Our Church Family

Dear church,

Haggai gave four messages to the people of Israel, all in the “second year of Darius,” who was the Persian king. The first message is in Haggai 1, and the final three messages are in Haggai 2. Scholars have dated these messages to 520 BC.

In the first message, Haggai spurred the people of Israel to begin again at rebuilding the temple. The second, third, and fourth messages seem to be more about what God is going to do. He’s going to shake the heavens and earth. He’s going to bless his people. And he’s going to bring the King.

The second message from Haggai (2:1-9) came during the Feast of Booths, where the people spent seven days living in booths as a reminder of how they lived when they were delivered by God from slavery in Egypt. And so the people were living in temporary shelters while Haggai was encouraging them to continue in the construction of God’s own permanent (or was it just temporary?) house.

This message is an encouragement to the people to continue the work of building the temple. God encouraged them, saying, “for I am with you” and “my Spirit remains in your midst.” As Christians, we don’t have to think hard to start coming up with New Testament connections to these passages. God also reminded the Israelites of the covenant he made with the people after their exodus from Egypt.

In this second message, God also promised a cosmic “shaking” of the heavens and earth and sea and dry land – and of the nations. Those nations will be shaken so that their wealth falls into the temple. Haggai could have been talking about some of the political events that were going on in the world during his day. But he’s also speaking of a future “shaking” of the heavens and earth. You really ought to read Hebrews 12:18-29, which quotes Haggai 2:6. You’ll find some good things to ponder. (More on that below.)

The third message from Haggai (2:10-19) has a question for the priests about what God’s Law says about how holiness and uncleanness are transferred from one item or person to another. The core of the message is that uncleanness is contagious. Holiness is not.

In this third message, God noted the economic weakness of the people and promised them a blessing. This would have been a good message for that moment, which was late in the year (the ninth month, or December) when some of their crops were in the ground.

The final message from Haggai (2:20-23) is to the local governor, Zerubbabel. Like we’ve noted before, he was a member of the family of King David – a descendant from the old monarchy. God promised to make him like a “signet ring,” which was an engraved ring that a king would use to put his mark on official documents. Perhaps the presence of Zerubbabel (who kind of disappears from the biblical record after this particular period in Israel’s life) marked God’s official message to the people that God had not forgotten his promise to David, or his promise to bring the people a King, or his promise to make them into a secure nation.

So that’s some of the background of the passage.

As I read Haggai 2, my eyes kept getting drawn back to this notion of the shaking heavens and earth and sea and dry land – and the nations. God invited the people to look at the temple. He especially wanted those people who had seen the temple in its glory days to take a look at the reconstruction process. “How do you see it now? Is it not as nothing in your eyes?”

I am sure it wasn’t much to look at. Because of the people’s disobedience to God, the temple had been shaken down to its foundations by the Babylonians. It had been destroyed, left as rubble there in the middle of the equally destroyed city of Jerusalem. The fact of the matter is God had shaken it.

But now he was encouraging the people to build again. “Work, for I am with you.”

Something had changed. Not only so, but God was promising to be with the people as they restored the temple. And he was promising to shake the cosmos on their behalf. The heavens and earth and sea and dry land and nations would shake while the temple – God’s presence with his people – presumably stood firm.

Life for the Israelites must have felt like it took place on shaky ground. The nations surrounding them and the agricultural conditions with which they had to contend must have seemed completely out of their control. They were a weak people. Remember years later when the skeptic Sanballat was watching as the Israelites worked to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. “What are these feeble Jews doing?” (Nehemiah 4:2). Perhaps Sanballat just wanted to insult them. But there must have been truth to his statement. This no longer was a formidable nation.

Life today can feel like it’s on shaky ground. Here’s the top headline on my phone right now: “Masked and standing apart, the world tiptoes out of lockdown.” Yep. Shaky. We wear masks because we are afraid of breathing in viral air. We stand apart because we don’t know what might happen if we get too close to other people. We tiptoe because we don’t want to upset the balance of nature and the coronavirus. And we want to get out of our lockdown – because humans weren’t designed to be locked down.

If there’s anything we have learned during the past couple of months, it is that life and good health and financial security are fleeting. They can disappear at a moment’s notice. Everything can be humming along well and then, in a blink, it’s gone.

But we have a God who is unmovable. Our world is shaky, but he is not. And he has promised to shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land and the nations. There will be a divine reordering of the universe on the Last Day. But for those who put their faith in Christ – there is peace.

“At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more,’ indicates the removal of things that are shaken – that is, things that have been made – in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:26-29).

There is a temple – Christ and his church – that cannot be shaken. And this is where we live as Christians. We are unshaken in this shaky world.

Spend some time thinking and praying about these things. Tomorrow, we start reading the book of Zechariah.

Chris

Dear church,

I doubt the book of Haggai is on your must-read list. But after we read Ezra-Nehemiah, it seemed natural for us to read the books of Haggai and Zechariah. Those were two prophets who helped restart the building of the temple (Ezra 5:1). As you see in Haggai 1, the reconstruction of the temple is the prophet’s main goal.

Just to recap, the Israelites were carried off into captivity by the Babylonians in 587 BC. After the Babylonians were taken over by the Persians about 50 years later, the Persian King Cyrus released the exiled peoples to go back home to their own countries. The Jews were among them. This happened in about 538 BC.

Of course, when the Israelites returned, they found the city of Jerusalem in shambles. The walls had been reduced to rubble by the Babylonian invaders, and the temple was destroyed. Their first task was to rebuild the temple. It was the center of religious life – the place where the people came into contact with God. “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!'” (Psalm 122:1).

The temple foundations were laid relatively quickly, and the altar was put back into use. But then the people became discouraged, and the work stopped. This happens sometimes. The Israelites had just come back to the land. They were re-establishing themselves there. Economically, they likely were quite fragile. Politically, things were fragile as well. Dedicating large sums of time, energy, and money probably seemed like a risky proposition. So the work at the temple stopped for more than a decade.

Haggai prophesied in 520 BC. You can see he was careful to date his messages to the people. The first one came during the second year of the reign of King Darius, who was the king who succeeded Cyrus. Haggai addressed his first message to Zerubbabel, the local governor, and to Joshua, the high priest.

Zerubbabel was descended from King David. This is important because it’s a reminder of the fact that the Israelites were waiting for the restoration of their nation. And part of that waiting included waiting for the resumption of the Davidic monarchy. Through the prophet Jeremiah, God had promised this would happen. “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. In those days and at that time I will cause a righteous Branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely. And this is the name by which it will be called: ‘The Lord is our righteousness'” (Jeremiah 33:14-16).

And so the return of the people to Israel – with a descendant of King David with them – must have marked a renewal of these hopes. The restoration of the temple and the rebuilding of Jerusalem were only part of the story. The people also were looking for the return of the King.

I thought of this as I read through Haggai 1. The people were lax. They were saying the time hadn’t come to rebuild the temple – “the house of the Lord.” God noted that the people were living in houses with roofs and walls while his house was in “ruins.” The temple was described that way twice in Haggai 1 – a house that “lies in ruins.”

God also noted that the people of Israel weren’t exactly swimming in prosperity. They had sown much and had harvested little. The crops weren’t a success. And perhaps inflation was causing even the little they did earn to go not quite as far as they would have liked. “And he who earns wages does so to put them into a bag with holes.”

Maybe you know what that is like, living hand to mouth and never quite seeming to be able to get ahead financially.

God said twice to the people, “Consider your ways.” Ah, that’s a good phrase. Examine yourself. The apostle Paul said largely the same thing to the members of the church in Corinth when they came to take the Lord’s Supper. “Let a person examine himself, then, and so eat of the bread and drink of the cup” (1 Corinthians 11:28). In the Corinthian church, the people weren’t paying enough attention to the church (the new temple of God). They were leaving behind their brothers and sisters in Christ. They were failing to love one another the way that Christ had loved them.

It’s not all that different from what God had told the people of Israel, some 500 years earlier, through Haggai. God was disciplining the people because of their unfaithfulness. “You looked for much, and behold, it came to little. And when you brought it home, I blew it away. Why? declares the Lord of hosts. Because of my house that lies in ruins, while each of you busies himself with his own house.”

God wanted the people of Israel to turn away from their own personal cares and begin to pay attention to the needs of the nation. They needed to look beyond themselves and build up the people of God by building up the temple. They needed to consider their ways.

In this way, it’s a call to repentance for the people of God – and it is applicable to our lives today. Sometimes we need a wake-up call, like what Haggai gave the Israelites and like Paul gave the Corinthian church (1 Corinthians 11:30). We need to pay attention to what we are paying attention to! Are we spending all of our time concerned with our own needs and concerned with our finances and our own personal security? Or are we concerned with the upbuilding of the “house of the Lord?”

Well, the people listened to Haggai. For his part, Haggai was a fairly successful prophet of God. Most of the time, the people ignored God’s prophets. Or killed them.

And there was a stirring among the people to begin work again on the temple.

Two other statements caught my attention in this chapter. First, God told the people he desired for the temple to be rebuilt “that I may take pleasure in it and that I may be glorified.” When God is glorified, the world is blessed. That is, when the creatures turn their attention and praise to their Creator, things are operating as they should.

Jesus went to cross with the glory of God on his mind. “‘And what shall I say? “Father, save me from this hour”? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’ Then a voice came from heaven: ‘I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again'” (John 5:27-28). The ultimate glory was brought to God when Jesus went to the cross and died for the sins of humanity. It was the ultimate display of God love. When we put our faith in Christ, when we trust in his work on the cross, we bring glory to God.

Second, the people found their motivation to re-start the temple construction after Haggai’s wake-up call. But you’ll notice God made them a promise. “I am with you, declares the Lord.” And we remember again: All of this is God’s doing. Our ability to obey is fueled by the promise of God – “I am with you.” It was God’s promise to his people from the very beginning. Read Genesis 26:3; Joshua 1:5; Isaiah 41:10; Jeremiah 30:11.

And read Matthew 28:20. This particular promise – “I am with you” – makes all the difference in the world.

Chris

Dear church,

Nehemiah 13 is about Nehemiah cleansing “everything foreign” from the nation of Israel. He focuses his work in three areas – the temple, the Sabbath, and the people. After describing his work of clearing out the foreign things, Nehemiah prayed to God (Nehemiah 13;14, 22, 29). He asked God to “remember” the work that had been done in God’s name.

And then at the end of the chapter, at the end of the book, Nehemiah offers this prayer – “Remember me, O my God, for good.”

Before we look at that short prayer, it’s worth looking at Nehemiah. In this chapter, he comes across a crusader for the holiness of God’s people. He came back to Jerusalem from a visit with the Persian king and was like Moses when he came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments, only to find the people worshiping a golden calf. Or maybe he was like Jesus coming into the temple to find people buying and selling in the courts there.

There’s no question Nehemiah left a mess outside the temple, with all of Tobiah’s belongings strewn on the ground. But Nehemiah was striving for holiness among the people of God. The temple was a sacred place. The people were no longer seeing it in that light. The temple was becoming something to be used for political purposes, rather than a place where the people could find communion with God.

During the Sabbath, too, Nehemiah was a crusader. Just as the temple was a holy place, so the Sabbath was a holy day. And yet, the people were treating it like any other day. They were doing work and buying and selling on the Sabbath – a day God had given the people for rest. For the people, it had become just another day of commerce. The people began to take for themselves something (a day) that was supposed to be devoted to God. Nehemiah was fierce in setting things straight. He locked the gates.

And just as the temple was a holy place and the Sabbath was a holy day, so the Israelites were a holy people. And again, they were falling away from God. And again, Nehemiah was fierce in setting things straight. Remember, this is a problem the people of Israel had time and again in their history. Time and again, intermarriage led the people astray from the worship of the One True God. Nehemiah reminded the people of this.

And so Nehemiah reformed these three crucial aspects of Israelite life. His concern was holy things should remain holy. To cleanse “everything foreign” was to restore purity. The people’s attention was being drawn away, bit by bit, from God. And Nehemiah was the crusader. He was going to bring them back, or die trying.

And he said, “Remember me, O my God, for good.”

In our lives as Christians, there should be a certain pursuit of holiness. To me, that means our lives should be aimed at becoming more and more Christlike. Think about the last year of your life. Has anything come into your life that draws you deeper into Christlikeness? Nurture that thing. Has anything come into your life that makes you LESS like Christ? Cut it off.

I don’t think we drift off course in our spiritual lives all at once. At least not usually. Usually, we drift away an inch at a time. Just an inch here or there. But before long, we no longer can see the land. We’re far gone.

Nehemiah’s example is a pretty stark one. When it becomes evident that we are off course, our action should be swift and sure – dramatic even. Like throwing Tobiah’s belongings into the street, or physically shutting and locking the doors, or plucking beards.

Nehemiah wasn’t far off from Jesus’ course of action. Remember Jesus driving out the merchants in the temple, and dumping over the tables of the money-changers (Matthew 21:12). And remember Jesus saying, “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. …” (Matthew 5:30).

Maybe the idea is we should take holiness seriously. As Christians, we are temples of the Holy Spirit. And so we ought not to have any part in sin. We are to be a holy people. Immediate course corrections, even drastic ones, might need to have a steady place in our lives.

What I found interesting, though, was Nehemiah’s plea at the end. “Remember me, O God, for good.” 

Why would Nehemiah need to pray that prayer? After all, he had worked hard for the Lord. He had energized the people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem. He had been courageous in the face of opposition. He had stood firm in the face of a weak-willed people who wanted to inch away from God. God would remember Nehemiah, surely.

And yet Nehemiah prayed, “Remember me, O God, for good.” It’s not all that different of a prayer than what the criminal on the cross asked of Jesus. You recall that story. One criminal, hanging on a cross next to the one bearing Jesus, mocked Jesus. But the second criminal answered the first one. “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And that criminal then turned to Jesus. “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:39-43).

Remember me. Unlike Nehemiah, the criminal hadn’t done anything we would consider righteous. And yet Jesus promised the man paradise!

Salvation is a matter of grace.

This makes Nehemiah’s final “reforms” in Jerusalem a picture of the Christian life – even though Nehemiah was living 400 years before the time of Christ. A Christian is supposed to strive for holiness. We are never to give up striving. The apostle Paul said, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own” (Philippians 3:12).

We press on. We throw out the greed and the lust and the habits that so easily drag us away from God. We cut them out of our lives. We press on toward holiness. We do this because Christ Jesus has made us his own.

We press on, and yet we recognize that all of it is God’s doing, not ours. We remember that every good thing comes from God. The return of the exiled Israelites – that was God’s work. The reconstruction of the temple – that was God’s work. The rebuilt walls – that was God’s work. Any semblance of holiness in any human being – that is God’s work.

And Nehemiah’s final prayer, the closing words of this book, was a humble recognition of God’s work. Salvation only comes from God – not us. We press on toward holiness because that’s who we’ve been called to be in Christ. But all of this – our lives, our redemption, our hope, our future – all of it is because of God, not us. It was God who set us free from sin and death through Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection on the third day.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:17-18). 

Nehemiah knew this. If he were to look around Jerusalem at the Israelites residing in the holy city, going in and out of the temple, and in and out of the city gates, he knew what “all this” was about. And we do, too. And so we ought to press on toward holiness and, at the same time, press on in our prayers – “Remember me.”

Chris

Dear church,

This chapter marks a celebration for the people of Israel. They dedicated the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah formed two choirs that marched in different directions around the city. He led one, and Ezra led the other. They met at the temple. “And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.”

This really brings the rebuilding work to completion. After the temple foundation was laid shortly after the Israelite exiles returned to Jerusalem, they had a similar celebration – “for the people shouted with a great shout, and the sound was heard far away” (Ezra 3:13). Here in Nehemiah 12, they had finished the temple and now they also finished the temple walls. And the sound of their rejoicing again was heard “far away” – apparently from outside the city of Jerusalem.

We must keep in mind the people of God are supposed to be people of joy. As we follow God, the giver of life, we find ample reasons to rejoice. Even the hardships of life should point us to the glory of God, and we can rejoice even in them.

The angels showed up one night near Bethlehem and surprised some shepherds. “I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.” And Jesus Christ – the one about whom those angels proclaimed – was a man of joy, and he promised joy to those who followed him. “Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21, 23).

The apostle Paul told the Philippian church, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). He told the Thessalonian church the same thing: “Rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16). 

Like God’s people of the rebuilt temple and the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem, we rejoice at the work of God. They rejoiced because they could see God moving to restore his people. We rejoice for the same reason. It’s all about the work and the glory of God.

And we have even more reason to rejoice – because we’ve seen the king, the new David. I noticed how many times the name of King David was used in Nehemiah 12. There was a careful connection being made between this celebration of the rebuilt walls of Jerusalem and King David, who established the city and who was “the man of God.”

The chiefs of the Levites were praising and giving thanks to God, “according to the commandment of David the man of God.” The people were celebrating “with the musical instruments of David the man of God.” One choir marched up “by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David.” And temple workers and singers and gatekeepers were put to work “according to the command of David,” and music was being made, just like “long ago in the days of David.”

The nation was careful to link this time of rebuilding in Jerusalem with the very beginning of the city – and with King David. Maybe the past was becoming the present, thanks to the movement of God. This is what restoration is all about. Ultimate restoration is when our relationship with God is put back together. That relationship is wrecked by sin and restored by the work of Jesus Christ, the new King David for whom the Israelites were waiting.

The people of Israel could look back over their shoulder to the foundations of Jerusalem and King David. We look backward even further because this plan of restoration started at the very beginning, and by the time it is finished off, it will be even more complete. “He chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ” (Ephesians 1:4-5).

And so we can rejoice. Our joy ought to be heard “far away.”

I suppose that means other people should hear our rejoicing from time to time. I suppose people who aren’t in the “city” should be able to hear us shout for joy. Think about this today. As a church – as the people of God – are we rejoicing? And how “far away” can our rejoicing be heard?

Chris

Dear church,

I read today’s chapter and thought about tithing. That’s really what the people of Israel did, after all. They tithed. They tithed people. They “donated” one out of every 10 to Jerusalem. What good was that rebuilt city – with its temple and its fortifications – if no one was living there? What good were those city walls if no one was living within them?

And so the people tithed their own people. They gave a tenth.

When we tithe our money, we give a tenth of what we’ve earned to the work of God’s kingdom. The offering plate is handed to you, and you drop in your tithe. Or in our case, we put our tithe in the hidden offering box in the newell post!

Some people feel very strongly about tithing. A Christian has a duty to tithe. One question they sometimes are asked is whether a person should tithe from his or her gross income or net income. A lot of employees’ take-home pay is several hundred dollars less than their gross pay, after taxes and insurance premiums are paid. So you can save a little on your tithe if you focus on your take-home pay. I once heard a wise old man answer that question by saying, “Well, do you want God to bless you based on your gross pay or your net pay?” We all want “gross” blessings from God! (By the way, that wise old man wasn’t a prosperity gospel type. He actually confessed to double-tithing because God had enabled he and his wife to do that. If you can give it to God, you should give it to God, he said.)

There are others who don’t believe the tithe still exists. Like the rest of the Old Testament Law, they say, the notion of tithing was fulfilled by Christ, and God’s people no longer are required to tithe. They argue there is no set amount we should give to the work of the church.

And then there others who don’t believe we should be talking about money at all. A Christian man once told me the preacher should never talk about money from the pulpit. “People don’t like that,” he said. Under this view, my money is my own business, and no one else’s. What I give is between me and God.

Ten percent isn’t all that much when you think about it. Most people can take a 10 percent hit on their income and still make it through. They might have to make some hard decisions here or there, but it’s doable. A lot of people are finding that out today as they suffer from lost wages during the pandemic. A 10 percent sacrifice is better than 100 percent sacrifice!

Certainly, in Nehemiah’s day, those towns and villages and families would miss all those folks whom they tithed away to Jerusalem. But those towns and villages and families would be OK without them. They would survive. It was only 10 percent. And, after all, it was the right thing to do.

And then I think about the 10 percent who were sent to live in Jerusalem. I wonder whether they really wanted to go. They already had established homes outside the city, in the villages around Judah. That’s where they had family and friends and businesses. And they had to leave all of that behind to go live in the holy city, to populate it.

I can imagine some of them saying to the people, “You only are giving 10 percent of the people to live in the city of Jerusalem, but you are giving ALL of me!”

We’re Americans – living in “the land of the free and the home of the brave” – and so there’s something in our collective psyche that is uncomfortable with the idea of shipping people off like that. It’s a harsh infringement on freedom. Ancient Israel was a different kind of culture, of course. They were a “strong-group” culture – meaning individuals put the needs of their nation and tribes and families (likely in that order) in front of their own.

So I am guessing while each of those members of the “10 percent” may have had their personal feelings about needing to pick up and move into the city, they set those aside. The nation needed them. This was the right thing to do.

In all of this, the nation of Israel was looking forward to its full restoration. God had told them, through the prophet Jeremiah,

“For thus says the Lord: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you, declares the Lord, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the Lord, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile” (Jeremiah 29:10-14). 

And the return of the people to Israel from Persia – along with the re-construction of the temple and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem and the repopulating of the city – were all steps in this restoration process. This tithing of the 10 percent of the people must have been something like seeking God “with all your heart.”

And we can’t forget, the final piece of the restoration puzzle was the return of the King. The Israelites were waiting for that – a king from the Davidic line to bring the nation to full independence and prosperity. And it would be prosperity beyond belief.

The King has come.

I’ve always thought tithing is good thing. But you and I know what we’ve been given. And so tithing really is just a good start. We ought not give only 10 percent. We ought to give everything. That’s our calling as Christians. In reality, we are the tithe. Like those members of the 10 percent, the call for us is to leave everything and take up our crosses and follow Jesus. The path, of course, does ultimately lead to Jerusalem (Revelation 21).

The apostle Paul said, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Romans 12:1). 

Chris

Dear church,

When you think about your commitment to God, what does that entail? It’s kind of an interesting question because we are “grace” people. We are saved by the grace of God. We don’t earn our salvation. It’s given freely to us (Ephesians 2:8-9).

So an initial response to the idea that I have a commitment to God to fulfill might be – “N/A.” Not applicable. There’s nothing I have to do to stay in God’s good graces, to remain in relationship with him. He just gives and gives and gives. And I am the blessed recipient of his giving.

Here is what I know is true: We do not earn our salvation. We do not work our way into God’s grace somehow – by being good enough or by praying the right prayers. That’s not how God operates in Christ. When Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was torn in two. Our sins are forgiven, and because our sin are forgiven, no barrier exists between us and God. This is so much the case that God even comes to dwell in us – like he did in the temple – through the Holy Spirit.

This is powerful stuff that is the heart of the gospel.

But am I committed to God in any way? Is there anything that is due God in this “new covenant” Jesus talked about in Matthew 26:28? Is God OK with Christians living just any kind of life? What does it mean to be “holy” as God is holy (1 Peter 1:14-16)?

I thought about these things as I read the covenant the Israelites were renewing with God. They told God everything they were going to do in being a holy people who had “separated themselves from the peoples of the lands to the Law of God.” I’m trying to figure out the connection between them and us. What are we going to do in being a holy people who have separated ourselves for the sake of Jesus Christ?

Here’s what the people in Nehemiah’s day committed to do:

1. They pledged not to intermarry with the people of the lands. Intermarriage in the past led the people into idolatry – to the worship of false gods.
2. They pledged not to buy and sell on the sabbath. The holiness of the sabbath points to the completion of God’s work – and it points to the restoration of the kingdom of Israel and its king. Read about the sabbath in Jeremiah 17:24-25 when you get a chance.
3. They pledged to forgive debts every seventh year. Mercy is God’s way.
4. They pledged to provide grain for the offerings in the temple. The offerings, in part, marked a recognition that all good things come from God. Gratitude is embedded in these offerings.
5. They pledged to provide wood for sacrifices at the temple. A key sacrifice was made for the atonement of the people’s sins.
6. They pledged to provide the firstfruits of all they had to God. If you are giving your firstfruits, you are trusting that God will supply your needs with whatever may come along after the firstfruits. You are trusting in God’s continued provision for your life.

Can we make pledges like this to God? Can we commit ourselves to him in this way? We make mistakes, and we fall short. But I desire to commit myself to God in the same way the Israelites did. This must be the work of the Holy Spirit.

1. I want nothing to do with false worship. Jesus Christ is the only one worthy of my praise (John 14:6).
2. I am hoping and praying for God’s Sabbath rest to come to full reality, not just for me but for the whole kingdom of God (Hebrews 4:1-10).
3. I desire to be a person of mercy. After all, God has been merciful to me (Matthew 18:21-35).
4. I do want to live a life of gratitude, recognizing that “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” (James 1:17).
5. I do recognize the Sacrifice (Hebrews 9:11-14).
6. And I do want to give God the first and best from all that I have, just as Mary and Joseph did so long ago (Luke 2:22-35) and just as God did himself (John 3:16).

I think it’s a good question for us as Christians. What is our commitment to God? How can we live our lives to give God what is due him? If we’ve truly separated ourselves from the ways of the world and are clinging to Christ, what does that kind of life look like?

Chris

Dear church,

Our family was down by the Crystal River the other day, and the kids were goofing around. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, and the ripples of the water upstream glistened with light. And the kids were laughing. How far into the river could they go on dry rocks? And without falling in? It wasn’t dangerous. The water wasn’t deep. It was just good fun.

And Sam brought me a stone. It was smooth and flat and the edges were rounded. And he asked, “Dad, is this a good rock for skipping?” And the answer was yes, although it was a little larger than you’d want it to be. It would take a strong throw to make it skip across the water very far. Stronger than Sam could muster. But I didn’t tell him this. I just told him it was a good rock for skipping.

And in the blink of an eye, he threw it. The stone skipped once and then sank. “Ah,” he said, “I wasted it!” And then he walked away, looking for other good “skipping stones.”

I just watched the place where that stone went into the water. It left no trace. The constant flow of the river instantaneously smoothed over the spot. It was like the stone never was there – long forgotten if anyone even tried to remember.

In Nehemiah 9, we discover what it’s like to be an enemy of God and his people. It’s just like that stone. When the Egyptians were chasing the liberated Israelite slaves, the whole ensemble bumped up against the Red Sea. God parted the waters to let the Israelites pass, and the water then swallowed up the Egyptian army. “And you cast their pursuers into the depths, as a stone into mighty waters.”

The Egyptian army was gone. It simply was swallowed up and didn’t even leave a mark.

The people of God are precious to him. He loves them. And he is patient with them – “ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” In short, the people of Israel are NOT like that stone that splashes into those mighty waters, erased forever. They are different.

And when the people of Israel, on the 24th day of the seventh month, stood up to bless the name of God and to repent of their national sin, they remembered that. They recounted their whole history, from God’s covenant with Abraham – which made them a unique kind of stone, different from the world – to the exodus from Egypt to the Promised Land to the exile and return. And that history was littered with sin and rebelliousness. And the people admitted that they got what they deserved. “Yet you have been righteous in all that has come upon us, for you have dealt faithfully and we have acted wickedly.”

God was faithful to his covenant. He disciplined his people appropriately. The destruction brought on the people by the Assyrians and the Babylonians was justified. And the people knew that.

But they also knew who they were. They were God’s chosen ones. And they remembered that.

It is interesting that at the beginning of the chapter, the first thing the people did in their moment of national confession was this – “And the Israelites separated themselves from all foreigners and stood and confessed their sins …” They distanced themselves from non-Israelites. They stood apart.

There was something about this moment that had nothing to do with “all foreigners.” This moment was strictly between God and the people with whom God had made a covenant. And the people recognized that and stepped aside from the world and conversed with God about their troubles.

Of course, the primary sin of the nation – the big temptation – was to act and worship in the same way as all the other peoples around them. The big temptation was to find something else to worship other than the One True God. It was to find something smaller, something they could more easily control, something that didn’t demand holiness, something that didn’t really make many demands at all. It was to find something that didn’t require them to change.

And so when the people separated themselves, they said “no” to the world, and they turned their attention to God. They sought him. They blessed his name, and they confessed their sins, and they told him about the lay of the land. They confessed the reality of that moment. “Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.”

I thought it was interesting that the people here didn’t necessarily demand anything from God. But they made their feelings clear to him: Things still were not good. Something was missing, even amid all the good things that had happened. The people had come back to the land. They’d rebuilt the temple. They’d reconstructed the city walls. They’d returned to God’s Word. And they’d reinstated their festivals. But something was missing. They still were slaves – slaves to other “kings.”

And during this entire confession, the people were separated from the world, conversing with their God, admitting their mistakes, and looking forward. They were looking for the King. And they were coming back to God in humility and repentance in hopes that God would fully restore the nation. And the last piece of the puzzle was the King.

It is the King who make us a different kind of “stone.” And we separate ourselves from the world to look for the King.

Jesus preached, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew 4:17).

We have the King. His name is Jesus. We separate from the world – it’s called repentance, to turn around – and we bless his name. We come to him. He is the King the people of Israel were waiting for, and he is the King we worship.

Have you separated yourself from the world, from the “nations” that have nothing to do with the King? Is there anything in your life that points to false worship, that points to pride? Is there anything that belongs to the world to which you are clinging more tightly than you are clinging to Jesus?

Repentance is something the world tells us we never need to do. Sin is something the world does not believe exists. But the call of Christ is to turn around and look for him. And that means separating ourselves. We’re not called to work harder. We’re just called to turn around.

In my reading today, I wandered around and landed in the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel. There, we find a pregnant Mary, living more than 400 years after Ezra and Nehemiah. She was a faithful Israelite, also waiting for the King. If you have time today, read what Mary said in Luke 1:46-55.

Her warm words soothed my soul. “He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”

Chris

Dear church,

This chapter is about God’s Word. It is about the public reading and study of God’s Word. The people of Israel were coming together. They’d rebuilt the temple. They’d rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem. And then they stopped. They unrolled the scrolls. And they read.

I found it interesting that they were at the Water Gate. Just as the Sheep Gate was central to chapter 3, the Water Gate is central to chapter 8.

We know water is an important symbol in life. It was an important symbol in the life of Israel, and it’s an important symbol in the life of every Christian. The prophet Ezekiel wrote about the fully restored temple. In a vision, he saw water flowing from the threshold of the temple. The water became a mighty river, and swarms of fish swam in it – and “everything will live where the river goes” (Ezekiel 47:9). It was a picture of eternal life flowing out of the very presence of God.

The promise of God always was to give life to his faithful people. And so the people assembled at the Water Gate to hear the reading of God’s Word. They wanted to hear about life. “My soul clings to the dust; give me life according to your word!” (Psalm 119:25). God’s Word is life-giving.

According to the gospel of John, the Word is life. “In the beginning was the Word … In him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:1-4). Of course, John was writing about Jesus – the Word of life and the bringer of living water.

We remember Jesus sitting beside that well in Samaria, having a back and forth with a woman who just couldn’t figure him out. And Jesus said, “whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14).

And when Jesus was in Jerusalem at the Feast of Booths (which the Israelites were just re-learning about in Nehemiah 8), this happened: “On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, ‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, “Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water””‘ (John 7:37-38).

And so there’s a scriptural connection between water, life, the Word, and Jesus Christ.

The people of Israel were gathered together at the Water Gate to listen to God’s Word. And their teachers explained to them what they were hearing. There was interpretation. And the people wept when the heard it – because they knew they had broken it.

But it was the first day of the seventh month. And that was a day set aside for celebration. So they couldn’t weep – even though they wanted to. They had to celebrate. It was written into the very Law they were hearing!

I wonder if you’ve ever experienced that. “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account” (Hebrews 4:12-13).

Have you ever read God’s Word and just felt like weeping? It can crack open our hard shells to see what’s inside. It can lay bare what’s really there – what we really would do if we had the opportunity – what sins are in our hearts. The “thoughts and intentions of the heart” can be a pretty ugly picture. They can drive a person to tears when compared to the glory of God revealed in Scripture.

But Nehemiah and Ezra and the scribes ran around among the people, telling them not to cry. They were told not to mourn or weep because of the missed opportunities, because of the way their sins (and the sins of their forefathers) had contributed to the decay of the people and to untold amounts of suffering. They were told not to weep!

It was supposed to be a day of rejoicing.

Those two – weeping and rejoicing – are interlinked. We need to do both. And I think rejoicing, maybe, ought to come first. The more we rejoice at the goodness of God, and the more we are thankful for all his generous gifts to us, the more we are able to appreciate just what it cost God to bring his greatest Gift to us.

Back at the Water Gate, the people were trying to figure all that out. “And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” 

We understand now. As Christians, we’ve stood at the Water Gate, and we’ve received the Word that is life. And oh how we can rejoice. For us, it’s always the first day of the seventh month!

Spend some time today counting the blessings of God in your life. Spend some time today rejoicing in the Lord. Think about your salvation and about the preciousness of Jesus Christ. Do that first.

And then I think it’s OK to feel some sadness. If you recognize sin in your life, grieve. The apostle Paul wrote, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death” (2 Corinthians 7:10). We aren’t people who know worldly grief. Death is nothing to us. But we can grieve over our sins – and repent of them. It’s OK to do this.

But rejoice first.

Chris

Dear church,

I was in the church sanctuary today, staring out the window. I was supposed to be praying, but I found myself looking out across the river at those old coke ovens. From my vantage point, I couldn’t see any of those nicely reconstructed coke ovens – the ones with the smooth brick and stone. No, these were some of the old and broken down ones. They were caved in and open to the sky. It was not the way they were designed to be. But time and the elements do their work on things.

They’re a great picture of the effects of neglect and disuse. This is what it looks like when something no longer is needed and when no one cares anymore. Weeds grow up among the bricks.

It’s like the fire pit out behind our house. The weeds want to take over. A baby spruce tree even is trying to emerge alongside the benches.

Many things in life take care. They take commitment. They take someone who is willing to say, “This is important.” And for most things, it’s not enough to say in one moment, “This is important.” It takes a diligent life of continually reaffirming that intention – “This is important.”

To build isn’t enough. We also must maintain. The building of something is just the start. What we also must do is count the cost of maintaining what we’ve built.

I appreciated Nehemiah’s three actions in chapter 7. He appointed leaders for Jerusalem. He also instituted a guard over the gates and homes of the vulnerable city. And he brought out the genealogy with a record of the people by their families.

It was not enough to build. What was built needed to be maintained.

This is true of our spiritual lives, of course. You know what it means to “backslide.” You know what it means to grow slack. You know what it means to drift off course – in our spiritual disciplines – in our scripture reading, our prayer, our obedience to Christ.

There comes a time when we must begin again. That’s what Nehemiah 7 records. It marks Nehemiah’s leadership in helping the people of Israel to begin again. Just as they did when they first returned to the Promised Land, they pulled out their genealogies and read them. They recorded names and the numbers.

They were beginning again – building a people of God. The were recommitting themselves to the work. When they first came back to the Promised Land, they built the temple. And then they built the walls of Jerusalem. And then, yet again, they began again. After the walls were up and the gates were in place, they got out the genealogies again, and they started. They took note of the names and the numbers. Surely they remembered. And they began again to move forward with God.

And it was the seventh month again, the time for the festivals – the time for the Day of Atonement – the time as a nation when each year they began again in their walk with God.

As you read about Israel’s walk with God in the Old Testament, you’ll see multiple times when the people began again. They would rededicate themselves to their relationship with God. And each of the festivals marked a moment of remembrance, when the people recalled God’s good deeds of old – and the people marked those moments and began again, continuing on in their walk with God.

When we begin again, we aren’t the same as we were when we first started out. Some things about us have changed. We don’t start from scratch, spiritually. There are some things that we’ve learned. There are some things that have been added to our lives – good and bad. And there are some things that have fallen out of our lives – good and bad. But we take what we have, and we begin again.

And as you’ll see in Israel’s history, God isn’t so interested in how far you’ve fallen as how committed you are to beginning again.

You might have noticed that the genealogy of the people of Israel was slightly different in Nehemiah 7 than it was when it first was recorded in Ezra 2. There are changes in it, here and there. I never found a really convincing explanation for the differences. But you can find some things that have changed if you pay attention. Maybe it’s God’s reminder to us that things tend to change. We as a people tend to change. And when we begin again, we’re starting from a slightly different spot. But we must, always, begin again. We can’t let the walls collapse. We can’t let the nation fall back. We can’t let the church crumble and the weeds grow up between the bricks.

We ought to stop frequently and consider where we are and where we’ve been and where we want to go with God. And then, like Nehemiah and the Israelites, we begin again.

Chris

Dear church,

The walls of Jerusalem were completed in October 445 BC. It must have been an awesome triumph for the returned Israelite exiles. The temple was in place, and the city of Jerusalem once again was fortified. If nothing else, it was a symbolic victory. God’s people had not been been defeated. They were rising again.

Chapter 6, however, doesn’t dwell very much on the victory of the completed walls. Rather, the focus is on the trials of Nehemiah. He was besieged by enemies who wanted to deceive him and to trip him up and even to kill him. There were enemies outside the walls and enemies inside the walls.

We could think of the apostle Paul, who was “in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers” (2 Corinthians 11:26). There was danger at every turn.

But God builds us up through suffering and trials. The writer of Hebrews called it “discipline” (Hebrews 12:5-11). God’s discipline is designed to yield the “peaceful fruit of righteousness.” It is God’s very Fatherliness toward us that brings his discipline. He disciplines us because he loves us, and he wants us to grow. Even Jesus was allowed to be tempted in the desert.

Nehemiah was tempted to sin by entering the temple – something that was not allowed. Nehemiah humbly resisted that temptation. Nehemiah also faced Sanballat and Geshem, who wanted to stop the work on the walls, who were spreading lies about Nehemiah’s work, and who basically wanted Nehemiah dead. Nehemiah humbly resisted them.

And Nehemiah faced his own people. And this is what caught my attention. There were some who were connected to Tobiah, who had married into a prominent Israelite family. Some of those family members considered themselves “bound” to Tobiah. I thought this was interesting. They felt more bound to Tobiah than to the nation’s work in following God. They had forgotten that their true family is the family of God.

It reminds me of Paul – in danger “from false brothers.” And it reminds me of Jesus – “‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother'” (Mark 3:33-35).

God has created a new family that supersedes any other family allegiance we may have. Certainly, Jesus was “pro-family” in the sense we understand that phrase today. He highly valued marriage and a covenantal sexual ethic and honoring parents and caring for children. But when push comes to shove – when our biological families try to draw us away from obedience to God – we know what we must do. Our ultimate allegiance is to the family of God (the church) over even our biological families. “Who are my mother and my brothers?”

In Nehemiah’s day, those with allegiance to Tobiah didn’t understand that. It’s hard even to understand this today. Think about these things. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Chris