To The Word! (Nehemiah 8:1-8)

We will continue our series in the Book of Nehemiah this morning, and we find ourselves at the start of Chapter 8. The text on which the sermon is based will be verses 1 thru 8. You can find it on Page 474 of the Bibles in your pews.

And for a bit of change today, let me invite you to stand for the reading of God’s Holy Word.

B. Sermon Text

Nehemiah 8:1–8 ESV

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 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 the purpose. And beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all 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. Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, 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.

This is the Word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God!

C. Background

So, let’s once again recall where we are in Nehemiah. When we last left Jerusalem, the walls of Jerusalem had been completed. The building project was finished. And the people had heard a reading of names. Chapter 7 repeats a list given to us way back in Chapter 2 of Ezra of the Exiles who returned from Babylon. These would have been the grandparents of the people listening, or even the great-grandparents.

And we heard at the end of Chapter 7 tha

Nehemiah 7:73 ESV

the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the temple servants, and all Israel, lived in their towns. And when the seventh month had come, the people of Israel were in their towns.

So, in other words, they heard the names, and then they went home.

A few days later, they’re all back in the city.

They are gathered for the Feast of Trumpets, the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles. The wall is finished, so now it’s time for a Bible Conference.

And we see Ezra again. We haven’t heard from him in awhile, and it might surprise us to see him pop up in Nehemiah’s book. But remember that originally, Ezra and Nehemiah were one book in the Hebrew Bible — a single continuous narrative of Israel’s post-exile restoration. Very much like Luke and Acts: Different books, but one connected account.

So just as a reminder the first wave of exiles comes back to Jerusalem in about 538 BC.

Ezra arrives in Jerusalem about 80 years after the first batch. Nehemiah shows up about 13 years later. So there is only a 13-year gap between Ezra’s arrival and Nehemiah’s arrival. So by the time we reach Nehemiah 8, Ezra would be an older but still faithful priest and scribe leading the public reading of the Law.

And it seems likely from this that the two men had separate jobs and callings.

Ezra was the teacher and spiritual reformer (focused on the Law and Worship).

Nehemiah was the governor and builder (focused on reconstruction, leadership, and covenant community).

Nehemiah’s job was to restore the wall. That’s finished. So, the natural next step is to restore the heart of the people. That’s where Ezra steps forward again to read God’s Word and lead renewal.

D. Sermon Points

And so, there are at least three things in the story this morning that are going to guide the sermon and our time in these eight verses

I. The People are Called (1-3)

II. The Book is Opened (4-6)

III. The Words are Understood (7-8)

E. Sermon Prayer

Let’s Pray

Grant, Almighty God, that as you shine on us by your Word, we may not be blind at midday, nor willfully seek darkness, and thus lull our minds asleep; but may we be roused daily by your words, and may we stir up ourselves more and more to fear your name and thus present ourselves and all our pursuits as a sacrifice to you, that you may peaceably rule, and perpetually dwell in us, until you gather us to your celestial habitation, where there is reserved for us eternal rest and glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(A Prayer by John Calvin)

I. The People are Called

Nehemiah 8:1–3 ESV

The Chapter begins by telling us that the people were called together and that they “gathered as one man.” Which should immediately tell you that the the Holy Spirit was already at work among his God’s people.

For this is what worship is: when we gather “as one man.” As one body. As one people. It doesn’t mean that our identity as individuals is lost or consumed, but we are gathered with a real corporate identity. We tend to think of worship as several individual people having isolated, individual times of worship while happening to stand next to each other. In the past, I have called this "cubicle worship." Everybody is in their own little cubicles, doing their own little semi-private "thing." In this understanding, gathered public worship is mainly about you having your own private devotional time, it just happens to be acted out in public.

But Corporate Worship is more than that. It happens in God’s presence, with the people gathered together as one man. Here’s the principle: unity of heart is actually very important for the worship of God. We think of worship as a bunch of individuals all doing their own thing in one room together. But to gather together to worship God is to have our hearts “looking” in the same direction. This is why we prepare our hearts at the start. So that we are moving in the same direction together.

It’s why there is a liturgy. We speak the same words and hallelujahs and amens together. It’s why we all sing in the same key (most of the time). It’s why we all say the same setting of the Lord’s Prayer together. You might know a different setting, but we are confessing this one together. The same with the Apostles’ Creed. You might know a different setting of the Apostles’ Creed, but this is the one we are confessing together. And this is not the erasure of individual identities. It is, rather, the establishment of a corporate identity together, as we all lift up our voices and worship to God together, gathered before him as one man.

And what has this people come to do? They have come to hear the Word. Notice (verse 1b) it is the people who tell Ezra to bring for the Book of the Law of Moses.

And so he reads.

Nehemiah 8:3 ESV

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.

Notice that this is being done in public. Out in the open. It’s booth a gathering and a witness. And there’s another important reality for us: Our faith has always been public. Jesus’s ministry was public. The crucifixion was done in public. The resurrection was public. This is why we do not confine our faith to the four walls of this room. Ours is a public faith and a public witness. That’s why I believe in preaching in a church. I also believe in preaching on a street corner, or singing in front of city hall, or having a booth at a parish fair. Our faith takes public action.

So my encouragement to you this morning from these first few verses, dear saints, is never to forget that we are a people who are called in to worship God. It is why our worship services begin with the Call to Worship. God gets the first word, and he is the one gathering us together as one man. And that readiness of heart to hear the Word begins on Saturday night. That you would pray that your heart is ready to hear the Word. Eager to hear the Word. Eager to grow thereby. Pray for yourself. Pray for me, not just in the preaching but also in the preparation. Pray that God would glorify himself in our gatherings, and be mindful that we are not each doing our own private thing on Sunday morning. We are a gathered body, lifting up praises to God with...many voices? Yes. And with one voice? Yes.

II. The Book is Opened

Nehemiah 8:4–6 ESV

And Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah on his right hand, and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam on his left hand. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all 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.

So this is one of the many places in Scripture where we are given some narrative foundations for the elements of worship in our own services.

In verse 4, they construct what we would call a pulpit. The Hebrew word there is actually the same word for tower. And verse 5 is rather specific. I tells us that Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people because he was above all the people.

And the church through the centuries has, from this text, followed an example and built a tradition of making pulpits for preaching. This one was build by McGinty McBride, Bud’s father.

So why do we build pulpits? Yes, because there is a tradition rooted in Nehemiah 8. But also because of this simple reality:

What we build always conveys what we believe. What we make always reveals something about our Master. This is why a lot of modern art preaches godlessness. What we make always reveals who we worship.

In fact, there’s a very interesting book by Jean Halgren Kilde, who is an expert in religious architecture at the University of Minnesota. Her book is called When Church Became Theatre: The Transformation of Evangelical Architecture and Worship in Nineteenth-Century America.

Now that title itself is provocative. The transformation of architecture and worship in Nineteenth Century America. Can architecture really have an affect on worship?

Kilde says yes, and she argues that during the Reformation and in early colonial America, pulpits were built like Ezra’s. They were great towers that elevated the Word and the Preacher, such that you literally came under the preaching.

And over time, into the 19th and 20th centuries, we started building churches like theaters.

With the pulpit at the bottom center of the room, and the seats elevated above the stage. And she argues that people moved from sitting under the Word in humility to sitting over it as critics. Because that’s what one does in a theater. Evaluates as a critic.

Now I know what you are thinking. No way! That’s not a thing! (We’re such Gnostics, and we love to think that we are magically unaffected by our surroundings.) We’re above all that, no pun intended.

So I would challenge you to consider, that your environment has a profound affect on your thinking. And that if every time you come to a movie theater, it is to be entertained, and if we build churches so they look like movie theaters, you will subconsciously anticipate that the man up front has a job to entertain you. And that you are there as a critic.

I know that’s a tough sell for us—we love to think of ourselves as so much above and beyond getting affected by these things, but all I will say is the literature on this from Kildie’s work to things from Media ecologists like Neil Postman would beg us to reconsider our arrogant modern presumptions about how we are affected by our surroundings, technology and architecture.

So what else do we notice from our text? We notice not only that they built a pulpit, but that there’s a kind of platform behind Ezra, big enough to hold 13 people.

And there seems to be an order of worship.

There is blessing and prayer. The people lift up their voices and say “Amen.” They lift up their hands. They bow their heads and even their bodies to the grounds. These are corporate acts that involve bodies, not just voices.

It’s why we bow our heads in prayer. It’s why you are encouraged to kneel for confession of sin. It’s why we stand for the Assurance of Pardon. It’s why we raise our hands together for the Doxology, the Gloria Patri, and the Benediction. Because again, we’re not Gnostics who think the body has nothing to do with the soul. Rather, I would insist the body has everything to do with the soul.

We see also that they stood for the scriptures.

Nehemiah 8:5 ESV

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it all the people stood.

And I don’t think that’s a requirement—Mary sat at Jesus’s feet after all. But once again, what does this convey but respect for hearing the Word?

And if you look back at verse 3 you catch the real kicker. Not only were they hearing the Word of God read, but this was a long meeting

Nehemiah 8:3 ESV

Ezra has the attention of the people. Their hearts were invested in hearing this. Nobody is glancing at their watches. And this might really blow your mind—there’s no separate church meeting for the youth or children. Now, I realize that the text says men, women, and those who could understand. But that does not mean only teenagers. It means that the only people not present were likely nursing mothers and their wee babies.

How do I know that, because, as was said at the start, they are celebrating the feast of trumpets, which is the start of the Feast of Tabernacles. The instruction given for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles comes from Deuteronomy 31, starting in verse 10. And here is that instruction...

Deuteronomy 31:10–13 ESV

And Moses commanded them, “At the end of every seven years, at the set time in the year of release, at the Feast of Booths, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God at the place that he will choose, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Assemble the people, men, women, and little ones, and the sojourner within your towns, that they may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, and be careful to do all the words of this law, and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God, as long as you live in the land that you are going over the Jordan to possess.”

So this was a whole-family celebration and a whole-household event happening before Ezra’s pulpit. And all the people are gathered together.

And this meeting lasted all day. From early morning until Midday. That’s anywhere between four and six hours. Of just hearing the Word and hearing it explained. We don’t know how much was read or which parts. Verse 1 says it was the book of the Law of Moses, so that’s the Torah or the first five books of the Old Testament. If you were to read straight through Genesis to Deuteronomy without explanations, you’re looking at about 20 hours, so it seems obvious that only some portions were read and explained.

Now look, I am not saying this is a command for our services to last four to six hours. But I do think it is an invitation that we might dare to hope that our hearts long for that kind of encounter with the Word. Do we gather hungry for the Words of God? To we gather to be with the people of God and to come under His voice and presence together? Do we long for it? Do we long for Sabbaths that actually last the whole day?

Derek W.H. Thomas confronts us as a brother when he says

If we are wearied with twenty-five to thirty minute sermons, we will barely understand what kept these folks in Jerusalem riveted for six hours.

Now don’t get me wrong, it is not a sin to be wearied or tired. But it might be our failure that we do not desire in ourselves to cultivate resistance to such weariness in our own bodies and souls.

And to cultivate it for our children as well. This is why Marissa and I keep our kids in church. So they can cultivate a resistance to weariness from their earliest days.

Now is that wearying for Marissa? Absolutely. Most Sundays, she only hears about half the sermon and she goes back and listens through the week, bless God for the technology we have to record the preaching.

But it’s worth it to both of us that our children from the earliest days should be learning to sit under the Word even before they can understand all of it. Because children are always learning before they are understanding. That’s what children do.

III. The Words are Understood

Nehemiah 8:7–8 ESV

Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, 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 seems to be happening here is that Ezra is expounding the Word, and then he deploys these 13 Assistant Pastors, if you will, who go and give the sense. And anyone who has ever been to seminary will know that this is the primary text for defending the idea of expository preaching. Drawing the meaning out of a text and applying it to people’s hearts.

Now there’s some interesting possibilities for what this “giving the sense” could mean. Some think they might have been translating from Moses’s Hebrew into the more familiar Aramaic of the day. But I am with those who see this as a work of interpretation and explanation.

Because Scripture needs to be not only read but understood. In fact the Puritans said that if all you did was have Bible reading out loud, with no one ever preaching or explaining, they went so far as to call that a dead letter.

The point is that the Bible is meant to be preached. It’s meant to be explained. The people of God ought to “be given the sense” of it. So much so that just like this was Ezra’s specific job, we continue—in the church today—to set apart, call and ordain men for this specific task. This is the primary work of the minister—to speak the words of God to the people. We lay hands on them and say Preach the Gospel, and woe to you if you ever stop. We ordain men to speak his Law and his Gospel and his forgiveness and his welcoming words at the Table.

This is the fundamental task of the minister: helping people understand the Bible, to make it clear, to call to obedience, and to give the heart every reassurance of the grace and mercy of God.

One of the giants of preaching in the History of Scotland is a man named William Still. On one occasion, a visitor to Still’s Church in Aberdeen, was greeting the minister after the service and he commented, “Sir, you don’t really preach.” Perplexed by the statement, Still asked what he meant. And the fellow said, “Well, you just take a passage from the Bible and explain what it means.” And Still replied, “Brother, that is preaching.”

Now I would include that preaching must include actual application to actual life. It should get into the details because Jesus is Lord over the details. But True preaching is not a TED Talk or an inspirational speech. It is when the Bible gets to do the talking, wherever the text leads.

And I don’t want you to miss what flows from biblical teaching.

Doxology.

Worship.

Verse 6 says

Nehemiah 8:6 ESV

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.

You see, Worship is not just something we show up for. It is God who by His Words does a work in us, and we respond with worship.

Conclusion

So we might ask what is happening in this text? Is it Revival? Or Reformation? I would say it is both.

As we will see, later in this series, this day of blessing brought with it a desire among the people to change their ways and to return to biblical patterns of living. But it also renewed their zeal and commitment, at least for a season.

And this text reminds us that true preaching is the exaltation of God because he is the center and focus of all scripture.

A sermon is not a mere lecture on a theme, and it is not entertainment to be consumed. it is the unfolding of what the Bible says and means. When the Word is faithfully expounded, we respond with doxology, for we cannot help but worship.

And here is the point I want to leave you with: If we want revival and reformation, we must eagerly pray that we would have greater faith in our need for the Word of God and the simple power of it. The Holy Spirit wrought power of all the Words of God. Read, Expounded, Applied.

Derek Thomas observes that John Calvin labored week by week to expound the Scriptures, carefully working his way through entire books of the Bible a few verses at a time. We have access to 46 of his sermons on Thessalonians, 186 on Corinthians, 86 on Timothy and Titus, 159 on Job, 353 on Isaiah, and 123 on Genesis.

On Easter Sunday in 1538, he was banished by the city authorities at the conclusion of the service.

He returned in September 1541 (about 2 and a half years later), and he picked up his exposition in the very next verse where he had left off.

He was demonstrating his unwavering commitment to preaching the Word one verse at a time. And we should long to see a day when every pulpit is committed to a form of preaching that honors the integrity of the written Word of God.

And so the call comes to us to be faithful hearers and doers of the Word. If we do not do this--if we do not gather to hear the Word and let it change us, the city remains in ruins, the covenant is forgotten, and our hearts will wander. But if this is our life together, then we are the restored people of God.

In the name of Jesus, Amen.

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