Nehemiah’s Preparations

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I feel ill-prepared for tonight, which is ironic because we’re going to talk about being prepared for worship. But, you know, I have my little Wednesday afternoon routine. Wednesday always turns out to be the busiest day of the week.

And no matter how far ahead I am, getting ready both for Wednesday and Sunday on Wednesday afternoon, something always comes up. And it’ll be about 3 o’clock. Everybody else in the office leaves to go home.

I think I’ve got three hours until church. I’m in a good position, getting ready. Everybody’s going home.

It’s going to be quiet. This will be great. There’s always something to do.

And about five o’clock, well, a little before five o’clock, Charlie and the kids were headed here. The kids were going to eat their dinner and then be here for church. And Charlie calls me and says, I need something for Jojo.

Can you run over to Cash Saver? So I did that. And then I came in here to sit down with them.

I got here the same time they did. Came in here to sit down with them, and I was going to finish up the last little bit of my stuff for tonight, and our alarm goes off at home. One of the inside motion sensors.

So I had to rush up there at 5 o’clock, sweep the whole house room by room. All I can figure out is the dog through the back window. Those things are infrared.

So I moved a sensor around and came back just in time to be here. The message is written, but I just feel like the afternoon got away from me. So, I guess the moral of tonight’s study is if we’re going to be prepared for worship, I need to be totally prepared by Tuesday afternoon because there’s no telling about it on Wednesday.

We’re going to be in Nehemiah chapter 7 tonight. Nehemiah chapter 7. And this is another one of those chapters like, I’ve lost count here, I want to say chapter 3.

chapter 3 where we’re going to skip a little bit skip around a little bit not that it’s not all important but not all of it is immediately applicable to our lives it’s important for history reasons, it’s important for genealogy reasons but you’re not going to read verse 39 where it says the priests and sons of Jediah, the house of Jeshua 973. You’re not going to read this list of names and find a lot there to apply. So we’re going to skip over some of that and look at other parts of the chapter.

It is all important. I encourage you to go back and read it for yourself, but for tonight we’re going to skip around a little bit. We’re going to look initially at verses 1 through 6 and then look at the end of the chapter as well.

When we left off two weeks ago, we weren’t here last week because of ice and all that. When we left off two weeks ago, they had just finished the wall in spite of the fact that there was severe opposition, threats, intimidation. Basically, the powers that be, through everything that they had at Nehemiah to try to stop the last little bit of work on the wall, the last thing they had to do was to hang the doors in the gates, and then the walls were finished.

They did not want that to happen because no matter how big the walls were, if the gates were wide open, enemies could still come and go and the people were still vulnerable. So they tried to stop that. And nevertheless, they kept going and they finished the wall in 52 days.

So starting in chapter seven, verse one, it says that it was when the wall was built and I had hung the doors when the gatekeepers, the singers and the Levites had been appointed. that I gave the charge of Jerusalem to my brother Hanani, and Hananiah the leader of the citadel, for he was a faithful man and feared God more than many. And I said to them, do not let the gates of Jerusalem be opened until the sun is hot, and while they stand guard, let them shut and bar the doors and appoint guards from among the inhabitants of Jerusalem, one at his watch station and another in front of his house.

Okay, I’m going to stop there for just a second. He’s finished the law, The doors are now hung in the gates. The city is secure.

They’re beginning the process of signing people up for jobs. The priests, the Levites, the singers, all these things. He’s found people that he can delegate to for the defense and the administration of the city.

But he gives them some instructions. He said, this is going to be your job to take care of. He says, but let me give you some instructions on how to deal with the defense of the city.

And he says, don’t open the gates until the sun is hot. The reason he did this is because not everybody that belonged in Jerusalem had come back yet. So they’ve got this city that at least the walls are rebuilt, but not all the houses are rebuilt.

Not all the buildings are rebuilt. Not everybody has come back from captivity in Babylon and Persia. And so it’s what you call a skeleton crew of people there in Jerusalem.

they don’t have enough people to adequately defend the city if the gates were open. And there’s some debate over what exactly the Hebrew means here when it says until the sun is hot. Some people say, and I think this makes more sense, it’s kind of the majority position, is that he was saying, don’t open the gates early.

Not necessarily that you have to wait until noon, the hottest part of the day, but wait until the sun is up. because I’ve never been in the military, but I’ve studied a lot of military history. And one thing I’ve learned is that enemies will often attack just right before dawn when people are still sleepy or there’s guard change, that sort of thing.

And so he’s saying, don’t be in a hurry to open the gates of the city. Keep it protected. Keep it locked down until everybody’s up, everybody’s alert.

Then you can open the gates. but we need people who are going to be aware and alert of what’s going on. There’s a minority of people that say what this Hebrew phrase means is keep the gate shut during the hottest part of the day.

So open it up during the day. Obviously, you keep it locked at night, but shut it down during the hottest part of the day when people are going to get lethargic, maybe take their siesta. I don’t know what they call it in the Middle East. I’ve never, I’ve not been a napper, but when I’ve been in Mexico, I’ve taken a siesta because it’s hot.

And so I imagine they would in the desert too. When it’s midday and everybody’s lethargic and everybody’s resting, you keep the gates shut. It could be either one of those.

But the important point there is that Nehemiah is telling them, don’t open the gates, whichever time he’s talking about, don’t open the gates unless everybody’s alert and paying attention. So he’s telling them just because we have the wall doesn’t mean that we can get complacent about it. It’s kind of like with a security system.

A lot of people get complacent once they put up a security system to the point they forget to turn it on and it doesn’t do any good. So just having the wall is not going to do you any good if you don’t have somebody standing guard when the gates are open. Verse 4 says, Now the city was large and spacious, but the people in it were few, and the houses were not rebuilt.

I already kind of mentioned that. Then my God put it into my heart to gather the nobles, the rulers, and the people, that they might be registered by genealogy. And I found a register of the genealogy of those who had come up in the first return and found written in it, these are the people of the province who came back from the captivity of those who had been carried away, whom Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, had carried away, and who returned to Jerusalem and Judah, everyone to his city.

And then starting in verse 7, there’s a list of names, and there’s an accounting of those names. And like I told you earlier, those names and those numbers are important for historical reasons, but for our purposes tonight, just suffice it to say, he counted all the people. And as best he could, given the records that he had, he figured out where they fit into the lineage and into the tribes of the nation of Israel.

Try to figure out where everybody fit. So we skip down to just after the list in verse 64. And they’ve listed names and listed names and listed names.

And he gets to verse 64. And he says, these sought their listing among those who were registered by genealogy, but it was not found. Therefore, they were excluded from the priesthood as defiled.

There were some of the people who were trying to be part of the priesthood. and maybe they were Levites. Maybe they were qualified because you had to be from the tribe of Levite according to God’s law to be a priest. Maybe they were, but they couldn’t prove it.

And so Nehemiah said, we’re going to err on the side of caution and you can’t be a priest unless we can prove that you’re a Levite. He said, so they were put out from the priesthood. Now, maybe, I don’t know, maybe later records were found and they could prove it and they were readmitted.

But for now, they are excluded from the priesthood. Verse 65 says, And the governor said to them that they should not eat the most holy things until a priest could consult with the Urim and Thummim. And there’s not a lot I can tell you about the Urim and Thummim.

This is something I’ve been puzzled by for many years. I know that these were evidently gemstones that were put in the breastplate of the high priest. And somehow or another, they were used to discern answers from God to questions that they dealt with. Not necessarily all the time.

They’re not featured prominently in the Old Testament, but they do show up at various times, these two stones. What they did with the stones, I couldn’t tell you. What the stones did to indicate God’s will, I couldn’t tell you.

I don’t know if there was one that maybe a green one and a red one, and it lit up, one of them shone for yes or no. I don’t know. I have looked, I have searched, I have scoured the internet and scoured books. And there are theories out there, but as far as anyone who actually knows, your guess is as good as mine.

But they had these stones that went in the breastplate of the high priest. And so he said, basically, until we can get a reading from God on these people, they’re excluded from the priesthood. They’re not able to eat the bread, the things from the, any of the holy things that a priest normally would be able to eat until God weighs in on each other. And then verse 66 says, altogether the whole assembly was 42,360 besides their male and female servants of whom there were 7,337 and they had 245 men and women singers.

And I meant to add up that whole number. If somebody wants to add up those three categories and let us know how many people there were, I think that was part of what I was going to do when I came in and sat down with Charm and the kids. Their horses were, suffice it to say, it was a big group of people.

Their horses were 736, their mules 245, their camels 435, and donkeys 6,720. And some of the heads of the father’s houses gave to the work. The governor gave to the treasury 1,000 gold drachmas, 50 basins, and 530 priestly garments.

Some of the heads of the father’s houses gave to the treasury of the work 20,000 gold drachmas, and 2,200 silver minus. And that which the rest of the people gave was 20,000 gold drachmas, 2,000 silver minus, and 67 priestly garments. So the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the Nethanim, and all Israel dwelt in their cities.

And when the seventh month came, the children of Israel were in their cities. All right. So just to clarify a few things.

He lists here at the end. He’s going through here. The numbers of the people, the numbers of the servants, the numbers of the singers, the mules, the donkeys, the horses, the lions and tigers and bears.

And he says they have been. Just see it if you’re paying attention. He says we’ve got the Levites, the priests, the Nethanim.

Okay, the Levites were anybody from the tribe of Levi. The priests had to be Levites. Okay, so every priest was a Levite, but not every Levite was a priest. There were people in the tribe of Levi who didn’t function as priests, but they might have carried out certain duties in and around the temple.

And then the Nephilim is a Hebrew name for sort of the temple assistance. 49,942. 49,000.

Well, let’s just.. . That’s what I just texted him, yeah.

Let’s just pull it up. Is that why my notes just disappeared on me? All right.

Well, let’s just pull an election thing and say it was 50,000. 50,000 people for Nehemiah. Close enough.

So it was a pretty good-sized group, right? So these Nethanim, I don’t know if I finished that thought, but the Nethanim were sort of the temple assistants. They were the interns.

They were the guys who helped out. So Nehemiah, as we see in this chapter, and including the parts we skipped over that have the actual records of who was there and how many from each family, he ordered a full census and a full accounting of the people and of the stuff as the wall project came to a conclusion. It says in verse 5, he registered the people by genealogy and he lists it in verses 6 through 63.

The reason why that was important, again, is because in order to be a priest, you had to be a Levite. And so they had to know what tribe everybody was from. It was very important for God’s purposes in the nation of Israel that people know which tribe they were from There were prophecies about the different tribes.

There were laws about the different tribes. As I said, the Levites were the priests. They knew that they were looking for a Messiah from the tribe of Judah.

It was very important to know where everybody fit in, where everybody belonged. It’s sort of like going to a family reunion, and one of the older people, one of the very older people, saying, and whose are you? You know, they kind of want to know where everybody fits.

So he’s registering everybody by their genealogy. He counted the people. He counted the servants.

He counted the livestock. He counted the giving, which some of that was to support their rebuilding efforts. Some of that was going to be used for the temple and in the temple.

And we see in verses 70 and 72 that that included the priestly garments, the special garments that the priests would wear as they were. It’s not like here where I show up in a three piece suit and people say, oh, I suit. And I show up the next week with a sport coat and no tie and I feel weird without my tie.

And somebody says, nobody cares. You know, where I can basically get up and lead services in anything respectful, anything within reason. And it wasn’t like that.

God had specific rules about what they had to wear and what they had to do. And so the people were contributing these priestly garments. He was counting those, seeing what they had.

This gold and silver that were going to be used in the temple because some of their lamps, some of their utensils they used, all these kinds of implements that were used in the worship would be made out of gold and silver. He made accounting of all of that. And he accounted, too, for those who were going to serve.

And we see that in verse 73, the priests, Levites, gatekeepers, sinners, all these people. He’s listing those who are going to serve. So as I was reading this and thinking, why is this important to us today?

I realized we’re not just looking here at a census. This is not just an accounting record. But I stopped and thought about what he’s doing here in context of what’s going to take place over the next two chapters, which is a worship service.

And then I began to realize that what’s taking place in chapter 7 is not just counting. It’s not just balancing the checkbook and making sure everybody’s where they belong. in addition to any of those logistical purposes he was preparing the people for worship he was preparing them for the worship to resume in the temple in a way that it hadn’t gone on for 70 plus years they had to be prepared that’s why they they took the steps to identify those who were still eligible for the priesthood if they were going to resume the sacrifices if they were going to resume the offerings.

If they were going to resume relating to God in that way in their temple, they needed to know who was able to lead them in that. They couldn’t just put anybody up there because it would be offensive to God. So they identified those who were still eligible for the priesthood.

They located musicians for the temple. That’s why they keep talking about the singers. That’s why they numbered them separately.

They were important, just like they’re important to our worship too right aren’t we are we thankful for christy and the praise team leading us in worship I mean yeah it would something would be I mean the the preaching of the word I was going to say the preaching of the word is great I’m not patting myself on the back I mean as a general concept the preaching of the word is great but I feel like we’re churches in general are missing something if we don’t sing praises to god when we when we gather and so they were they They were locating the musicians for the temple. They acquired the ritual garments for the priests. They collected the gold and silver for the temple.

We see in verse 73, they organized the priests and the Levites and the Nephanims. They made sure that there were all the people that they needed, and they were all in the right place for when this resumed.

All of this was done to prepare them for what we’re going to see in chapter 8, which is the reading of the law, and in chapter 9, which is essentially a gigantic prayer service, time of confession and repentance and so as I read this and see the effort that they put into this I realized too that they were hungry for worship and of course we think well you can worship everywhere and you should that’s true but they were told to do certain things to go to the temple as part of their worship and make these offerings and make their sacrifices and hear the law read and they missed it Think about the time when the shutdowns were starting to end and how anxious we all were to go back to church. Now, in the time that y’all were shut down, in the time that we were shut down, I’m sure you worshipped. We worshipped.

Studied God’s word together online as best we could. Carried on with our personal devotionals. I’ve seen some of the videos from Central during that time.

And I know there were even song services over the internet. I led music badly until it was safe to bring our music minister back to services. I was so grateful to have him back.

But we were all just ready to come back. Even those today here who have not come back to worship or have not come back to worship regularly because of COVID, because they’re at a higher risk, are telling me regularly that they cannot wait. It’s driving them nuts.

They’re making a decision they feel they have to for their safety. And I don’t fault them for that one bit. But to hear them talk, they are ready for it to be over.

This is not a fun time for them. They’re ready to be back for worship. The people of Israel were hungry for worship.

They were hungry to get back to doing what they were supposed to do. And so they prepared themselves. Now, we need to prepare ourselves too for worship.

Our preparation is going to look a little bit different. Because the circumstances are a little bit different for us with worship. We have a different relationship with God.

They would worship corporately at the temple, bring sacrifices, bring all these things, and we’re called to prepare ourselves individually to worship corporately. They were preparing corporately. They were preparing as a group, getting together and doing all the things that needed to be done so that they could come together and worship corporately.

I believe that our preparation for corporate worship takes place in our individual worship. Because the difference here between us and them is that they were preparing to go to the temple and we are the temple. I didn’t make that up.

The Bible says that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Right. If we belong to Jesus Christ, if we’ve trusted him as our Savior, we belong to him.

The Holy Spirit of God has taken up residence in us. Bible calls us the temple of the Holy Spirit. the Bible describes how God lives in a temple not made by human hands.

That’s us. He lives within us. We are the temple.

We don’t have to go off to the temple to worship. We worship every day in the way we relate to God. As we pray on our own, as we study His word, as we sing to Him, as we confess as they were going to do.

And we stay in this constant communication with God and we seek to honor him with our lives, we are worshiping on a daily basis. And how well we do that individually to prepare ourselves for corporate worship affects how well we worship together. Have you ever, maybe don’t raise your hand, especially if it was recently, but have you ever left church and thought, well, I just didn’t get anything out of that today?

I have. I have.

sometimes it gets to be a little bit routine doesn’t it it’s unfortunate but it happens it can get to where it feels a little bit routine and you leave out of there thinking well the music wasn’t that great that preacher my mother will ask me how was church that preacher will not shut up it just we’ve all been there and I realized a while back it’s not necessarily the preacher’s fault and it’s not necessarily the music the worship leader’s fault more often than not it’s my fault there was a time a few years ago that I came in on a Sunday night our church in Seminole and we had our just our regular service and I was just practically moved to tears during the song service and there was nothing different about it at all you know we had the same organ and piano we sang out of the same hymnal we sang it at the same speed but I was just about moved to tears and I told our music minister afterwards I said you were just on fire tonight he said I don’t feel like I did anything different.

I said, it was really good. And I realized what the difference was. All that Sunday afternoon, I had spent time at, what do they call it, Life Chain, that they do every October on a Sunday chain.

We go out on a street corner or side of the road and hold up signs about abortion and pray. Well, I participated in that that afternoon. Stood out there on Highway 99 in Seminole holding my sign, and there were prayer, you know, hints, things to pray for on the back of my sign, just as there were for everybody’s.

I’m here to tell you, and I hope it doesn’t make you think less of me, it was really hard thinking of things to pray for constantly for two and a half hours. And I didn’t want to just stand there. So I’d pray for a few minutes and then I’d sing.

And then I’d pray some more and then I’d sing. I realized after that what had made the difference in that time of worship together was that I had spent all afternoon stuck in worship by myself. I came to worship prepared.

And it changed the entire dynamic of it. And so as we look at this, I know that the world that they lived in looks different from ours. Their religious practices look different from ours.

Their circumstances, I mean, just about everything about it looks different from us except the God we serve. But I think the principle applies here. That we see this incredible revival breakout in chapters 8 and 9 as they come together to worship.

Because in chapter 7, they took the time to prepare. And so as we read over this, I just leave you with this encouragement to spend time, not just this week, but make it a habit to spend time preparing yourself for our times of worship by making a commitment to have your own times of worship. Prepare yourself.

Prepare yourself for when we gather for worship. You just might be amazed what God will do.