Neh No.14 Within the walls

Now you might like to join in the reading of the even-numbered verses if you have the authorized version and if not we'll still read from your version but a little more quietly and I wish you well when you get to verse four. Now in the twentieth and fourth day of this month the children of Israel were assembled with fasting and with cycloths and earth upon them and they stood up in their place and read in the book of the law of the Lord their God one-fourth part of the day and another fourth part they confessed and worshipped the Lord their God. Then the Levites, Jeshua and Kadmiel, Bani, Hashbaniah, Sheribiah, Hadijah, Shabaniah and Pithiah said stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever and blessed be thy glorious name which is exalted above all blessing and praise.

Thou art the Lord the God who didst choose Abram and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees and gavest him the name of Abraham and didst see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heardest their cry by the Red Sea. Thou didst divide the sea before them so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land and their persecutors thou threwest into the deeps as a stone into the mighty waters. Thou camest down also upon Mount Sinai and spakest with them from heaven and gavest them right judgments and true laws good statutes and commandments and gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger and brought us forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst and promised us them that they should go in to possess the land which thou had sworn to give them and refused to obey neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them but hardened their necks and in their rebellion appointed a captain to return to their bondage.

But thou art a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of great kindness and forsookest them not. Perhaps later on during the day you'd like to complete the reading of that chapter. Now I'd be grateful if you'd have your Bibles open at the book of Nehemiah.

In fact it's almost imperative for you to have your Old Testament at the ready if we are going to profit from our meditation this morning which actually is the 14th address from this book and we look to God for the help of his spirit in implanting upon our minds scriptural truth which have timeless relevance. On occasions when I have been in London and driven past or walked past Buckingham Palace I confess to my curiosity being raised in as much as I would like to know what is happening in the palace just when I go by but the inhabitants of that place have never yet seen fit to invite me so I'm left to speculate as to what happens the other side of the walls and that really sets in perspective the word which I believe the Lord has laid upon my heart for us today. For you will remember as we have been studying this slender volume from the Old Testament that we have watched Nehemiah lead many many Jewish people in re-erecting and restoring the walls of Jerusalem and rehanging the gates but we have gone beyond that in our study and as you come into the 8th 9th and 10th chapters you read about what goes on behind those walls.

Now I argue that the Jewish community there stand in embryo for the Church of the Lord Jesus there is much spiritual value to be gained by looking through these pages of the Old Testament because we can run many parallels from that century when Nehemiah was ministering to our own day and I go on in my argument and add this that we can determine what life should be like in the redeemed community today by examining certain things that spring to our attention as we are confronted with the story of Nehemiah and the lifestyle and the way of worship of the Jews in the rebuilt Jerusalem. So I want to lift to you before you from these 8th through to the 10th chapters of this volume certain principles which suggest themselves to me as being axiomatic in the manner of life particularly in regard to their religious practices which was enjoyed by the ancient redeemed community and the first thing that becomes apparent when you look into the 8th chapter and the 9th chapter is what I would call impartiality before the Scriptures. Now I'm going to list five observations and that's the first one for anyone who's taking notes.

Impartiality before the Scriptures. There's nothing more wonderful in the whole of the book of Nehemiah than to read in the first verses of the 8th chapter and the 9th chapter the hunger that these Jews now secure in Jerusalem had for the Word of God. To the extent you remember that they asked Ezra to read the book of the law to them and they listened to his colleagues as they explained the reading doubtless from the Old Testament volume called Deuteronomy.

There was an eagerness there was a real hunger for the Word of God. It comes out as I say in the first verse they make the request in the fifth verse in the very attitude of the people in that eighth chapter to listening to the Word of God as the scroll is unfurled and when you come to the third verse of the ninth chapter what do you find? Well the people a very large congregation are once again joined in in worship of the Lord their God and they spend three hours considering the exposition of Scripture. Once more their concern for their hunger for the Word of God is evident and what's the effect of listening to Scripture after all you can be merely academic in your pursuit of knowledge and nowhere does the Bible countenance that.

Well what was the advantage of this prolonged period of preaching at the two feasts which are represented in these eighth and ninth chapters? Well a corrective was applied from the Word of God to the people. They were concerned to ensure that their lifestyle was in accord with the teaching of God in the Old Testament but there was something else too. Restored to them were feast days that they hadn't kept for many a long year.

Look at the 14th verse of the eighth chapter. They found written in the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses that the children of Israel should dwell in booths in the feast of the seventh month reference being to the feast of the tabernacles. Now that feast had not been kept in Jerusalem for decades indeed for centuries and the tradition that had developed in Jerusalem since the return of the Jews completely vaulted over this aspect of scriptural teaching in the Old Testament.

The tradition itself therefore was incorrect and something needed to be restored to it. How did they know what needed to be restored? How did they work out in which area they were in default? Well by the Old Testament the early volumes of the Old Testament the book of Deuteronomy being read and expounded and so they corrected their religious practices and brought them into alignment with the revealed will of God. Now I say there was impartiality before the scriptures.

These people in their hundreds, in their thousands congregated together. They listened to what Ezra had to say and he with his colleagues pointed out certain areas in which they were completely defective and it would have been very easy for them to have said well that's not in our tradition. We've never done that in Jerusalem not in our lifetime not in the lifetime of our grandparents but they recognized that there is something stronger than their tradition the Word of God and this my dear friend has always been the case in the redeemed community down the years.

One of the cries of the Reformation was sola scriptura. John Calvin was concerned to take on the whole of the establishment in Europe because he believed that they were wrong and he was right because he was taking his maxims, he was taking his doctrine from the Word of God which never changes. Impartiality before the scriptures is a prerequisite for people in the redeemed community.

Number two reality in worship is another. Reality in worship and two things must be said about the worship which is described in the 8th and the 9th chapters. In fact perhaps we'll develop them to four if there's time.

The first is that it was spontaneous without being unthinking and secondly it was demonstrative without being theatrical. Spontaneous without being unthinking. Come down to the 8th chapter again and watch the people as they view Ezra unfurling the scroll.

Verse six, all the people answered amen amen and they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord. Here was spontaneity but it wasn't unthinking. They realized that something holy was happening, something wonderful was taking place and their whole spirits elated within them compelled them to rise bodily and to praise God.

Spontaneity which was not unthinking and their worship again I argue was demonstrative without being theatrical. Stay with verse six, they lifted up their hands and they bowed their heads with their faces to the ground. Demonstrative without being theatrical.

They weren't doing this for a show they were doing it because they couldn't help but do it. They wanted to show externally the very feelings that they had internally of worship and reverence to the Lord. If I were to live in the subcontinent of India I think without a shadow of doubt that I would worship amongst a group of people whose fellowships are sometimes referred to as the Bucksing assemblies.

Bucksing is a great man of God still alive in India today and he was instrumental under God in fostering a branch of the Christian Church which is truly Indian. It's not a sort of import of a denomination from the West and I worshipped in these assemblies on several occasions when I was out there in the Far East. And one of the most precious things was to see these people as they came into what they call their prayer houses, they don't refer to them as churches, there were no pews, no chairs, just mats that they sat down on with the women on one side and the men on the other side.

They congregate at nine o'clock or thereabouts in the morning and from time to time in Indian fashion they would kneel before the Lord and they would put their head upon their hands and they would bring honor and respect to the Lord in their worship. It was demonstrative but it wasn't theatrical and it was one of the things that I cherish most of all in my recollection of my itinerary around India and other countries in the Far East. There was reality in worship, spontaneous without being unthinking, demonstrative without being theatrical, private and yet corporate.

How can you have the two? Well look at the second verse of the ninth chapter and you discover that when these people in their masses come together to praise God, all those who are not in the redeemed community are removed from the congregation. So here is private worship being offered to the Lord on a corporate basis. All those in the redeemed community exclusively praising God in an uninhibited and yet an acceptable fashion.

And what's more it's controlled but it's not restricted. Controlled by the Levites but not restricted as far as time goes. Again stay with chapter 9 verse 3. They praise, they listen to the exposition of scripture for one-fourth part of the day.

That's the working day therefore three hours and for another three hours they confess their sins and they worship the Lord. Enough has been said. Two aspects that are dominant in the redeemed community in Nehemiah's day are these.

Impartiality before the scriptures and also reality in worship. Number three and with this I'll not stay for very long. There was plurality in ministry.

Plurality of ministry. When Ezra unfurls the law in chapter 8 verse 4 he has colleagues alongside him who minister to the people. The same thing happens in the fourth verse of the ninth chapter.

I congratulate you for your pronunciation of Hebrew in the collective reading that we had. You did it far better than I did. And the peculiar names that you were reading were names of the men who were the preachers.

Now it was a large congregation that had assembled. Forty two thousand three hundred and sixty. You say how do you know that? Well not because I was there or because I'm a good at arithmetic which I'm not.

But if you read the seventh chapter you'll discover the number but don't read it now. And incidentally I've cut out the choir. There were two hundred and forty five of those.

So that was a mighty big congregation. So what happens? Well they must have been broken up into units. There's the initial reading of the law and then the ministers go to each unit and they explain the law to the people.

Plurality of ministry. The third aspect of life within the redeemed community. Here's the fourth.

Honesty on reflection. Honesty on reflection. And with that term I sum up the whole sermon that is encapsuled in the ninth chapter.

Here are these Levites really preaching it to the people. And in their proclamation they place alongside the historic faithfulness of God with the infidelity of the Hebrews. And so they start off and obviously we have time to work our way through the whole of these thirty odd or more verses.

In the sixth verse thou even thou art Lord alone. Thou hast made heaven the heaven of heavens etc. Verse seven.

Thou art the Lord the God who didst choose Abram and broughtest him out of Ur of the Chaldees and gavest him the name of Abraham and foundest his heart faithful. Verse nine. Thou art the God that didst see the affliction of our fathers in Egypt and heardest the cry their cry by the Red Sea.

Verse 11. Thou art the God that didst divide the sea before them so that they went through the midst of the sea on the dry land and their persecutors thou throwest into the deep as a stone into the mighty waters. Verse 13.

Thou art the God that came down upon Mount Sinai and spakest with them from heaven and gavest them right judgments. Verse 15. Thou art the God that gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst.

And so it goes on until you get to the 16th verse when the preachers move over from the faithfulness of God their exposition of his consistency down the centuries to the reaction of the people. But over against that great faithfulness how did we behave ourselves? How did our forefathers conduct their affairs? But they and our fathers dealt proudly and hardened their necks and hearkened not to thy commandments and refused to obey neither were mindful of thy wonders that thou didst among them. Time and time again in the following verses of Scripture the preachers have to confess that as they review the faithfulness of God it is not paralleled with the consistency of the people.

But what did God do as a result of this rebellion on the part of the Hebrews? We'll look at verse 31 of the same chapter. Nevertheless for thy great mercy's sake thou didst not utterly consume them nor forsake them for thou art a gracious and merciful God. Now therefore our God the great the mighty and the terrible God who keep us covenant and mercy let not all the trouble seem little before thee that have come upon us on our kings etc.

Here I say we have honesty and reflection. They see the consistency of God and alongside that they place their own failure their own lack of ability to maintain the lifestyle that God would have them live and they apologize for it. And the redeemed community my friend is always doing that.

It's coming back to the Word of God and acknowledging where it has gone astray. Honesty and reflection. The fifth and for our purposes this morning the final aspect of life in the redeemed community is seen in what I call unanimity through covenant.

Unanimity through covenant. What happened after these preachers have placed their message before the people at such a long and it was such a long process. Well they called the people together to say look this is the Word of God this is our infidelity let's now enter into a new agreement with God.

So verse 38 ties the whole thing up. They've recognized that God is the God of the covenant which he has sustained down the years. The covenant first made with Abraham.

Now they are going to renew that covenant and because of all this we make a sure covenant and write it and our princes, Levites and priests seal unto it. And then in the tenth chapter that long list of names which no way am I going to try to read publicly this morning are signatories to the new covenant that they are entering into. And it's not just a case of who's who signing that particular document but we read in the 28th verse that all the people accept their responsibilities and they reaffirm their allegiance to the things of God.

Five aspects. Have you got these clearly in your mind? I'd be very glad of feedback if you feel that in any way I have stretched scripture or I haven't preached clearly this morning from what Nehemiah allows me so to do. Five aspects of life within the redeemed community impartiality before scripture, reality in worship, plurality in ministry, honesty on reflection and unanimity expressed through covenant.

Right I've got five minutes left. Somebody may say all that my dear friend is in the Old Testament and you can't build your case on certain things that you've been arguing simply from the Old Testament. All right let's run a parallel therefore from these five observations I've deduced from these chapters and God knows there are many more that could have been brought before you into the New Testament and see the justification that we've got.

Impartiality before scripture. Jesus said that the Pharisees erred because they did not know the scriptures. The Apostle Paul when dealing with possible heresy in the churches that he had founded time and time again used the formula but brethren I would have you ignorant and when Peter refers to Paul's epistles he does so in the fashion that they are as inspired as the Old Testament scriptures and therefore as Paul argues when he's writing to Timothy they're profitable for correction and reproof aye and indeed restoration.

Impartiality before the scriptures is incumbent upon every member of the redeemed community. You don't vault over a passage simply because this sort of thing has not been done for many a long year. That being the case they'd never have restored the Feast of the Tabernacles to the redeemed community at the day of Nehemiah.

Number two reality in worship. Well I gave you certain qualifications as to how I understand that but listen to the reality in worship in the New Testament era. Acts 4 verse 34.

No need to turn to these scriptures you can always borrow the tape if you want to check them through. Acts 4 verse 31 rather. When they had prayed the early Christian community in Jerusalem the place was shaken where they assembled together and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost.

All filled with the Holy Ghost. They all spake the Word of God with boldness. Praise.

Worship. Reality in it. It's spelled out.

It reverberates down the corridors of the early history of the church at Jerusalem. Listen again to 1 Corinthians chapter 14 and verse 15 and 16. The Apostle Paul is here spelling out the sort of ministry that was received in Corinth.

I said 16 actually I mean 26. How is it then brethren when you come together every one of you hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation, hath an interpretation. Let all things be done unto edifying.

He was reality when the people came together. They contributed to the worship. Now again these are things that we cannot bypass.

Why? Well because that principle of impartiality before the scriptures is incumbent upon you as it's incumbent upon me. And God knows I try to bring my own thinking time and time again before this book before ever I would preach or dare to preach from the Word of God. Ephesians chapter 5 verse 19.

Again describing life and worship within the redeemed community. What happens when you come together? Well you're not drunk with wine. Rather you're filled with the Spirit speaking to yourselves in psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things unto God and the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus.

Reality in worship. Plurality of ministry. Stay with Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 11.

God hath set in his church some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors, some teachers for the perfecting of the saint, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ. Listen to the Apostle James as he sets down certain directives that are to be practiced amongst the people to whom he is writing. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders.

Plural. You never come across the word elder in the New Testament in the singular. Is any sick among you? Let him call for the elders of the church.

Let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. What is that? The plurality of ministry. Honesty, unreflection.

Well listen to the Apostle Paul in 2nd Corinthians and chapter 13 and the fifth verse. Examine yourselves, whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves.

Know ye not yourselves how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobate. I quoted when I was dealing with this from Nehemiah, the war cry of the Reformation. Sola Scriptura.

Only the Scripture. But you know there was also another aspect of the Reformation which if my Latin serves me right was Semper Reforma, Semper Reformata. Always reformation.

Always reforming. Always coming back to the Word of God to ensure that your practice and your preaching is in accord with this book. Plurality in ministry.

Honesty in reflection. And finally, unanimity in covenant. Unanimity in covenant.

1 Corinthians chapter 10 and verse 17 has this to say, we being many are one bread and one body for we are all partakers of that one bread. To what is the Apostle referring? Coming around the Lord's table. What do you do when you come around the Lord's table? You re-enact the covenant.

You say this stands for the body of Jesus. This stands for the wine of Jesus. The blood of Jesus.

I recognize that I am a member of the redeemed community through the covenant which God has enacted at Calvary. And every Sunday I reaffirm, I pledge my allegiance to the fact that I am a member of the household of God. I say that from Nehemiah chapter 8 right through to chapter 10.

There are five aspects of life in the redeemed community which are spelt out and amplified further in the New Testament. Impartiality before scripture. Reality in worship.

Plurality of ministry. Honesty and reflection. Unanimity in covenant.

May God help us to work out these principles more and more in our own fellowship at the tabernacle. Amen. Father, if it be the case that this morning we have looked beyond the wall and seen life within the redeemed community, then we pray that more and more we shall not be spectators but participants within that life.

We thank you for what we have enjoyed of your grace. We ask, O God, that you will constantly, individually be reforming us. You know how the best of us is just a bundle of contradictions.

We stretch out your faithfulness and contrast it with our infidelity down the years. And the marvel of it all is, is that your hand is still outstretched to be gracious. Father, we praise you for your love and for its depth and its height.

We ask, O Lord, that we might more fully enter into all that you have for us in and through our Lord Jesus. Now send us on our way rejoicing, knowing the blessing of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit now and until our Savior either comes or calls. Amen.