Thoughts for the Church Today from Ezra-Nehemiah

For a really long time in my journey I’ve been drawn to Ezra, the person. “For Ezra had set his heart to study the Law of the Lord, and to do it and to teach his statutes and rules in Israel (Ezra 7:10).

I have loved the model of setting your heart to read the law so you can do what it calls you to do and from that place you help shepherd and teach others. Far too often, we platform people who want to teach without doing it themselves. Some are good at placing a yoke on others while following a different set of principles (eg, the Pharisees). I know I can be guilty there too. So Ezra has been a constant source of encouragement to me.

Lately though, I’ve been wrestling with the ideas of revival, individual callings, corporate responsibility, what is a “prophet”, etc. And sure enough the Lord has led me right back into reading Ezra-Nehemiah, originally read as one unified work in the Hebrew Bible. So maybe not the sexiest of articles, but one I feel compelled to write in order to capture my thoughts and how it pertains to the Church today.

(1) Step into YOUR calling not someone else’s.

Zerubbabel focused on rebuilding the Temple. Ezra focused on rebuilding the people with Torah. Nehemiah focused on rebuilding the city walls. And this doesn’t even account for Jeremiah encouraging some to seek the welfare of Babylon (Jer 29:7). Other prophets called for a deep repentance. Daniel lived one way in a foreign land and Esther lived a different way. Your life, your ministry, your church doesn’t have to look like the church down the street. One of the great laments of many people who love the Church is the lack of variety we see today in the church. I’m not talking about the need of more denominations but often in my evangelical non-denominational expression you see the same formula with announcements, 3 songs, message, one song. We should ask the Lord more often and more sincerely what He truly wants for our specific expression based on our demographics, needs, gifts, callings, etc.

I have a growing conviction that good shepherds love to draw out the gifts, callings of their people more than trying to corral those people into just simply meeting the needs of the institution.

(2) It’s a great and noble work to repair and rebuild God’s Church.

From age to age and movement to movement, our building upon the foundation of Christ is always in need of some degree of repair. Many of us come from a “protestant” background. By our nature, we have been trained to see cracks in the foundation and desire to repair, fix, and sometimes from the ground up.

If this is your calling, it’s a noble work. Ezra, Nehemiah and company undertook a beautiful calling that remains for every season of the Church. In every era of the Church there is some repair work to be done. (see one of my favorite books – Dynamics of Spiritual Life). So go do your work guilt-free and with full conviction. And then on the backside, when others of the next age see some repairs that need to be done, stay humble and open to what the Lord is doing through them. God calls different people to do different things for different reasons in different seasons. He always has. The danger is in getting stuck and satisfied with cracks in the foundation and mold within the walls.

(3) Faithfulness does not produce one specific leadership personality.

Ezra didn’t want a military escort for safety back to Jerusalem (Ezra 8). Nehemiah got a military escort to ensure his safety (Neh 2). Ezra identified with the sins of his people and ripped his clothes (Ezra 9:3). Nehemiah ripped out other people’s hair. (Neh 13:25). That’s a comical difference of leadership styles. We sometimes canonize a temperament and call it biblical leadership. The quiet, collaborative Zerubbabel; scholarly and repentant Ezra; and intensely pragmatic Nehemiah would probably lead three very different churches.

And I would argue the returning exiles would need a blend of these leadership styles. I’ve come from a church that specifically focused on elevating the brash and outspoken. But, in reality we lacked the balance of quieter, collaborative leaders who deeply loved the text and humbly and gently called for individual and corporate repentance. I know other churches could use a little bit more fire. The body of Christ is not to become cookie-cutter replicas of each other. We must draw out that which God intended us EACH to become.

(4) We must return to the Word of God.

We are not lacking for preaching content in the Western Church and yet one could argue there is a problem of Biblical literacy in our land. Few of us have completely read the Old Testament and more struggle with understanding it. And yet, many of us think we have a good grasp of our New Testament. Ironically, those two sentences don’t work together. Often, Jesus is quoting the Old Testament in ways we simply miss because we don’t know our Text. Thus, we are quick to make assumptions today about the text and wildly miss the original context.

Ezra simply read the word aloud. There was an unpacking of the text (Neh 8:8) but you get the sense they did more reading of the Text than sermonizing of it.

We need preachers (Rom 10:14-15), don’t get me wrong. But that’s not today’s problem. We have preachers in abundance. Words are constantly multiplied on Sunday morning. It almost feels like Ecclesiastes 12:12 could be applied to the multitude of sermons today. And ironically, most pastors acknowledge that their people forget 99.8% of what they communicate.

So if the people forget man’s words and it’s the Word of God itself that is living and active, why don’t we just read the living Word more?

(5) Thoughts on revival.

I’ve been a believer for 35 years and I’ve heard about how revival is coming for 35 years. I’ve got so much to say here that it’ll be its own article one day. But for now, I’d encourage anyone claiming revival is coming or revival is here to read Ezra-Nehemiah and notice some of revival’s ingredients: long, toilsome work often in obscurity, commitment to God’s word and shepherding, individual and corporate confession, lack of grandiosity, etc.

Revival rarely happens when and where you think it will. It usually starts like a mustard seed in a small corner of the world where there is a faithful remnant. Today, we seem much more interested in identifying revival than Ezra-Nehemiah is. The book gives far more attention to the long, hidden work that prepares and sustains renewal.

(6) It takes a community working together and valuing each other’s gifts to rebuild and repair.

Nehemiah 3 captures this idea so beautifully. Empire values people based on their production ability and the perceived value of said production. God remembers what each person does for His kingdom, values it, celebrates it. End of sentence.

The work of Acts 2 is not done by one person, one church, one platform, one giftset. We all believe this in theory. Now we just need to practice it. Good shepherds see others’ contributions. Taskmasters often ask “what does that person even do?”

Does your community have good shepherds or taskmasters?

(7) Until Christ returns, we wait for shalom in our hearts, our churches, our communities, and our world.

The book of Nehemiah ends unsatisfactorily. The Temple is rebuilt. The walls are rebuilt. The Word is restored. The covenant is renewed. And by the final chapter, things are already unraveling again. All this work, yet the people start drifting again because the human heart remains unfinished. It’s okay. We still await our full rescue, both individually from ourselves and from our shortcomings as a corporate community of believers. And it’s okay. I repeat, it’s OKAY.

Jesus came to begin the work in our hearts and is coming again to complete His work of making all things new. You. Me. The Church. Until then, live out YOUR calling. Lead like God intended YOU to lead. Fall in love again with the Word of God.