Church Hopping

This chapter surprised me a little because look at the first section…it’s made up of 27 verses.  I’m not exactly sure why it was decided to split every three or four names into a separate verse, but I guess if you want to brag about memorizing a big chunk of verses then this would be an easy one.  I’m really starting to wish I could speak to the people who decided on the numbering system, because although they helped us out so much, they also did some strange things.

I was underestimating the size and scope of what this revival that was happening.  This is the entire Jewish nation (at least the part that had returned from exile) confessing their sin and completely rededicating their lives back towards God’s original plan.  This is a pretty big deal.  The first thing they start with is promising not to intermarry with Gentiles.  It took me a while to accept this practice, because as believers we are supposed to “be in the world.”  But its just marriage that he is asking them not to do, not to avoid any contact at all.  I still don’t quite understand how a believer could get married to a non-believer.  Your ultimate hope is found in completely different thing and it tends to make me question the salvation of the believer.

They make some pretty big commitments that aren’t commanded in the Pentateuch, such as giving a third of their income.  My guess is that this was to help get the temple up and running again, but you have to wonder if they really thought that was sustainable.  I wish it was, but people are greedy.  I also thought about how they gave their best as a tithe to God and I wondered if we were as focused on that today as we should.  I’ve always like CS Lewis’ quote that we should be forced to deny ourselves some luxury by tithing, otherwise we aren’t giving enough (paraphrase).  I wonder what (if anything) we are giving up by tithing and if it is valuable enough to us to be considered a “firstfruit.”

This chapter should be titled “The Faithfulness of God” because look at how many times the people disobey yet God remains faithful.  I count at least 4 or 5 times in the story when the Jews disobey God yet each and every time He restores them when they cry out to Him.  We see the same thing on a smaller scale in our own lives.  We’ll go through life in cycles of disobedience to crying out for His help.  Right now the Jewish nation as a whole is in a period of crying out for God’s mercy.  This is a very unique time because it seems that there is genuine repentance and revival throughout the entire Jewish nation.

This one chapter gives us an entire summary of what God has done since the beginning of time.  I think that this is a very important exercise because it helps you understand where you are in that plan as well as what God is doing at that time.  If you cannot summarize what God has done from the beginning in Genesis up to today, then you may want to look into it.  It will also help you get a better grasp on where God is going and might provide some clarity into the end times.

One last interesting note:  in the ancient Greek texts it credits Ezra as dictating this prayer in verse 9:6.  This is not present in the Hebrew texts, which are older.

In Nehemiah 7 we finally get an intersection of Ezra and Nehemiah.  Ezra begins reading the Book of the Law to the people in the square.  It is very likely that many of the people had not heard it before or at least not recently due to the exile.  This means that Ezra got up and started reading the book of Deuteronomy to the people (possibly the other 4 books of the Pentateuch as well).    How attentive would you be if you went to church on Sunday and the pastor started reading the first five books of the Old Testament all the way until midday?  They do have Levites wandering around through the crowd to help provide understanding of what Ezra is reading.  This all seems fairly close to our modern day church.

The crowds initial response was the natural one.  They recognized their sin in light of what they were hearing from the Book of Law.  I think that recognizing your own sinfulness is a very important part of the gospel that we downplay in modern times.  We know that we make mistakes but our standard is usually those around us instead of God.  Since we aren’t as bad as that other guy, then we must be pretty good.  The problem with that sort of thinking is that the Bible (especially Jesus) is very clear that the standard is God who is perfect and holy.  In comparison to him we are traitors and our deeds are as filthy rags.

While it is good to remind yourself of why you need God (i.e. your sin), it is not good to dwell on forever, because that is no longer who you are.  Since you are a redeemed child of God, you can dwell on His beauty and find joy in the fact that He has saved you.  Nehemiah and Ezra both agree that this is a time for joy, so they encourage the people in that.  They also charge them to serve others.  It seems that the overflow of joy that comes from the Lord is service.

The feast of booths is a funny one.  Basically the Jews all make little huts out of tree branches and they go camp out in them.  The purpose is to remember how God led the people in the wilderness where they lived in these little huts.  I can’t think of a parallel for us today.  I wonder if we are lacking in opportunities to remember who we once were before God delivered us?

Nehemiah has finished the building of the wall, so now he must begin to rebuild the rest of the city.  Since Jerusalem is still in ruins and vulnerable, he orders that the city gates are only open during the busy hours of the day.  The fact that there were so few houses reminds us that we are not talking about the old thriving city of Jerusalem or anything close to the one today.  This was probably a sparsely populated, run-down city.

Nehemiah wants to begin organizing the people probably to focus on repopulating Jerusalem or perhaps it was more necessary for property rights.  This list is almost identical to Ezra 2.  You’re not going to find a huge amount of application out of the rest of this chapter, but I get two things out of it.

1. God gifts certain people in certain ways and I am glad He does

Someone thought it would be important to write down all of the names of the people who were returning from exile.  I would not have been that person.  It was probably important that it get done and it was definitely useful to Nehemiah.  If God had gifted everyone like me then something like this never would have gotten done.  But God made someone who had the foresight and diligence to take on this very tedious task.

2. God is faithful to the children of Abraham

God promised Abraham he would make them into a great nation. God promised David that the Messiah would come from him. God has been committed to Israel through these two unconditional covenants. Even though they were not faithful to Him and consistently broke the Mosaic covenant, leading to their exile, God remains faithful to his unconditional promises. If you study the history of the Jewish nation, it is amazing that it still exists today. Multiple times groups have tried to wipe them from the face of the earth and every time they fail. There is something special about a group of people who have faced genocide on multiple occasions, but continue to flourish. For me the phenomenon of the continuance nation of Israel is enough to attest to the existence of God but also it speaks to His unending faithfulness.