May it please almighty God to
bless us together this morning as we meditate in his word. Let
us turn to the book of Nehemiah chapter 8 and reading verses
9 and 10. The book of Nehemiah chapter
8 and reading verses 9 and 10. And Nehemiah, which is the Teshatha,
and Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites that taught the
people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the Lord
your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all
the people wept when they heard the words of the Lord. Then he
said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet
and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy unto our
Lord, neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Well this was indeed a special
day for Israel and a special day when we consider that they
had come of course back from Babylon and they'd repaired the
walls and they'd rebuilt the temple and God had blessed them
and yet in many things they still weren't following the way of
the Lord. And this is referred to as a
holy day. This is holy unto the Lord. And it was interesting this morning
at Sunday school that Paul Rasmussen spoke about the days and he spoke
about the trumpets being sounded and how important those days
were, and especially the day of Jubilee. Well, this day was
also a special day And the special day again is, we're told what
it is in the book of Leviticus. Again, Paul refers to Leviticus
this morning a few times in the Sunday school. And it's referred
to in Leviticus chapter 23 and verse 24. And this is what it
says. Speak unto the children of Israel,
saying, in the seventh month, in the first day of the month,
shall ye have a Sabbath. a memorial of blowing of trumpets
and holy convocation. So here we have another occasion
when trumpets were to be blown and trumpets clearly were to
be blown to alert the Israelites that this was a special day,
this was a holy day and of course a holy day was a day which was
kept really like the Sabbath, like the Lord's Day that we keep
today, when everything is given up to the worship of God. And so that was the situation
on this occasion. And therefore we're told Nehemiah,
who was the governor, it's referred to as the Tershithah, which means
governor, and Ezra the priest, the two principal people, and
the Levites, that taught the people, said unto all the people,
This day is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep,
for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Why did they weep? They wept
because they realized they had disobeyed the law of God. For many years, the law of God
had not been followed, and how often that occurred in the history
of Israel, and truly how often it occurs today, that the people
of God do not follow the gracious laws of God, the laws contained
in the word of God. And it's interesting to, as we
read together in this account, of what had occurred, because
what had occurred all the people they gathered themselves together
as one man into the street that was before the water gate and
they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law
of Moses which the Lord had commanded to Israel. You may remember the
book of Moses of course was Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and
Deuteronomy. And Moses had written that, or
he dictated it, not long before he died, not long before he was
taken up to the mountain and the Lord took his life and buried
him. And it was written in a scroll, a long scroll, and that scroll
obviously had all these valuable words that God had spoken to
Moses And Moses wanted this to be put in a safe place. So the
original scroll was placed alongside the ark. In those days, of course,
it was in the tabernacle. And later on, of course, it was
in the temple. There was the law of God contained
in those five books of Moses. And what a great, wonderful account
it was. God brought back to Moses remembrance
or he was able to be told the wonderful history which had occurred
since the beginning of time when God created all things and that
was what now the people wanted to be read to them. They were asked to bring the
book of the law which the Lord had commanded to Israel And Ezra
the priest brought the law before the congregation, both the men
and women, and all that could hear with understanding upon
the first day of the seventh month, which was, of course,
the festival, the memorial of the blowing of trumpets this
first day. And so that's what occurred. And then he read. He read therein
before the street that was before the water gate from the morning
until midday before the men and the women and those that could
understand and the ears of all the people were very attentive
unto the book of the law well two things here first of all
quite clearly they stood and they listened to the law of god
being read for a long time, several hours, and they were attentive. They didn't kind of think, well,
hopefully this will be finished soon. They were attentive to
the Word of God. They wanted to hear the Word
of God. What a blessing that is. What
a wonderful thing, if it is so today, that we want to hear the
Word of God. We want to hear what God has
spoken. And we desire and we are attentive
to what is spoken. And so we're told, Ezra the scribe
stood upon a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose.
And then we're told who stood alongside him. And Ezra opened
the book. Well, of course, it would have
been unrolling the scroll. And I'm sure you young people
and children have seen a scroll and you unroll one end and then
you unroll the other end and then you roll the first section
up and therefore you only have a section open before you, the
section that you're reading, when you finish that page and
then you start again and unroll the next bit and so on. And of
course, as you may or may not know, the Hebrew which this would
have been written in you start back to front you start as we
would start from the end and work to the beginning so it's
operated in an opposite way to the way that we read a book today
and it wasn't in leaves it was in a scroll and so we're told
Ezra open the book in the sight of all the people It was above
the people. He was standing on this on this
pulpit. It was about one and a half meters
high. And he stood on it. And and when he opened it, all
the people stood up. It's interesting, isn't it? The
word of God was being read to them. It was a holy book. The Bible should be to us a holy
book is called the Holy Bible. And It was therefore treated
as such. And all the people that didn't
sit down or lay down, no, it was the book of God, the holy
word of God, and therefore they stood up. And of course, it's
interesting, you know, if you stand up, you can't fall asleep
very easily, can you? You're bound to be more attentive.
Whereas if you're sitting down or lying down, the tendency might
be to doze off to sleep. So here were the people then,
they stood up and Ezra blessed the Lord. the great God and all
the people answered Amen, Amen. You know I do feel it's a lack
today that people for some reason do not say Amen, do not say Amen. Amen means so let it be and surely
that should be our desire and perhaps people don't say it because
they don't want to say or can't say it. But if our heart goes
with the things we just said and goes with the word of God,
surely we have this blessed word and example to say, Amen, so
that it was clear that people had listened, that people were
attentive, and therefore they said, Amen, Amen. We're lifting up their hands
and they bow their heads and worship the Lord with their faces
to the ground where it's a good thing when you and I, by the
grace of God, worship the Lord, the great God, the ruler of the
universe and the ruler of our lives. And so may we indeed bow
down before Almighty God. And then we're told that when
these others then that stood around and they what did they
do? They caused the people to understand the law. and the people
stood in their place. You know, you and I come together
to worship. We come together to worship,
to have our souls fed. And therefore, if our souls are
to be fed, we are to understand the things which are spoken to
us. And if we don't understand, it
would be a good thing if we ask those who perhaps do understand,
to explain to us those things which have been read or have
been preached. There is in a day and age in
which we live a great backwardness to ask questions. Perhaps it's
because there is an embarrassment that people might think we ought
to know the answer, which may be true, but nonetheless we should
never be afraid or never ashamed to ask that those things which
we don't understand might be explained to us so that we should
understand. And let me say this, perhaps
people might ask us a question and we might not know the answer.
And if we don't know the answer, we shouldn't pretend that we
know the answer when we don't know the answer. But we should
confess that we don't know the answer and we should volunteer
to try and find the answer so that we may be able to tell the
inquirer and give them an answer so that they might understand
the Word of God. Well, here it was spoken. So they read in the Book of the
Law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused the people
to understand the readings. It's a lovely picture, isn't
it? It's an important situation. You and I should desire to do
just that. You see, we don't come to worship
just to pass the time. We don't come just to sit and
while away the time. We come to hear the Word of God. And we should come with a prayer
and the Word of God might be made profitable to our souls. We mentioned last week, I think
it was, how good it is if you are able to recall, record, and
to tell of what God has done. And if we don't understand, there'll
be nothing to tell. But if we do understand, there
will be things to tell, there will be things to say. and God's
name will therefore be honored and glorified and we will be
encouraged and the church of God will be encouraged in the
name of God we lift it up and honored and glorified. So then you see we come down
to these two verses that we read this morning and Nehemiah, which
is the Tershithah, and Ezra the priest, the scribe, and the Levites,
that taught the people, said unto all the people, This day
is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all
the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Well, it's good when the word
of God, the law of God, the word of God, has an effect upon us,
and that effect will be to reveal to us how we have disobeyed the
Word of God. And that means that you and I
have sinned against a holy God, and the effect of that is to
make us truly sorry for our sin. And here was this situation,
the people wept before God, because of it well that's a good position
and a good situation and it'll be good for you and me if we
can look back in our lives to times when we were really sorry
before God for the things that we done in disobeying God disobeying
God in keeping his law disobeyed God in doing his will many things
you know that we have done perhaps and we've disobeyed God. What
a blessing then if we come to God and we wept before God and
we've been truly sorry for our sin. Well, all of us today must
answer before God whether you and I have passed through an
experience like that or perhaps even today. We might weep before
God because of our failure in the things of God, because of
the failure which we've been, perhaps through our life, perhaps
through our past life. And we have many regrets, many
things to weep over as the law is read and the Spirit of God
speaks to our heart and reveals to us that we are a sinner and
that we are a great sinner and therefore what a blessing if
the word of God has an effect. Now it won't have an effect if
we haven't listened, it won't have an effect if we haven't
understood, but bless God when his word does enter in to our
hearts and we realize then that almighty God, that one who rules
and reigns, is very gracious in bringing into our soul that
conviction of sin so that we are then a condemned sinner before
a holy God. If you and I are a condemned
sinner, which we are, then all of us will need to realize in
order to free us from that condemnation we will need to be delivered
from that crime, the crimes delivered from sin, freed from it, and
that means to have our sins forgiven. Well, the position we have here
in this chapter is very, very wonderful because this day that
we've spoken of this holy day when the law was read and of
course it was read for seven more days so there was plenty
of time for the people to observe what was being read and of course
they they would have heard in those seven days all the law
those first five books of moses perhaps they might have heard
it read several times it's good again to just follow through
Word of God. Well this was then this day,
this Sabbath day, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and holy
convocation, a holy day. And what it led up to was this. It led up to the Day of Atonement. Paul just touched on that this
morning in Sunday School. The Day of Atonement was the
most wonderful day in the year for Israel, because it was a
day when sins were forgiven, when the Lord graciously came
and met with Israel in the Holy of Holies, as the High Priest
went in beyond the veil, and again not without blood. The blood of a sheep or a goat
and that was taken in and that was sprinkled on the mercy seat. The Lord came and met with the
high priest and there was then that confession of sin. The high priest confessed the
sins of the people. You can imagine what a wonderful
day it was, how they would have looked upon it with gracious
anticipation, and therefore the preparation for that was to be
this conviction of sin. The passion you see in the Old
Testament was clearly laid down for us today. The necessity of
conviction of sin, the necessity were standing condemned before
our holy God. And if we're not forgiven of
our sins, we shall pass into eternal hell forever and ever. Let us be very clear about that.
But to know the glorious words of the gospel spoken in the eighth
Romans, where the apostle who so well knew the need for forgiveness,
there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. There is no condemnation to those
who are in Christ Jesus. So therefore what a blessing
for us today if we can look forward to that wonderful time when our
sins are all taken away. Look back to the time when that
did occur and to realize therefore the importance the day of atonement,
and then look back these few days to this time of preparation,
of this blowing of trumpets. It's only recorded really this
once in Leviticus, but once is sufficient in the Word of God
to tell us the reason for these things. And so here we have Nehemiah
and Ezra then on this occasion, and he telling them this day
is holy unto the Lord your God, more not, nor weep for all the
people wept when they heard the words of the law. Because now
you see it was a day to look forward to that day of atonement. It was a day, a day of thanksgiving
to know that they were approaching this time and a day of thanksgiving
to realize they'd be blessed with understanding to read and
understand the Word of God and to have it spoken to them. Well
today the ordained way of blessing is of course through the preaching
of the gospel and you and I should never therefore despise the preaching
of the gospel. The Lord has seen fit to use
ignorant, foolish men to preach the unsearchable riches of Christ. You might ask, young people might
ask why this is often done. It's not always done because
God has also called very learned people, especially in the Puritan
days, there were many very learned people raised up to declare the
unsearchable riches of Christ. But I believe the great reason
why the Lord has chosen ignorant people is that they won't be
able to boast of their learning, of their ability, and had to
boast of Christ's glorious and wonderful ability that he has
given to them to declare the unsearchable riches of Christ. And so Nehemiah says to the people,
having said, for all the people wept when they heard the words
of the law, then he said unto them, go your way, eat the fountain,
drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is
prepared for this day is holy unto our God, our Lord. Neither
be sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. You see, when you and I are convicted,
when you and I condemn, it will be no satisfaction to stay in
that place. It will be no satisfaction to
live in that place. we will need deliverance. The Spirit of God produces that
conviction, but the Spirit of God also produces repentance
for our sins. It brings up to our remembrance
our sins and grants us that confession to God and that desire for forgiveness. and earnest seeking for forgiveness.
And in one sense, we can look forward with a humble and yet
gracious expectation of liberty or freedom, because Christ has
died to atone for our sins. And so on this situation, on
this occasion, what was it? It was a time for feasting. It
was a time for thanksgiving. It was a time for joy. And so
it is. You know, you and I will never
get to heaven under just condemnation. And in fact, many people will
say, oh, I'm a sinner. We don't really know what they're
saying and don't really mean what they're saying. My friends, you and I
need to know the deliverance. And that deliverance comes in
this way. The Lord Jesus tells us in the Gospel of John, I think
it's the eighth chapter. If the son therefore shall make
you free, you shall be free indeed. And that should be our desire.
That should be what we want to know. And that should be that
which we design to have a gracious expectation for. You know, some
people sadly settle down in a condition where they think they know their
sinners and they stop there. And I think more, my friends,
you and I need to know the freedom, the liberty, which is granted
to the whole true church of God, because then there is joy, then
there is thanksgiving, and indeed the psalmist David tells us,
the 118th psalm is a wonderful psalm of praise, but he tells
us in that he said this verse 24, this is the day which the
Lord hath made we will be glad and rejoice in it, a day of blessing,
a day when Christ is revealed to us as our Saviour, a day when
the preciousness of Christ is brought home to us, the reality
of the atonement. We can then look and we can think
and we can meditate upon that great day of atonement in the
Old Testament, what an important day it was, my friends, in our
spiritual What an important day it is to know that we are at
one with Christ, freed from the condemnation of the law. We have
to pass that way. We have to perhaps weep as these
Israelites did. But then you see the word of
Nehemiah was saying, don't stay there. It's a day now to rejoice. the Lord has brought that conviction
and now he's set before you this go your way yes go forward press
on and eat the fat and drink the sweet and send portions unto
them for who nothing is prepared to truly feed spiritually you
know so it's the the bread and water of life that's really The
word set before us here was a picture in physical things, but for us
in spiritual things, it's that which God sends to us and we
should go away rejoicing in these things. But then there's a further
point that we shouldn't pass over. This is what it says. And
send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared. Yes, we
should clearly desire to spread the Word of God, to spread the
truth of the Gospel. And that's the command, and surely
that is the desire of every living soul. That will be the effect
of God's gracious love toward us, that those who do not know
it might know it. might be blessed with a spiritual
understanding, might be blessed with a wonderful favour of divine
life. And so it's set before us here,
isn't it, really, in a very clear way. So to rejoice ourselves,
but it's to spread the word, is that others might come and
hear the good news, and they might be able to truly rejoice
in what God has done. Yes, what a mercy and what a
blessing these things are to realize then the Lord is faithful,
the Lord is gracious. And Isaiah knew what these truths
were. Isaiah is a beautiful book, obviously
there's so much in it we can't refer to, but just very briefly
in the 12th chapter and in the second verse, this is what Isaiah
says. Behold, that means take notice, particular notice. He
says, God is my salvation. There's no salvation outside
of God. He says this, I will trust, faith
given to believe the word of God, faith given to trust in
the word of God, to believe it is the very truth of God's word
and it speaks to our souls. I will trust. and not be afraid. Naturally,
condemned by God's law, we are afraid of righteous judgment. We are afraid of falling into
hell because of our sin. That's the effect of God's righteous
law, God's work in our heart, it brings upon us the fear of
falling into hell. Maybe perhaps at night time we're
afraid to go to sleep, we're afraid we may wake up in hell. It's a condemnation of almighty
God and he says I will trust and not be afraid because The
prophet had faith in God's promises. You see, you and I need then
to look out of ourselves. We cannot continue looking at
ourselves. Lonely sinkers, lower. Look to
Jesus, firm and strong. Well, my friends, there's the
glorious solution. And indeed, as Isaiah tells us,
In the 45th chapter, the 25th verse, look unto me and be ye
saved from the ends of the earth for I am God and there is none
else. What a blessing it is when the
Holy Spirit brings us to that condition, to that situation. And therefore I will trust and
not be afraid for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. There was something to sing about. The Church of God have something
to sing about. Salvation is of the Lord, said
Jonah, didn't he? Yeah, Jonah was convicted eventually. He was three days in the well's
belly, apparently without really doing much. And then he said,
I will look again unto thy holy temple. came down then eventually
to say, from his heart, salvation is of the Lord. No hope in himself,
but hope in his God. What a blessing for us today
to be able to say, as Isaiah says here, Jehovah is my strength and my
song. He also is become my salvation. David also in the 28th Psalm
reiterates words very very similar and he says the Lord is my strength
and my shield my heart trusted in him and I am helped therefore
my heart greatly rejoicing and with my song will I praise him. Again In the 40th Psalm, David
tells us, he waited patiently for the Lord. The Lord inclined
unto him and brought him up also out of the horrible pit. Kamari clay, the pit of condemnation,
the pit of sin realized, brought him up, set his feet upon a rock,
established his goings. put a new song in his mouth,
even praise unto his God, many shall see it. Oh, what a blessing
it is. And therefore, as we see these
things and see these words addressed to Israel of old. Wonderful time of faith, isn't
it? All the people who imagine that gather together in the street
to hear the words that Ezra and Nehemiah were able to set before
the people. and have all these things explained
to them so there was a true understanding of the grace and glorious truth
of God. And may we have a right and true
understanding of the truth of God. May the Bible not be a closed
book, may it not just be an historical account, but may it be in a wonderful
day, the Word of God speaking to our soul, speaking condemnation,
but also speaking deliverance, also speaking freedom. And what will the effect be?
The effect will be this, to lift up the Lord Jesus Christ as the
only way of salvation, that we may be found looking unto him.
Oh, blessed be God, if we today can rejoice therefore in Christ's
atonement, The picture was there in the Old Testament in that
single day, the most important day in the history of Israel
year by year. My friends, the day of atonement
for us was when Christ died upon the cross at Calvary, shedding
his most precious blood and then entered in to the holy place
there to intercede for us. And remember, Jesus is alive
today and he is ready to hear our cry, hear our prayers and
to grant us the blessed wonder of spiritual deliverance so we
indeed can then anticipate and can then go on our way rejoicing
in what God has done and realize that this day is holy unto our
Lord Neither be you sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Well, may we prove it, and may
we praise God for it. Amen.