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- [Kathleen Nielsen] The last few chapters of Nehemiah have showed
us a revival. In Chapter 8,
we saw God's people feeding on God's Word. And then in Chapters 9 and 10,
they were responding to that word with repentance and obedience.
Those were hugely encouraging chapters as we saw God renewing and reforming
His people. But what happens when a revival is over? That's the question
for this session. True revival should bring good results. In a previous session,
I mentioned Ann and Adoniram Judson who were among the first American
overseas missionaries, the early 1800s. It's amazing to see the gospel passion
that burned in their hearts and to learn about how the fire of that passion
was kindled. Those young people, who first boarded ships to take the good
news to foreign lands, had had their teenage hearts set afire
by the second great awakening, the revival that swept New England at the
start of the 19th century. The earliest American overseas
missionaries were the fruit of a revival. Nehemiah:11-12 shows several
results of revival as these people process the spiritual awakening they've
been experiencing. The magnificent worship celebration dedicating the rebuilt wall is
at the heart of this section. But it's encased on either side
by seemingly more mundane activities like repopulating Jerusalem, on the one hand,
and organising temple personnel on the other. Let's take these results as they
come in the text. First, in Chapter 11, comes the repopulation of Jerusalem.
The temple had been rebuilt under Zerubbabel and now they've finished
the wall. But now they need a critical mass of people to live inside.
We read earlier that Jerusalem was large but deserted, full of broken-down houses.
From the first two verses of Chapter 11, it's clear that not many people want
to move in. Living conditions were much more attractive in the hills and towns
all around. The leaders were there, but they need many more to restore this
city to life. And so they cast lots in order to choose or really to ask the Lord
to choose one out of ten, it says, one out of ten of them to come and live
in Jerusalem. This repopulation program is a big deal for a lot of reasons.
Of course, the place we make our home is important to us human beings.
Many of us could tell stories about long searches at various points in our lives
to find just the right place to settle down, especially if we had a certain idea
of what we were after. I'm sure these returned exiles had dreamed
of getting back to their land and settling down in certain places in certain ways.
But now, some of them would have to adjust their dreams. Verse 2 of Chapter 11
is beautiful. It shows their godly, their cooperative spirit.
It says "the people blessed all the men
who willingly offered to live in Jerusalem."
Which may mean the ones chosen by lot and may mean others who volunteered as well.
Surely, their hours of studying God's law together and feasting and praying and
repenting together are here bearing good fruit and they're peacefully working out a
plan for Jerusalem's flourishing. But there's more at stake in the
repopulation of Jerusalem. This isn't just any city.
This is the Holy City, as Jerusalem is repeatedly called here.
This is the city where God, in the past, has blessed His people with His presence.
This sessions commentary references 2 Samuel 7, which describes King David
joyfully bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem where he wanted to build God
a house, but where God promised to build David a house that would last forever.
It was David's son, Solomon, who built the temple in Jerusalem.
The temple that, at its dedication, was filled with the Lord's presence
in such an overwhelming cloud of glory that it knocked the priests
off their feet. Nehemiah's aim to restore Jerusalem is an aim to restore
that city with that history with that temple and its ceremonial system
of worship with priests and sacrifices providing access to a holy God.
This restoration of communion with God in Jerusalem's temple truly brings the exile
to an end for God's people. The revival then results, first,
in the repopulation of Jerusalem as the centre of God-ordained worship.
It makes sense to find all these next paragraphs in Chapters 11 and 12 tracing
the lines, especially if priests and Levites and many who are related in some
way to Jerusalem's Temple worship. These sections lead directly into the
second result of revival which is the worship celebration itself there in the
heart of Chapter 12 beginning in Verse 27. This worship celebration dedicating the
wall is like a burst of praise in the text. It's almost like coming on a live
interactive link that opens up colourful sites and motion and ringing music.
The scene is just full of amazing pageantry and carefully orchestrated music
to accompany the drama. Don't miss the purification that happens
first in Verse 30 as the priests and Levites follow the laws of ceremonial
cleansing required for the people to approach a holy God in worship. And then,
with Nehemiah directing it all, here come these two great choirs
of thanksgiving. Apparently, they begin together at a certain point
on the rebuilt wall and then they process along the wall in opposite directions,
one to the south, one to the north, all the while singing and playing their
musical instruments with Ezra and one group accompanying one choir and Nehemiah
and another group accompanying the other. You have to wonder how many choir
practices and dress rehearsals all this might have required.
You have to wonder too whether they might be feeling just a few licks
of satisfaction and recalling. Do you remember Tobias jeers about how the
wall would break if even a fox went up on it? After this grand processional,
everybody ends up together in the house of God for more singing and
great sacrificing, a kind of climax of joy. How many times does joy appear there
in Verse 43? That verse is a climactic one as it tells of all the people's joy.
And don't you love that special notice of the women and children?
It tells of the witness of their joy in that lovely final phrase,
"and the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away." Joy will out. Joy echoes far and
attracts notice in a world where real joy is way too scarce. I have found,
I imagine you have found, too, that showing joy often draws unbelievers
in a powerful way because people are really hungry to be joyful and they just
don't know where to find that kind of food. What a glorious picture here of joy
echoing out of Jerusalem. Verse 43 also tells the reason
for their joy, and it's not just that they're done with the wall in record time.
Notice the wording, "For God had made them rejoice with great joy."
This celebration is about what God has done. When we think of worship,
we tend to think first of our own praises, our own experiences, our own responses.
And surely, all that is important. But biblical worship is God-focused.
It is grounded in what God has done for us. These people have been worshipping
already filling themselves, we've seen it, with God's law and the record of God's
merciful deeds on behalf of His people. They are full of it,
and that's why they're singing. These are choirs of thanksgiving to God.
This is worship in God's place according to God's law and the joy of it comes
from God Himself. What a challenging picture of revival that just keeps
overflowing into joyful worship? If we don't know such joyful
God-centered worship, we can pray for it for ourselves and
among God's people and we can do everything possible to foster it,
starting with ourselves and those around us, doing our best to take in God's Word
substantively and deeply. As we saw back in Chapter 8,
that's the first step in worshipping the Lord with this kind of joy.
Well, we're watching the results of revival and we've seen first,
a repopulation project to restore Jerusalem as the centre
of God-ordained worship. Second, we've seen the actual corporate worship,
the joyful worship of God's people. And finally, third, we see
an institutionalizing of the progress they've made. Chapter 12 ends there
in Verses 44-47 with a solidifying of the structures necessary to keep these
results happening. Certain men are appointed
to be in charge of certain offerings
for certain temple sacrifices and certain temple workers. It all has to be organized
and supported or else the rush of revival passion can just flare up and
then disappear. We can tell they've been consulting the Book of the Law here,
their intent on following the law's requirements for offerings to support the
temple and the priests and Levites. They're also following the patterns
of musical worship set up by King David. They haven't lost their sense
of continuity and identity as God's people. Now, if you're not an organiser
kind of person, this final section may seem sort of, well, institutional to you.
But if you are an organiser, or even if you're not,
you might just get excited about how God's people capture spiritual momentum in the
structures God ordained to keep it going day after day, week after week,
worship gathering after worship gathering. Most of our lives don't get lived in a
rush of passion, do they? Most days are pretty ordinary and need
structure to keep us moving in the direction of God's purposes.
We need Bible study groups to keep us accountable, we need to gather with fellow
believers in local congregations week by week with the right leaders in place.
And we need to support the church faithfully and regularly with our money
and our time and our prayers. Back in Nehemiah's time,
God meant for the ceremonial temple worship to continue faithfully and
regularly for purposes that are now very clear. These people were paving the way
by faith according to God's promises and those promises all pointed ahead to Jesus.
Think of it. All our human longings to find a place, a home,
a city like Jerusalem, all those longings find their answer
finally and only in Jesus. In Him, we find life because He came and laid
down His life for us as the final sacrifice. After all those sacrifices
offered by all those priests, Jesus came and offered Himself as the
perfect sacrifice for our sin in our place on the cross so that, now,
we are heading not for a physical city with a physical temple,
but for what the Apostle John, in the book of Revelation,
calls "the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God
prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." That's the place where God
dwells with His people forever. There's no temple there because
Jesus Himself is our temple. We come directly to God in Jesus who died
for us and who is even now preparing this amazing place for us.
God's Old Testament people grasped these things by faith as from afar.
The Word worked in their hearts and they were revived and showed the fruit of that
revival in the concrete details of their lives, where they lived,
how they worshipped, how they ordered themselves as God's
worshipping people. They couldn't do it perfectly. Oh, how they needed the Savior
to come. Oh, how we need him as well, our Savior, who finally came. And now,
even as we wait for His coming again, we can learn from these
Old Testament stories. We can learn about letting the Word work
in us while we wait. We can pray for revival and for the
ongoing fruit of revival among us as God's people. And we can take all these requests
directly to God in Jesus' name. What a joy? There's no reason we shouldn't be a
lot like Nehemiah's people in that grand worship celebration with our joy ringing
out and heard from afar because God,
in Christ, has made us rejoice with great joy.
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