Sermon Tone Analysis

Why do you come to church?

Why do you get yourself together on a Sunday, interrupt the flow of your day, get out of those PJ’s, turn off the TV, to come each week?

Some people would say there are a million ways to spend your Sunday that are more important than going to church for two hours.

Students, I know the answer to this question for you is because my parents bring me, but would you come on your own?

Why are any of us really here today?

I hope and pray your answer is not obligation to your parents, obligation to a social norm, or obligation to a spouse.

My prayer is that your desire to be at church comes from a supernatural desire given to you by the Holy Spirit to come and feast upon God’s word and be encouraged by others like yourself.

What is the church?

Matt Merker in his book Corporate Worship:

“A local church is an assembly of blood-bought, Spirit-filled worshipers who build one another up by God’s Word and affirm one another as citizens of Christ’s kingdom through the ordinances.”

- Matt Merker, Corporate Worship

In Nehemiah chapters 7-8 we are looking at the Jews repopulated in the city of Jerusalem.

It looked to weeks ago at how and why Jerusalem was called Zion, God’s holy city.

Zion: God’s Holy City

Physically in Jerusalem

Spiritually in Eternity

The gathering of the Jews in Zion point forward to the gathering of the NT church which points forward to our eternal gathering of rest in the presence of Christ for all eternity.

Nehemiah 7 is Nehemiah populating the physical city of Zion as after the walls were established.

He was careful to make sure the inhabitants were protected and we made sure that he verified their lineage so that they may populate God’s city.

We applied that last week to the need for the church to be in the business of authenticating those who truly belong to the body of Christ and who will forever populate the city of God.

II.

Gathering the City

Gathering as Holy convocation

God chose to use numbers with significance and one such number is the number 7. We know that God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th.

7 days is makes up a week in God’s creation and the 7th was a holy sabbath of rest.

God also commanded Moses to teach His people that their worship of Him should include feasts throughout the year.

Each feast and festival had theological importance to their worship of YHWH.

The 7th month of their calendar was ultra-important, it was considered a Holy month, a Sabbath month with three separate times of worship.

7th month: a Sabbath month

Feast of the Trumpets (Day 1 of 7th month)- Lev.

23:23-44, this sabbath rest on the first day of the seventh month began with the blowing of trumpets.

There is a term HOLY CONVOCATION: this means a required assembly of the people for the worship of the Lord whereby the trumpets are blown at the beginning and end, where the law is read and where worship of the Lord commences.

Day of Atonement (Day 10 of 7th month) where Aaron and High Priests who served after him would make atonement for the sins of all of God’s people.

Feast of Booths (Day 15-Day 21 of 7th month)

Every 7 years a Sabbath Year: Every 7 years: no sowing to give land rest, no harvesting to give the poor an abundance of food, erasing of debts brought equality back to people such as creation

Sabbath days, months , sabbath years....all points to redemption where peace is restored between men and men restored to God....an eternal rest.

God’s people Gathered around the Word

The gathering of Israel during these feasts and festivals focused on God’s word.

At its inception when God commanded Israel through Moses, until this present day, the gathering of the people centered on the word of God given to man.

It was not the only time the people of Israel were students of the word, but the highlight is that they would gather and worship with God’s law to them at the center.

This gathering of God’s people around the His revealed word is what sets His people apart from all others in the human race.

The lost despise his word and run from, but God’s people gather around to hear and learn from it.

Focus of Families together to learn (adults and children)

Deuteronomy 31:13 (ESV)

13 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.”

Notice also in the passage in Deut that that reading of the law was to include the next generations.

They would not be set aside in their own little groups away from the assmbly.

Instead, we see the little ones gathered with the assembly at this Sabbath feast.

Here they are learning from the law with the rest of the adults

We can too apply these truths to the church today as we gather as God’s people.

As a shadow of our eternal rest, the church exists to live out today in part what we will experience as a whole in the presence of Christ.

In our homes we gather around the word of God, keeping it center.

We don’t allow the cares of the world to overcome our love and affection for Christ that we see in his word.

But like Israel, we also gather together as one people centered around the word of God.

This is what our passage will teach us today as we look to Nehemiah 8.

The importance of this passage to the application for the church is the need to ground ourselves in the word of God as we gather as God’s people.

If we gather for entertainment purposes, or merely social engagement, while ignoring God’s specific instruction from his holy word, then we have failed as a true gathering of God’s people who is called to give proper honor to the Lord by worshipping His name.

Our gathering is supernatural, setting itself apart from any other civic meetings in Bartlett City Hall, PTA meetings at the local elementary school, or gathering at social events like sports and entertainment.

Here we gather to be fed and nurtured by the living word who is Jesus Christ.

He unites us and be cares for us through fellowship with him in his word.

There is nothing like the Gathering of God’s people.

This is the context of Nehemiah 8, as we see the Jews come back together, gathering in the 7th month, re-establishing the feast of the booths, and seeing a revival of spiritual awakening in their lives.

From this passage in chapter 8, let’s observe ways that God’s people can prepare themselves each week for the gathering around God’s word.

1. Gathered and Hungry (1-4)

One of the first points of emphasis in verse 1 is the desire and hunger that the people of God have for Ezra to bring out the scrolls of the Law and read them aloud.

Many scholars argue as to what Ezra is reading from here but if we take the text at face value, then we can understand that he is reading the law which would be considered the Pentateuch (5 books of Moses).

This is the instruction for God’s people as to how they might live in godliness among the nations.

These words define for them the reality of the covenant that God made with His people.

They are words of relationship and worship of the One True God.

After 70 long years without worship in the city of God at the temple of God, here the people are again back in the city and they want to hear God speak through his word!

God’s people should hunger to hear God speak to us each and every day from his word as we go to the Scriptures.

He has shown his voice in the words in this book and He speaks to his people about the relationship that He offers to them through His Son Jesus.

Now that hunger does not originate in us out of sheer will and determination.

Hunger begins supernaturally, when God transforms our dead, hard hearts to hearts of flesh that beat for him.

Once therefore a person is regenerated as the bible defines it, with faith in our hearts and the Holy Spirit in our lives, then have activated a desire for God’s word, because we now desire God himself.

God’s people who come to Him by faith in His Son now long daily to hear from Him through the written word of God we call the Bible.

Not only do we hear from God as we study his word daily, but we gather to hear the preaching of God’s word each week.

Scripture is read, hymns derived from Scripture are sung and then the Scripture is opened and exposited for those who have gathered.

Do you hunger to hear from God when you open his word to read it and when you hear someone preaching it?

Do you acknowledge that God has something to say to me every time God’s word is opened?

I admit as a preacher of God’s word that many times a sermon may fall flat, may be confusing or my oratory game may be off.

Regardless, when the word of God is declared, God has some truth to teach you in order to instruct your heart.

Listen for it as the word is read or declared!

In John Macarthur’s book on Expository Preaching, there is a section at the end entitled the “Listener’s responsibility.”

In it he formulates three steps that listeners can take to prepare to hear the word of God preached:

Be Physically Ready : be in attendance to hear the Word

Be Personally Ready: be rested and attentive to the Word with proper attitude

Be Prayerfully Ready: come bathing the gathering in prayer

If a people are looking for rich sermons from their minister, their prayers must supply him with the needed material; if they seek for faithful sermons, their prayers must urge him, by a full and uncompromising manifestation of the truth, to commend himself to every man’s conscience in the sight of God (see 2 Corinthians 4:2).

If God’s people are going to expect powerful and successful sermons, their prayers must make him a blessing to the souls of men!2

This idea is clearly seen in v 3 as we see the 4+ hour event where Ezra read the law aloud, atop his platform that was constructed in the Water Gate.

The people gathered, not just men but also women and older children who could understand the law and its interpretation.

V 3 states “the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the law.”

The phrase “were attentive” is added in translation to explain the literal phrase, “their ears of all the people were on the book.”

But I like that literally…putting our ears on the book.”

We have heard the idioms, nose to the grindstone, ear to the ground, hand to the plow.

Putting your ear to the book is the way in which God’s people tune their attention to what God has to say in His word.

2. Gathered and Needy (5-8)

Next we can see how humbled they people were by the words of God being read.

V 5 tells us that as Ezra opened the books perched high above them in his platform, giving the orator a helpful audible advantage with such a vast amount of people who needed to hear at one time.