Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): When we open the Bible, do we expect to hear from the Lord? Here's Pastor Bill Lubkeman.

Bill Luebkemann: The word of God. And here it was when he opened it up, all the people stood up. They were expecting to hear from God. And I want to suggest to you when we open up our Bibles, we should be expecting to hear from God also. If we just open up our Bible like we open up some fiction book, some novel or some bestseller or whatever, or some book about politics or current events, then we're missing out on something. They were expecting to hear something from God here. They were excited about it. What's the Lord going to speak to me or to us today?

Guest (Male): We're told in the Bible today, if you hear the Lord's voice, do not harden your heart. In other words, God is still speaking through his word even today. Well, the people in Nehemiah's day had a great respect for the word and anticipation of receiving instruction from it. Could the same be said of you? Hello and welcome once again to Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, pastor of Calvary Chapel of Marlton. We make our way over to the Old Testament book of Nehemiah today. The walls been built. The people have returned. Everyone is excited.

At this high peak, they were still vulnerable and needed to continue to rely on the grace of God and on the word of God. From Nehemiah chapter 8, here's Pastor Bill.

Bill Luebkemann: So, we are in Nehemiah chapter 8, and you'll recall that last time we looked at the conspiracy, if you will, against Nehemiah in chapter 6 and how these enemies of the Jews, Sanballat, Tobiah, Geshem the Arab, and other enemies were working against him, trying to tear him down, trying to stop the wall from being built. But nevertheless, it was finished in a record 52 days, and we looked in chapter 7 and saw the people that were there in the city at that time. Those people that had returned or were still there from the prior returns.

So, now they're at a very crucial point because the people have returned, the walls been built, uh they're excited at what the Lord's been doing and happy to be serving him. And now you'd think they're at a high peak, if you will, and their faith in the Lord and what have you. But uh I want to suggest that that may be the most vulnerable time that you have when you're most vulnerable to attacks of the enemy, whoever the enemy is. Attacks of the enemy, meaning the devil, or attacks of whoever the enemy is prompting to harass you at that time.

It's not like the wall was built and their enemies were gone and they were never going to hear from them again. It's not like we've accomplished this and now we can accomplish anything cuz look what we did. I was reading a commentary today by Redpath. I should have brought it with me because the one paragraph I thought was really good, it's along the lines of we're not going to finish some great thing and be stronger than we were before and able to take on the next thing. We finish one task, whatever there is the Lord's doing, whatever it is we've done, it was only by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ that we did that, and it's only by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ that we're going to accomplish the next thing.

It's not that we got stronger in doing that and well, look, I learned and I'm stronger and now I can do the next thing by myself. And he pointed out as an example how the Jews had conquered Jericho and the walls came down. And then he suggested that now that they were confident in themselves, look at what we can do. We kind of don't like need God anymore. And they went off to the next city, Ai, and it was a route. They lost. A lot of people died. It was along the lines of, you know, don't think that now that you've accomplished this great thing that you have some power or strength or ability that you can now use the next time because whatever God accomplished in you the next time around, it's only going to happen if he accomplished it in you also.

It's not going to happen cuz of something you did. Don't start to feel proud in yourself, I guess is the way I want to say it. Maybe I'll remember to bring it next week. So, chapter 7 ended. So, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the Nethinim, and all Israel dwelt in their cities. They were successful. They were happy. The Lord had blessed them. This wall was built. And when the seventh month came, this was their new year, by the way. It would be in roughly in the fall for us here.

When the seventh month came, the children of Israel were in their cities. Now, all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded Israel. Now, we're going to see Ezra come along here again. And of course, the previous book to Nehemiah is called Ezra. And Ezra had returned some 16 or so years before Nehemiah. So, he's been in the town a long time. He is the scribe.

I believe he's a priest. He's been with the book of the law the whole time. He knows the book of the law inside and out. He's been telling people about it and he's seen them through and been with them as they built this wall. He didn't just walk in here. He's been in this town for a long time. And we're going to see here in chapter 8 how important it is to know and rejoice in and follow or obey the word of God because that's kind of what chapter 8 was all about. This was kind of like the first Calvary Chapel here.

Now, all the people gathered together as one man in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate. And they told Ezra to bring the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded Israel. They said, bring out the Bible. Well, it was probably just the first five books of the Bible, the five books of Moses. So, Ezra the priest brought the law before the assembly of men and women and all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate from morning until midday before the men and women and those who could understand.

And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. So, Ezra the scribe stood on a platform of wood which they had made for the purpose. And beside him at his right hand stood Mahlahiah, Shema, Anaiah, Urijah, Hilkiah, and Maaseiah. And on his left hand, Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hashbaddanah, Zechariah, and Meshullam. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people. And when he opened it, all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. Then all the people answered, Amen, Amen, while lifting up their hands.

And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Also, Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabbethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, and the Levites helped the people to understand the law. And the people stood in their place. So, they read distinctly from the book of the law of God, and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading. You know, they've been working for the Lord for 52 days building this wall. And now they decide it's time to hear from the word of the Lord, hear from the book of the word, hear from the law, the Bible, the word of God.

And they tell Ezra to bring it out. And he comes before the assembly. Now, this must have required some planning. They didn't just all coincidentally happen to be show up there on the same day. Somehow this was planned out ahead of time that we're going to do this. And they all got together, the men and the women. And it says all who could hear with understanding on the first day of the seventh month. You know, one of the commentators I was reading called these first eight verses of chapter 8 understand the word. And that's something that's important for us to do today as well is to understand the word because there's a lot of people that don't understand it.

There's plenty of people that don't even read it. So, of course, they don't understand it. They're the ones who always say, well, you know, everyone's entitled to their opinion about what the Bible means. I like to ask those people what their opinion is and why they feel that way, which they can never elaborate because they have never read it. But they feel somehow that they're entitled to their opinion. But you have other people who do read it and still don't understand it. I sent around an email today. Some of you may have gotten it. It was a commentary on a certain broadcasting operation that broadcasts a lot of preachers who are faith and prosperity and that kind of stuff.

And the focus of the article was about how many of them are asking for you to send them money. That's all they do is is look for money and they ply on people who are sick or poor or out of work or who don't have much and say, you know, if you give us what you do have, even one of them is going so far as to tell people to send in their grocery money. Send in your grocery money and and God will bless you for it. It's a seed offering, you know? And I was at a church once where they did this.

The preacher would work up the crowd and say, you know, if you you need a car and the car costs 10,000 and you don't have 10,000 but you have a thousand, what do you do? What do you have? And they all said, a seed. And what do you do with the seed? You plant it, they shouted. And of course, his idea of them planting the seed was that they should give it to him. And then it would come back to them. I never could figure out if the preacher needed money why he didn't give a seed to the people in his church and figure that it would come back to him.

It seemed to be kind of a one-sided kind of a thing. And this article talked about, you know, how mad this author was at what was going on here and how much money was flowing into the coffers of these ministries that really they don't do anything. They just collect your money and use it to pay for airtime on television so that they can collect more money so that they can pay for more airtime. And they have big hair dos and live opulent lifestyles. And see, they read the parts of the Bible about God providing and they don't understand the whole word.

And so they get carried away with this stuff, which is not the message that the Lord wants to communicate all the time or most of the time or maybe even some of the time. And it's important here that we understand the word. And we're not going to understand it of course unless we read it and get into it and then pray and ask God to show us the understanding here. And so the first thing we see here is that they got together, all of those who were able to, who could hear with understanding. The people that had they didn't get the little children together because maybe they weren't ready to understand it.

They got together the people who were able to hear it and hopefully understand it. And the first thing that happened was they brought out the book. You know, you can't read it if you don't have it. If you just have it sitting on a bookshelf and it's all dusty and whatever, you put it on the coffee table when the pastor comes over so that he can see that you have the book there, that doesn't do any good. You have to get it out and do something with it. And that's the first thing they did is telling Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses out to them.

They didn't have a hundred copies. They didn't have all their own copies. It was big and bulky and had to be copied by hand one word at a time, one letter at a time, one stroke at a time. You you know, not everybody could have their own copy of the scriptures in this day. It wasn't practical. They wouldn't be able to afford it. There probably weren't enough people around to make all those copies, scribes and what have you. You know, it was just beyond their resources. They could only listen to it while somebody else read it to them or maybe they could borrow it and read it themselves.

Then he read from it in the open square that was in front of the Water Gate from morning until midday before the men and women and those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. So, there they were outside in the open square. He's standing on a platform we see in verse 4 of wood. In other words, the first pulpit here perhaps in the Bible. And he's reading from the Bible from morning until midday. Now, you can take that any way you want but it seems to me it was at least a few hours cuz we're not talking about a 10-minute reading just of the highlights of the scripture.

He read from it maybe from 9 to 12 or maybe from 8 to 1 or maybe from 8 to maybe it was three or four or five hours. It doesn't say by the way that they didn't take breaks and stuff like that. They may very well have taken a break and relaxed a little bit somewhere in there. But during this time, he was reading from it and the ears of the people were attentive. They were paying attention. So, Ezra the scribe stood on a platform of wood which they had made for the purpose. And beside him were these people who were no doubt other priests or other leaders.

So, he stood on a platform of wood. He was up there on this pulpit and beside him he had these guys that were like his assistants, helpers, other priests perhaps. Verse 5, and Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people. And when he opened it, all the people stood up. Now, it's amazing here how much respect, I think, they gave to the word of God. Today perhaps we take it for granted. We have the Bible available in so many different translations. Many of us on our bookcase, you know, we have a King James and a new King James and a new American Standard and maybe an Old American Standard, you know, the RSV.

And maybe we have the NIV. And maybe we have if we have kids in our house, we have some kids Bibles. And we pass them around and throw them around and they get dusty or dirty and they're sitting at the bottom of the pile or whatever. We don't maybe treat it sometimes with the respect that it deserves, the word of God. And here it was when he opened it up, all the people stood up. They were expecting to hear from God. And I want to suggest to you when we open up our Bibles, we should be expecting to hear from God also.

If we just open up our Bible like we open up some fiction book, some novel or some bestseller or whatever, or some book about politics or current events, then we're missing out on something. They were expecting to hear something from God here. They were excited about it. What's the Lord going to speak to me or to us today? And look, I'm not saying that when we come to church here, I should stand up on a big tall thing and we should all bow down when we see the Bible. But I am suggesting that perhaps some of us don't pay very much attention to it.

Perhaps we don't necessarily treat it with the respect it deserves. And maybe perhaps I just want to suggest that maybe God doesn't speak to us as much as we want him to because we don't really expect him to say anything or maybe what we're expecting him to say is something different. So, we never really hear him saying what he what he's saying cuz we're too busy listening to something else. I've said many times before about how the one time I was sitting at my house many years ago praying, Lord, what do you want me to do today?

Anything you want me to do, Lord. Just tell me what you want me to do. And the doorbell rang and I went to the door and it was some Mormons or something. And so I'm busy and I closed the door and I went back. Lord, what do you want me to do today? And after a while, I remembered maybe that was the answer to my prayer. And I missed it. And I was studying today and they came again. And it was either the Mormons or the JWs. I'm not sure which. I was behind. I was trying to get my reading done.

The phone kept ringing. I opened the door. I saw their name tag. I said, I'm not interested. I closed the door. I went back, sit down. Lord, I can only do so many things at once. Don't don't like give me ten things to do at once. I can't keep up with it. Later on I thought, you know, I probably missed a mark on that one also. Maybe I should have dropped all the other things and done what was most obviously in front of me. Ezra opened up the book and the sight of all the people and these people were expecting God to say something.

And they stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. Then all the people answered, Amen, Amen. Now, look, it said earlier that he read it from morning till midday but I I think what we're doing now in verse four and five is we're backing up a little bit to give more of a play-by-play account of of what happened. And we see that Ezra said a blessing before he read the Bible. Seems like so often today we read the Bible and then we do the blessing afterwards. It seems like here he did the blessing before he read the word.

And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, which means so be it. So be it. We want to hear from God while lifting up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. They may have even been on their knees. And then it lists these other guys who were there as well in verse 7 and it says that they helped the people to understand. And the people stood in their place. Now, one of the commentators that I was reading had an excerpt of an English translation of the Bible that was written in 1382, 600 plus years ago.

And he said, I wonder how many of us can understand what this says. It was almost impossible to figure out yet it was in English but it was way before the King James English even. And that was 600 years ago. And this commentator pointed out that these books of Moses had been written around a thousand years previous to this date here when it was being read. And he said, if we can't understand English that was written 600 years ago, I wonder how hard it was for them to understand what Moses had written a thousand years before that because language changes over a period of time.

So, they had people there to help them understand. And this kind of makes you think that they they probably did take some breaks. And they probably did pause and maybe they broke up into small groups and these guys were the small group leaders. Maybe they asked them questions. Well, what is this mean or why does it say this or I don't understand it. Can you explain this? And these people helped the people to understand the law but meanwhile they stood in their place. So, they read distinctly from the book in the law of God and they gave the sense and helped them to understand the reading.

They gave them the sense. They explained what it meant. Helped them to put it into context, helped them to figure out what how does it relate to their life today and all that kind of stuff. And what is it that God's trying to tell them there? This was like a Calvary Chapel Bible study. They were going through the Bible and they were explaining what it meant, talking about it, trying to get the sense of it and understand it. These are good things that we should be able to continue to do today. 1 Timothy 4:13 Paul said to Timothy, one of the things you should be doing is continuing the public reading of scripture which I think probably means reading but also teaching.

In fact, that same verse 1 Timothy chapter 4 verse 13 goes on to say, till I come, give attention to reading, to exhortation, and to doctrine. I think in the NIV it says the public reading, teaching maybe and preaching. Maybe I reversed that but that's the idea here. Give attention to these things. Publicly read it, preach and teach about what the word of God has to say. And that's what these people did. They wanted to hear what God had to say. They got the Bible out. I keep calling it the Bible but of course it was the book of Moses, what they had at that time.

They got it out. They opened it up. They read it and they had it explained to them. Verse 9, and Nehemiah, who was the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn nor weep for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. What happened was when they heard the God's word, which they hadn't heard in a long time if ever, it brought conviction to them in their lives. And they realized how far they were away from where God was.

And if anything as we read the Bible, if ever you think the Bible is, you know, confirming that you're basically a nice person and you're doing pretty much everything right, then you're you're not reading it right. And maybe you should check the cover page and see if it's really a self-help book that you're reading and not really the Bible because when you read the scriptures, what you should come away with is that God is holy and you're not, that you're a sinner and he's not. And there's a lot of aspects to God. God is love but God is also holy and he's also perfect.

And these people got a sense of who of who God was and a sense of what was required. I think some of them they have never heard it before and just in in one session here for just a few hours and it it has them weeping. And they have to be told, look, this is a holy day to the Lord, not the time to mourn or weep right now. We're here to celebrate. We're here to be excited about, you know, what the Lord is doing. Then he said to them, go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared.

For this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So, the Levites quieted all the people saying, be still for the day is holy. Do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and drink, to send portions, and rejoice greatly because they understood the words that were declared to them. Look, they read the word or in this case they had it read to them cuz they didn't have their own copy of it. They understood the words because it was taught to them and the Holy Spirit in some way was working here.

God was working to give them understanding. And it brought them to the point of weeping so much so that they had to be told, hey, don't weep. Today is holy unto the Lord. We're we're celebrating today. We finished the wall. The Lord has blessed us in that way. We got the word of the Lord out. We're reading it. We're understanding it. Today's an exciting day. Do not sorrow, it says, for the joy of the Lord is our strength. You know, the joy of the Lord does not mean you're going around every five minutes saying, Hallelujah, praise God.

I'm so happy. It also don't I don't think means you have to go around being ugly all the time. I remember a guy long time ago that I met was always looking real serious for after a few weeks I asked somebody, what's up with that guy? They said, oh, he's he's spiritual. You know, you can be joyful and happy and be spiritual as well. The joy of the Lord doesn't that that's not talking about happiness here. It's talking about a joy that we have within our soul that's not disrupted by things that are going on around us.

It's our strength. The joy of the Lord is our strength. It's something that he gives us. And it's based on our knowledge of who he is. And when we come into an understanding of how he is holy and how we are not and how we are sinners and how he's forgiven us, it gives us joy to know that we're living our life for him, that we'll spend eternity with him. But that joy depends on us following him and understanding his word and doing the things that he calls us to do, being obedient to it.

Guest (Male): You've been listening to Hope from the Word. We're currently in the study of Nehemiah. You can hear this message or more Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman by going to ccmarlton.org. Pastor Bill's messages can also be found by downloading the Hope FM app on your smartphone or tablet. Or if you prefer to listen via podcast, you can find Hope from the Word wherever you find your podcasts. We'd love to have you join us at Calvary Chapel of Marlton either in person or online. Our Sunday service begins at 10:00 a.m. And there's a Wednesday evening service at 7:00.

To catch us online, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton or just go to our website for the link at ccmarlton.org. And if you'd take a moment to write to Pastor Bill, it would be such a blessing to us. We're thankful each and every time we hear what God is doing in our listeners' lives. And we want to pray for you too. Either email us through the website at ccmarlton.org or call 856-983-1662. We'll continue our study in Nehemiah next time on Hope from the Word with Pastor Bill Lubkeman, a presentation of Calvary Chapel of Marlton.