Nehemiah 9:3: “And they stood up in their place and read from the Book of the Law of the LORD their God for one-fourth of the day; and for another fourth they confessed and worshiped the LORD their God.”

November 11th, 2023 by Pastor Ed in devotional

After the wall and gates of Jerusalem were rebuilt and the people had come together for Ezra the scribe to read the Law to them, they discovered it was time for the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. This was a time to celebrate how the Lord had protected their fathers when they lived in booths, temporary dwellings, in the wilderness during the Exodus. So Nehemiah called for a great celebration in the city, and they observed the feast and read from the book of the Law for 7 days as the feast required. At the end of it, Ezra again stood before the people, and with the help of several men, read and explained the first 5 books of the Bible all morning long. The people again heard and understood just what God had done for them and their nation, recognizing the goodness of God and the sinfulness of humanity.

The first 5 verses of this chapter are an introduction to one of three of Israel’s great national prayers, found in Ezra 9, here in Nehemiah 9, and Daniel 9. This is the longest prayer recorded in all of the Bible. It contains at least 20 of Israel’s sins, but it didn’t leave them (or us) without hope as it also contains at least 20 facts about God’s greatness and faithfulness. Reading and studying the Scripture, led the people to acknowledge and confess their sins and rededicate, recommit, their lives to God.

I read about a native of India who was writing to a friend about a great revival they were having in his home village. He wrote, “We are having a great re-bible here.” That is a great way to describe what we all need to regularly be: re-bibled. John Richard Green expresses this same idea in his book A Short History of the English People. He begins with these words:

No greater moral change ever passed over a nation than passed over England during the years which parted the middle of the reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the Long Parliament. England became the people of a book, and that book was the Bible.

“LORD, make that true of every nation on the face of the earth, but more than anything make each one of us a ‘people of the book’ this day.”