Rev. David Holwick ZQ Nehemiah series
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
December 31, 2006
Nehemiah 8:5-10
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I. Where are the revivals?
A. Important revivals in America's past.
1) Jonathan Edwards, pastor of a small frontier town in
Massachusetts in the 1730s, witnessed a great revival.
300 believers were added to his church in six months.
2) A revival called the Second Great Awakening in the early
1800s brought thousands of members into the Methodist
and Baptist churches.
3) During the Civil War more than 250,000 soldiers, Union and
Confederate, made professions of faith.
B. Scheduled rather than experienced? #31109
1) Today, revivals tend to be just organized meetings.
a) What used to be weeks long, are now often a single day.
b) According to Peter Beck, there has not been a great
season of continual revival in America in more than
100 years.
2) An exception: the Easley revival in South Carolina.
A Southern Baptist church in this small town opened
a coffee house for young people in 1970.
Young people packed the place, and the leader says it
seemed like Jesus showed up as well.
The revival spread to the high school, then to two
nearby colleges.
Kids began carrying their Bibles everywhere.
Some of them went to five Bible studies a week!
The excitement led the youth leader to charter two buses
to take about 80 students to "Explo '72" in Dallas.
It was an evangelistic-oriented event organized by
Campus Crusade for Christ.
No one tracked the number of conversions.
Still, participants say because of the revival, several
dozen people are in fulltime Christian work today.
Hundreds more are faithful church members.
#30918
C. Ezra's revival was a lot like this.
1) The Jews had been beaten down for a long time.
2) Under Nehemiah they had built up their physical defenses.
3) With nudging from the priest Ezra, they now built up their
spiritual strength.
4) We need this strength today.
II. Ezra's revival.
A. God's Word took center stage. 8:2-4
1) As in Easley, God's Word provided the spark.
a) A large platform was built.
b) Ezra and fellow priests read God's Word all morning.
1> Apparently the Torah (first five books) was the
focus.
2) People don't read much anymore.
a) Most books are neglected, not just the Bible.
b) But even when we read the Bible, do we expect to
encounter God?
c) Famine of the Word - predicted by the prophet Amos.
Amos 8:11-12
"The days are coming," declares the Sovereign LORD,
"when I will send a famine through the land -- not a
famine of food or a thirst for water,
but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD.
"Men will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north
to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but
they will not find it."
3) There is still a hunger.
a) Bible study has greatly expanded in our church.
b) I find that even non-believers are interested in what
the Bible has to say about modern issues.
B. God's Word is explained to them. 8:7-8
1) The rote reading of the Bible was not enough.
a) The words themselves are not magical.
b) What about the Bible Code?
1> Some claim the very letters of the (Hebrew) Bible
reveal every event in history, like Kennedy's
assassination or the 9-11 attacks.
(You just have to mix them up the correct way)
2> The Bible itself never claims to contain a code.
3> You can get the same kind of "predictions" by
computerizing any sufficiently large book.
2) The power of the Bible lies in understanding God's message.
a) Priests and Levites explained the reading to the people.
b) We do not know exactly what it covered:
1> Simple translation into diverse "Exile" languages?
2> Explanation of the biblical concepts?
3) The need for Christian education today.
a) The Bible is not an easy book. It never has been.
b) But it can be understood, even by simple people.
1> It just takes diligence on our part.
A> Read the Bible with a simple commentary nearby.
B> Attend a Bible study or Sunday School class
where you can ask questions.
C> Listen to my sermons!
2> Jews have always emphasized education and knowledge.
A> We should as well.
B> Encourage our kids to attend Christian colleges.
C. God's Word is applied to their situation. 8:14
1) Understanding is not an end in itself.
2) The people decided to practice what they were hearing.
3) Succoth (Feast of Tabernacles) practiced in a bold way.
Tabernacles was essentially a harvest festival.
It was not as if they had completely neglected it.
However, they took it more seriously now.
Just like Thanksgiving dinner in America, the Feast of
Tabernacles had a deeper meaning than thanks for food.
Pastor Ray Stedman comments:
The Feast of Tabernacles was a reminder that they were
called as a people out of Egypt.
heir departure was sudden and precipitous.
They were not even to sit down when they ate the Passover
meal.
They had to eat it standing, with their staffs in their
hands, dressed in traveling clothes, ready to leave.
They left Egypt in one night.
When they got into the desert, one day's journey out, and
night fell, where were they to find shelter?
Moses had been told by God that they were to collect boughs
and limbs of trees, etc., and build booths for shelter.
Then God ordained that they were to do this once every year.
Even though later they had homes to dwell in, they were to
build these booths and live in them for seven days.
(Religious Jews do it even today)
This was to teach them that they were always pilgrims and
strangers in the earth.
As the old gospel hymn puts it:
This world is not my home.
I'm just a-passing through.
My treasures are laid up
somewhere beyond the blue.
The angels beckon me
from heaven's open door,
And I can't feel at home
in this world anymore.
That is the truth that will deliver us from the pressures
of the times.
We must hold things lightly.
We must not think that houses, cars, money and material
wealth is all that important.
Even if we lack these things, the great treasures of our
life remain untouched. [1]
III. An emotional response.
A. The people reacted to what was happening.
1) They stood when the Bible was read.
a) It is a sign of respect for God, same reason we stand
during parts of our worship. (Do you realize this?)
2) They shouted out "Amen!"
3) They fell face down on the ground.
a) It was touching them to the core of their souls.
B. The people wept.
Why were they weeping?
It was because the effect of the Word of God is to show us
what is wrong with our lives.
As they listened to the reading of the Scriptures they saw
that the cause of their destitution and ruin lay in their
own thoughts and attitudes.
They saw the beauty of God and the ugliness of man.
This is always the ministry of Scripture to the human heart.
They saw that the evil in society came from the pride and
arrogance of their own lives. [1]
#33952
1) Hebrews 4:12 says:
"For the word of God is living and active. Sharper than any
double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul
and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and
attitudes of the heart."
2) Happy or holy?
Evangelist Jerry Drace visits many churches, and he doesn't
like what he sees in many of them.
We are trying to develop happy churches, but not holy
churches.
One pastor told him that he wanted his people to leave the
Sunday worship feeling "affirmed, approved & applauded".
Whatever happened to leaving feeling confronted, convicted,
confessed and cleansed?
#33542
C. We have a lot to cry about.
Some of the secular commentators of our day are growing
disturbed about the conditions of life in America.
For example, Richard Reeves, a New York columnist, wrote
a few years ago:
I can barely stomach the newspapers here in my hometown.
In the tabloids, day after day, the first four or five pages
are routinely filled with stories of parents beating or
starving their children to death...
... of children plotting to kill their parents,
... of people being killed by random gunshots,
... of people chopping up other people,
... of cyanide being put in yogurt at the supermarkets.
America, I think, is out of control in some very weird ways.
I don't know how bad it really is or exactly why it is
happening.
There are obviously many, many reasons, beginning with the
unrelenting pressure of living in an open and competitive
society....
I suspect that things will get worse before they get better.
This is what a secular commentator has noticed.
But why are we this way?
It is only when you open the Book of God that you learn the
reason for these kinds of conditions.
We learn from the Scriptures that as individuals, and as a
nation, we have turned our backs on God's ways and wisdom.
We have ignored his laws.
We have missed the glory of his plan.
We have messed up the beautiful world that he gave us.
When we see the sad results and hear them poured into our
ears continually by the media, it should make us weep.
#33952
IV. God's joy makes you strong.
A. The weeping was balanced with rejoicing.
1) The leaders had to command it.
2) For all our troubles, there is a lot to be thankful for.
B. Be positive and not negative.
Patio lights at the Holwick house - we only notice the ones
that don't work.
Hundreds of them DO work!
Christian joy is a stubborn positiveness about life that's
rooted in the Lord we belong to rather than the
circumstances we're experiencing.
#12821
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
[1] Taken from sermon "The Shining Light" by Rev. Ray C. Stedman of the
Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California; February 5, 1989;
Kerux sermon #5475. I made extensive use of his material in this sermon.
#12821 "Seeing What Isn't Working," Ron Hutchcraft, A Word With You #4202,
February 18, 2003.
#30918 "Outbreak of Revival Still Stirs Their Souls 30-plus Years Later,"
Ken Walker, Baptist Press, http://www.baptistpress.org/,
April 13, 2006.
#31109 "Getting Ready For Revival," Evangelist Peter Beck, Baptist Press,
http://www.baptistpress.org/, May 8, 2006.
#33952 "America Is Out Of Control In Some Very Weird Ways,"
Rev. Ray C. Stedman, late pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in
Palo Alto, California; February 5, 1989; Kerux Sermon #5475.
These and 30,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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