Faith Presbyterian Church - Birmingham

Nehemiah 8:1-12; A Foundation of Joy

• Jason Sterling

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Jason Sterling November 2, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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SPEAKER_00:

If you have a copy of God's word, turn with me to Nehemiah chapter 8. Nehemiah 8. So go to the center of your Bible. If you want to open up your Bible, center of your Bible, and just start flipping backwards, you'll run into the book of Nehemiah. We're in the middle, as I've mentioned, you can tell, but just coming on the property of this generational building project and the all generations campaign. Today, we're starting the next chapter or phase of the campaign, All Generations Forward Together. So for today, in the next two weeks, so three weeks, we're inviting everyone that calls Faith Church their home to come with us. In the next couple of weeks, just like we did in the campaign, if you were here a couple of years ago, after the benediction, I will ask you to be seated. I'll give you some more information. We'll hear stories on the goodness of God. We'll watch videos and I'll tell you more about the project and what we are asking you to do. So stay tuned for that after the benediction. We have been looking at in this series, Ezra Nehemiah, during this significant season in the life of our church, the importance of building strong spiritual foundations. That that is actually more important. Our hearts and the construction project inside of us and inside of our church is more important than the physical foundations. And so we've been looking at these different foundations over the last couple of weeks. This morning, we look at the foundation of the Word of God. You'll see the whole section printed there in your bulletin. I'm only going to be reading selected portions, but in light of this passage that we're about to read, and you'll see why in just a moment, I would like to ask us to stand in honor of the reading of God's word. Please stand with me. This is the word of God. And all the people gathered as one man into the square before the water gate. And they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had commanded Israel. So Israel, the priest, brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, and all who could understand what they heard on the first day of the seventh month. And he read from it, facing the square before the water gate from early morning until midday, in the presence of men and women and those who could understand. And the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Skip down now to verse five. And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people, and as he opened it, all the people stood. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Skip down now to verse nine. And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and 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 or weep. For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Lord. Then he said to them, Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, Be quiet, for this day is holy, do not be grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. You can be seated. This is the word of the Lord. Let me pray and ask the Holy Spirit to come and attend to the preaching and to the receiving and hearing of God's word. Let's pray together. Father, um, I'm asking that you would come through your spirit and do what I cannot do. And that is take this passage and put it in every heart. And I pray exactly what we see happening in this passage, that we would, that your spirit would create a hunger for understanding God's word, that you would lead us to weeping and conviction over our sin. And that you wouldn't keep us there, but you would lead us straight through to the joy of Jesus and the beauty of the gospel and the whole point of the Christian life, that you came to save sinners like us. Lord, I'm asking that all of us and all those listening would have an encounter through your spirit with the living God. Make that a reality. In Jesus' name. Amen. As we continue in this series, it might sound obvious that we want to build a foundation on the Word of God. Of course, we're a church. But Nehemiah chapter 8 shows us something surprising: that the foundation isn't just reading scripture or even understanding it. The foundation is what happens when we understand it correctly, when we let God's word take us all the way through, from understanding it to conviction of sin to something that all of us desperately need, and that is joy. As we look ahead into this next season in the life of our church, here's what we're asking: that God's word would do its full work in our church. And its full work, that the living word would do its full work in each and every heart. And when God's word does its full work, it creates, there's our first point, creates hunger for God's word, a hunger to understand it. Secondly, it produces weeping when we see our sin clearly. And lastly, it leads to rejoicing because we discover God's provision in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's where we're headed this morning. When God's work does its full work, first of all, it creates a hunger for understanding God's word. Look at verse one. It opens, notice they gathered as one. This wasn't a mandatory temple service. Nobody was at the door taking attendance, but all, notice that, all showed up. And they're standing in the square. And what are they standing for? Not an SEC football game, not a concert, not a political rally. They're standing to have someone read the Bible to them. And notice the word, again, these little words are just so significant and always just they stand out to me. And notice it says they told Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law. They told them. And so this is not like Nehemiah and Ezra's program or their idea and something that they're trying to get the people to do and twisting their arm. No, they demanded it. They say, we want the word of God, and we are hungry for it. Look at verses two and three again, just walking through the passage. Ezra brings the law, he reads it from early in the morning to midday. Do the math. They're standing to hear the word of God and to understand it for six hours. And I love that little phrase. Their ears of all the people, all the people again, were attentive to the book of the law, so their ears perked up. They were locked in and they were focused, and they were engaged and receptive, and you could say they're standing, so they're not on the edge of their seats, but that's what's happening inside of their hearts. They do not want to miss a thing. Verses five and six. Notice the progression. They stood, showing respect for the word of God. Then they respond, Amen and Amen, while lifting their hands in order to receive the word of God. And then notice they bow down. They fall on the ground in humble submission. Their bodies were preaching what their hearts felt. They were saying, We need this, we receive this, and we submit to this. Now let me clarify something here. Lots of people take this passage and insist that you must always stand when scripture is read. That misses the point entirely. Because think about the New Testament, Luke chapter 10. Mary, if you remember, she is commended for sitting at the feet of Jesus and hearing the word and the teachings of Jesus. And if standing were required, then falling on our face, verse 6, is also required. You see, the standing here isn't a prescription for all time, it is a description of this moment and the reverence that the people felt. The issue, to say it another way, isn't the posture, it is the heart behind it. Verses 7 and 8. Small group ministry. Small groups aren't a new thing. We have ancient Near Eastern small groups in action. 13 Levites helped the people to understand the law. Notice these key phrases in verse 8. This wasn't just public reading of scripture. We're talking in-depth Bible study here. Clearly, the word means making distinct, gave the sense, so providing insight, and then understood, which was the goal. And so here's maybe a possible scene. Ezra's on the platform, reading the word of God, and then after he reads a section, 13 small group leaders, the Levites, fan out into the crowd to explain what they have just read, translating and clarifying and applying. And then Ezra would read a little more, and the process would repeat itself. Commentators make a point that and suggest that that's making distinct means that they broke it down section by section and would not move forward unless until each part was understood. And so what? You know, we're always asking, what does that mean for us in 2025? We want to move towards hungering for the word of God. Here's the application. Towards a mature, into a mature hungering for understanding the word of God. We have unprecedented access to the Bible in our time. We have apps and on our phones. We have all sorts of translations and commentaries, but we must move beyond the quick reading. This is where it's pushing us. Beyond the just grab a verse for the need of the moment. Nothing wrong with these things, but it's pushing us beyond that. Beyond just a short snippet or devotional before my next meeting. Again, those things are great, but this is pushing us deeper. This is calling us deeper to seek what these people sought. Patient explanation and careful study and a community of learning. And don't miss what makes the difference here for these people. It's not that they were so intelligent or so disciplined or their effort. It was their heart. It's the receptivity and the readiness that these people came with. The heart posture. They came hungry. They came ready to listen. They came willing and ready to be taught. And when God's word is met with that kind of openness, look out. Because it will do what it always does when we come with that kind of posture. It will reveal, it will convict, it will transform, because Hebrews 4 says the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And the same can be true for us, not because we try harder, but because we come ready to receive whatever it is that God wants to give us. Here's a very practical application to cultivate this kind of hunger and readiness. Prepare before you come into this place on Sunday morning. And here's how you can do it. One practical way. We send an email newsletter from the church called the Pilgrimage. If you haven't signed up for that, call the church office, get signed up for that. It's everything going on in the life of our church. But if you scroll to the end of the newsletter, you'll see all sorts of links. And one of the links is into a link that will take you to Sunday's bulletin on Friday morning. Take 10 minutes between Friday morning and when you walk in here on Sunday. 10 minutes. Read through the bulletin. Read the confession of sin. Read through the songs that we'll be singing. And read the passage that will be preached on, and maybe even jot a couple of notes down or things that you observe in the passage. Come with your appetite, in other words, already stirs. Try it. And you will be amazed how much more meaningful Sunday mornings will be because you're not coming in cold. You're coming in already warming up, ready to hear from God and from his word. Lord, make us a church hungry for the word of God and for understanding the word of God. That's our prayer. Secondly, when we truly understand and encounter God through his word, look at what happens next. It produces weeping because we start to see our sin clearly. Look at the second point, starting in verse 9. For all the people wept as they heard the word of the Lord. So the word's explained. They understand it, they really understand it, and they weep. And commentators and scholars agree that they encountered the word of God and it showed them their sin. Perhaps they were encountering this. Remember, they'd been in exile for the first time in generations. And they clearly see the gap that exists between the holiness of God and his standards and their lives. They understand what God requires of them, and they knew that they had not measured up, and it breaks them. And they start weeping. Again, here's my thing for the little words in here. All the people, everybody starts weeping. This is corporate conviction. Everyone felt the weight of how far they had fallen from God's design. The word of God, when it was read and interpreted and preached, did its surgical work and went straight to the heart, cutting right to the core of who people were. And that's the pattern of scripture. Think of when we get to the church and the preaching in the word, uh, preaching of the word in the book of Acts. We've seen it all the way through church history. Here's an example: Jonathan Edwards, 1734, is preaching in Massachusetts. This is not full-blown first great awakening. This is actually a forerunner to that, to that. But also Edwards, and I think this is important, he wasn't trying to start a revival. He was just preaching the Bible and interpreting the Bible and carefully talking about what the text said about justification by faith and human sinfulness and God's holiness. And when he started doing those things, something started to happen. People started to weep as they understood God's word for the very first time. And there's one woman named Abigail Hutcheson who had been in church. Edwards talks about her, been in church her whole life, sitting in the pews, and she was well respected in her community, never missed a service, and she hears the word of God preached and explained, and she starts realizing that she had been deceived her whole life, and she had been trusting in her own performance rather than in Jesus Christ and him alone. And Edwards writes that she starts weeping and is greatly distressed as she realizes the depth of her self-pers uh self-deception. Her weeping doesn't stop there, though. That was not the end. It led to what Edwards called a clear sight of the glory of God's sufficiency, a clear sight of God and his provision. And that's the pattern we see when that happens when God does its full work. Conviction doesn't crush, it leads to something better. And that's what we're going to talk about in the final point. But first, let's talk about weeping. Because for the most part, me included, that makes us very uncomfortable. We get uncomfortable with weeping and conviction because, and especially in our culture, we prefer a spirituality that always affirms us and tells us that we're basically good people who just need a little spiritual supplement, that we just need a little bit of help. The Bible says we're dead, spiritually speaking, in our sins, and we need new life. We need resurrection. And we often would rather hear about God's love without his holiness or hear about grace without understanding why it is we need grace. And so conviction often makes us uncomfortable and makes us afraid. And so we just keep things on the surface because we want to avoid feeling what these people felt. And what I want us to see is when we avoid that, we miss the good stuff. We miss the whole gospel and why the gospel is so beautiful. We miss what comes next. And that is a clear sight of the glory of God's sufficiency and the joy of the gospel. Maybe you don't avoid feeling this way. Maybe you're stuck and you have made conviction and guilt and shame of your sin a permanent residence. Maybe for you, you're not trying to avoid it. You actually camp out in verse nine because you think it makes you a more serious Christian. And you think the more conviction you have and the more guilty you feel, the more God's going to love you. Friends, that is worldly remorse, not godly repentance. Remorse drives you, it's self-focused. And it drives you away from God. Godly repentance in the Bible drives you closer to God. It always leads you to something better. It leads you to glory and it leads you to grace, the grace found in the Lord Jesus. And my prayer for us as we move into this next season of ministry is that we would encounter the word of God in such a powerful way that it would convict us, yes, but that it would be tender enough to lead us to the glory of Jesus. I do not want us to be a church that avoids conviction and we just always keep everything comfortable, but I also don't want us to be a church that gets stuck in our guilt and shame. I want us to be a people who let God's word do its full work in us. Wounding, but also healing, leading us to sorrow, but also profound joy, convicting us, but also restoring us. Lord, convict us of our sin and give us the glory of God's sufficiency. Give us Jesus and help us to see Jesus in all of his glory and beauty. Notice here that the weeping is only half the verse because we are meant, and the weeping leads to joy. We see that in the last point, leads to rejoicing, or last point. Look at verses 9 through 10. This comes, here's the surprise. So you have the Levites in Ezra, and they interrupt the weeping, and look at what they say. This day is holy to the Lord. Notice, I've said this a ton over the years. Lord, all caps in your Bible, really significant. Personal name of God, covenant name of God. Notice also it says your God. So this is very personal. This is the day holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep, do not be grieved. Here it is, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Now, wait a minute. We just realized how badly we have failed. Shouldn't what do you mean the response is to celebrate? Shouldn't we fast? Shouldn't we wear sackcloth and ashes? Well, instead, Nehemiah calls them to joy. Look at that phrase, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Let that sink in. Let that sink in just for a moment. Not try to be joyful. The joy of the Lord. So this is not your joy. It's God's joy, is your strength. Not your joy. This is God's joy over you. This is God's delight over you, and he rejoices over you with singing. And that joy and God's delight in you is the strength that you and I need. But then the question is still, okay, why do they celebrate when they've just seen their sin? What is the basis for this joy? Look, keep reading, verses 13 through 18. We didn't read the time. Again, context, context, context, and reading our Bibles, the timing is significant. And you know the timing? The Feast of Tabernacles. It was one of the most joyous celebrations in Israel's feast. Seven days they family the families would leave their homes and build these temporary shelters in order to remember God's faithfulness to them and God's goodness and how God had sustained their ancestors in the wilderness, feeding them, giving them water, and giving them his presence. And so the message was clear. And that is your joy isn't something you provide for yourself. Your joy comes from what God provides for you. His faithful love and care and provision. You know what God has provided for us? Himself. Jesus Christ. God would take on flesh and become in Jesus the ultimate provision. Because Jesus would stand up. Check this out, John chapter 7. At the Feast of Tabernacles on the very last day, Jesus stands up and makes this audacious claim. And he says, If anyone thirst, let him come to me and let him drink. You see what Jesus is saying, I am the feast that this feast of the tabernacle has been pointing to all along. I'm the true manna, the true water. I am God's provision for your deepest need. Because yes, we need conviction from sin, but you know what we need even more? We need provision for sin. And that is exactly what Jesus gives us. Jesus is our provision. He lives the life we could not live. And he dies the death that we deserve on a cross. And he rises three days later. He walks out of the tomb. Our debt has been paid, sacrifice complete, death defeated. That's good news. Some of you this morning, perhaps, you feel you understand the gospel, but you feel stuck because you don't feel forgiven. And you don't feel like God really delights in you. And so you say stay stuck in your guilt and shame. And you feel like you're in quicksand sand. God doesn't want you drowning in your guilt and shame. God, you know what he wants from you? He wants you to live in gospel joy. And that joy doesn't depend on your performance. This is why it's so good. It doesn't depend on your performance and feelings, it depends on God and His character. God's joy over you doesn't waver. You know why? Because it has nothing to do with you. It's not based on what you have done. Isn't that awesome? And freeing. And it leads us to joy because it's based on Jesus and his finished work. And so when you are weak and when you have failed, and when you feel empty, that is exactly when the joy of the Lord becomes your strength. Because this joy is unwavering and constant. And it becomes the joy that carries you when you feel like you have nothing left. I'll close with this. George Whitfield. All my illustrations are from the 1700s today. I talked about Edwards. We got to talk about Whitfield. But Whitfield, he preached the gospel. There's this story about him preaching the gospel to Welsh coal miners. And the coal miners were considered. Dirty and poor and too dirty and too poor for church. And so what does Whitfield do? He takes the gospel to them. And so George Whitfield shows up at this coal mine and he stands outside where the coal miners are coming up, has a little podium, has a powdered wig, robe, and all. And he opens up his Bible and he just starts preaching, preaching the gospel. And one by one, these men, these coal miners with coal dust on their face, they gather around Whitfield, and witnesses who witnessed this event say that they were cut to the heart. And they said, all of a sudden, you looked at these coal miners, and there was these channels cutting through the coal dust from their tears as they heard Whitfield talking about their sin, but also talking about their Savior. The men understood verse 10, the promise: God's provision is for anyone. Anyone who has nothing ready. God's provision was for them, the outcast and the broken and the empty-handed. And the gospel is good news indeed. And when God's word does its full work, it creates hunger, it produces conviction and cuts to the heart and profound joy. Joy that's available to anyone who will receive God's provision in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so that's how I'll end. Do you need that provision this morning? Will you come to Jesus, who is God's provision for your sin? That's an invitation. Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Would you forgive us for avoiding your words conviction and for staying stuck in our guilt and shame instead of experiencing great joy? Holy Spirit, would you do the full work of the Word of God inside of our church and inside of each and every heart? Give us a deep hunger for understanding and studying your word. Help us to deal with our sin as you show it to us and lead us to profound rejoicing in the gospel and Jesus. In Christ's name I pray. Amen.