Somethig to Do aWith Love

On the first day of the week a man stood before his congregation and began reading the word of God. When he opened the book to read all of those present stood. As long as he read the people stood and did not sit down until he had finished reading. While the word was being read the people raised their hands and responded, “Amen! Amen!” Then at the end of the reading, which had been for 6 hours, they bowed down and worshiped God with their faces to the ground. Great conviction came upon these people, so much so that they were weeping as they listened to the words being read. This day and days that followed turned out to be quite a revival.

Finally, they were told to go and eat lunch. Their leader said, “‘This day is holy to the Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” About three weeks later everyone returned and listened to the word for a quarter of the day and then confessed their sins and worshipped God for another quarter of the day. Before they came back that day they had dealt with their sins by getting rid of everything in their lives that had been against the laws of God. Some of those who had been instructing the Israelites told them, “Stand up and praise the Lord your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting.”

I’m sure most of the people in the world would not go to a service like these two services. “You are crazy if you think I’m going to stand half the day and listen to someone read the Bible”, is the protest we would hear. Yet some of these same people would get up early, drive a hundred miles to a football stadium and sit in freezing snowy weather to watch a game for three or four hours. How many people in the church you attend sit in a padded pew every Sunday and get upset if the service lasts more than an hour? Maybe it is because I am a preacher and once a pastor, but this bothers me. However, there are people in our world that are so hungry for the word of God in their own language and love Jesus so much that they will walk all day and stand for hours to hear the word read. I guess it must have something to do with what a person truly loves.

Ezra, the priest of Israel, was the one who had read the Law of God, and Nehemiah was their leader. Nehemiah 8 and 9