Meet Me at the River

1. Fasting is required for revival (8:21-23)
2. Faith is required for revival (8:24-30)
3. Follow-through is required for revival (8:31)

In just a minute, we’re going to read Nehemiah 9:5-6. But that’s not our text tonight. That is the result of our text tonight. Our text is actually going to be a few pages before that in Ezra 8:21-31.

NEHEMIAH 9:5-6

The verses we just read are the beginning of a chapter-long song of praise and confession before the Lord. It came as the result of the experience of true revival in Israel. In Nehemiah 8, Ezra had led the people through a series of revival meetings. Those meetings were incredible. They were incredible because they were real. They weren’t artificially ginned up fits of emotional frenzy. There is no precedent for anything like that being from God in the Bible. Contrary to what most people think, that’s not revival. Revival is renewal. It only comes from the solid exposition of the Word of God and always results in repentance and renewal of relationship with God. It is God-started, God-centered and God-sustained. It comes from the preaching of God’s Word, continues with the study of God’s Word, and carries on with the proclamation of God’s Word to everyone we meet. Let me describe to you one of Ezra’s revival meetings. Look back a couple of pages to Nehemiah 8:1-8:

NEHEMIAH 8:1-8

Where was the music? Where were the quartets and the groups and the special guest singers? If they didn’t have any good singing, how did Ezra work up their emotions? He read to them. As a matter of fact, he read a lot to them. He opened up Genesis 1:1 and read at least all the way through Deuteronomy 34:12. He probably read more than that. And you think my preaching is long and boring. But what was the people’s reaction? Look back at verse 6.

NEHEMIAH 8:6

All that emotion just from reading the Book. But he didn’t just stop at reading the Book. Verse 8 says that they read it, interpreted it, explained it, and told them how it applied to their lives—they gave the sense of it. That was their revival meetings. Earlier we saw the result of those meetings. But what got them ready for it? Those people weren’t really that much different than we are. And I can’t imagine just standing up here and reading the Pentateuch to ya’ll. And if I did, I can’t imagine you staying awake, much less hollering Amen and raising your hands. What got them to that place? That place where they were that eager to hear the Word of God? That place where they were that ready for revival? That place where they weren’t looking to be entertained, but were looking for the manifest presence of God in His holy Word? To find that out, we have to go back to Ezra 8. As I said Wednesday night, Ezra and Nehemiah were probably originally one book. And they were more than likely written by Ezra. So, in reality, the revival meetings of Nehemiah 8 and the resulting revival in Nehemiah 9 are really the result of the initial preparation that was made in Ezra 8. Remember where we are in history. Ezra was leading the second group of Jews who were returning to Jerusalem from the Babylonian exile. Before heading out on the four-month long journey to Jerusalem, he gathered the exiles at the river of Ahava for a time of preparation for what God had in store for them. There by that river, Ezra laid the foundation