Our Wondrous God: His Miraculous Mercy in Nehemiah
Our Wondrous God: His Miraculous Mercy in Nehemiah.
“O the depth of the riches and the wisdom and knowledge of God! What a deep wealth of wisdom and knowledge He has! How incomprehensible are His decisions, how unsearchable His judgments! How undiscoverable are His paths, how mysterious His ways, beyond finding out! Who has understood the mind of Yahweh? Who knows how the LORD thinks, or what His thoughts are? Can anyone discern the LORD’s intentions, His motivations? Who knows enough to give Him advice? Is there anyone qualified to be His counselor? Who has given Him so much that He needs to pay it back? Who could ever have a claim against Him? For everything was created by Him, everything lives through Him, and everything exists for Him; So to Him must be given the glory forever! Amen!” (Romans 11:33-36, also Isaiah 40:12-14).
Nehemiah and Ezra Remember the Wondrous Works of God:
“But our ancestors acted arrogantly and became stubborn, stiff-necked, and paid no attention to God’s commands, for they failed to remember them. So they refused to obey the Lord and were not mindful of Your wondrous (“pala”) works, O Lord, that You did among them; but instead they stiffened their necks and appointed a leader to help them return in rebellion to their slavery in Egypt. But You are a forgiving God, ready to pardon, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abundant in mercy and lovingkindness, and You did not abandon them.” (Nehemiah 9:17).
Pili (pil-ee) = the Hebrew word which means: wondrous; miraculous; unsurpassed; something so wonderful that it is beyond comprehension; remarkable, extraordinary, marvelous; so awesome it cannot be understood by humans; so amazing that it seems impossible or too difficult to accomplish; so uniquely set apart from human understanding that it is God’s secret. The two related forms of “pili” which mean the same thing are ”pala” and “pele.”
Lost Sheep. After 70 years of exile in Babylon for their national punishment, the Hebrews were finally allowed to return to their homeland. They badly needed to reestablish the nation of Israel and their identity as the Chosen People of God. In the first few years of settling into the Promised Land of yesteryear, it was clear that the people of Israel had lost touch with their Jewish faith in Yahweh. They were like lost sheep as they tried to figure out how to return to their Israelite roots. Upon their return to Israel, it was obvious that it’s easier to get out of Babylon than it is to get the Babylon out of them. They had been living in a polytheistic culture, a pagan society, and the worship of their one true God was bit foreign to them. Eventually, after about twelve years or so, the people were successful in rebuilding the Temple in Jerusalem. They still needed leadership and spiritual direction, though, and two special men arrived to help. Ezra and Nehemiah had both risen to impressive posts in Babylon, but they were both called to return home to help in their people’s transition process. These two talented Jewish men were determined to follow God’s call on their lives.
Ezra was well-suited for taking the religious leadership role. He was a trained Torah scholar, an interpreter of Torah, a lawyer and a trained teacher of the Teachings of Moses. Ezra was well-prepared in his training to provide what was needed to take the new Israel down the right path. Ezra was the most famous and celebrated scribe in Biblical history.
Ezra and Jesus. Ezra, who lived about 450 years before Christ, was who, when listening to Jesus’ parable about the well-trained scribe, would have immediately come to mind. Ezra was the ultimate scholar of God’s word, trained to read and interpret Scriptures for the people. Scribes like Ezra spent their lives studying the Sacred Writings and explaining it to the people so they could understand it. “Ezra had prepared his heart to study the Law of the Lord and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.” (Ezra 7:10). God-fearing Jews revered the memory of Ezra, and recognized that that day was gone, that the new scribes were more concerned about their own reputation, their new traditions which often replaced Scriptures in their teachings. So Jesus’ mention of a well-trained scribe would have brought many in the audience back to the golden days of Ezra as the trusted scribe. Jesus presents Himself as being something of a modern version of Ezra, the Chief Scribe, well able to present and interpret Scripture and teach the people into the kingdom of God.
Nehemiah seemed to be a born leader, or at the least was equipped by the Lord to do what is necessary. His task, after being given permission by the Babylonian king, was to move back to Jerusalem and lead the construction of the broken-down walls surrounding Jerusalem. The Temple had been rebuilt many years earlier, but the walls around the city were still in shambles, and so the people living there were defenseless and the Temple was vulnerable to attack. It didn’t take Nehemiah long to get the project organized, inspire the people to begin the rebuilding project, and set everything in motion. He assigned workers into groups who would each tend to different sections of the wall, clearing out the unusable rubble, and selecting the choice stones for the wall. Because of some stiff opposition from local enemies, Nehemiah assigned the continuous duty of a watchman with a sounding trumpet if needed, and then half the workers to stand guard duty, and the other half to work on rebuilding the walls with one hand doing the work and the other hand wielding a sword. Due to Nehemiah’s expert leadership and the hard work of the people, the wall was completed in just 52 days! But of course, and Nehemiah was the first to acknowledge this, God was the true construction superintendent. As Nehemiah reported, “When my enemies and the surrounding nations heard about the wall being completed, they were frightened and humiliated. They realized this work had been done with the help of our God.” (Neh. 6:15-16). Nehemiah remained a governor of Judah for about twelve years and helped Ezra lead the way to spiritual renewal in Israel.
“Ezra opened up the Book of the Teachings of the Lord teaching the Book from sunrise to noon. All the people could see him because he was standing above them; and as he opened it, the people all stood up. The Levites instructed the people in the Teachings while the people were standing there. They read from the Book of God’s Teachings, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read.” (Nehemiah 8:5-8).
After the rebuilding of the walls surrounding Jerusalem, Nehemiah gathered all of Israel together to hear Ezra read from Torah and teach them the ways of the Lord. So we read in Nehemiah 8 how Nehemiah gathered all the Israelites together during the Jewish New Year in order to establish a new beginning for Israel. Ezra had a special wooden platform built in the big public square so all the people could see him, or at least hear him. From early in the morning till midday, Ezra read aloud from the long-forgotten Law of Moses, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. Ezra’s plan was to rebuild Israel by rebuilding the hearts of the people, by reminding them of the Word of the Lord and how vital it is to find their identity in this Word of God. He must have read with authority as he recited portions of the Pentateuch, while all the people stood out of respect. Accompanying Ezra was a number of prepared elders who would not only interpret the Hebrew of the Scripture for all those who only understood the Persian Aramaic, but these elders would also explain and unpack the Scripture as it was being read so the people could understand.
A Sacred Day. Ezra said at the beginning of his readings that “This day is holy to the Lord!” And it certainly was. These teaching elders hand-picked by Ezra must have been-well-trained and very talented, because they were amazingly successful in helping the people to understand Ezra’s readings of the Word. Children who were old enough to understand were also included in this assembly, to complicate matters of comprehension for the elders. These elders were the unsung heroes of this powerful scene, for they could not only do language interpretation right on the spot, but also explain the Scripture in understandable terms to the adults, and they could reach the children in attendance as well! The people were said to be especially receptive during the readings, for “the ears of all the people were attentive to the Teachings of Moses.”
YES! There is something powerful about reading the Word of God, in any setting, and the wind of the Holy Spirit certainly seemed to blow through this huge assembly of Israelites. The people shouted, “Amen! Amen!” during the reading. Yes! they exclaimed, O Yes! This is the truth! This is the truth! And their body language, which the Lord can of course understand perfectly well, was telling. “Then as all the people were standing, Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, ‘Amen! Amen!’ as they lifted their hands. Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.” (Nehemiah 8:5-6).
At the conclusion of Ezra’s reading of Torah, the Levites led all who were gathered into an extensive prayer to the Lord, helping them remember their national and spiritual history as well as their newly-discovered dependence upon God. Included in this historic prayer is a direct quote from the historic centerpiece of their faith. “… But You are a forgiving God, ready to pardon, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abundant in mercy and lovingkindness, and You did not abandon them.” (Nehemiah 9:17). It appears that the Israelites were accepting the fact that the most wondrous aspect of God’s character, the greatest marvel about His divine nature, His most wondrous deed above all others, is His gracious desire to show mercy and forgiveness to stubborn and rebellious people, like us.
The Great Self-Revelation of God. There is one profound passage in the Hebrew Bible that has been the reference point of believers ever since, and may be the most important passage in all the Bible. This brief self-description of the Lord was repeated a number of times in the Hebrew Bible, including by Jonah, Joel, Hezekiah, and at least six times in the Psalms. This self-description has formed a believer’s vision of the nature of our God. When at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses asked God if he could see God’s glory. (Exodus 33:19). The Lord Yahweh responded by saying that He would pass before Moses, but he would not be allowed to see His “face,” His full Presence, but only His backside. The Glory is too overwhelming for humans who are not equipped to experience a consuming fire quite yet. Yahweh told Moses that He will cause all His “goodness” to pass before Moses, and that in Moses’ presence He will pronounce His holy Name. Goodness is usually a synonym for mercy, because God’s goodness is revealed through His mercy. So Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to meet God at the top, and Yahweh descended in a cloud and stood there with Moses. Only God can accurately name Himself, and here we see the Lord pronouncing His sacred Name… “God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “I AM Yahweh! I AM Yahweh! A God who is compassionate and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in mercy, faithfulness and truth, keeping steadfast lovingkindness for thousands of generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty or allowing sin to go unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7). What a singular moment! The Almighty God, the Great I AM, describing His Name, His identity. He is revealing to Moses how He sees Himself in His Essence. What a turning point in history! The Lord of the universe chooses to reveal Himself in utter transparency to a human being! ‘You want to know what I am made of, Moses, the Lord is saying, then this is how I describe my character, these are my core attributes. Yes, I am the great LORD, and this is Me in a nutshell… rich in mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness. That is truly who I am, Moses!’ At the very end of this historical self-description, God reminds Moses (and all of us) that He is Lord of a moral universe, that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and He has established an ultimate system of justice. God’s statement about justice and moral accountability, interestingly enough, seems to have been made in the context of mercy and forgiveness, of compassion and grace. So it appears that if God’s will springs out of God’s core character, His will must be mercy.