Address—Steve Sacksteder
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Like to read the first few verses of the 8th chapter of Nehemiah?
EMI 8 verse one.
And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the Watergate. They spoke them to Ezra the scribe. Bring the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel.
The priest brought along before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the 7th month.
And he lived there and before the street that was before the water gate, from the morning until midday, before the men and the women and those that could understand, and the ears of all the people who were attentive unto the book of the Lord.
Prayer.
Following God, our gracious Father, we thank Thee that we can have open before us in our last.
The word of the living God. We think of the claims that thou dost have upon us as thy people, Thy sheep. Those for whom doubted spare not thine own Son, but delivered him up.
We thank our Lord Jesus Christ of what we owe to Thee, and we just would look to Thee now and would pray for Thy blessing on Thy word as we'd read it together. Help us to understand it, that it might cause our hearts to rejoice and that we might receive instruction. We commit this to Thee now and give Thee our thanks. We thank Thee too for the.
The exercise and the love that has called us to be together in this place.
And that we look to the and pray for thy blessing on those efforts and the time that's before us this week, as we have it before us. We thank Thee to realize that could be at any moment, Lord Jesus, that Thou just come to call us out of this world. And we thank Thee that in the meanwhile, thou hast given to us opportunities like this to be with loved ones and to have thy word open.
And so we just would look to the thank thee for the work that has been done and just look to thee for thy blessing as we ask these things. Our Father in Jesus name, Amen.
What we have read in Nehemiah chapter 8.
Is really something quite beautiful and I would like to continue there, but first to point out that it was not 100 years before.
The verses that we've just read.
That we have this recorded in the last chapter of Second Chronicles.
Just to point out that it was not always so that the people of God were attentive to the Word of God.
And Second Chronicles 36.
We get a recount. We get recounted to us the.
The wickedness of King Zedekiah.
Verse 11 Zedekiah was one and 20 years old when he began to reign, and reigned 11 years in Jerusalem, and he did that which was evil in the sight of Jehovah his God, and humbled not himself before Jeremiah the prophet, speaking from the mouth of the Lord.
And he also rebelled against King Nebuchadnezzar, who had made him swear by God, but he stiffened his neck and hardened his heart from turning onto Jehovah God of Israel.
Moreover, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed, be it remembered as king. So the people, all the chief of the priests and the people transgressed very much after all the abominations of the heathen, and polluted the House of Jehovah, which he had hallowed in Jerusalem. These next two verses you can hear the anguish of God.
Crying out to you and I.
Don't go this way. Don't go this way.
And the Lord God of their Father sent to them by his messengers, rising up betimes and sending, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place. But they mocked the messengers of God, and despised his words, and misused his prophets, until the wrath of the Lord arose against his people, till there was no remedy. We know what happens in history after this.
00:05:26
We had read the words at Zedekiah had revolted against Nebuchadnezzar.
This same king, Nebuchadnezzar took away captives out of Judah and Jerusalem.
Jerusalem was destroyed, the temple was was destroyed, and we can read about it if you were to continue where we were just looking there in Second Chronicles.
The Lord was true and faithful to His word. He had told them before they even entered the land that He had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob exactly what was going to happen. He would not have them to go that way. He would not have them to learn their lesson in that way.
It wasn't necessary.
But in that they went that way.
It seemed that there was number other way for them to learn and so he allowed it.
Well, back to Nehemiah chapter 8 please.
Again, I say we have this beautiful.
Picture and with the words that we started in these first.
1St 3 verses.
The people gathering themselves together as one man into the street or the open place that was before the Watergate, and they're there and they're asking to have the word of God brought before them. They can't go wrong here.
How different than what we read earlier in Chronicles. But before we get in, before we get into this chapter.
To kind of get an idea, a little bit of the layout where this chapter falls in this book of Nehemiah, we realize, I suppose it'd be good to recount that Nehemiah.
Comes right after Ezra, and in the days of Ezra we we found that.
The Lord fulfilled his promise that he had given through Isaiah the prophet he had called some 200 years before it ever happened. A man by the name of Cyrus called him by name, called him mine anointed, and said that he would be the one that would send the people of Israel back.
To Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar.
And we we have we know that in the prophet Jeremiah.
The duration of that captivity was given as 70 years. They would Israel would be in servitude or would be in in ******* in Babylon for 70 years. We know that about five years, maybe a little more before the end of that 70 years. Daniel the prophet, he was reading in the prophet Jeremiah, he was studying the word of God and he realized.
That this was going to that, that that this time was just about at an end, that it was going to be 70 years.
And of course, he had been there for the duration of that as a young man. He had been carried away and he saw kings change, he saw times change, and he was faithful the Lord had given him to live throughout that time.
And preserved him.
And gave him to be a mouthpiece of God, of the God of heaven, among those Gentiles to whom the people of Israel had been.
In in *******.
What a privilege for for the prophet Daniel to.
To live through this time, how difficult, how sad, how many were his tears.
But he lived to see the Lord fulfill His word. How heartening it must have been for him.
And then in the first year of Cyrus the King, we get in the book of Ezra.
There were those who were sent back under the rubber belt, a remnant that went with him back to Jerusalem.
And there they reinstituted the worship of the Lord.
00:10:05
And the sacrifices that were.
Given under the Law of Moses.
Were again brought back into play there in the city, in the beloved city, in Jerusalem, that the Lord hath chosen to place his name there.
And some 12 or so years later.
I'm sorry, it was sometime later that in Ezra Chapter 7, the man Ezra who is a ready scribe in the law of his God, and it was of the priestly line in the 7th chapter of Ezra where we get his qualifications.
And we get how it was that the Lord had raised him up to be a help to the people of God in this time, to give them to understand the Word of God and so on, and to reinstitute the worship.
The one true God, the worship of Jehovah there in Jerusalem. It was a wonderful time.
Before the chapter that we've opened up to here, Nehemiah chapter eight, it was 12 years since Ezra had come on the scene in Ezra Chapter 7.
And the last view we get of him in the book of Ezra.
Is not quite as happy.
There had been some who had come and told him that the people of Israel had again had again turned away from the Lord, and they had taken to themselves.
We'll read in Ezra Chapter 9 verse one. Now when these things were done, the Princess came to me saying the people of Israel and the priests and the Levites have not separated themselves from the people of the lands doing according to their abominations.
Even of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Jebusites, the Ammonites, the Moabites, the Egyptians, and the Amorites. For they have taken of their daughters, for themselves, and for their sons, so that the holy seed have mingled themselves with the people of those lands.
And so the last view we get of Ezra.
Chapter 10 verse one. He prayed, he confessed, he wept, he cast himself down before the House of God.
It was sorrow in the face of declension. The Lord had done a great work. He had fulfilled his promise to bring them back to the land. And what had happened? They had turned away from him again.
And not until Nehemiah chapter 8, again, I say about 12 years later, do you hear about Ezra. He re enters the scene here. He in the first seven chapters of Nehemiah, you don't hear about him, but it's significant.
In Nehemiah chapter 6 the wall was completed and and in Chapter 7 provision was made for the the security of the city. Remember that Nehemiah he appointed his brother Hanani, a faithful man, to to take charge there in Jerusalem. Nehemiah at the beginning of the book he had obtained leave of the king that he would go be sent by the king to go and and to.
To see how his brethren did, and to help them, and to build the wall, and so on. And so the time was coming when he was going to leave, so he commits the care of it to his brother.
Who was a faithful man? Faithful above many, it says.
And to him he he gives charge about how to keep the city secure, that they would not open the gates until the sun was fully risen and so on, that they would watch over it.
And that's in Chapter 7. Here in chapter 8, what seems to be the the most.
Prominent thing is the authority of the Word of God, the establishment re establishment of the authority of the Word of God. And I think that order is instructive.
The gates might be built, the people might be back in the city, and the genealogy is given there in chapter.
7.
And the people are back in their place. They're in their cities or in and around Jerusalem. But what was going to preserve them in that place was obedience to the Word of God and that alone.
And that seems to be what is at the forefront here in this chapter. Nehemiah, chapter 8.
00:15:02
And there were certain things that characterized the people in the 1St 8 verses. Here. We've read a few of them.
1St is that there was energy among them. They gathered themselves. They there was impetus on their side. They wanted to be where the word of God was being read and given out.
They wanted to know.
What the Lord had to say to them?
And and so they gathered themselves together as one man, a singleness of purpose, into the street or the open place that was before the Watergate. If you were to turn back to the third chapter of Nehemiah, you would read about 10 different gates for the city.
And because others have already done so and I'm not as qualified as they, I would recommend that you look up.
You look up on recorded ministry.com the Gates of Nehemiah. Brother Jim Highland has has spoken very ably on that and given some very helpful.
Some very some good help as to the significance of those gates, what each one, what each one means. But it's not my purpose to pursue that. But there is this one mentioned here.
That and I'll mention too that a little bit further down.
Here in this chapter as well as in chapter 12, you'll get the Gate Ephraim.
In verse 16 it shows up in 12 along with one other gate, so that there are 12 gates around the city of Jerusalem in the time of Nehemiah, and each one has its own significance. This one here is the Watergate.
It is the place, if we turn back to read a few verses and and chapter 3.
About it, verse 26.
And it's going around, it's making a circuit around the wall and, and talking about this section of wall and this gate and so on was worked on by this individual. It's really something as you read through Ezra and Nehemiah, all the names that are mentioned.
And how the Lord takes note of those individuals and their work on the wall, their work in in seeking in one measure or another to be of assistance to the people of God and to serve them. But in verse 26, moreover, the Netherlands dwelt in Opal under the place over against the Watergate toward the east and the tower that lieth out.
And that you may remember who the Nephenims.
Were they were those who were appointed as servants and their service was to draw water and was to.
Was to Hugh Wood.
And we know that in Scripture water very often is a picture in its in its standing state and and contained in vessels is a picture of the word of God.
And there are many places we can point to that would that would speak of that.
And.
You know among them would be the Lord when he was at the marriage in Cana of Galilee, the pots were filled with water and he turned that water to wine. He took the word of God and administering it, it became joy to the hearers and and many other places.
The.
And then it's and it's moving state when it's running water. It's a picture of the Spirit of God and his activities. But here.
We're this is, this is the Watergate. It's the place, the the place where the activity of the nephenims were to draw water and to give it to the people and.
And it's significant in that sense that that it brings forward the importance of the word of God.
And they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded to Israel. Again, I say he had been kind of in the background for some 12 years or so. What a wonderful thing for for a man who is a servant of the Lord. He had been raised up of the Lord and and uniquely qualified.
To be a help.
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And yet, during times of declension that closed the book of Ezra, you don't hear anything from him.
But the moment he's needed, he's ready, and he steps forward by the grace of God willing and happy to be of service to the people who so needed his his help. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, both of men and women and all that could hear with understanding upon the first day of the 7th month.
And so here we are.
This is a This is a special date in the calendar of Israel. Perhaps there's a young person here who knows what happens in Israel on the first day of the 7th month of the year.
It is one of the feasts, not the Passover.
Maybe someone a little older can help.
It is a feast, one of the feasts of Jehovah. It is the feast of the blowing of trumpets. Again a significant.
And wonderful thing.
In Leviticus chapter 23 is where you get those feasts the Lord calls my feasts. There were times that He had set up, and each one has its significance. Again, I don't have the time. It's not my object to go through those at this point, but the feast of trumpets it typifies for us.
The time when Israel is regathered to their land according to the promise of the Lord in picture exactly what is happening here.
With these people, they had been brought back to where they could enjoy the presence of the Lord in His city, His beloved city, Zion Place, where He had sought to where He chose to place His name.
Place that he loved and the feast of the idea of trumpets does carry other thoughts with it. In Numbers chapter 10, it seems to be more the idea of prayer calling out to the Lord the blowing of those silver trumpets.
But in the feast of Trumpets, it was a call to action, a call, a time to move. Even during the building of the wall, Nehemiah had one by him who held a trumpet. And so that when those who were opposing that work, if they were to attack, then a sound could be made from that trumpet to let everyone know. You remember, as they worked on the wall, they had a trowel on one hand and they had a weapon in the other because.
They were not only working, but they had to be ready for warfare.
Because the enemy might attack at any moment. So it is for us. In our Christian lives. We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but are mighty to pulling down the strongholds. And we have we have a battle before us. The enemy is constantly seeking to stop us from doing any kind of work.
For the Lord.
And it takes real energy to follow him and to do his will, especially in a day like this where there's weakness. And there was a good deal of weakness here, but they were his people.
Savior, we belong to the poor and feeble though we be.
Verse three he read therein before the open place that was before the Watergate from the morning until midday.
Before the men and the women and those that could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive under the book of the law. There's another characteristic of them. They were listening for whatever it is that the Lord had to say to them, and they were prepared to do. It reminds us of the man Cornelius when he called for Simon Peter. And Peter came and he said, here we are all before thee, ready to hear whatsoever the Lord commands you to say unto us.
And you could tell he was ready to do it, too.
And that seems to be the case with these people because knowing the Word of God is not enough. We need to walk in what we know.
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There is a misquote that happens sometimes. I've heard people say the truth will not keep you.
Be it known we need the truth. We can't do without doctrine.
However, the truth alone will not keep you.
You must be prepared to act on it. The Word of God was meant to be lived, not merely read and studied and and known intellectually in our minds. We need that first, but there needs to be the obedience along with it right from the start. Just like as a child, you're taught to come when you're told. It could even be a matter of life and death.
So obedience is absolutely necessary in the Christian warfare and and here these these people. If you go back to chapter the previous chapter, verse 66, it says the whole congregation together after giving all these names which were not all of the names there, but the whole congregation together was 40 and 2303 score 360.
42360 That's a lot of people. I don't know that all of them were here in the open place before the Watergate, because it does specify. We've read it twice, the men and the women and all that could hear with understanding. We don't know how many of those 42,000.
Were those who could not discern their left hand from their right, If we borrow the language from the prophet Jonah, In other words, who were so young that perhaps.
They would not be able to understand what was being read, but it must have been at least 10s of thousands of people there in this court.
And Ezra described verse 4, stood upon a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose. And beside him stood Matathia and Shima and Anaya and Urijah, and Hilkiah and Maya. Sia, on his right hand six men, and on his left hand Padaya and Michelle and Malkaya, and Hashem and Hashbadana, Zechariah and Meshullum 7 men.
We'll find a little bit further down that these thirteen men were instrumental in helping him in explaining the Word of God and giving the sense of it.
And Ezra opened the book and the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and when he opened it, all the people stood up.
Well, first we have him standing up. Maybe you've noticed in the reading meetings that the brother who reads the passage.
Stands up.
There are at least two reasons for that.
And I think the first and foremost is out of reverence.
Let us never forget when we open this book that.
We are listening to the words of God. He is speaking to us through the word of God and hence its authority.
And the second reason, I suppose that he stands up as a similar thing here to why Ezra stood upon a pulpit of wood.
That he might be up above the people so that they could hear him. 10s of thousands of people altogether. If he's standing there surrounded, probably the first several rows of people could hear him if he's yelling, but probably not everyone.
And so there's a practical reason as well.
And it's really something when he opened the book, all the people stood up. There was reverence there among them as well. If there weren't, you might not expect the kind of result that that happens later on in this chapter.
There was reverence for the Word of God.
You know, the first time that the words came to Israel, they first heard them as a nation was on the mount. That is the book of the law.
And they trembled and quaked, and they asked Moses.
To not read anymore. They were so afraid.
00:30:01
They trembled at the word of God.
And so to hear these ones had a sense of that, They had a sense of the realization that God himself had something to say to them. They wanted to hear it, and they wanted to be made right by it.
And as we're blessed the Lord, he thanked the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered Amen, Amen with lifting up their hands. And they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.
There was prayer, the expression of dependence.
And there was gratitude. There was thankfulness.
More characteristics of the people.
And worship the Lord with their faces to the ground, it seems. It seems that the.
Even their bodily movements. They stood up when the word of God was opened, but not for very long. Next thing you know, they're on their faces before the Lord.
And.
I believe that's a model for us. We could learn from even these small details of reading this.
The the attitude and the character that benefits us when we take up with the Word of God.
And so in verse seven we have the verse I referred to Joshua and Baina and Sherebaya, Jamin, Akub, Shabafi, Hodija, Maya, Siya, Kelita, Azariah, Jazabad, Hainan, Pelaya and the Levites cause the people to understand the law, and the people stood in their place.
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave this sense and caused them to understand the reading.
And Nehemiah, remember they read from morning verse 3 until midday.
This is hours of reading.
Talk about energy. These people wanted to know what God had to say to them.
And what must it have spoken to their hearts as they listened?
To the law of Moses read in their ears.
Think of Moses addressing the people of Israel as, for instance, in the book of Deuteronomy, just before they entered into the land that the Lord had promised to their fathers. And he says, you're going to go into this land, you're going to dwell in houses that you didn't build, you're going to drink from vineyards that you did not plant.
And he says take care, take care.
That you don't become complacent.
And lose the attitude of dependence upon Jehovah your God.
Take care that you're not lifted up.
In Pride, take care that you don't join yourselves to the people of the land and begin to do the things that they do and speak the way that they speak and worship the false gods that they worship.
They read in the book in the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. And Nehemiah, which is the Tershava, that is the governor, and Ezra the priest, the scribe.
And the Levites that taught the people said unto all the people, this day is holy under the Lord your God, more not nor weak for all the people.
Wept when they heard the word of the law.
Can you imagine what it must have meant to them as they?
Had read to them and explained to them.
What their life might have been.
Remember the promises in Deuteronomy, he says. You follow me, and your enemies will be subject to you. I will bless you in every possible way.
But if you don't follow me.
There are curses, there's judgment in store for you, and as this was read to them and unfolded to them.
They must have thought to themselves, what could it have been?
00:35:06
How? What glory could have been ours? And yet we find now we find ourselves just now coming out of captivity.
What mixture of thoughts Must there have been joy that the Lord was delivering them?
But sorrow upon sorrow about the way that they had gone.
There's a poem that I've enjoyed often and I hope you don't mind if I quote it.
When before Christ's judgment seat, I stand and He shows me His plan for me, the plan of my life as it might have been had He had His way. And I see how I blocked him here and I checked him there, and I would not yield my will. Will there be grief in my Savior's eyes? Grief though He loves me still? He would have me rich, but I stand there poor, robbed of all but His grace, while my memory runs like a haunted thing down the path.
That I cannot retrace.
But thank the Lord here at this time.
He was bringing them back.
The Word of God was being opened up in their ears. I.
And it was not a time for sorrow and weeping.
These ones who understood the Word of God, and were and were bringing before them the mind and will of God for them for the very moment in which they were living.
Reassured them this day is wholly unto our Lord. Neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
So the Levites verse 11 stilled all the people saying hold your peace but the day is holy.
Neither be grieved.
So that poem ends this way. O Lord, of the years that are left to me, I give them to thy hand.
Take me.
Break me, mold me to the pattern that thou hast planned.
When Peter writes the apostle Peter, he divides your life up into two separate sections. The time pass of our life that sufficed us to live under the will of the gentiles doing.
Fulfilling the lusts of the flesh and of the mind, and on the other hand, the time that remains to us.
Friends, you and I have time. That remains to us.
Where we can.
We can take the Word of God in our hands, we can bow to it, we can obey it, and we can prove the blessing of the Lord in our lives. It's never too late to turn back to the Lord. I speak to you as Christians, I suppose I should say.
If you've not accepted Christ as your Savior, these things are of little or no value to you at all.
Other than the fact that you are hearing the word of God now, in the entrance of thy word giveth light.
Give life and understanding to the simple.
And it's by the word of God that we were born again.
And so as you're here and you have the Word of God opened up and read to you, read it yourself.
We trust that the Lord Jesus Christ, in his beauty and his glory, will be opened up in the meetings that are before us. We had read to us this morning in the prayer meeting that simple statement. Sir, we would see Jesus.
And we know that that is the desire here in this place, that our Lord Jesus Christ would be well spoken of, His word held forth, and that the Spirit of God would have liberty to take the Word of God, bring it home to our hearts and minds and to our consciences, and give us joy. For, as it says, the joy of the Lord is your strength.
There was something else here.
Their hearts were filled with sorrow and grief, and rightly so, as we have said.
But there here is an occasion, the blowing of the trumpets, the feasts of Jehovah that were being opened up to their understanding.
That gave them to realize that there was something that took a higher priority and that is my feasts. The Lord had claims and and he wanted them to enter into his thoughts about his people because this feast of trumpets points forward to the fact.
00:40:19
They had the word of God to tell them that regardless of all the path that they've traveled and they could look back on and grieve over, regardless of all of that, the Lord was not going to fail in his promise. He was going to bring them back to that land and he was going to restore them. He's going to restore that nation. Still has yet to be done. You know, in Jehovah's feasts in Leviticus 23, some of them have a fulfillment, an anti type.
The Passover, it has its anti type in the death of Christ. We see him there as a Lamb of God whose blood was shed, and that all those who take his blood and apply it in their own circumstances accept him as their Savior. And so on the the judgment that is coming upon this world, they have been delivered from it.
The.
The feast of Pentecost had its fulfillment and the shedding forth of the Spirit of God. But this one, the Feast of Trumpets, it's not had its fulfillment yet. It's still yet to be.
It could be in a matter of seven or so years if the Lord were to come and to receive his church home tonight.
It would be perhaps in just a little over that.
Seven years, he's going to work with that people. He's going to bring them through deep waters. There's going to be great sorrow and repentance, and it's going to be very similar to what you read in the following chapter, Nehemiah, Chapter 9.
Well, as we go on.
The people did enter in to the thoughts of God. Verse 12. All the people went their way to eat and to drink and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because because they'd understood the words that were declared unto them.
So there was joy. There was an exercise about others. There was a desire to invite others into their joy. They sent portions to others.
And I suppose you could say that their hearts were.
Were, you know, these are ones who were in Judah and Jerusalem, but their hearts were opened up to all of Israel.
Because in the mind of God, His people are always one. No matter what the outward display, whatever the outward testimony looks like, in the mind of God, His people are one.
And then there's something that happens here on.
In verse 13, in the second day, we're gathered together the chief of the fathers of all the people and priests and the Levites unto Ezra the scribe even to understand the words of the law. So here it's the next day they come back. They want to know more. They want to know, they want to know more about what the Lord had in mind for them on this for this feast. And, and they and they go on to find and, and I imagine that they're reading here in Leviticus 23 about the feasts of Jehovah.
They find something else that happens.
There that comes before them in Leviticus 23.
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 7th month.
And that they should publish and proclaim in all their cities, and in Jerusalem, saying, go forth under the mount, and 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.
So the people went forth and brought them, and made themselves booths, everyone upon the roof of his house, and in their courts, and in the courts of the House of God, and in the street of the Watergate, and in the street of the gate of Ephraim.
And all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity, 22,000 made booths and sat under the booths. And in this remarkable statement. 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. Now they had kept the Feast of Tabernacles. Now this is another feast. If you go back to Leviticus 23, you find that it's the last.
00:45:22
Of the feasts, and it points to the millennial day, the points to the fulfillment of all the Lord's promises to Israel in a day to come and again promises to them. What the Lord has said he was going to do is going to happen. He's going to bring it to pass.
But and they had kept it back in Ezra chapter 3, they had kept the.
The Feast of Tabernacles.
There the emphasis was more on the sacrifices and the worship of the Lord being reestablished.
Here they go back and they search even more and they find that we're supposed to make booths. And because of the energy that was there, because of because of the desire to know and follow the word of God, they did something. They went out and they collected the materials, these branches and so on. They went up into the mountains and the place of the place of communion, typically speaking, where they could, they could get the materials, bring them back.
And make these booths and the significance of them is mentioned. Maybe we'll turn back to Leviticus 23.
And starting at verse 37.
These are the set feasts of the Lord, which He shall proclaim to be holy convocations, to offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord, a burnt offering and a meal offering, a sacrifice and a drink and drink offerings, everything upon his day beside the Sabbaths of the Lord, and beside your gifts and beside all your vows and beside all your free will offerings which ye give unto the Lord. Notice all the the emphasis on these on on the gifts and sacrifices also in the 15th day of the 7th month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land.
You shall keep a feast under the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a Sabbath, and on the eighth day shall be a Sabbath. And you shall take to you on the first day the bowels of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and the boughs of thick trees and willows of the brook. And ye shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days, and you shall keep it a feast under the Lord seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month.
Ye shall dwell in booths seven days. All that are Israelites born shall dwell in booths. That your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
He's pointing back this this one aspect of of making booths and dwelling in them during this feast of Tabernacles. It was something to remind them from generation, from one generation to the next of what the Lord did when he brought them out of Egypt. It points back to a time in their history of the prophets, often point back to when there was great freshness of affection, when there was on the side of his people a willing heart.
And and love for him because of what he had done, appreciation for his work in delivering them out of Israel and scattering Pharaoh and his armies upon the seashore and then bringing them.
Through the wilderness, and so on, or prior to the wilderness. But how the Lord took care of them, and how He gave them comfort in the wilderness.
How it says in in in the book of Numbers, he bare them on eagle's wings.
All through the wilderness journey their shoes didn't wax old, their clothes didn't didn't fall off of them. The Lord provided for them at every step. His care over them was unceasing. So we often sing Air New or beating heart to move by tender mercies still pursued.
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The Lord has looked over you from day one unto this, and He will, dear Christian, bring you safely home.
Just as the time is coming when Israel will be brought back into their land and we'll worship him, their hearts being.
The Stony heart being taken, taken out of them in a heart of flesh given to them. Israel is a nation born again and enabled to worship Him in the way that is according to his mind and heart. And we see all that in a picture here.
Or in a small in a small way in this chapter.
When they had heard the word of the law.
It did cause them grief, as we've noticed, and the time would come that that that grief would come out rightly in the following chapter and they would pour out their hearts to him.
And I would recommend to you with as soon as you get a chance.
In private, open up Nehemiah Chapter 9 and read it.
You know it's it's.
It's the goodness of God that leads you to repentance.
It's also godly sorrow that leads to repentance, not to be repented of.
And it's a it's a right and a proper thing to look back over the whole course of your life.
For two different reasons.
Given to us in the 8th chapter of Deuteronomy says I've LED thee through the wilderness to show thee what's in your heart and to show you what's in my heart. You'll see that very clearly in the 9th chapter if you'll take the time to read it. It's a very healthy and right thing.
For you and I.
A good exercise for us to look through to to see his faithfulness through everything.
How He loved and has cared for and provided for us every step of the way. And though it's humiliating, though it's humbling to see how we've treated him, it will bring a freshness of affection to your heart, a thankfulness to him for all that he is and all that he's done.
A loving God and our gracious Father, We do give thanks now once again for this opportunity to open Thy word. We thank Thee for any reminder of Thy love to us.
Of Thy faithfulness, and we thank Thee that we know the time is coming. If we remember the pathway above remembrance no sadness shall raise. It will bring but fresh thoughts of Thy love, fresh themes. For our wonder and praise. We do thank the Lord Jesus Christ, that though we have not seen the, yet do we love Thee. We believe in Thee, and though not having seen Thy face, we can rejoice.
And hope of joy, of the joy and the unspeakable glory of knowing that soon we will be in thy presence. All thy promises to thy, thy Church fulfilled. And we thank thee that we can look forward to this. And in the meanwhile, we do pray for continued encouragement and help along the way. Again giving thanks for this time that we can be together. We would just look to thee now and and pray too for loved ones who.
Who are suffering, Father, we pray that they might to themselves have a sense of Thy care, that underneath them are those everlasting arms, and we look to Thee to to keep them and give them the sense of Thy presence. So we just would ask these things and give Thee our thanks, our Father and Jesus precious name, Amen.