Sermon Tone Analysis

Prior to my coming to the Philippines I was a lay chaplain for the Arkansas Department of Corrects and would conduct Bible studies at a local work release program and a few small detention centers.

It was always exciting for me to walk through those prison doors, hear the sound of those large electronic bolts locking me inside a room full of killers, thieves, rapists, and drug addicts.

What excited me was knowing that I was bringing the Word of God to those who truly needed to hear and understand His word.

This one time we were teaching through Romans and studying chapter seven when suddenly a fight breaks out while we were trying to understand the struggle between the sin nature and the new spiritual nature.

This was the ultimate drama illustrating the spiritual truth being taught.

Why did the guys start fighting you may wonder?

One guy came to church every week and the other guy went this time only to harm the other guy.

Because they were locked up in a different block of cells the second guy had to go to a common area where he would see his target.

The second guy was not interested in God’s word and saw the church service as a means towards his ulterior end – inflicting harm on the other.

I wonder how often we do the same.

I wonder how many people are going to church only to allow Satan to achieve his ulterior end of inflicting harm on people.

Allow me to start by asking “what is your understanding and expectations of God’s word.”

That is, what do you think you can gain from the Bible?

Do you see the Bible as a Holy relic from which you will receive blessings if revered?

Or do you see it as a source of information, the type of information that can affect major change in your life?

In like manner, why do we come to church?

Is it to check off a task from our religious check list or is it to worship through learning?

How many of you believe that we can worship God by learning from the sermon?

Paul tells us in Romans 1:16 “I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God…” But how does this “power” actually manifest itself?

I have seen a time where a jeepney was traveling down a city street and from the back gospel tracts were being thrown at the people walking on the sidewalk, yet the tracts were just walked over by the people on the sidewalk.

Were the people in the jeepney evangelizing?

Or how about this, have you ever thought that if you have a Bible study with a co-worker or friend that they will automatically be a better person and this will help keep you secure?

‘They will be less likely to steal from me or harm me in so other way’ you may have thought.

Why do we think this way?

What type of Bible study should we have with non-believers?

What type with believers?

Do we wish to be able to just read one Bible verse and that act will protect us from evil?

There is a Christian doctrine, the Perspicuity (Clarity) of Scripture, which instructs us that the Bible is written in a manner that the text is clear and that the understanding of any text can be discovered by ordinary readers.

Do you find this to be true?

Have you always picked up your Bible, read a chapter or two, and fully understood the meaning of what you read?

No, of course not.

The key to understanding what is meant, when theologians tell us that the scriptures should be clear to the average reader, is that it “can” be understood.

We will be looking at “how” this “can” be so.

We will be looking at the need of studying and striving to understand scriptures, the need for the scriptures to be proclaimed and explained so that we can understand, the need to allow the scriptures to affect its purifying effect upon us, and the outcome of engaging in the studying of scriptures.

At this stage in our study of the Book of Nehemiah we shift our focus from the physical labors of Nehemiah and the Jewish people to the spiritual side of things.

Starting now in chapter eight and going on until the end of the book, Nehemiah, and at times the priest Ezra, will focus on the spiritual wellbeing of the people and how to help the people grow in their faith and relationship with God.

So let’s take a closer look at chapter eight and see what precipitates this change that takes place throughout the rest of the book.

In Nehemiah 8:1-3 we discover that the Jewish people were gathered together in what was a large open square or plaza near one of the gates of the newly rewalled city.

As they were gathered together they called for the scribe/priest Ezra to read to them the scriptures.

We need to note that in verse two is the timeframe for this event; it was the first day of the seventh month.

The seventh month in the Jewish calendar should have been a busy time for the Jewish people.

Three times each year those Jews who lived in the proximity of Jerusalem should have converged on the city for religious festivals.

Similar to how here in the Philippines you can be sure that people will return home to their province on All Saints Day, Christmas/New Year, and Holy Week.

For the Jews, these pilgrimage festivals should have been centered on agricultural times of harvest so as to simplify the tithing process.

We should recall that for Israel the tithes and sacrifices were for the most part a fragment of a larger celebration that involved a lot of food and fun.

There definitely was an air of reverence surrounding the feasts, but they were to be feasts nonetheless.

So during times of major harvests the Lord designated these to be the times to celebrate the feasts and thus allow the Jews to bring in their freshly harvested tithe which would mostly be consumed during the festival.

The bringing of the tithe would vary in amount from year-to-year as the Jews followed a lunar calendar which does not always sync with the solar defined farming seasons.

Also, or should I say contrasting with this, not to waste an opportunity, the Lord tethered each primary harvest to a historical event or spiritual reality that He wanted the people to always remember.

Such as how our Christmas should remind us of the birth of Christ and Easter of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The three primary pilgrimage festivals were: 1) The Passover which was coupled with the barley harvest and was intended to remind the Jews of their deliverance from bondage; 2) Coupled with the wheat harvest was the Feast of Weeks (Pentecost) which took place seven weeks after Passover and was the end of the cereal or grain harvest.

Pentecost was intended to remind the Jews that God was their provider and resulted in Israel renewing their covenant relationship with God spurred on by gratitude for His provision; 3) The Feast of Tabernacles was the final pilgrimage festival and occurred during the seventh month.

The feast was in celebration of the end of the farming season and would be similar to an Autumn Festival celebrated, usually in October in the northern sections of the northern hemisphere, in appreciation for the general harvest.

The American autumn harvest feast is called Thanksgiving Day and will occur in a few weeks (and I am looking forward to the feast).

The Jewish Feast of Tabernacles ought to have involved the Jews making tents that they would live in during the time of the weeklong celebration and would have been a reminder of when the nation of old lived in tents during their wandering experience after their spies motivated the people to reject their promise land.

The seventh month of the Jewish calendar should have had three holidays celebrated within a short order of time.

This would be similar to our Christmas Day, Rizal Day, and New Year’s Day.

The first holiday in the Jewish calendar’s seventh month is the Feast of Trumpets and involved a day of the blowing of trumpets and calling the people to come to the feast of that day as well as the two feasts that were to soon follow.

This feast happened on the first day of the month and it is this feast that we see in Nehemiah chapter eight.

Then on the tenth day of the seventh month should have been the Day of Atonement which was a day of repentance and sorrow.

This day should have instilled into the minds of the Jews their need of atonement for their sins.

It was the day in which their sins were dealt with.

Then five days after the Day of Atonement should have been the Feast of Tabernacles which lasted a week and was potentially a time of great celebration.

Thus when God outlined the Jewish calendar when He gave them the Law of Moses the seventh month began with a call to the people to join together with God, but before they could move on to the primary celebration they had to deal with the guilt of their sins.

Once their sins were dealt with it was then to be a time of great festivities.

The nation of Israel had not always followed this sequence regarding the feasts of the seventh month nor understood the significance of the order of these events.

We see this alluded to in Nehemiah 8:17.

After the Day of Atonement was prescribed by Moses it was practiced a few times but then there is no Old Testament record of Israel actually practicing this feast after the time of Moses.

There are several instances of the Feasts of Tabernacles being practiced, but there is no indication that the Jewish people understood that the feast was to be a time of celebrating the autumn harvest in conjunction with the symbolic cleansing of their sins that would have taken place during the Day of Atonement, and finally joining all of this together to be a time of remembrance of their occasion of living in tents contrasting the difficult times with God’s current provision of an abundant harvest.

This indicates that the people of Israel likely missed the overall meaning of the combined celebrations of the seventh month thus no traditions were formed that would have enhanced life and their enjoyment of the goodness of God.

God wants us to enjoy Him!

The fact that the Jews missed the timing of the calendar events as was given in the law will be seen in our study today as well as next week when we study chapter nine.

This is where we find Nehemiah and the people of Israel when they asked Ezra to teach them the Word of God in Nehemiah 8:1.

Another bit of background I would like us to understand before we start digging out the truths of chapter eight is that in Nehemiah 8:1 we see for the first time in the Book of Nehemiah Ezra the priest and scribe.

Ezra was a contemporary of Nehemiah and of the generation following the prophets Haggai and Zechariah whom were instrumental in the rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple more than sixty years prior to the time of Nehemiah chapter eight.

Preceding his reintroduction seen here in Nehemiah eight we can find Ezra being commissioned by the king of Persia to train leaders in knowing, applying, and helping others apply God’s law.

Ezra 7:25 reads: “You, Ezra, according to the wisdom of your God which is in your hand, appoint magistrates and judges that they may judge all the people who are in the province beyond the River, even all those who know the laws of your God; and you may teach anyone who is ignorant of them.”

King Artaxerxes would have done this likely in order to allow the Jews to have the freedom to adhere to their religion with the hopes that this would satisfy the people thus enhancing the peace and order of the Persian Kingdom.

Yet in reality this set the stage for what we will discover in Nehemiah chapter eight.

Fourteen or fifteen years may have passed since the time Ezra was charged to train leaders in how to handle accurately the Word of God.

Ezra was committed to the task but to accomplish the task took years of hard work and preparations; a price that had to be paid.

With this all in mind let us now turn to our text to discover what transpires.

Again looking at Nehemiah 8:1-3 we discover that Ezra was reading the Bible and that the people were listening intently at what was being read.

Yet we discover that the goal of this exercise was to understand God’s word and not merely just hear the word.

In verse two we see that anyone who could understand was brought in and then in verse three that they listened attentively.

It was more than just a religious exercise done so as to provoke a blessing from God.

How often do we go to church just to invoke God’s blessing but during the sermon we are thinking about anything else rather than the sermon.

I know for me I must shut down all other thoughts and focus on what is being taught from the pulpit, especially if the message is given wholly in Tagalog.

This morning many of you should be putting forth greater effort to understand my message that is being delivered in English.

This is the price we will need to pay to learn God’s Word.

It would be a lot easier for us if we simply received blessings for just coming, but that is not how God has designed it.

God communicates to us and then we must strive to understand what it is that He has communicated and then allow those thoughts to impact our behavior and refashion our character.

The people who returned to Israel understood this.

We see in our passage today that six times the emphasis is on understanding or gaining insight.

In Nehemiah 8:5 when Ezra was reading the Scriptures the people stood up; they stood up due to their reverence to the Holy Bible.

They knew they needed to understand and they respected that need.

It is likely here in verse five where our tradition began of us standing at the reading of the passage that our Sunday morning’s sermons will be based on.

I would like to ask, before reading this passage this morning how many of you knew that there is a biblical precedence for our tradition, that this is likely the passage where that precedence is found, and that our tradition is founded on the notion that God’s people gave reverence to God’s word for they believed that a greater understanding of God’s word will affect greater change in their lives.

Or, have we never given much thought as to why we stand when we read our passage of study?

To stand because it is a tradition is simply a religious work that has no merit!