sermons for slapstick. 

And believe me, we don’t want that! It doesn’t honour God, and it will not help us to grow, as we should!

Now, content isn’t the only place the church wants to be seeker sensitive in our own day. It also has a hang up about attention span.

It tends to recoil a little at long sermons. And bum-shuffle when the supporting readings are longer than a couple of minutes. 

Well, I’ve got news for you: this congregation stood still, listening attentively - and it did so from sunrise until noon!

Now imagine, if you can (I can), if you came to church and the pastor (that’s me) stood up and said:

‘I welcome you to our 6-hour service. 

There are no chairs this morning, so you’ll need to huddle. 

I hope you’ll be comfortable!

Enjoy the service!’ 

I think I can see the exits filling up in my mind’s eye!

It's unthinkable in our day of wall-to-wall entertainment that we would entertain a sermon much longer than 60 minutes or a one hit reading of Psalm 119 for example. 

And yet, a two-hour film, or youtube on loop presents no problem to us whatsoever.

And that can only mean that time is not actually the issue. What is the issue, is what our hearts ultimately desire. 

A two-hour movie is no problem for a heart that likes movies. But for the 25 minutes it would take to read Psalm 119 through in one hit, that, we would find hard to contend with. 

Beloved, our hearts run after that which is of lesser value. And we cry ‘attention span’ when presented with that which is of more value. 

That is ultimately a heart issue I’m afraid.

The people here, stood and listened attentively from daybreak until noon – children included. And so, we just want to desire God’s word like that, don’t we? 

‘O God, give us a sense of the worth of your word. We cannot live on bread alone but need every word that proceeds from your mouth’.

Response: Worshipping Through The Word

One of the key issues, then, for God’s people, when confronted with God’s word, is passivity. What I mean by that is when the hearing of the Word is an academic exercise and not a worshipful experience. 

And I don’t say ‘academic exercise’ meaning that this is a problem only for university types. No. Every single one of us will make an academic exercise out of the hearing of God’s word this week. 

Because, what I mean by ‘academic’ is, that we hear the word – but that’s all we do with it. In hearing it, we essentially feel nothing. In hearing, we mentally agree with it, but we don’t respond in any way that engages our hearts. 

That is to say, we don’t find ourselves saying, either audibly, or in our hearts, ‘yes Lord’. ‘Thank you, Lord,’. ‘That’s me Lord’. ‘Sorry Lord’. ‘Praise be to your name O Lord’. 

We just sit there either disconnected in mind, or engaged in mind, but disconnected in heart. 

But Jesus calls us to worship in Spirit and truth – not just truth. The truth is meant to so impact us that it causes worship to rise in us.

And that’s what we see here. The people stood up in reverence. The people raised their hands in honour. The people said ‘Amen’ in agreement. The people bowed down in worship. And all as Ezra read the law of the Lord.

And so, we have to look for a response in our own hearts. And if it’s not there, we’ve got to say, ‘Lord I believe, help my unbelief’. Because you can bet your bottom dollar, the heart that is unresponsive to the word of God, is a heart that in that moment, is unbelieving. 

And I confess my own hard-heartedness so often when under the sound of this amazing reality that is: God speaking to me. 

Why should God speak to me? Only that he is a super abundant God – abounding in love and mercy to me!

Well, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that the New Testament pattern for the church: of preaching the word, is mapped out here in Nehemiah’s day too. 

The leaders instructed the people, making plain the meaning of the text. 

Fundamentally, that’s what preaching is. 

Faithful preaching is this at its core – the worshipful exposition of the Word that gives it’s plain meaning to the people. 

That’s what Paul called Timothy to do when he said, ‘preach the word in season and out of season’.

Riverside’s commitment to preaching is a commitment to the very thing the leaders were doing in Nehemiah’s day. 

God has ordained this method – not another – for the shaping and nurturing of his church in the truth of his word. 

And I suspect; we’re going to hear increasingly from the gospel fringe, that preaching is an outdated form of communicating God’s word to God’s people. 

Don’t you believe it folks! God’s word tells us: God’s way for communicating God’s Word to God’s people – and it's preaching. So, we’ll just stick to that.

Conviction to Joy

But notice: worship was mixed with sadness too. Do you see that? Because, as the word of God landed on their hearts, they recognised where their own lives were divergent from his will for them. 

They sensed the grief that it caused God – being adrift like that. And so, in turn, that rightly grieved their own hearts too. 

In other words, they came under conviction of sin.

Current culture has got us all thinking that fun is the only way to be. If it’s not fun, it’s not good. But in my experience, that’s a paper-thin idea. 

Most people I know who are trying hardest to be happy, are the least joyful people. And that’s because they’re plastering over the cracks with fun.

It's incomprehensible to any, but the Lord’s people, that the path to greatest joy is a path that travels through some kind of self-loathing. 

Think of the joy of the gospel – of salvation in Jesus. It can only be obtained by recognising the depth and the impact of one’s own personal sin and afront to God. That is the path to greatest joy.

The people, here, wept as they listened because they knew how far they had drifted from God’s design for their lives. 

And that’s not a bad thing. 

If we were to be so cut to the heart this morning by God’s word that we cried, it would not be a bad thing. It wouldn’t be fun! But so, what? I guarantee it would lead to greater joy.

And I can say that because, look! That’s what happens! In the Christian experience, conviction leads to confession; confession leads to repentance; repentance leads to forgiveness; forgiveness leads to the cross of Christ by faith; and the cross leads to reconciliation and joy in God!

Nehemiah said therefore, ‘this day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength’. 

Every day that we are taken from one glory to another is a day holy to the Lord and it’s one to be rejoiced in. ‘Once again, Lord, in spite of my great sin, I have found favour with you!’ 

God has made himself known to me – even me! Can you believe that?!

Obedience

The revolution is not just inward though. It’s outward too. And it must be this also. James says, ‘be doers of the word, not just hearers of it only’. 

You know, it counts for nothing if you’re convicted, repentant, restored, but then return to the way of life exactly how it looked before. Rather the Christian life must be characterised by change. By growth.

And these people found out that there was a festival to be celebrated that week. And that it was meant to be celebrated in shelters made out of branches. 

Not a comfortable prospect, I’m sure, but God’s command, nonetheless.

A command, in fact, specifically designed to remind them of the deliverance by their God from Egypt, and the time their ancestors spent wandering in the desert. 

God wanted them to remember that! 

So that they would recall what it took for them to be redeemed from slavery in the first place. Very much like our Lord’s table, that we’ll be celebrating shortly.

Comfortable prospect or not, their spiritual reformation had to have actionable results. And it did. They went and got branches. They made their shelters. And they lived in them for seven days.

And so, it is with the gospel. It produces in us heartfelt obedience by the word. A new desire to do God’s will, God’s way.

Persistence

The final thing, then, that we learn here is that the hearing of God’s word was a persistent thing. 

Verse 18 says, ‘day after day from the first day to the last, Ezra read from the Book of the Law of God’.

All of God’s word, for all of God’s people, for all of life. That’s what we have here.

And that’s the Christian pattern too. Before, there had been a famine of hearing it. Now there was a persistence in hearing it. 

And I would encourage you, that if you think that hearing from God once a week on Sunday is enough, it really isn’t. Any more than eating once a week is enough. 

Jesus said ‘if you abide in my word, you are my disciples’. ‘Abiding’ is another way of saying, ‘living’. ‘If you live in my word’. 

And so, I would encourage you to make God’s word your abiding place – make it your living place. 

Come, Sunday by Sunday and do this collective listening. Then come together and help each other understand more. But then, make sure that the diet of your life is saturated with the living and enduring word of God. 

For by it, your joy will be full. 

Jesus promised this: ‘These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and your joy may be full’. 

And I know we all want that!