I have looked forward to this chapter ever since I started preaching in Ezra, two years ago. When we were in Ezra, we looked at what I consider to be my life-verse. Ezra 7:10 says, “For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach in Israel statutes and judgments.” That verse sums up the mission that the Lord has called me to do. He’s called me to study God’s Word as thoroughly as I possibly can. But it’s not just a scholar’s call. Because He’s called me to live it. That’s the same thing He calls all of us to do. We are to live God’s Word before a watching world. But here’s the unique part of the call. God called Ezra to teach and preach God’s Word to God’s people in Israel. He’s called me to teach and preach God’s Word to you. That is my mission in life. The reason I like Nehemiah 8 so much, is it is the clearest example of Ezra putting that mission into practice. Throughout the book of Ezra, we saw examples of how he knew the Word and especially how he lived the Word. But here is where we get to see how he preached the Word. It’s going to take us four weeks to make it through this chapter. I think the rest of the book will go fairly quickly, but we need to spend some time here. These four messages are titled, “Understanding God’s Word.” They are going to answer the question, “What does it take to understand God’s Word?” They’re going to answer it by giving us four things that are absolutely essential to understanding the Bible. First, you have to have the right message. Second, you have to use the right method. Third, you have to have the right response. Finally, you have to have the right follow-through. Of course, it goes without saying that you have to have the right messenger. Ezra was that man in Nehemiah’s day. Without sounding egotistical, I trust that I am the right messenger for us here now. Seeing that, tonight we’re going to look at the right message. In order for us to properly understand the Word of God, we have to have the right message. I think the best way we can understand what the right message is, is to contrast it with what the right message isn’t. Tonight, we want to look at 5 of those contrasts.
The first contrast is that the message we preach is not a secret message, but a revealed message. Notice what happened in verse 1. The people had just finished the great accomplishment of rebuilding the wall. Their enemies were at bay. God had shown Himself strong in their weakness and the task was complete. But that wasn’t the end of it. They still had work to do. They just had to figure out what that work was. So they turned to the only place they could go to find out their purpose in life. They went to God’s Word. God doesn’t do things in secret, does He? Did He do His great act of creation in secret? Did He call Israel out of Egypt in secret? No, He used Moses and Aaron and a stick to bring the mightiest nation in the world to its knees. Did He give His law in secret? No—He covered Mount Sinai in clouds and lightning. He physically carved out stone tablets and physically carved the Law into them, on the front and back so anyone could read it. We’ve talked about this before, but God’s will is not a secret. He’s not playing hide-and-go-seek with you. He has revealed His good and perfect will to us in His Word. We might not like what we find there. We might choose not to believe it. But we can’t deny what it says. When 2 Peter 3:9 says that God is not willing that anybody would perish, but that all should come to repentance—that’s pretty clear. When the Bible says in Romans 12:2 that we should not be conformed to this world, but should be transformed by the renewing of our mind—that’s pretty plain. When the Bible says that we are not to forsake the assembling of ourselves as the manner of some is—that’s clear. When the Bible says that God has given us gifts to use in the service of ministry within the local church—it’s clear. Is it God’s will for you to buy a car? I don’t know—use your head. Can you afford it? Do you need it? Will buying the car take away from the things that the Bible clearly reveal that you’re supposed to do? If you can’t afford to tithe and make car payments, then buying the car is not in God’s will. Do you see how it works? God’s will is for us to do the things that He clearly reveals to us in His Word. Once we’re doing all of those things, everything else will fall into place. It’s not a mystery. It’s not a secret. We’re not in the business of giving people mysterious insight into their future. We’re not fortune-tellers who have some kind of mysterious secret knowledge. We preach a message that has been clearly revealed to us in the Bible. Not a secret message—a revealed message.
The message we preach is also not a private message, but a proclaimed message. Sometime on your own, look through these verses and highlight all the times where “all the people” are referenced. In just these 12 verses, the phrase “all the people” is used seven times. Not only that, but verse 2 says that when Ezra preached, the congregation was made up of three groups of people. It included all the men. It included all the women. And it included all of the children who were old enough to understand what he was saying. Verse 3 repeats the same thing. The Bible isn’t a message for just a privileged few. The Bible is God’s Word for everyone. One of the reasons that many of the reformers were martyred was because of their belief that all people should have access to the Bible. Even after the Reformation, state churches restricted access of the Bible to just a chosen few. In England, a predecessor of the King James Bible was called the Great Bible. It was the first authorized edition of the Bible in English. Some people still call the King James Version the Authorized Version. The reason it’s called that is that it was the only Bible that the king of England would authorize for use and distribution. And distribution was limited to certain churches who were in good favor with the king. The Great Bible had a different nickname during that time. It was called the Chained Bible. The reason they called it that was because the churches who were authorized to have them were required to chain them to a stand within the church. And then the priest would decide who could have access to it. But no one was allowed to have their own copy. If you were found with a bootleg copy of Scripture, it could mean your death. That’s how many of our Anabaptist forefathers lost their lives. God did not intend for access to Scripture to be only for a privileged few. He intends it for all people. He intends it to be preached to all men and all women and even all children who can understand. A picture of that in this passage is how Ezra proclaimed God’s Word. Notice how he did it in verse 4. He stood up on a pulpit so everyone could see him and hear him. God’s Word is for everyone. I don’t care what you look like or what you smell like or act like, God’s Word is for everyone. And we are to proclaim it to everyone. The message we preach is not a private message. It’s a proclaimed message.
The message we preach is also not an ecstatic message, but a rational message. One of the wonderful things about our God is that He hasn’t hidden Himself from us. He has clearly revealed Himself in a way that we can understand and in a way that we can clearly communicate. How can you describe a feeling? You can’t. Describing a feeling is like trying to describe music to a person who has never heard. Or like trying to describe a rainbow to someone who has never seen. You can’t do it because all of those things are subjective. And subjective thing affect different people differently. That’s why God chose to reveal Himself in His Word. Words on paper. Words that can be read and translated and interpreted. Words that make plain and clear truth statements. Words that are rooted and grounded in actual, real history. Our message is a rational message. That’s why Ezra was able to READ it to the people in verse 3. That’s why he only had people gathered who could UNDERSTAND what he was reading and preaching and teaching. That’s why the TEACHING of the Word was emphasized in verses 8 and 9. You can’t teach somebody what you received in a dream. You can’t transfer the meaning of a vision to another person. Dreams and visions are subjective. God chose to reveal Himself to us objectively in His Word. In 2 Peter 1, Peter spends time remembering the glorious experience He had with Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. Peter was standing right next to Jesus when Jesus was changed right before his very eyes. Jesus was no longer standing there in His regular body. He was transfigured into His glorious heavenly body. Not only that, but he heard the voice of God the Father from heaven as He spoke to God the Son. Can you imagine! We give Peter a hard time because he wanted to build some tents and just stay up there. I think that if I saw that, I’d like to stay there too. But at the end of his life when he was remembering that event in a letter, Peter wrote this: “And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts.” Even though the Transfiguration was an unimaginable experience for Peter, he realized that it paled in comparison to that “more sure word of prophesy.” It paled in comparison to God’s written Word. Because the memory of that experience fades. The excitement wears off. The images in your mind grow dim and the details might get forgotten. But God’s Word endures forever. The message we preach is not an ecstatic message. It doesn’t come in dreams and visions and experiences. It is a rational message that comes in His perfect, complete, infallible, inerrant, written Word.
The message we preach is also not an easy message, but a good message. What name do we give to the message we preach? We call it the Gospel. The word Gospel simply means good news. We preach the Good News. Here’s what we sometimes get confused about. The news is always good. But most of the time it’s not easy. It certainly wasn’t when Ezra preached it. Otherwise, why does verse 9 say that the people wept when they heard it? They wept because they were broken. James 1 describes the Bible as a mirror. And it’s not a fun-house mirror. It’s a mirror that never lies. It never distorts. It shows us the way we really are. It removes all of our excuses. It strips away all the ways that we try to deceive ourselves by the way we try to justify ourselves. It completely exposes us before a holy God. And when we’re exposed before God, it’s uncomfortable. That’s called conviction. When I compare my righteousness with other people, I can feel pretty good about myself. My pride can swell up a little bit. But when I compare my righteousness with the righteousness of Christ as revealed in His Word—mine is as filthy rags. When I see God prophesy through Jeremiah that there is no one who is righteous—no not one. And then when I see in Romans 1:18 that the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness… I can’t help but feel convicted. Those aren’t easy words to hear. As a matter of fact, they can make you weep when you hear them. But what makes it a good message is what follows. The remnant was weeping under conviction when Ezra preached the Word to them. But Ezra knew the next part. So he told them to quit crying in verse 10. As a matter of fact, he told them to have a party. Because the good news is that God has provided a way to turn your unrighteousness into His righteousness. He has provided a way to replace your conviction with His comfort. He has provided a way to save you from sin. Oh, it’s not easy to see ourselves as God sees us. But that just serves to show us how great the grace of Christ truly is. And when we see how great His grace is, we can “make great mirth” with the remnant. Because it’s only then that we truly do like verse 12 says… it’s only then that we will understand the words that are declared to us. The message we preach is not an easy one. It’s not an easy one, but it is a good one.
Finally, the message we preach is not a changing message, but a life-changing message. The message that Ezra stood and preached to the remnant that day is the exact same message we have today. God hadn’t finished revealing all of it to them yet. In some sense, it was an incomplete message. They still had not seen how all God’s prophesies would be fulfilled in Jesus. But the essential message was the same. The message is that God created the heavens and the earth and all that is in them. Out of all that He created, He only created one thing in His image—people. And as His image-bearer, He sets high standards for us. As a matter of fact, we cannot keep the high standards He sets. No one ever has and no one ever will. Because of that, we have infinitely offended our creator to the point that the only thing we deserve is to be objects of His wrath. But God loves us. He loves people so much that He will provide a substitute to take the punishment for our offense. That substitute was promised in Ezra’s day. It was pictured in his day, every day on the altar in the temple. Even though they hadn’t yet seen what the picture pointed to, they could clearly see the picture. The message we have is exactly the same. The only difference is, we’ve seen the rest of the story. On the pages of the New Testament, we’ve seen how Jesus is our sacrifice. Jesus is our substitute. Jesus is our payment. Jesus took God’s wrath for us. Jesus lives today to give us His righteousness. No, the message has never changed. Hebrews 1:1-2 says: “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, Hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds.” It’s the same message. God is perfect. You aren’t. You deserve His wrath. The Substitute willingly took your wrath. Now you can be reconciled to God because you can claim His perfection as your own. The message never changes. Lives change because of the message. Look at how the remnant’s lives were changing in verse 6. “And all the people answered, Amen, Amen, with lifting up their hands: and they bowed their heads, and worshipped the LORD with their faces to the ground.” Those people heard the message. They eagerly listened to the message. And they were changed by the message. That message has never changed. The question is, have you been changed by the message? How has it changed you? Is that change evident to those around you? The message has been clearly revealed to you. Does your life reveal it to those around you? Do you proclaim it to those around you? Will you allow the message to change you tonight?
