Message 3
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Scripture Reading: Neh. 8; Neh. 9; Neh. 10
In this message we will begin to consider the reconstitution of the nation of God’s elect (chs. 8—13).
In order to be reconstituted, we need to come back to God by coming back to His law, that is, His word (ch. 8). Suppose a fallen person wants to come back to God. If he would come back to God, he must come back to God’s word. No one can come back to God without coming back to His word.
God’s word reconstitutes us. We all have our own kind of disposition and habitual behavior, but God is able to reconstitute us through His word. This is why we need to read the Bible. God’s word gradually changes our mind and our way of thinking. The word of God is one with the Spirit (Eph. 6:17). When the word of God works within us, the Spirit, through the word, spontaneously dispenses God’s nature with God’s element into our being. We may not even be aware that such a dispensing is taking place within us. By this way we are reconstituted.
Most of those who had returned to Jerusalem from the captivity in Babylon had been born not in Israel but in Babylon, and they were raised in Babylon. The Babylonian element had been wrought into them and constituted into their being. Therefore, after they returned to the land of their fathers to be citizens of the nation of Israel, they needed a reconstitution. Ezra was very useful at this point, for he was one through whom the people could be reconstituted with the word of God.
The constitution of a person provides the foundation for the constitution of a nation. A proper nation is not merely an organization but also a constitution. This is especially true of a nation’s army. The army of the United States, for example, is constituted with many elements, and these elements afford the way for the individual soldiers to be reconstituted as parts of the army. Thus, the army is a constitution and not merely an organization.
God’s intention with Israel was to have on earth a divinely constituted people to be His testimony. In order for God’s people to be His testimony, they had to be reconstituted with the word of God. Under Ezra and Nehemiah the returned people of Israel were collectively constituted by and with God through His word to be a nation as God’s testimony.
According to Nehemiah 8:1-8 all the people of Israel gathered as one man before the Water Gate and told Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses and read to them. Ezra did it and blessed Jehovah the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen,” lifting up their hands; and they worshipped Jehovah with their faces to the ground. This indicates that rebellious Israel had been fully convinced and fully subdued by the word of God spoken through Moses.
The word of God is the solid base for the Spirit of God, who is God Himself, to dispense God’s element into our being to cause us to be constituted with God. This should be our personal experience day by day. When we come together, we then need to read even more of the Word of God. To do this is to come together according to the way of the divine constitution.
In order to be reconstituted, we need to read the sixty-six books of the Bible again and again. As one who has been reading the Word for more than sixty-five years, I can testify that I have been reconstituted through the daily reading of the Word. Every day I am reconstituted a little more.
Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who helped the people understand charged all the people to sanctify that day unto Jehovah their God and not to mourn or weep, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Nehemiah charged them to have a feast without grief, a feast full of joy. It was hard for the people to do this, because they had been convinced and subdued by the word to realize they were sinful (vv. 9-10a). Nehemiah said to them, “Do not be grieved, for the joy of Jehovah is your strength” (v. 10b). Then all “went their way to eat and to drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing” (v. 12).
On the second day the heads of the fathers’ houses, the priests, and the Levites were gathered to Ezra the scribe in order to gain insight into the words of the law (v. 13). Today many read the Bible without insight. Who has genuine insight into the word of the Bible? Here in verse 13 “insight” refers to the intrinsic significance. We all need to be helped to see the intrinsic significance of the word of the Bible.
Verses 14 through 18 tell us that they found in the law that Jehovah commanded the children of Israel to dwell in booths during the feast in the seventh month (the Feast of Tabernacles) and to publish and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem to go out to the mountain and bring olive branches and other kinds of branches to make booths. All the assembly did it accordingly for seven days with great rejoicing, and day by day Ezra read in the book of the law of God. On the eighth day there was a solemn assembly, according to the ordinance. This indicates that they did everything according to the complete law, with the commandments, the statutes (the supplements to the commandments), and the ordinances (the judgments). They had a revival and became a new nation, constituted through and with the word.
In chapters nine and ten the people made a clear confession to God of their past and made a firm covenant with God.
The descendants of Israel separated themselves from all foreigners and stood, confessing their sins and the iniquities of their fathers and reading the book of the law of Jehovah (9:1-4).
They praised God as the only God, who created the heaven of heavens, the earth, and the seas with all that is in them, and who chose Abraham, brought him forth from Chaldea, and made a covenant with him to give him and his seed the land of Canaan (vv. 5-8). They knew God in this way and praised Him accordingly.
Next, they enumerated all the good that God had done for their forefathers, bringing them out of Egypt through the wilderness into the good land and giving them His law in spite of their arrogance and their stiffened neck and their refusing to listen to His commandments (vv. 9-25). What can deal with our arrogance, our stiffened neck, and our refusal to listen to God’s commandments? Only the word of God can deal with these ugly things. The word of God can annul our arrogance. The word of God also can bend our stiff neck and cause us to listen to God’s commandments.
Following this, they made a further confession of their disobedience and rebellion (vv. 26-37). They confessed that, with a stiffened neck and a stubborn shoulder, they had cast God’s law behind their back and had slain His prophets. Thus, they provoked God’s wrath to give their good land to the oppression of the nations and give them, the people of Israel, into captivity to foreign lands. As a result, since the days of the kings of Assyria until that day, they had been in great distress.
Because of all this they made a firm covenant in writing, and upon the sealed document were the names of their rulers, their Levites, and their priests (9:38—10:27).
The rest of the people, the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, the temple servants, and all those who had separated themselves from the peoples of the lands unto the law of God entered into a curse and an oath (vv. 28-39). For them to enter into a curse meant that they would curse themselves if they did not keep the covenant. For them to enter into an oath meant that they could not cancel the covenant which they had made.
In verses 29 through 31 we are told that they entered into a curse and an oath to walk in the law of God, which was given through Moses, and to keep and do all the commandments of Jehovah their Lord as well as His ordinances and statutes, not giving their daughters to the peoples of the land nor taking their daughters for their sons, keeping the Sabbath by not doing business, and foregoing the crops of the seventh year. To forego means to give up. According to God’s ordination in His law, in the seventh year they were to give up sowing and reaping so that the land would have rest. Then the land would grow something by itself for the poor and the needy. This law concerning the seventh year reveals that God, the Lawgiver, is full of love, caring for the widows, the orphans, the needy ones, and the strangers.
The people agreed also to forego the exaction of every debt. They were not to force others to pay their debts. Therefore, in the seventh year they were not allowed to use the land, and they were not permitted to exact payment for every debt. The rich had to lend to the poor and then forego the exaction of the debt if the poor were unable to pay. For those who were unwilling to lend to the poor, God had many ways to balance the social wealth among the rich and the poor. In His wisdom and love God balances the wealth of His people. This matter also is related to the reconstitution of the nation of God’s elect.
Furthermore, they laid upon themselves obligations to offer their produce from the land for their sacrifices to God and to provide for the service of the temple (vv. 32-39).
All these matters are items of the reconstitution of the people of Israel. The “wild” Israel was reconstituted with a divine constitution to be a separate, particular, sanctified people as a testimony of God on earth.
