Spiritual Snowmen
As we begin this passage of scripture, the Jews have just returned from 70 years of foreign captivity in Babylon. Unlike our county jail up in LaPorte with its jail ministry that provides Bibles to the prisoners, the Jews were not allowed to practice their religion or even read the word.
They weren’t allowed access to the Law of God. All that they remembered of their faith came from memory or what had been passed down from the elders of the community. So by this time, they had forgotten more than they remembered about the word of God.
The book of Nehemiah tells us of the time of Israel coming home, rebuilding their homeland, and returning to their faith. If you look back in the book of Nehemiah you can see how Nehemiah has been busy doing the work assigned to him by God, rebuilding the walls and gates of Jerusalem.
But Nehemiah had more than building walls and gates on his mind. He was a man of passion. He was passionate about returning God’s people to God. He was passionate about getting the people beyond the state they were in. Nehemiah not only wants to reconstruct Jerusalem, he wants to help the Jews reconstruct their lives.
The reconstruction of Jerusalem is over. Now it is time for re-instruction. Then - because they have been denied the word of God for 70 years. Now - because we have become apathetic to God’s Word. We need to become passionate about God and His Word, as passionate as those who were set free then.
The reconstruction is done and the Book of the Law has been discovered. What did the people do? They all gathered in the square and said, “Hey, we’re gonna have church! Hey Preacher, get your Bible and get out here! We’re gonna have church! We’re gonna have church!”
They were excited about going to church. They have had enough of the way they had been living for the past 70 years. They told Ezra to get the book and get to work. “We want to hear the Word of God. We want to learn. We’re ready to worship.” They were excited about going to church.
Now, if you’ll look in your Bible you will see that book of Ezra is right before Nehemiah. Ezra is a priest, a scholar, and a teacher of God’s word. He’s been in Jerusalem for 13 years, sent there to make sure that worship took place in the rebuilt temple. Finally, he is called to do just that.
Verse 2 says, "Ezra the priest brought the scroll of the law before the assembly, which included the men and women and all the children old enough to understand.” (I’m guessing the rest went downstairs for children’s church.)
Ezra stood before them on a high wooden platform built for the occasion. Ezra was in the pulpit. We know this from vs. 4, not included in our Lectionary reading for today. And he is standing there, surrounded by 13 guys with hard to pronounce names.
Then Ezra opened the Book. And all the people stood up. I think that’s neat. Have you ever been in a courtroom? No, it’s not a trick question. I’m sure you’ve seen one on TV or in a movie. What happens when the judge walks in? The bailiff says, "all rise."
And everyone stands up out of respect for the judge. Well, no one deserves more respect than God or His Word.
So the people stood up out of respect for God’s Word. They had assembled as one man. They were bound together by their common desire to hear the Word of God. They were single-minded. And at the end of vs. 3 we read, “All the people paid close attention to the Book of the Law."
We’ve all heard the jokes or funny stories. “Why are we supposed to be quiet in church? Because people are sleeping.” “Pastor, I wasn’t sleeping during your sermon. I was meditating on your words of wisdom.”
Pastors have long been the targets of jokes dealing with the length of sermons. There’s the one about the preacher who was ending his sermon and apologized the congregation for speaking too long, "I don’t have a watch with me", he said. Somebody from the back yelled out, "Do you have a calendar?"
The Pastor’s sermon went on and on and on. The little girl, thinking about the offering, leans over to her mom and says, “If we pay him now, will he stop?” Tapping the watch, making sure it’s working.
“All the people paid close attention to the Book of the Law." They were eager to learn! How do we know this? Vs. 3 tells us that the people listened to the Word of God from dawn until noon. This is a 6:00 am service to a 12:00 pm service! Six hours! What do you think of the idea of standing for my sermons, let alone for a 6 hour worship service?
It probably makes you squirm just to think about it! “We’re not horses, we can’t sleep standing up.” Yet that’s not the reaction of the people to this incredibly long proclamation of God’s Word. Far from it. In fact the people are completely wrapped up in it. They cry. They holler Amen. They raise their hands to heaven. They fall down on the ground and bow their heads low and pray.
In short they are completely involved with the word that they hear. It touches them deeply. I’ve noticed that today people are increasingly indifferent to God’s word. But not these people.
Why did they approach the Word of God this way? They were hungry! The pastor is one who is charged with the responsibility of feeding the Word to the flock—the role of the flock every week is to come hungry! These people were hungry for the word of God.
Yet, when they heard the Word of God, they were grieved. “All the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the law.” They were hungry but what they were fed didn’t taste good to them. The more they heard the more they realized just far they were from God. They wept in sorrow at who they had become.
I saw a cartoon that pictured 2 women at a well. Each one has a bucket to draw water. One woman, looking sad and bitter, remarks, "Life is terrible. Every time I fill this bucket up, it is empty within minutes." The other woman, who appears at peace with herself, replies, "I think life is wonderful. Every time this bucket is empty, I can simply fill it up again."
It’s the old "is the glass half-empty or half-full?" dilemma. Unfortunately, these people only grasp half of the message presented to them. They understand how they have failed, how far they have moved from God.
As worshipful human beings they are half-empty. The forces of life have stolen their joy. And this grieves them.
But this is only half of the message. The set up of this scripture reminds me of the lesson we learned in our training. If you have a negative and a positive in your sermon, always lead with the negative and end on a positive note.
The other half of this message ends on a positive note. Nehemiah continues on by saying, “Go and celebrate with a feast of choice foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Now, if we continued on reading in Nehemiah we would see how the people were changed. You might even say, they were transformed. With joy they continued to come together, meeting to study the words of the law, confess their sins, and worship the Lord their God.
They continued to worship. They took on the passion of Nehemiah and that’s what we need to recapture. We face the danger of falling into a rut. We often fail to realize we’ve lost the passion of our faith. And we don’t care because the rut is very comfortable. We say the Lord’s Prayer without thinking of the meaning of the words. We sing most hymns without paying attention to the lyrics.
By renewing our faith we may be challenged to change. Status quo doesn’t bother us, we can go on sleeping. As a society, too many have become spiritual snowmen. Cold and apathetic toward God.
But you know what happens to snowmen when the heat is turned up? They start to melt and before you know it, they’ve turned into a pile of mush. That is what’s happening to more and more of God’s people.
We’re melting under the heat of a world that’s pressuring us to compromise our Christian convictions. We wear what they wear, talk like they talk, live like they live. We are melting into a pile of mush that you can hardly tell the difference between us and the lost people around us. Because we have lost our passion, our excitement for gathering together in worship and lost our hunger for God’s Word.
I’ve only flown in a plane 3 times, the last time in one of those little 2 seaters where you can actually see the front of the plane and what your going to crash into (Oops, I mean what’s in front of you). I’ll tell you one thing though - when you come in for a landing, the runway looks like a tiny, narrow strip.
Some people say that God’s Word is narrow, too; that living by it is restricting and difficult. Maybe it is, because it often goes against the way the world thinks. But next time you hear someone say that, remember the runway. It’s narrow. But landing on it—instead in the cornfield or in the water—is the way to safety. And so it is with God’s Word.
We don’t have to stand up, at least not all the time. But if we get excited about God, if we hunger for His Word, if we can rediscover the passion that has brought us to this place and time, then we can have joy and safety in the strength of the Lord.
By passionately keeping our eyes focused on that narrow runway, God’s Word, it doesn’t matter how much the world turns up the heat, we won’t turn into a pile of mush.
