Rejoicing with Great Joy


Sermon by Billy Dempsey on July 11, 2021 Nehemiah 12:27-43

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We return to Nehemiah chapter 12. We’ll pick up with verse 27. It was my deep interest to persuade rabbi Lowry to come read this passage for us tonight; nobody reads the Hebrew like that boy does. But, he demurred, and so you got me reading the Hebrew, not as well as rabbi Lowry. Let’s pray.

Father, we need to hear from You tonight. We thank You that You have spoken. We thank You that You have told us who You are and who we are and what this world is and especially who Jesus is. And You call us to respond to Him. And so feed us, feed us tonight the words of life. Like Peter we say, “Lord, where else can we go? You have the words of life.” Feed us now the words of life. Father, we make our prayer in the name of our Lord and Savior and Elder Brother, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Beginning with verse 27:

“And at the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem they sought the Levites in all their places, to bring them to Jerusalem to celebrate the dedication with gladness, with thanksgivings and with singing, with cymbals, harps, and lyres. And the sons of the singers gathered together from the district surrounding Jerusalem and from the villages of the Netophathites; also from Beth-gilgal and from the region of Geba and Azmaveth, for the singers had built for themselves villages around Jerusalem. And the priests and the Levites purified themselves, and they purified the people and the gates and the wall.

Then I brought the leaders of Judah up onto the wall and appointed two great choirs that gave thanks. One went to the south on the wall to the Dung Gate. And after them went Hoshaiah and half of the leaders of Judah, and Azariah, Ezra, Meshullam, Judah, Benjamin, Shemaiah, and Jeremiah, and certain of the priests’ sons with trumpets: Zechariah the son of Jonathan, son of Shemaiah, son of Mattaniah, son of Micaiah, son of Zaccur, son of Asaph; and his relatives, Shemaiah, Azarel, Milalai, Gilalai, Maai, Nethanel, Judah, and Hanani, with the musical instruments of David the man of God. And Ezra the scribe went before them. At the Fountain Gate they went up straight before them by the stairs of the city of David, at the ascent of the wall, above the house of David, to the Water Gate on the east.

The other choir of those who gave thanks went to the north, and I followed them with half of the people, on the wall, above the Tower of the Ovens, to the Broad Wall, and above the Gate of Ephraim, and by the Gate of Yeshanah, and by the Fish Gate and the Tower of Hananel and the Tower of the Hundred, to the Sheep Gate; and they came to a halt at the Gate of the Guard. So both choirs of those who gave thanks stood in the house of God, and I and half of the officials with me; and the priests Eliakim, Maaseiah, Miniamin, Micaiah, Elioenai, Zechariah, and Hananiah, with trumpets; and Maaseiah, Shemaiah, Eleazar, Uzzi, Jehohanan, Malchijah, Elam, and Ezer. And the singers sang with Jezrahiah as their leader. And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced. And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.”

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever.

It was just a little crowd. It was a little enclave. In the scope of world events at that time, they really didn’t matter much. But what they did that day and that night were so significant and so important. You didn’t pass a bunch of news trucks on your way in here. There was nobody doing man on the sidewalk interviews as you came in the door because it really doesn’t matter much, it seems, to the rest of the world what you do here tonight. But it matters. It matters for time that you and I are here together tonight. It matters in eternity that you and I are here together tonight. You will know tomorrow that you were here tonight. Guess what? You’re going to have reason to remember on Friday that you were here tonight because it matters. It matters that we gather to worship God. It matters that God is praised right here this evening at 1390 North State Street in Jackson, Mississippi. It matters. What these people, most of whose names we don’t have, what they did here in Jerusalem echoes still through eternity or through time and will echo in eternity as we consider the worship, as we think about what they’re doing and the dedication of the wall and the city it bounds. It’s a huge moment. It’s a huge moment. We have things to learn from it, so let’s begin to talk about it.

We have walked through this book and we have seen some incredible milestones. We’ve seen the wall of Jerusalem begun and finished. We’ve watched as Nehemiah has faced down fierce opposition to that work and has personally led his people in this great, significant effort to rebuild. Their opposition remains, but now the wall is finished. You remember the remark made in verse 16 of chapter 6, “When all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and they fell greatly in their own esteem, for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God.” An amazing observation. We’ve witnessed some deeply moving moments since then as Ezra read the Law before the people there in chapter 8. And the sweet celebration of the Feast of Booths as they were called to remember and celebrate God’s provision for their forefathers in the wilderness for 40 years, reminding them that He would keep them as well if they would believe and obey. We read their radical confession of sin in chapter 9 and watched as they made covenant together to obey God and to serve Him as His people. And now they’ve begun to repopulate the city. You’ll remember a couple of weeks ago they began to draw all their leadership into living in Jerusalem. One family out of every ten that had settled in the surrounding villages, now moving into Jerusalem, and others volunteering to move in there, over and above that number. They were welcomed as well.

That brings us to the moment of a dedication when the wall has been completed, the city is beginning to be populated again. It’s a fabulous service of worship and celebration, of thanksgiving and joy. And it teaches us some things about worship. Let’s remember now, this is a particular type of service that we’re reading about and talking about tonight. Nevertheless, there are some things that we draw from this passage about worship. This passage isn’t meant to teach us everything there is to be taught about worship, but there are some things that we draw. We want to look at a couple of things. We want to look at dedication, we want to look at celebration, we want to look at thankfulness, and finally we want to look at purification. So to give you great comfort, I’ll take my watch off and put it right here. Don’t ask me if I’m going to look at it or not, but we’ve got some ground to cover, so let’s talk!

Dedication

Let’s think about dedication. This is a service of dedication that we are reading about. They are dedicating the wall that they have built with such effort and such amazing sustaining and keeping of the power of God. And they’re dedicating as well the city that is within those walls. Let me ask a dumb question – “What does it mean to dedicate something?” My parents gave me a set of WorldBook encyclopedias late in high school; if they had only known the computer age was coming they would have saved their money, but I’ve still got them! I’ve shipped them around all over the countryside; I’m not going to let go of them yet! WorldBook dictionary definition of “to dedicate” is “to set apart for a sacred and solemn purpose; to give up wholly or earnestly to some person or purpose.” One commentator on this passage, Raymond Brown, describes their dedication as “putting over the work of human hands to God’s ownership.” I really like what Matthew Henry had to say. “They hereby devoted the city in a peculiar manner to God and to His honor and took possession of it for Him and in His name. It had been so, ever since God chose it, to put His name there, and as such, it being now refitted, repopulated, beginning to be rebuilt, it was afresh dedicated to God by the builders and the inhabitants in token of their acknowledgement that they were His tenants and their desire that it might still be His.”

Let me ask a question – “Are we aware of making dedication to God when we gather to worship?” Certainly there’s a part of our service where we make time to collect an offering; that’s a clear moment of dedication. We dedicate a portion of our income to Him in recognition of our dependence upon Him and His rich generosity to us and His faithfulness to provide for us. We acknowledge that all that we have comes from Him. That’s a clear moment of dedication. My fear, I guess, is that our sense of dedication can easily stop with our dollars. I think it’s important that we remember that we dedicate not just our money but our time and our talents as well. We bring our whole person to God as we worship. We worship in the sense of our whole person belonging to God. “I’m Yours. Put me where You want me. Do with me with You will.” Paul says it better. “I appeal to you, brothers, therefore by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind that you may, by testing, you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” God lays claim to all of us. It seems that in that moment of giving of our finances, perhaps in our heart, in our mind, we are recognizing a moment to reaffirm, “God, You have all of me. You have all of me.” As we step into the sanctuary, as we begin to sing that first hymn, we have a moment in which we can say, “God, I lay everything else aside, and any claim to anything but to belong to You,” dedicating ourselves – all we have and all we are. God has claim upon all of us. It seems that what we’re recognizing here in some part of this particular service of worship there is that moment, that recognition of dedication, handing over to God everything that is ours, everything that passes through our hands – our whole life.

Celebration

Well there’s also celebration. They’re dedicating, they’re dedicating the wall. They’re celebrating. It has been so hard. As we just kind of think back through all that we’ve walked through, as we’ve walked through this book, the scope of the work, the fear – let’s go back to the scope of the work. What would you think if you walked into that broken city and somebody says to you, “Hey, we’re going to rebuild this wall.” And you’re looking beyond the wall to a city that’s still in ruins. Imagine the trepidation and the sense of burden and the sense of, “How can this be done?” The amazing scope of the work.

The fear that’s inspired by their opponents, we remember how Nehemiah’s got men standing guard, they’re holding weapons with one hand and they’re working with the other. And he does have other guys who are standing guard and we have people who are on the lookout and people are terrified. They’re coming in from the countryside saying, “You can’t do this! You’ve got to send our fathers and our brothers and our sons back to us to protect us!” Here we are. The wall is finished. The city is beginning to be reborn. It’s beginning to re-flower as the place where God has set His name and established His worship. The temple is already functioning as a place of worship. Now the city that surrounds it is becoming reborn. Celebration is the response – joy and music and shouting!

When does the celebration begin? Is it only with the recognition that a job is done? Celebration begins with who God is, with what He has said and what He has done. And we can go further. Celebration begins with recognizing in Jesus that reconciliation with God the Father is a present reality. In Christ, you and I live in God’s very presence. When our sin makes a separation between Himself and us, we still have an advocate with Him, Jesus Christ the righteous one, who speaks to the Father on our behalf. We repent, we make our confession, and because of Jesus we find a welcome with our Father and not a condemnation. Celebration begins when we recognize that the Spirit of Christ lives within us if we trust in Christ. That we are the very temple of God. It’s not just that He is with His people, it’s not just that He is with us, He is within us. The saints of the old covenant in the days of their pilgrimage never had it so good. They never had it so good. He is within us; Christ in us, Christ uniting us intimately with the Father. The Spirit within us as a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance in glory. As Paul says to the Colossians, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Whoever imagined such good news? As the prophet Micah said, “Who is a God like Yahweh?” Micah is saying it’s unimaginable that He is so good as to forgive the sin of His inheritance. Rehearsing, remembering, reciting these kinds of truths makes us celebrate.

Do you see how these saints are celebrating in Jerusalem and still broken Jerusalem – a whole wall but still a broken city? Do you see how important music is to the celebration that they are living out right here in this moment? Verse 27, they’re celebrating with singing, with cymbals, with harps, with lyres. They’ve gathered the Levitical singers from the villages they’ve built for themselves all around Jerusalem, almost as far away as Jericho. Nehemiah created these two great choirs – one to march on one direction along the wall and one to march in the other direction.

What are they singing? Maybe they’re singing from Psalm 100. We know the words of Psalm 100. Let me just read part of them here real quickly for us. And think – maybe they’re singing this – “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into His presence with singing! Know that the Lord, He is God; He has made us and we are His, we are His people and the sheep of His pasture.” Imagine hearing that beautiful psalm echoing back and forth among those stone walls. Maybe they’re singing Psalm 48, “Walk about Zion, go around her, count her towers, consider her ramparts, view her citadels that you may tell of them to the next generation. For this God is our God, forever and ever. He will be our guide even to the end.” Maybe they’re singing part of Psalm 127 – “Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches the city, the watchman stays awake in vain.” They have the trumpets ready to sound at the exact right moment. It’s a tremendous outpouring of celebration! It’s rowdy and it’s loud. It’s a spectacle.

And guess what? It’s not spontaneous. It’s not spontaneous. It was planned for. Maybe Nehemiah is a good Presbyterian! It was planned for; it was thought through. There was time given to gather the Levites from their places to gather their instruments, to learn the music – maybe the music they already knew but to rehearse again and again and again. Look at all that has taken place since the completion of the wall in chapter 6. We just rehearsed it at the beginning of this sermon. Even if time has passed, even if what’s related in the chapter since chapter 6 is not exactly chronological, maybe it’s a loose chronology, time, those events still provide some time for thoughtful planning. There’s time for spontaneity, but the point I want to make is that somebody had to think through this celebration. Somebody had to think through what this celebration would look like and what it would sound like and what the singers would sing and what the musicians would play so that it was done with beauty and with excellence and it was done appropriately and honorably to the Lord. There was planning, there was thoughtfulness, and it enhanced their joy.

Listen to this again from verse 43. “They offered great sacrifices that day; they rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy” – God enhancing their joy because of the extent of the pain. We’ll talk about that more in just a moment. “The women and the children rejoiced. The joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.” Nehemiah has set the stage for a fantastic celebration of incredible joy. God sweetened it. God helping them, making them rejoice with great joy because He had laid the foundation, He had laid the groundwork – He and those who helped him. So it’s important that we appreciate that. As we think about celebration, there’s so much that is spontaneous about celebration, but here at the foundations of it, it’s being thought through and planned and organized in a thoughtful fashion.

Let’s think about this phrase, “God made them rejoice with great joy.” How much heartache have they endured? How much pain has it been? How tired, working from can to can’t, from the time you can see to the time you can’t see, how tired, how weary must they have been? And here at the moment that the work, that this part of the work is done, they can look at this wall surrounding Jerusalem, it’s a great accomplishment and it’s a great feat in terms of not only the work of men but also the work of God, keeping His people and helping His people. And what does God do? In His kindness, He brings them great joy because they have endured great pain. We’re all in for the great joy part; I get that. “Where’s the great joy? Show me the great joy? Let me sign on for the great joy party! That’s what I want to be there for!” But to get to the great joy party, we have to endure. Don’t we? We have to endure the heartache and we have to endure the pain and we have to endure the tears that God has marked out for us. The great joy party is at the end of the long, twisty road. The great joy party is at the end of the long, hard road. And God keeps us, doesn’t He? He sustains us, and along the way He sweetens it, but it’s still hard. And that’s what makes the great joy party so sweet – because of the pain that we have already endured and the trial and the molding under God’s mighty hand. And now here’s the moment, and God sweetens it, indescribably so, because He loves these people. He sweetens it, indescribably so, because He is so kind.

Your joy party, our joy party, will be sweetened the same way. Won’t it? Because is not less kind than He was to them. God’s not less giving than He was to them. But we have to endure. And God, in His goodness, gives us those tastes, those foretastes along the way and they sustain us. Don’t they? A sweet friend. A tender moment with Him in His Word or an answer to prayer that’s just stunning in it’s clarity and it’s timeliness. Those are things, and so many other things that we could name, that He gives us along the way to sweeten us, to sustain us, to help us, to lift our eyes to the horizon, and to see something beyond it as we think of what He has stored up for those that walk with Him. Well let’s move on. We’ve got more to say here.

Again, this is a celebration of dedication. It’s an event that’s a specific purpose. It does help us to understand that celebration has a role in worship, but perhaps celebration is not always as rowdy as it was here. And I’m not saying that celebration always has to be as rowdy as it is here portrayed. There’s room for celebration of a quieter sort. Let me just ask a couple of questions. “Do we pay attention to the words of our hymns?” Wow, we have some great hymns! I’m Presbyterian on purpose! I haven’t always been Presbyterian, and I want to tell you, those of you who have been Presbyterian from day one, y’all have got some great hymns! And they’re my hymns now and they’re my family’s hymns now. Wonderful, deep, rich, thoughtful lyrics and words and a poetry of words that just find a place in our hearts that are different from the regular prose we so often come in contact with. Music is a poetry that finds us. There is a soft spot to live in our heart and give us rich truth. Do we think about that? Do we pay attention to that? Are we aware of that as we’re singing some of our hymns? If we can give thought to what we’re singing, there is so much celebration to do right in the pew. You don’t have to march around a wall; right in the pew there is so much celebration to do with the words of fantastic hymns. But we’ve got to think about them. We’ve got to think about them as we sing them. We’ve got to let them find that place in our heart that they are designed to reach, that our hearts are designed to receive them. We’ve got to think about them. We’ve got to be aware of it.

So many times I feel like – I see this, and I see this with my own heart – that I am a million miles away while I’m standing up here singing these words. Let’s come in from a million miles away. Let’s not be distracted by what’s coming up later today or what’s coming up this week. Let’s be in the moment and listen to what we’re singing and listen to what the people around us are singing as we sing these fantastic, soul-reviving truths. Let’s not let that moment pass. We want to find celebration in worship? Pay attention to what we’re singing! We want to find celebration in worship? May attention to what we’re singing! It’s rich, it’s full, and God designed poetry to strike that nerve in our hearts and send our hearts to singing and not just our mouths.

We enjoyed the Lord’s Supper today – a rich time, and a rich time to do it in the pre-Covid fashion. Do we recognize that the Lord’s Supper is a meal of celebration? Jesus brings it right out of the Passover meal, itself a meal celebrating the deliverance of the people of God from bondage; a meal that foretold in so many detailed ways what Jesus would do at His moment of purchasing our freedom from sin, and theirs too. It’s a meal that lays out – this is what the Lamb of God will do. It is a time – and we know this, we labor on this – it’s a time for self-examination and confession of sin, but in a context of deliverance and redemption, of adoption and heaven. It’s a time when the Lord Jesus Himself is offering grace and sustenance to our weak and hungry souls. It’s joy. It’s joy. It’s a celebration for what Jesus has done in His sinless life, in His death as our substitute, and through faith in Him we’ve got the benefit of His work. You know, that’s just too good to be true! It really is. It’s too good to be true. It’s a celebration moment as we think of it, as we recognize it, as we handle that little piece of bread and that little half a thimble full of juice. It’s a celebration moment. “Look what Jesus did for me – I’m free! I’m free from the guilt and power of sin! I’m free to put sin to death! I’m free to be a child of God and to rejoice in His adoption! I’m free to step from this world to that and find a Father’s smiling face! I’m free!” It’s celebration. It’s joy. It’s laughter. It’s music. You want to find celebration? Listen to our hymns and receive that meal as that meal of rich joy that it is.

Thankfulness

Well we need to move on. There’s thankfulness. Three times in this passage the giving of thanks is mentioned. How do we give thanks? Usually we’re thanking someone for something particular they’ve given or done or said, and in some cases, something particular they’ve not done or they’ve not said – we’ve all done that. We thank God best when we do the same. We thank Him for specifics, for particular things He’s done for us, particular ways His truth has spoken to our hearts. Otherwise, we end up offering Him – Him the one who gives us our very breath – thanks in general terms using some shop-worn kind of phrases that don’t really mean much at all. So we thank God best when we thank Him specifically. You see it in the psalms. Read the psalms and we learn how to thank God.

In this case, let’s look at some of the specific things they might be thanking God for. They might be thanking God for His guidance – they certainly have opportunity and reason to thank God for His guidance – that Hannani met his brother, Nehemiah, in the citadel of Susa and shared the burden of his people’s needs in Jerusalem with no city wall to protect the city and no city to be raised behind it, that Nehemiah made such an immediate response. They could be thanking God for His sovereign direction that Artaxerxes, the king of Persia, who had all power in his hand in this regard, allowed his cupbearer to go to Judah. And then before he left, loaded him with these material resources in such a rich and generous fashion. And then for a safe journey for Nehemiah and those that traveled with him across a vast and hazardous territory. They may thank God for the willing colleagues who shared Nehemiah’s burden for the city and were willing to give themselves to that kind of hard and dangerous work. They may well thank God for the constant protection they all enjoyed from enemies whose ire was up as they saw this building activity happen around Jerusalem and knew what it meant for them. They enjoyed God’s constant protection. For the unselfish dedication that a huge team of workers – not just Nehemiah and his leadership team. Everybody had to pitch in as we walked through and saw how everybody was working on different sections of the wall, and for the steadfastness that enabled them to bring the work to a successful conclusion. Finally, they might well be thanking God for the completed building of the wall, for the benefit of the city, all of which they are dedicating to Him.

These are some of the things that they could be specifically thanking God for. You and I have got a million things we could be specifically thoughtful about. Thankfulness – as we come into worship here, as we sit down to have, engage in our own private worship – thankfulness. What am I thanking God for? What in particular, what specific that God has done that I need to thank Him for?

Purification

Finally, one more thing. Before all of this, before dedication and celebration and thankfulness, there’s purification. Do you see that? Verse 30, “And the priests and the Levites purified themselves and they purified the people and the gates and the wall.” Nehemiah, bless his heart, he had the best of intentions. Didn’t he? He had good motives. He wanted to see the city restored and the people of God flourish in the land again. He wanted the glory of God to be seen in the land again. People working with Nehemiah, those who came in from the villages, they had good intentions and they had good motives, but they understood something that we’d do well to remember. Sin has corrupted everything. Sin corrupts everything. Nothing is pure in this world in and of itself. Everything needs cleansing. Everything, including us, needs purifying. Sin isn’t first what we do. It’s who we are, and it taints everything we touch, even what we do for God. Brother Lawrence, the lay brother serving the Carmelite monks at a monastery outside Paris, confessing his sin said, “It is my nature. It is what I know to do.” How true is that? “It is my nature. It is what I know to do.” And so, before they worship, they purify.

Very early in our worship service we confess our sin, most Lord’s Day mornings. I hope you don’t wait that long. I try not to wait that long. I hope, before we walk through these doors and take our seats in our sanctuary here, because we’re expecting to meet the Lord of glory in worship, that we confess our uncleanness to Him, that we repent and ask Him to forgive our sin, our particular sin, before we even take our seat. James calls us to “cleanse our hands and to purify our hearts, to humble ourselves before the Lord.” Do we? Do we have an expectation that we’re stepping into the presence of God as we praise Him? Do we expect to hear from Him as we read His Word and hear it preached? Do we step into His presence knowingly dependent on the intercession of Jesus on our behalf, knowingly dependent on His work as our Savior to bathe our praise, to bathe our praise in His righteousness and to sanctify our prayers with His own prayers for us, praying perfectly for the will of His Father for us? Do we expect Him? Do we call upon Him to wash our tears so that our repentance, because of His work, has the ring of purity? They purified themselves and purified what they had built because they knew sin needs a remedy and they knew that sin has a remedy. It’s plain to us that sin has a remedy. They saw it from a distance, but they knew that God had provided a lamb. We see that Lamb. He is our remedy. He is our purification. He is our peace. Do we think those thoughts as we come into worship? I hope so, I pray so, that we might worship with hearts that are more and more like Christ.

Let’s pray.

Father, we see Your people at work here in the work of worship, in a particular case of a particular type, but it’s still worship. Father, would it be that we would worship in ways that are thoughtfully reminiscent of theirs. Help us think along the lines that we see them worshiping with celebration and dedication and thankfulness, with a heart striving, longing for purity. Make us pure. Father, thank You so much that You speak to us through Your Word. Plant Your Word deep in our hearts, and by Your grace and the work of Your Spirit, let it produce fruit – thirty, sixty, a hundredfold, for Your honor and Your glory and the advancement of Your kingdom right here where we are. Hear us. We make our prayer in Jesus’ name.

And all God’s people said, “Amen.”

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