Sermon Tone Analysis

The Joy of the Lord is your Strength

My mother introduced me to the book of Nehemiah when I was a teenager.

I don’t think she knew she introduced me to this book, but she did.

She didn’t do it directly, she did it because she listened to Chuck Swindoll on the radio every day.

He had a show called Insight for Living.

He is pastor and teacher.

I pretended to be doing something else while that program was on, but in reality I was listening to his preaching and teaching and taking it all in.

He turned his sermons into books and his book on Nehemiah was titled Hand me another brick.

It is about leadership principles that Nehemiah exhibited.

That book has been a source of inspiration to me.

Nehemiah is the Governor of Israel.

He had grown up on Babylon amongst the people who had been living in captivity.

He long to go home to Israel, to a place he hadn’t lived.

God chooses him to lead a remnant of people back to Israel, to Jerusalem.

They find the temple destroyed and the walls of the city torn down.

Nehemiah organizes the people and they rebuild the walls to the city.

This wasn’t an easy process because the enemy was constantly harassing them and attacking them.

That meant that only half of the men could work on rebuilding because the other half were defending the workers.

They got the walls rebuilt in record time.

The Bible tells us

Notice what is happening here.

The people had settled in their towns because the major construction project was completed.

It was the seventh month or about September for us.

This date had special significance.

It is known as the Feast of Trumpets or Rosh Hashanah.

It was the beginning of the Jewish New Year.

God established this as one of the required special Sabbath’s that the people were to observe.

In Leviticus 23:24-25 we read God’s instructions.

Trumpets were sounded and the people were called to assemble.

The people from the cities, the people from the town and villages all gathered in front of the Water Gate.

The Water Gate was one of the principles gates for entering the ancient city of Jerusalem.

It led to Solomon’s Temple.

This was a Holy occasion.

All the people gathered, men and women, even children.

Notice what the people did.

First they gathered.

Secondly they asked Ezra who was the high priest to bring the Instruction scroll from Moses out and read to them.

This Instruction scroll would have been the first 5 books of the Bible.

This is the first time since they were back home, back in the land that God had given them, that they were able to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Feast of Trumpets.

They wanted to hear God’s word.

This most likely wasn’t a spontaneous event because verse tells us Nehemiah 8:4 “4 Ezra the scribe stood on a wooden platform that had been made for this purpose.

”

Ezra the High Priest brought God’s Word out before all of the people gathered, men, women, and anyone who could understand what they heard.

Here is the priest up on a platform at one of the principle gates into Jerusalem.

The temple had been rebuilt.

They had finished rebuilding the walls around the city and now they were gathered at the gate of the City and the High Priest, Ezra, is reading God’s word to them.

Can you picture that scene in your mind?

Yes, they were supposed to be there, but this had special meaning.

They hadn’t been able to celebrate this feast while they were in exile.

There were probably people in that crowd who were hearing the Word of God read to them for the very first time in their lives.

The Bible tells us

If I calculate it correctly, Ezra read for 6 hours from Genesis 1 through Deuteronomy 30.

Ezra stood there reading with some of the important leaders of the Nation of Israel standing there with him.

Our text tells us that when Ezra opened the scroll that all of the stood up.

I want to think that the people came expecting to hear from God. Judah was in captivity in Babylon for about 70 years.

Most of the people there had not heard the Scriptures read to them before.

There was an expectation as Ezra climbed up to that platform and laid the scroll out on a pulpit like structure and unrolled it.

The people stood in reverence to God’s Word.

They rose in reverence to God.

Can you sense the excitement and anticipation that went through that great crowd?

They had witnessed how God was with them while the rebuilt the walls.

They knew that God was up to something.

Ezra looks at that crowd standing in anticipation and the Bible tells us that he “blessed the Lord, the great God.”

He hadn’t begun reading yet and he blesses God.

This is where we get our term Invocation from.

Jennifer Slattery in Crosswalk.com

wrote about invocations.

Some of the most powerful, life-transforming revivals began with a simple yet heartfelt prayer of invocation.

When leaders and those they serve humbly bow their heads and their hearts and acknowledge what God already knows—we need Him—God shows up.

He stirs souls, lifts perspectives, and sparks within His humble and yielded children a united, glorious, and eternal mission.

The invocation prayer is one of the oldest types of man-to-God communication recorded.

(Slattery)

Ezra begins with an invocation by blessing God.

One of the most beautiful invocations is from the Church of England Book of Common Prayer.

The prayer was writing probably in the 1500s.

Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires know, and from whom no secrets are hid; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love You, and worthily magnify Your holy name, through Christ the Lord.

Amen.

Ezra prays an Invocation and the people all answered Amen! Amen!

They also lifted their hands and then the Bible says

Nehemiah 8:6 (CEB)

Then they bowed down and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

As I read this section of Scripture I got to wondering if we ever come to church anticipating the presence of God.

Do we come to church because it is something to do or we feel obligated to be here?

Ben was in my office when I was finishing up for today.

He asked me if tomorrow was Sunday.

I said it was and we’d be in Church.

He said “Yes, Yes.”

He said he was excited that we were going to be in church.

Is that great?

One thing that has intrigued me about this event here in Nehemiah is that they were not at the Temple, the place of worship.

They were at one of the city gates.

They were at one of the places where people entered and exited the city on their way to or from the Temple.

Why does this intrigue me?

It intrigues me because the Church is not really the church until we are living out what Jesus has done for us out there.

The scripture from 1 Corinthians reminds us that we are one Body but we each have different gifts.

God the Holy Spirit has gifted each of us and we should be using our gifts to edify or build up the Church and share the Good News out there.

We gather here to worship but then we Go.

Shouldn’t we have some excitement that we get to serve God by using the gifts that He has given us?

Verse 7 of the text tells us that the Levites helped the people understand what was written in God’s Word.

They explained it and interpreted it so that the people would understand what they were hearing.

What a great reminder of the importance of attending Church.