Reasons for a Bible Conference in Nehemiah 8 — Stephen Baker

Nehemiah and chapter eight. I'd just like to spend a short time tonight thinking about why are we having a weekend of conference? Why do we take time out to do that? And we'll hopefully see from this passage some good reasons why we do that.

Nehemiah eight and verse one, and all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate. And they speak unto Ezra, the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel.

And Ezra the priest brought the law both before the congregation, both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding upon the first day of the seventh month. And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from morning until midday before the men and the women and those that could understand.

And the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. Come down please to verse nine. And Nehemiah, which is the Tershatha, and Ezra the priest, the scribe, the Levites that taught the people, said unto all the people, this day is holy unto the Lord your God, mourn not nor weep.

Hearing and Understanding the Word of God

For all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. 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 you sorry for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites stilled all the people saying, hold your peace for the day is holy, neither be you grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and to drink and to send portions and to make great mirth because they had understood the words that were declared unto them.

And on the second day were gathered together the chief of the fathers of all the people, the priests and the Levites, and to Ezra the scribe even to understand the words of the law. And 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.

And that they should proclaim, publish and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem saying, go forth unto the mount, fetch all of branches and pine branches and myrtle branches and palm branches and branches of thick trees to make booths as it is written.

They go forth, verse 16, verse 17, and all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity made booths and sat under the booths. For since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, unto that day had not the children of Israel done so and there was very great gladness.

Also day by day, from the first day until the last day, he read in the book of the law of God, and they kept the feast seven days and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly according unto the manner.

Now, we don't have a seven day conference, so we're not changing the timetable, but they did. And these were great days. You might remember the background. Nehemiah's one of a set of book, part of a set of books.

Israel’s Exile and Restoration

Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah. And it's what you will hear some people call post-exilic books, which really means they're written about the circumstances of the nation of Israel when they came back from exile.

You might remember, and it just happened to be in my daily readings today, so it was very useful, very handy, but you might remember that after King David died, his son Solomon became the king. And then when Solomon died, Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, he decided that he would reign in a harsher manner than his father had done.

You need to read the passages concerning this to get the detail. But actually, he said to the people of his day that he was gonna be really tough with them and that if Solomon had been severe, he was gonna be even more severe than Solomon had ever been.

And at that point, Israel, which was a 12-tribe confederacy, the tribes forming one nation, they were split to 10 and two. You probably know all this stuff, so forgive me for reminding you. In the north of the country were 10 tribes known generally as Israel.

The south, two tribes known as Judah and Benjamin. And it so happened that because of the behavior of their kings and because of what they had done and would do over many years, God was going to send them out of their land.

So when we talk about the exile, they were extracted from their country and sent to live in another country for a period of 70 years. Now you'll read all about that through Jeremiah chapter 25. It's tremendous stuff.

It's one of those wonderful things that you can read to understand this book is God's word. I hope you believe that. You need to really believe that if you're gonna enjoy this conference. This is God's word.

We've not come to tell you the thoughts of Stephen Harper or the thoughts of Marcus Cain or of Stephen Baker or of anybody else that preaches. We've come to relay to you the word of God because this is God's book.

And you will be blessed if you receive it as such. They didn't believe it. And they turned their back on God's word. And both the 10 tribes and the two tribes, the split, the division of the nation into two ended up in exile.

We might say a little bit more about that tomorrow. But this is after that. Now, I find it very helpful to get a timescale. Don't know how your mind works, but it's good to get things in the right order.

So we were doing Nehemiah in our Bible class a while back and one of our brothers did a little schedule of how the events all pulled together. And that was really helpful because actually Ezra chapter one, so this is the book before Nehemiah.

Ezra chapter one starts off the recovery. And Cyrus is the Persian king and he instructs them to come back and rebuild the temple. And I'll go through the whole timeline. If you want a copy of it, I've got it here.

And you can get a photocopy if you like. You can photograph it. It's probably the most efficient way to do it. Where we are in Nehemiah chapter eight. They've come back, they've rebuilt the temple. Then this man Nehemiah is given a direct instruction.

He had a pretty top job working for Artaxerxes who was one of the kings of the day. He comes back with the instruction to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. Now that took 52 days. Now any of you in construction, that was a pretty good project.

52 days to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. And so the people that had come back now can live within a safe environment. The temple has been rebuilt. The walls have been rebuilt. Now look back in chapter seven, just for a clue about how many people were involved.

Chapter seven, verse 66 says this. The whole congregation together was 42 ,303 score. That's 42 ,360. Then verse 67 says, beside their manservants made servants of whom there were 7 ,337. And they had 245 in the choir.

We don't have choirs now so we're not gonna have a choir at the conference. So don't try and just pitch your conference exactly around Nehemiah. But they had a choir. They had singing men and women of 245.

Add those three numbers together and not check your mental arithmetic. But I did it this afternoon. And it comes to 49 ,942. So just short of 50 ,000 people. That's who came back from the exile. Now keep that in your mind.

Because verse one says this. And all the people gathered themselves together as one man onto the street that was before the water gate. 50 ,000 people. I don't know how Garneville was gonna do tomorrow.

And I was told tonight it would be small. But I don't think we'll have 50 ,000 tomorrow. So this was a big gathering of people. And it's impressive the amount of time they spent listening to the word of God.

If my calculations are right, and it depends how you divide it up, it tells us that I think they spent three hours praying and three hours preaching. So we've had half an hour praying and half an hour preaching.

We've not come up to the mark, have we? They had three hours praying and worship and praise. And then they had three hours of reading the word of God. I don't want to talk in any more detail about how the chapter works out in the sense of what they went about.

God willing, I might deal with that tomorrow. But I want to pick up three things. I want us to think first of all, well, let me outline it first of all. Did you notice that the end of verse number two, it says this, that these people were gathered together upon the first day of the seventh month.

Then did you read with me, as we looked at them gathering together, and the end of verse eight, we didn't read that, but it says that they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and so on. Then we see the reaction of the people, verse nine.

It says the people wept when they heard the words of the law. I personally think, because they're reading through the law of Moses, they're doing it in the seventh month of the year. And there were three festivals that took place on the seventh month of the year.

There was the feast of trumpets. There was the day of atonement. And there was the feast of tabernacles. Now, why do I think that they're talking about those feasts? Well, because we read together, when we come to the end of the chapter, they go out, they find branches of trees, and they commemorate the feast of tabernacles.

So I asked myself the question, why were they so sad in verses nine, 10, and 11, and 12? Well, I think they were reading about the feast of or the day of atonement. So I wanna talk to you about those three feasts, and I want to use them just in the short time that we're taking tonight to remind you of some reasons why we're having our conference.

But before I do that, let me just tell you about those three feasts so we can draw the lessons from them. You'll read all of this in Leviticus chapter 23. And those of you that are taking notes or study your Bible, you will know that you'll read about those feasts in Exodus 23.

You'll also read about them in the day of atonement in Leviticus chapter 16. And you'll read again a bit of detail in Deuteronomy chapter 23. Now, the reason I'm telling you that is this, I'm not here tonight to tell you in detail everything about those feasts.

There were seven in total. They ran through a year. They were actually, fell into three clusters. The first of the three feasts was Passover, unleavened bread and first fruits. They ran together. By the way, they are picture, they are prophetic feasts.

They tell us about something that would happen in the future, and those three have already happened because Passover was the Lord Jesus dying. Unleavened bread is the suffering and shame that Israel is still under because of the rejection of Messiah.

And first fruits is the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Remember, unleavened bread was a week-long feast. Not my subject tonight. Very interesting. Get into your Bible, study those things. There's lots of lessons.

They became collectively known as Passover. But then we come to another feast, the fourth one, which kind of stood on its own, and it was called, we call it Pentecost. It's called the Feast of Ingathering.

It's called the Feast of Harvest. Well, that's past because the Spirit of God came down when there was the ingathering of 3 ,000 souls. But we've read, and I'm suggesting to you from Nehemiah chapter eight, that the final cluster is these three, trumpets, day of atonement, and tabernacles.

And they were in the same month. And I think in Nehemiah, as he seeks to bring the people back to God, you see, they've rebuilt the temple. They've put the walls around the city. But the place is of no value without the people of God in the presence of God, hearing the voice of God.

That's why we're here this weekend, so that we're in the presence of God, and we hear the voice of God. That's what you want, isn't it? You're not just here to sing some good hymns. Don't depend on me, because I'll not be able to sing.

But it's good to have sings. It's good to sing. I don't know if you do hear what they do in other places, and they have a sing over the weekend. It's great. We're not just here to sing. Well, we sing because we love him, because we want to sing the praise of him who died.

But we sing and we come because we want to hear the voice of God. We want to be in the presence of God. These feasts are actually part of an agricultural cycle. That might be something you're interested in in this area.

Because the first set was really about the presentation of the first fruits of the barley harvest. The second was the celebration of the wheat harvest. And the third was really a time of thanksgiving.

Now, let me come back to these three feasts. And let's learn just a few lessons that we can learn about our meetings. The first, on the first day of the seventh month was the feast of trumpets. It was really when God would gather people together.

It was when God reminded his people that they were being called into his presence. Each of these feasts, by the way, have a particular explanation or interpretation when it comes to the nation of Israel.

Feast of trumpets is about when God gathers the nation back together. They're not there yet. I know Israel, center of world news again. I know that they came back into their land in 1948, but they're not regathered in the Bible sense.

They don't know the indwelling power of God as Ezekiel 37, 38. They're not in the purposes of God again. They're still far from God. They're still set aside, but there's a day coming when the feast of trumpets will have its final fulfillment.

He'll gather the nation, bring them back into his purposes and his presence. But it's a great lesson for us that God is gathering his people together. And as these people gathered, 50 ,000 of them, as one man standing at the water gate, just looking at a little map of the city.

It's on the Southeast wall of the city. They would have had the temple up on the right. And they would have been able to probably see maybe if they got inside the wall, I don't know the height of the walls, but here they are gathered just outside the water gate.

And that might be significant as well. I know you've got to be careful with your interpretation of scripture, not read into things, nice ideas, but well, water is a picture of the spirit of God in scripture.

And it's also a picture of the word of God. They're going to be refreshed. It's not what we've come for this weekend. Maybe some of you have had a hard year so far. Maybe life is tough. Maybe you've struggled to read your Bible.

Maybe you find it hard to pray. Maybe you feel your heart's cold before God. God wants to refresh you this weekend. He wants to bring you to the water gate. He wants to gather you so that you hear his voice.

You know his blessing. It's a great feast, the feast of trumpets, the feast of gathering. But I think that by the time they get down to verses nine and 10 and they're mourning and they're weeping, I think they must have impacted on them.

We've been far from God. We've not been obeying the word of God. You say, why do you think, you might ask me the question, why do you think that they were reading about the day of atonement? Will you go back to read about the day of atonement?

We discover this. The day of atonement was a day of mourning. It's a day of regret. It's a day of sadness. You say, well, that wasn't a very nice feast. You're right. Wasn't meant to be. You see, in the cycle of Israel's history, after he gathers them back, once they get back into the land in the sense of being, I was gonna say, authenticated by God, that they're back in his will, when Messiah returns, they're going to mourn.

See, we always think of Christ coming again will be a day of joy. It will be for you. Your sins are forgiven. You've had your day of mourning. You repented of your sin. You know the joy of the Lord. They don't.

There's a day coming in their national history when Israel will dawn upon their heart. The man we rejected was Messiah. The man we nailed to the cross was the Lord Christ. We, that's when they'll say Isaiah 53.

We despised him. He was wounded for our transgressions. The chastisement of our peace was upon him. And by his stripes, we are healed. They say, we counted him smitten, stricken of God and afflicted. They'll mourn.

So I think as they read this, they understood there was a day of mourning coming. But I want you to understand this principle tonight. Mourning is not the end. It's not the purpose of this feast. It's the part of the process so that God will bring them into joy.

God never asks a man or a woman to mourn and repent to leave them there. They mourn, they repent to bring them into blessing, to bring them to forgiveness, to bring them into joy. That nation will mourn.

But then they'll recognize that Jesus is the Christ. They'll rejoice in his greatness, his glory, and his power. And that day in Jerusalem, there was great mourning. As 50 ,000 people recognized their sin, the sin of idolatry that took them to the land of exile, the sin of rebellion that took them away from God.

They'll mourn, but listen to what Nehemiah and the Ezra and the Levites, they say to them, this day is holy. They say, mourn not nor weep. They say to them, don't be sorry for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

He's not saying to them, don't mourn. Saying, just don't wallow in that. God is not asking you to stay in that state of mourning. He wants the joy of the Lord to be your strength. Listen, maybe this weekend there will be some mourning.

Maybe for some, there will be a call to recognize their sin. I don't know. Maybe for some, God is going to bring you literally to your knees so that you confess you're not where you should be. And you've not done what you should have done.

But God says, don't remain in mourning. I want the joy of the Lord to be your strength. I want to bring you to joy. I want you to know his blessing. That would be a wonderful thing if that happened over this weekend.

Understanding, Responding to, and Obeying Scripture

Ah, but notice this, the second day comes. You read through this chapter, you notice that there's a very neat division of the chapter. Day one, verses one to 12. Day two, verses 13 to 17. Days three to eight are summarized for us in verse 18.

You could also call that understanding the scriptures in day one, responding to the scriptures in day two and obeying the scriptures in day three. Why, what did they do? Well, when they come together the second day, look at verse 13.

There was the chief of the fathers, there was leadership, there was priests, there was worship, there was Levites, there was service. They come to Ezra, the scribe, to understand the words and they discover there's something they've not been doing.

We read verse 17, since the days of Joshua, the son of Nun, unto that day had Israel, the children of Israel, not done so. I can't remember if my calculation is right. I think it was my father, I had talk about it, so it probably was right.

But he told us of a revival 250 years after Moses and Joshua, then a revival after 500 years. This is beyond that. A long, long time since they had obeyed the word of God. God has privileged me to work over recent years with believers in the land of Uganda who have discovered they were Christians, but they weren't obeying the word of God.

They weren't gathering according to his word. And what joy in their faces when they discover the word of God. What joy there will be this weekend when you say, I'm going to do this. I'm going to obey this.

I'm going to follow the teaching of God's word. So in the seventh month, on the 15th day, what did they do? They went out, they got these branches, they built these booths. Look at verse 16, upon the roof of the house, in their courts, the courts of the house of God, in the street, what they were doing was, they were doing what God had taught Moses.

Back in Leviticus, throughout the law, this was a seven day celebration. This was ecstatic rejoicing in the blessings of God. They were having a good time. I hope you have a good time this weekend. I hope there's joy in your soul as we gather.

The Feast of Tabernacles and Future Joy

Let me just tell you very quickly, for Israel, this comes after the gathering, comes after the day of mourning and atonement. It's, I think it probably relates to the 1 ,000 year reign of Christ on earth, when there'll be an absence of sin.

There will be some sin, but it will be dealt with the minute it happens. There will be general, a beautiful administration, a world governed by the Christ of God, by the son of God, a world where harvesting and reaping, you know, the reaper will overtake the sower.

There'll be a world of beauty, animals living in harmony. That is pictured in the rejoicing of the feast of tabernacles, 1 ,000 years. But I do hope we get a little foretaste of it this weekend. I hope we don't just gather.

That's good. I hope we don't just listen to the word of God and understand it. That's great. I hope we do mourn and acknowledge and be honest about where we are spiritually. That's good. But I hope we live and rejoice in the goodness of God as we gather in his presence this weekend.

Shall we pray? Let's just commend ourselves to the Lord in prayer.