The Gravity of Understanding (Pt 1)

Yesterday I was able to preach at my church, Journey the Way. The text was Nehemiah 8:1-12 It was a blast, I love it (preaching & the church). Today I'll be posting the manuscript from the sermon. This will be done in bits and pieces so as to keep the readership up (long posts seem to kill people oddly enough). I hope and pray that you are able to glean from this what God desires you to learn. Enjoy!

Intro:

Imagine with me that feeling of understanding something for the first time. You know of what I speak, the feeling which causes a wonder to rise within your soul for you are now looking at an idea or an object, or hearing a tune or a song, or smelling an aroma as it ought to be seen, heard or smelled. Finally for the first time you understanding it as it really is.

Do you remember how things changed after that understanding? Do you remember the speechless, childlike wonder that you had in your spirit? The way you looked or heard or smelled things became so much more than just a sense that you’ve always had, indeed it became alive. For the desire to understand more and see more and hear more became more real than it ever had before. The faint ideas of the 5 senses started afresh in your brain causing you to want to gain that never before held knowledge of as many things as possible. Whether they are friend’s laughter or the breeze in the trees, the sound of the rain on the pavement, or the simple smell of coffee in the morning, these things came alive; indeed they became and are becoming worship.

It is true that as believers we see these good things as fodder used to stoke the flame in our hearts. This flame of beholding the glory of God, of being desirous to attempt at grasping just a little bit more of the vastness of God while we still live. Pressing our minds to grow and our hearts to include more than just ourselves.

But all the while knowing these things, these things that cause our minds to soar in worship to our God, are just a substitute for the Thing we really desire. Indeed C.S. Lewis says it well,

“These things-the beauty, the memory of our past-are good images of what we really desire; but if they are mistaken for the thing itself, they turn into dumb idols, breaking the hearts of their worshippers. For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”

Here in this passage of Nehemiah we read of the people’s understanding of the Law, many of whom for the first time. Thus it is appropriate that you remember your own understandings, for when they first came you where not simply excited by them, but you were also saddened by the mere fact of having lived life for so long without this new-found understanding.

Therefore let us pray, read the text, and hope that the Lord of hosts teaches us through this text for his own glory which is in turn our good.