Getting the benefit from the Word of God is like drinking tea. It all depends on how long you leave the bag in the water. Dr. Tony Evans says a quick dip in the Word won't do. You've got to let it steep. We bring our Bibles to church and look spiritual, but then we go home and put it up on the shelf.
That's weak tea. This is the alternative broadcast featuring the timeless biblical teachings from the archives of Dr. Tony Evans. When Nehemiah led the people to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, it wasn't just a construction project. It was the beginning of a spiritual awakening. Today, Dr. Evans shows how real revival isn't triggered by programs or politics, but by a return to God's Word.
Let's join him as he explains. Nehemiah has done a tremendous thing. As governor of Jerusalem, he has rebuilt the city's infrastructure.
He solidified the nation in 52 days. Nehemiah is a man of God in government, for in God's economy, the two were never meant to be mutually exclusive. For as we saw last time, the Bible teaches that politicians are ministers of God. It says the king and all those who are in authority, it was God's intent that they even carry out the political realm under his tutelage. That even if they were not Christians in terms of their personal commitment, that the standard of God would be the governing authority by which they would operate. For there are even non-Christians who believe in the Ten Commandments, that there is a standard. Many of our founding fathers were not Christians, but there was, in principle, a perception that there must be an environment that had a theological orientation if this new nation was going to achieve its goals. You see, if you want to fix a nation, or we don't have to go that broad, a community, or we don't have to go back that broad, a church, or maybe not even that broad, a family, or a life.
You must have a frame of reference. Nehemiah understood that you don't build society just by building walls. You have to fix people. Now as we enter into chapter 8, this becomes critical because you see, in chapter 8 we're going to see the Watergate revival. Something happened in verse 1. It says, "...and all the people gathered as one man at the square which was in front of the Watergate." And they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel.
The people gathered as one man in the square because they saw their community change in 52 days, and they say, we're missing something. If God can do that because we listen to the Word of God, and we work together as a community of Christians, and He can accomplish that in 52 days, Ezra, get out here and tell us some more. I want to know what else God can do. I want to know what else God can fix.
See, the reason why you need to see a miracle in your life from time to time is to remind you that there's a lot more where that came from. And so the people gathered there, and Ezra the scribe brought the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. And he read from it from the square. How long did he read?
Early morning until midday. We're talking six hours, folks. When you are set for a revival, you can't get enough of the Word of God. You say, but I can't hear the Word of God for six hours. Can you watch TV for six hours? Hello.
Can you work in your yard for six hours? These folks could be in the square from morning to midday because they saw God brand new. They said, I didn't spend all these years losing out.
Let me make up some time. Ezra, talk to me. Getting the benefit from the Word of God is like drinking tea. It all depends on how long you leave the bag in the water. If you just dip the bag in like we do on Sunday, we just dip ourselves in and dip ourselves out. That's going to be weak tea.
We bring our Bibles to church and look spiritual, but then we go home and put it up on the shelf. That's weak tea. If you want to have strong tea, you drop it and leave it. You let the water soak through the bag, and the bag soaks through the water and the color begins to change.
A metamorphosis occurs and the tea changes and it has a deeper taste because you've let it soak there for a while. It's not enough to hear the pastor preach. You've got to soak in the Scripture. And they understood that. The beautiful thing about the Scripture is it doesn't matter what level you're on, the Bible is so deep that theologians can't reach bottom. And the Bible is so shallow that kids can't drown.
It covers all the continuum of truth and the Word of God. And so, from early day, in the presence of men and women and all that can understand, did the people sleep? Were they napping? Were their eyes getting heavy? Were they rocking and shifting? Hello. Were wives nudging husbands? Get up!
Get up! No, the end of verse 3 says that all the people were attentive to the book of the law. Because they understood, like they had never understood before, that God was talking.
And they'd better listen. Such respect was given for the Word of God that they lifted it up. They built a pulpit. What we have here, a podium.
The podium was to elevate the Word. Ezra mounts the podium with his pastoral staff, some to the right and some to the left. And then the text says Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people, and he was standing above all the people, reflecting the elevation of the Word. And when he opened it, all the people stood.
Lord have mercy. He didn't say, please stand. It says when he opened the book, everybody stood. Why they stood? Because they understood it was more than a book opening.
They understood that this was the God who had built the wall in 52 days. They said, let's get up. When the president walks into the room, they say, ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States, what do they do? Get up?
When a dignitary walks in from another country, they get up. Well, when Ezra opened the book, God had walked in. They got up. They understood that this is the Word of God, worthy of reference, worthy of respect, worthy of acknowledgement, worthy of agreement. They stood up for God, represented in his Word.
According to verse 6, Ezra opened with prayer, and he blessed the Lord, the great God. Praise. And all the people answered, Amen. Amen. You know what Amen means? Amen means, so be it. Amen means I agree. Amen means you can count me in, that I buy what you say, that what you're saying, Ezra, is what I buy. Amen. He says, Amen.
So now you've got unity. And while lifting up their hands, let me explain the lifting of hands. The lifting of hands in the Bible was when the Jewish person raised his arms palm up. Palm up. The reason why they raised their hands palm up was to say, I am now ready to receive.
It wasn't because the preacher made a good point and they said, go ahead. It was because they were now saying, fill my cup. My hands are open. I'm coming to you empty. I thought I knew something.
I know nothing. My hands are open. Teach me, tell me, instruct me, guide me, O thy great Jehovah. That's what they would say when they lifted up their hands. But notice when they raised their hands, they bow their heads.
They went high and went low. And worship the Lord with their faces to the ground. This is the same reason that Moses had to take off your shoes. When God shows up, there's too much leather. When God shows up, you don't have the right to have a quarter inch of leather between you and the ground. And as low as you possibly can go, take off your shoes, humble yourself.
Humble yourself. When we come together as one man, that is as a congregation of people, God calls us to humility. You come through the door to worship. You don't come to give to God.
You come to give him praise, but you come to receive from God that which he has to give. When Dr. Evans returns in just a moment, he'll show how the leaders in Nehemiah's day helped the people understand God's Word right where they were. But first, I want to tell you about an empowering book from Tony that explores how we can bring positive spiritual influence to our culture. It's called One Nation Under God. If you're concerned about the direction our country is headed, this book offers a clear, kingdom-focused strategy for making a difference.
Not politically, but spiritually. We'll send this book out to you as our way of saying thanks when you make a contribution in support of our ministry. And right now, along with the book, we're packaging all 15 full-length messages in Tony's two-volume teaching series on the book of Nehemiah. This in-depth study explores how God uses ordinary people to bring restoration and renewal.
Lessons that apply to your personal life, your family, and even your community. Get all the details and make your request right away at toneyevans.org. Or call our 24-hour resource request line at 1-800-800-3222.
That's 1-800-800-3222. We'll get back to Dr. Evans right after this. Are you hungry for more of God, more of His truth, more of His power, and more of His wisdom applied in your life? Then you need to connect with a community of passionate believers who are growing in God's Word through the Tony Evans Training Center. With exclusive video and audio teaching from Dr. Tony Evans, this interactive online study experience allows you to explore theology, biblical history, and real-life application of the kingdom agenda. Anytime, anywhere. Visit toneyevanstraining.org to get started today.
That's toneyevanstraining.org. And then something interesting happened in verse 7. We're given a list of leaders and we're told in verse 7 that they explain the law to the people while the people remained in their place. And they read from the book from the law of God translating to give the sense so that they understood the reading.
It's what we call exposition. They explained it so the people could understand. And there are two reasons the people couldn't understand. One is that the Bible was written in Hebrew, but they were raised in Babylon, so they spoke Arabic. So they had not been used to reading the Hebrew text.
There's a second reason. There had been such a long time before they had read some of this material, they didn't know what it meant. So what Ezra does is break them up into small groups to make sure that everybody who needed clarity got it. And so in verse 7, the people were addressed so that their understanding could be developed. And then we come to verse 9.
Then Nehemiah, who was the governor, we'll call that the state, and Ezra the priest, we'll call that the church, because that's what you have here, church and state. And the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, this day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.
Now why did they say that? Because for all the people were weeping when they heard the words of the Lord. When was the last time the Bible made you cry? You know you're in for revival when understanding the Bible makes you cry. Why were the people crying? Because it dawned on them that they had spent all this time going nowhere, and you don't need the book of Nehemiah to understand this point. That people who live year after year after year in misery with no progress. That people who go from one mate to another mate with no progress.
They go day after day, month after month, year after year with no progress. When if they would have listened to God the first time, they could have saved a lot of time. We wouldn't have a generation of juveniles like we had it today if we would have cried a generation ago.
We wouldn't have the madness and economic disparity if we would have taken God seriously a generation ago. But you can't cry now. After you've understood it and weep, now you've got to dry your eyes. Verse 10, they said to them, go eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions of him who has nothing prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord.
And then he gives you a statement that can solve any problem. Do not be greed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. What you focus on governs how you feel. Rather than finding our chief joy in the Lord, let me tell you what we do. We find our chief joy in those temporary things that give us short-term feelings of escape.
And so what we do is we turn on the TV to what? Escape. We enter into an illegitimate relationship to escape.
We get involved with drugs and alcohol to escape. When the text says if your focus is properly situated on the Lord, he will give you his joy and his joy will give you strength. He says focus your attention, change your attention. Verse 13, and on the second day, the heads of the fathers of the household of all the people, the priests, the Levites, gather to Ezra the scribe that they might gain insight into the words of the law. Okay, men. Verse 13 says, the men said, we better take our rightful position. We better take responsibility for leadership.
We've given up our responsibilities too long. And so the men came, the heads of the households came, and they said, we better get on track. Because they understood something about the law of God. It's hierarchical.
They understood that if it doesn't flow through the leadership of the family, it won't get down to the kids. Verse 14 says, they found written in the law how the Lord had commanded through Moses that the sons of Israel should live in booze during the feast of the seven months. This is called the Feast of Tabernacles. The Feast of Tabernacles, spoken to us on Leviticus 23, was an annual celebration whereby for one week each Israelite family had to make little shacks or huts or booze or tabernacles, tents, so to speak, and they would pitch it on their rooftop. And all the family had to go in and live inside the tabernacle for one week. Israel was in the wilderness for 40 years. The Bible says in those wilderness wandering, in all those 40 years, their shoes did not wear out.
He put them in a booth to remind them that there was a time when you had nothing. What he was telling Israel is one week a year, remember that when you go back into your houses, I'm the one that takes care of you. And the reason why you're not making it now is because when you go back into your houses, you taking care of you. You running your own life.
You leading your own existence. He says, get up in that booth and remember the wilderness. Remember when I took care of you when I was growing up, when something was wrong, my mother gave me castor oil. Did your mama give you castor oil? That was the nastiest, stinky medicine I have ever had.
I hated to tell mama I was sick because it didn't matter what was wrong. She gave me castor oil. She said, boy, hold your nose. I put my fingers over my nose. She said, open your mouth. And I opened my mouth and the castor oil would go in my mouth and I'd hold it in there for a while. She'd say, swallow it.
I'm not moving. Tell you, swallow it. And I swallowed that nasty castor oil. But there's something about castor oil. When I had a headache, castor oil fixed it. When I had a stomach ache, castor oil fixed it. If I had a splinter in my toe, castor oil fixed it because castor oil was what? All purpose medicine.
You're not praying with me today. This is all purpose medicine. It's good for your personal life. It's good for your family life. It's good for your church life.
It's good for our community life. It's all purpose medicine. Now, what's making you sick today? Is it your personal life that's making you sick?
Your family life making you sick? Is there something going wrong that you can't fix? I'm here to offer you some divine castor oil. His name is Jesus Christ. And he can fix whatever is wrong in your life.
What's wrong in your life today? Would you give your life to Jesus? Would you turn yourself over to Christ? Would you stop living in your house and move up to your booth and let God take you through your wilderness and sustain you? Will you submit your will to the Christ who died for you and arose for you?
If you have yet to take the step of asking God to fix what's wrong in your life but aren't sure exactly where to begin, Dr. Evans is back with a little follow-up information and a challenge about encountering Jesus. You're not a Christian because you're religious or because you go to church or even because you believe in God. You're a Christian because you've accepted Jesus Christ as your personal sin-bearer. Being religious, doing good works, that's nice, but it's not sufficient when God demands perfection. 2 Corinthians 5.21 says, He who knew no sin became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. So what God has said is, He placed your sin on the cross, on to Christ, and then judged Christ for your sin. If you will go to Christ, He will take Christ's righteousness, which is perfect, and He will credit it to your account. So you will stand before God as though you've never sinned, not because you're sinless, but because you've got a sinless credit on your account. If you will receive Jesus Christ right now, if you will invite Him into your life believing that He died for you and rose for you personally, He will credit your account with perfection because He's already credited your sin on the Jesus Christ. So go to Christ right now and get this free gift of salvation that He's offering to all who come to Him for it.
Find out more about what it means to be a real Christian. Visit tonyevans.org and follow the link that says Jesus. You'll get a straightforward explanation from Tony and some free resources to get your new life started off right. Again, that's tonyevans.org. And while you're there, don't miss your chance to take advantage of the resource package I mentioned earlier, all 15 messages from both volumes of Tony's current sermon series on the book of Nehemiah, along with his inspiring One Nation Under God book. They're yours with our thanks when you make a donation to help keep this listener-supported program coming your way. Just visit tonyevans.org to make the arrangements or call our resource center at 1-800-800-3222 where team members are standing by to assist with your request. That's 1-800-800-3222 or online at tonyevans.org. Does it ever feel like your prayers are going unanswered, like they're just bouncing off the ceiling? Tomorrow, Dr. Evans reveals how the breakthrough you're hoping for may depend on a change that needs to happen inside of you. Be sure to join us for that. 🎵
