Church Hopping

John begins his letter by stating his purpose. Not just the purpose of this letter, but the purpose of his life. He is proclaiming what he has seen and experienced to others. He says his purpose is not just to make converts to what He believes, but rather that the people who hear this would have fellowship with them (which is fellowship with Christ). And then his end goal in this is that our joy may be complete.

There is an interesting note in the text because apparently translators are not sure whether it should be “our joy” or “your joy”. Some early, reliable manuscripts have “your” while several other early, reliable ones have “our”. I don’t think it is a huge issue either way. By saying “our” he could be referring to all of us or he could be referring to just himself and those who are proclaiming with him. In this case it would go well with the idea of proclaiming the gospel because it is good news and you can’t help buy sharing. Plus there is the anticipation of God saying well-done, good and faithful servant. So there is joy in the proclamation of the Gospel.

By saying your joy may be complete, he is referring to the joy that comes from salvation which he has already mostly received. I think this is obvious when we see the excitement of a new believer. So there is also joy that comes from salvation.

I think the most difficult to grasp verse here will be verse 6. It could easily be taken that if we sin, we are not saved. But a more careful read shows that this cannot be what he is saying for the following reasons:

• He specifically says fellowship instead of salvation. Salvation could replace “fellowship with Him” but it doesn’t.
• If no sin is a qualification for salvation through Christ, then it is impossible according to verse 8.

Well we are at the final chapter of Nehemiah and it is a pretty interesting one.  Nehemiah has left the city because he promised the king he would return.  While he is gone, everything he had put into place had started falling apart.  God had made a rule not to allow Ammonites or Moabites into the temple due to the story in Numbers 22 about Balaam’s ass (go read it).  Now God wasn’t completely prejudice against a entire people group, although He is often accused of it by detractors.  He still is concerned about the individual (Ruth was a Moabite and she got her own book in the Bible), but He knew that the majority of the Ammonites and Moabites were not God-fearing.

To make matters even worse, the specific Ammonite whom they had built a tomb for in the temple was for Tobiah, who as you remember was an enemy of the reconstruction of Jerusalem and also had corrupted the nobles of Jerusalem.  So this is about as big of a betrayal as can happen and has to baffle Nehemiah.  On top of that they haven’t been allotting the tithes to the priests, so they had to leave the city.  And they are not honoring the Sabbath, but are working instead.

I think that every single person who ministers (not necessarily in a paid position) will face this kind of let-down at some point.  For some reason, probably sin, men are going to fall back into their old sinful habits (Proverbs 26:11).  I think that very often that this is devastating to people who have poured so much time and effort into discipling and teaching just to see little results.  It’s times like this that God’s sovereignty is important to me, because I know I can’t change hearts but I am just called to go preach the Word and make disciples.  God is the one who changes hearts.

The majority of believers that I encounter, do not have radically different lives from the non-believers I encounter.  I think that Nehemiah is seeing this and trying to make the people understand the eternal weight of the decisions that they are making.  I know its not very acceptable to question people’s salvation today, but I think there is great value in individuals wrestling with their salvation and wondering why if they are saved, why does their life not look in the least bit like more mature believers?

I think it would be pretty cool to have your name mentioned in the Bible, but at the same time it’s kinda like having your name mentioned in the credits of a movie.  Nobody reads these parts in depth.  We are seeing a renewed emphasis on the Levites in Nehemiah’s new Jerusalem and that is promising.  For song long they had gone without any consideration for God and His law, so it is good to see a refocusing even though it took conquer and exile for it to happen.  But in the end it has brought joy to them even in the midst of their circumstances.  I think that is a defining characteristic of joy that come from God, being that it can come when there is no rational reason for it to be there.

It is encouraging to see the entire population supporting the priests and ministers with material giving.  It is encouraging for ministers to not have to worry while doing what God has called them to.  It is also shows a true commitment by the people since they are backing up their promise with action.  You’re never truly committed to something until you are sacrificing finacially.

Well it’s time to move back into Jerusalem, but not everyone is terribly excited about moving into a rundown city.  Its like someone asked you to move back to Berlin after WW2.  Not many people are excited about it, but it needs to be done for the continuance of the nation.  Nehemiah is smart enough to realize that a slow phase in of the population will be less miserable then everyone at once.  This is probably because there is very little infrastructure, housing, etc.  People probably wanted to stay in their villages cause they had already set up home there and there was definitely more business outside the vacant city.

One thing that I didn’t realize until this chapter is that this population of Jews was only comprised of the tribes of Judah and Benjamin.  This is because the northern kingdom of Israel was so dispersed by the Assyrians that they never really returned in significant numbers to their homeland.  So when we are talking only about the tribes of Judah and Benjamin, along with the Levites who were dispersed amongst all the tribes so that they could lead worship throughout the nation (see Joshua 21).  I read that the estimated population of Jerusalem was only about 4800 to 8000.

It is interesting to think that there were very few significant figures from this point on for the other tribes of Israel.  If you think about the two biggest figures from the New Testament they are Jesus who is from the tribe of Judah and Paul who is from the tribe of Benjamin.  I wonder which tribes the disciples were all from…I’ll have to check into all this.