“In the Word of the Lord”

Scripture Text: Nehemiah 7:73b-8:12

Today is St. Valentines Day. There are many traditions surrounding its origin, but they all point to one fact – love surmounts all. It’s been said that the Bible is God’s love letter to us all. And that’s the point – it’s about God’s love, given to us – not our love for Him. How many times do we read in scripture of the “failing” love of humans being overcome with God’s “unfailing and eternal” love?
Psalm 136 consists entirely of offerings being made to the Lord, with the response “His love endures forever.” Let’s try a few of these – after I read each offering, you respond “His love endures forever.”, and respond as though you really believe it!!
How do you feel in this praise? Isn’t it wonderful proclaiming that all things exist, and all things are, simply because of God’s eternal love?

Scripture tells us that love is greater than all other things. 1 Corinthians 13 ends with the words “Now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” Greater than hope? Greater than faith? YES! For without love, hope and faith fall flat – they have no meaning, they have no basis, no foundation. Both hope and faith must be grounded in love –God’s as well as ours.

Our reading today relates a time when the people of Israel, now back in their homeland but still not so far from the exile that they can’t remember the time when they felt separated from God’s love. As we begin today, remember that the rebuilding program is moving along and the people are beginning to settle back into the routine of everyday life.

Read Nehemiah 7:73b-8:4

Ezra read from the Pentateuch (the first 5 books of our Bible – which includes the earliest history of Israel, and the laws of Moses - for 6 straight hours, and 13 lay people assisted him. And the people listened “attentively”! No one wandered off, thinking that his time would be better spent working in his fields, or sprucing up the house, or caring for the animals. No one decided to take a nap, or struck up a conversation with the person standing next to them, or wondered if it was time for lunch yet. What would happen if we tried that here - if we all gathered outside (on a summer day, of course!!), at 6:00 in the morning, and 12 or 13 of us began to read the Bible out loud, taking turns, for 6 hours until noon? How many would still be standing when we finished?
And notice that it wasn’t only Israel who was there to hear the word proclaimed – it was “men, women, and others who could understand.” (vs. 3) who were there. It may have been servants or slaves, it may have been foreign residents of the land – they all came to here God’s word for their lives!

Read Nehemiah 8:5-8

And 13 priests taught the people to, once again, know and understand what the law meant for their lives. Laity and priests working together, presenting God’s Word to their neighbors and friends, helping them to understand His call on their lives. Sounds like a pretty good model for the church, doesn't it! But what did they hear?

This classic conversation between a guru and a pupil puts this into a more personal context:
Guru: Aranda, do you know the sacred scriptures?
Pupil: Yes, teacher, I have been studying them.
Guru: And, do you know the phrase, 'Thus have I heard?'
Pupil: Oh, yes, that is throughout the scriptures.
Guru: Aranda, what have you heard?
(From Homeletics Online)

When you hear the Word read, what do you hear? Do you just hear words, or do you hear God speaking to you? Do you hear commandments that you decide that you can never live up to so why even try, or do you feel challenged to turn over a new leaf, and try the Lord’s way for a change? What do you hear and how do you respond? Will you take this Book seriously or will you decide that you could have written one that is much better and makes a lot more sense?

Ezekiel, in his call to become a prophet, was handed a written scroll and commanded to eat it. (See Ezekiel 2:9-3:7) This episode provides a vivid image of how the Scriptures are to be internalized, influencing every fiber of a person's being and identity.
--Darrell Jodock, The Church's Bible: Its Contemporary Authority (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 143.

We are to consume God’s word so that it can nourish us and revitalize us and enable us to share it honestly and completely with others!
And we are to allow the word to consume us, so we might be taken up by it, inundated by it, that we might become absorbed by it.

What do we allow the word to do within us?

In “See Yourself As God Sees You”, Josh McDowell writes “We study the Bible not primarily to learn what to do as Christians but how to be as Christians. As we understand from Scripture who we are and what we are becoming, the doing part of our faith will practically take care of itself.”
How is the doing part of your faith? Is it truly taking care of itself and yourself?

Read Nehemiah 8:9-12

Does the “doing” part of your faith cause you to weep over the failures in life, or are you rejoicing and celebrating and honoring and feasting on the word?
Are we living with those great words “His Love endures for ever”? Is it on our lips? Is it within our hearts? Are we doing our love for God? Are we doing His love for others?

J. Oswald Sanders writes in his book Enjoying Intimacy with God (1980, Moody Press, 13-14), “Both Scripture and experience teach that it is we, not God, who determine the degree of intimacy with him that we enjoy. We are at this moment as close to God as we really choose to be. True, there are times when we would like to know a deeper intimacy, but when it comes [right down to it, are we] prepared to pay the price involved?

Give the Lord a Valentine today – discover His word for your life, and give him your heart in His life. That will be the greatest gift you will ever give – either to the Lord or to yourself!

His love and His word endure forever. Amen and Amen.