Nehemiah 8.1-12
25 March, 2007

I’d like to begin this morning by giving you a bit of a historical context
to the passage before us. It will help you to understand what is going on.
The events of our text occur 400 plus years before Jesus is born. That makes
it after King David, after Isaiah the prophet and after the exile that that
prophet had warned Israel about. What we have in the book of Nehemiah is the
account of the rebuilding of Jerusalem after the return of the exiles.
Nehemiah has returned to Jerusalem and, has rebuilt the wall of the city.
Now, in our text, he is ready, with the aid of Ezra the priest, to renew the
covenant relationship that Israel has with her God. And so, we find the
people of God gathered in one of the squares of Jerusalem to hear the Law of
God read and explained to them. The response of the people to the reading of
the Law is too obvious to miss. ‘… all the people wept as they heard the
words of the Law.’ Nehemiah and the others, seeing this, implore the people
not to weep and mourn. Instead, they call the people to celebrate. ‘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…’ And
then come the famous words, ‘…for the joy of the LORD is your strength.’ The
people took this exhortation to heart. And they celebrated and rejoiced
greatly. By the time we get to the end of this sermon, I hope that you will
see that you are also called to celebrate and to rejoice. It may not feel
that way in the middle of the sermon, but hang on till the end.

That’s the basic overview. Now, let’s ask some questions of the text so that
we might apply it well. Why did the people weep and mourn? They responded in
that way because they got it. They understood what the Law of God was
saying. In the Law, the people were warned about going after other gods,
warned about forgetting Yahweh. But they did anyway. They had sinned and so,
God had kept His promise. He had cast Israel out of the Promised Land and
suffered years of exile. Now, instead of living in a gloriously blessed
kingdom, like that of David, they were a conquered people, ruled by the
Persians. They understood their situation biblically, and so they wept. Was
it wrong for them to weep? Absolutely not! It was a good sign of real
repentance for the sins of the nation. It was very appropriate. But then why
did Nehemiah and the others tell them to stop? They told the people to stop
their weeping because it was to be a time of joy. It’s as if Nehemiah had
said, ‘Yes, we have been sinful. Yes, we have broken faith with our God. And
yes, we have been disciplined for that. But now, all is forgiven. Yahweh,
our God, has removed all our sins. And so, you should rejoice. Rejoice in
your God, in what He has done, in what He is going to do because of His
covenant promises. There is a time to weep, but there is also a time to
rejoice.’

This text can speak to us in many ways. I just want to look at one way. I
want you to see a dynamic at work here in the life of the people of God. The
people were aware of their situation, aware of their sin and its
consequences. They understood that something was wrong and why. But they did
not see this in some detached, uninvolved manner. They were pierced through
because of what they understood. And that showed in their weeping and
mourning. Several centuries later, Jesus told His disciples, ‘Blessed are
you who weep now’ and ‘Blessed are those who mourn’. [Luke 6; Matthew 5]
Jesus taught them, and us, that it is important that we weep and mourn. And
the reason that we are to weep and mourn is the same reason that those
Israelites did. We understand that there is something wrong and why. We see
our world affected by sin. But we must not see this in some detached,
uninvolved manner. We need to be pierced by what we see. We need to mourn
and weep as a result.

When Adam and Eve believed Satan and ate, something profound happened. All
of creation was disrupted. From that time on, nothing was whole, nothing
could avoid being twisted and perverted. Because of sin, things are broken,
lives and relationships lie about broken. We live in a world filled with
sorrow and hurt. Jesus’ call to weep and mourn makes sense. As you consider
what this life was intended to be and then look at what it now is, how can
you not mourn? Wherever you look, something is wrong, something is broken.
Is it any wonder that depression and other disorders are on the rise in our
society? Everybody knows at some level that things are not the way they’re
supposed to be. Everybody knows that something is wrong. We, of all people,
should know that best.

It is here that we need to stop and take so very seriously Nehemiah’s
counsel. ‘Do not mourn nor weep. … Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is
your strength.’ Left to our own devices we would be crushed as we try to
face the brokenness of this world. And so, Jesus doesn’t leave us to our own
devices. Through our text, He calls us to His devices. ‘The joy of the LORD
is your strength.’ Let’s ponder this. I think that if we were not familiar
with this verse we’d expect something different. We’d expect, ‘The arm of
the LORD is your strength’ or ‘the Spirit of the LORD’ or ‘the sovereignty
of the LORD’. Why, ‘the joy of the LORD’? Well, what is it that a depressed
world needs? It needs joy. Not some phony ‘joy’ which is what so many aim at
with their sad attempts at what amounts to a superficial happiness. Nehemiah
points to a real joy, a joy that finds its roots in Jesus. We can rejoice,
and that’s not despite the facts but because of the facts, all of the facts.
We rejoice because Jesus is Lord and He is our Lord. Yes, the world is
broken, but we know that Jesus has come and that He has come to fix this
world, all of it. He is now in the process of doing exactly that. He is now
fixing the world. He is now in the process of fixing everything in it. And
He has promised that one day this process will be completed. One day, the
world will work the way it was supposed to. One day it will be just like the
Garden before all of this mess. We know that, and so we rejoice.

And looking at a much smaller scale, we know that we are broken. We see the
evidence of that everyday we live. Yet, we also know that Jesus is in the
process of fixing our brokenness. First, your sins have all been dealt with.
You are completely forgiven. God is no longer your judge. He is now your
Father and He loves you more than you realize. Your relationship with Him
has undergone a tremendous change. But there is also this. By the Spirit
Jesus is at work within you, restoring your soul, bit by bit. And one day,
that work of His will be completed. And each one of you will be restored to
the beauty and perfection that you were intended to have. In the face of
what is so very wrong in this world and in your own souls, you can rejoice.
You can rejoice in your Lord. You rejoice in who He is for you and in what
He is doing in you. And that joy reveals itself as optimism and peace, even
in the face the worst. This joy, though, is not something that we have to
work up in our souls. No, it is a blessing of the Gospel. And that means
that it is a gift that the Spirit works in you. The joy of the Lord is your
strength.

But… (and this is where it gets even more interesting) this joy does not
wipe out your mourning or your tears. Your joy conditions those tears and
puts a different context around your mourning, but it does not remove them.
Jesus still blesses those who weep and those who mourn. And that makes
sense. How can you care for broken people if you do cannot mourn for them
and weep with them? ‘Weep with those who weep’, says the Apostle. We still
mourn and weep, and we may do that even more so as we come to understand
better and better the huge difference between what is and what might have
been. But we do our mourning and weeping differently. We do it in hope. The
world is still broken. People still hurt. Sin is still doing its accursed
work. But Jesus is Lord! He is fixing our world. He is bringing much good
out of all of this awful evil. And His plan is right on schedule. And so, we
need to mourn and weep – and rejoice, all at the same time. It is only when
we do that that we will be able to change the world for Jesus’ sake.

Now, there is a way to do this mourning and weeping, and rejoicing. Here, we
all need to do some learning. Some of us mourn and weep without sufficient
hope. And some of us rejoice without sufficient tears. And so, my counsel
for some of you is that you lift up your eyes and look at the world around
you. Look at the people who cross your path. Look and consider what might
have been instead of what is. Look at the world biblically and then weep.
The next time you’re at a store, look at the people around you. Most of them
are not Christian. Try to imagine the many different ways that their broken
lives are crushing the life out of their souls. Try to imagine how they try
to compensate for that only making things worse. Look at the world, see the
evil there and learn how to weep.

But then my counsel for others of you is to listen to the Spirit as He
speaks from our text. ‘The joy of the LORD is your strength.’ As you look at
the brokenness all around you, and especially as you see it within your own
life, and as you feel its crushing weight, simply tell yourself these words,
‘But Jesus has come!’ When the sorrow begins to overwhelm you, say these to
yourself – out loud. And then believe them. Jesus has come to fix this
broken world. And He has come to fix your broken life. He is at work even
now. And He promises to complete what He has started. Some of you need to
learn how to rejoice because of the Gospel. ‘But Jesus has come!’

And then, as we are all in the process of learning both sides of this
balance, we all need to go to this broken world and weep with them and tell
them of Someone who makes it possible to rejoice.