SOTL Podcast E23 – Love the Book

Today’s message comes from the book of Nehemiah. We will see how much of an effect, loving the Word of God can have.

Nehemiah 8:1 And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate; and they spake unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the LORD had commanded to Israel.

Nehemiah 8:2 And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women, and all that could hear with understanding, upon the first day of the seventh month.

Nehemiah 8:3 And he read therein before the street that was before the water gate from the morning until midday, before the men and the women, and those that could understand; and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law.

All the People Gathered

The first thing we can see in this passage in the very first line of the first verse is that ALL the people gathered. I love this!!!! ALL of the people gathered themselves together!!!! This is awesome!!!!

Think about this for a minute… What is the average attendance of your church on Sunday morning for Worship service? Now think about all the people who regularly attend you church, not just members but all the regular attenders. Now think about how many people would be at your church on Sunday morning if ALL the people gathered???

This would be awesome!!! I’ll be honest with you I pray for this every single week. I do this for 3 reasons… 1^st I like all the people in my church and I want to see them and talk to them. 2^nd I love ALL the people in my church and I want them to be close to God and worship Him and Grow Spiritually with me and 3^rd I realize that just maybe one of those people might not know Jesus as their personal Saviour so I want them to be there so they can have the opportunity to give their life to Jesus.

Now, there are many other reasons but those would be the big ones.

Just image how full God’s house would be if ALL the people showed up! If we were to all be honest our church attendance would probably double on Sunday morning if ALL the people showed up, maybe even more than double.

Also, image for a minute how big the smile would be on God’s face if He looked in our church and seen ALL the people there. Just imagine how happy and excited and pleased God would be if His house was full for the next service!!!

This would be so awesome to be a part of and to see!

All the People in Unity

Next, we see that ALL the people are together as one man. So, we don’t just have ALL the people show up but they are all together as ONE man. They are in unity. There is no fighting, no jealousy, no anger, no arguing, no disagreements… they are in complete unity here!

Again, how awesome would this be!!! Now I feel that my church is very close to this. We all love each other, help and care for each other but not everyone is always on the same page. No, we don’t fight or anything like that at all but sometimes I think us Christians are not in unity because we get distracted sometimes.

I think sometimes some of us come to church with other things weighing on our minds, burdens and stress of life and yes, even sins. These things distract us from coming together in complete unity. It’s like trying to mix oil into water. When we come into church with these issues, we are trying to bring oil into this perfect water.

No one is perfect, and yes, we all have things going on in life, not always sin but we do have burdens and stress or whatever else that distracts us from being completely focused on God. So, what do we do?

In Matt 11, Jesus tells us to come unto Him when we are tired or burdened down
1 Pet 5:7 Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.
Heb 12:1 …let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run…

We need to set aside any weight or sin, Somethings that distract us are things we have full control over and these would be in this category of weight and sin. We need to get rid of those to be able to be in complete unity with each other and with God.

Then we need to pray and ask Jesus to help us with any of the thing we cannot simply set aside. These would be the burdens and stress we have in life. Jesus is more than capable of taking these for us and helping us.

If we do these two things every Sunday morning, we could all be in unity in our worship to God. But don’t just leave this to a Sunday only ritual. Let’s wake up every morning and set aside our weights and pray and ask Jesus to help us with our burdens so that we can stay on the straight and narrow path every day.

All the People Asked for the Book

Next ALL the people TOGETHER, ASK Ezra to get the book out, this is the Word of God as they had in that time. I certainly hope that you are not in a church where you would HAVE to ask the pastor to bring the Book. Notice in Verse 2 of Nehemiah chapter 8 it says that Ezra brought the book before all the people there.

I hope that your pastor is like Ezra and brings the book before you and I hope this happens every service just like it does in my church. We revolve our entire service around the Book. The Book is so important!

ALL the people here knew how important the Book is and this is why they actually asked Ezra to bring the Book! They loved the Book, they wanted the Book, they desired the Book, they wanted to know every word in the Book!

When is the last time someone asked you for the Book? They loved and desired the Book so much that they asked you to read the Book to them? When is the last time YOU, asked someone to bring the Book and read the Book to you?

We NEED a lot more of the Book! We need to read it more, and listen to it more, sing of it more. We need to desire the Book more and we need to love the Book more!!!!

This will please the Father; this will bring us closer to our heavenly Father. We need to love the Book!

The Desire for the Book Did NOT Diminish

The last thing I want us all to see today is, their desire and their love for the Book did not diminish! In verse 3 it says that they listened to Ezra read the Book from morning until midday. Could you imagine the revolt that would happen if our pastors were to read the Book to us next Sunday from Morning until Midday?

We are talking about around 4 hours, maybe more of reading the Book. The people would complain, they would be falling asleep. We would get anxious to leave, most, maybe even all of us would get up and leave at some point, right?

Why is that?

Simply put… We don’t love the Book enough.

If we loved the Book as much as they did in the Book of Nehemiah than we would be asking for this, not looking at the time on our phone if it feels like the pastor has gone 5 minutes too long today.

If we loved the Book enough, we would be asking our pastor to read more or we would open our Book and read more ourself.

Notice that it says ALL that could understand was there, this means there were young people there. We don’t see enough young people in our churches today. My age bracket seems to be the hardest to reach these days. My generation does not Love the Book enough to show up to church to learn more about it.

Verse 3 also says that the people were attentive the entire time! They stood there for hours listening to the Book, and the entire time they were attentive. They were so in love with the Book that they stood there for hours listening to it being read.

They didn’t have these cushion seats like we do, they didn’t have their large cup of coffee from the coffee shop in the lobby, they were not sitting in the nice air conditioned and perfectly lighted auditorium.

This time of year, it would likely be hot for them. It may have started off cool in the morning but by midday it would most likely be close to 90-100°. Could you imagine ALL the people together in that kind of heat today…

What I am trying to say is… We have no excuse! Maybe we need to stop worrying about our flesh so much and worry about our souls more and all those excuses and reasons for not ALL gathering together might disappear.

This passage in Nehemiah is a great time for the children of God, this is the start of a great revival and it all starts with the Book.

We talked a few minutes about how much people love the super bowl and willingly sat there for 4 hours and watched the game. Could you imagine what would happen if we came to church as excited as fans are that go to a football game. Could you imagine if on this Sunday 113 Million Christians showed up to be in church to hear the Word of God preached!

The one stat said that 9 out of 10 homes had the game on, could you imagine if 9 out of 10 Christians showed up to hear from the Word of God. And was excited about it and wanted to sit there for 4 hours to hear the Book read?

If we want revival, we need to love the Book.

If we want peace, we need to love the Book.

If we want a sweet relationship with God than we need to love the Book!

If we want to live right, we need to love the Book.

Loving the Book really can change our lives. We need to Love the Book!

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