Merrily the Christmas bells were chiming in the old city of York on Christmas morning in the year 1890, when suddenly there came a change. The merry peal ceased and was followed by the quiet, sorrowful sound which always speaks of mourning and death: a muffled peal. News had reached the ringers that the Archbishop of York, who had been known and respected in the city for more than twenty-eight years, had gone home to God.
And as the citizens of York ate their dinners that day, the solemn voice of the great bell, called Old Peter, was heard tolling for the departed soul. Truly in the midst of life comes in death; in the midst of joy there comes sorrow; in the midst of festivity we are plunged into mourning.
And it is just the same in our spiritual life. One day the joy of the Lord makes us strong; the next, the sense of sin weighs us to the ground. One moment we are ready to overflow with thanksgiving; the next we are down in the dust mourning and weeping.
Just such a change as this, a change from the cheerful to the solemn, from joy to mourning, from feasting to fasting, comes before us in the book of Nehemiah.
Look at Jerusalem, as we visit it in our imagination today, and take a bird’s-eye view of the city. The whole place is full of joy. They are keeping the happiest, the merriest, the prettiest feast in the whole year, the Feast of Tabernacles. It was a saying among the Jews, that unless a man had been present at the Feast of Tabernacles he did not know what joy was. And in Nehemiah’s time this feast was kept more fully and with more rejoicing than it had been kept for a thousand years. No one had ever witnessed such a Feast of Tabernacles since the days of Joshua.
The city was a mass of green booths, made with branches of olive, pine, myrtle and palm, and in these the people lived and ate and slept for eight days. The whole city was lighted up, and glad music was constantly heard, while the people feasted and laughed and made merry.
It was the twenty-second day of the month Tisri when the Feast of Tabernacles was ended, and only two days afterward there came a remarkable change.
Look at Jerusalem again. You would hardly know it to be the same place. The green booths are all gone; they have been carefully cleared away. There is not a branch or a banner or a bit of decoration to be seen. The bright holiday dresses, the cheerful blue, red, yellow and lilac robes, the smart, many-colored turbans have all been laid aside; there is not a sign of one of them. Instead, we see an extraordinary company of men, women and children making their way to the open space by the water gate. They are covered with rough, coarse sackcloth, a material made of black goats’ hair and used for making sacks. Every one of the company is dressed in this rough material. And not only so, but the robe of each is made like a sack in shape, so that they look like a crowd of moving sacks, and earth and dust and ashes are sprinkled on their heads.
The rejoicing has turned into mourning, the feast into a fast. A great sense of sin has come over the people; they feel their need of forgiveness, and they have come to seek it.
The meeting seems to have assembled about nine o’clock, the time of the morning sacrifice. For three hours, they read the law of God; for three hours more they fell prostrate on the ground, and confessed their sin. Their prayers were led by Levites, standing on high scaffolding where everyone could see them, where all could hear them as they cried with a loud voice to God.
Then just at the time of the evening sacrifice, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Levites called to the kneeling multitude and bade them rise: “Stand up and bless the Lord your God forever and ever: and blessed be Thy glorious name, which is exalted above all blessing and praise.”
Then the Levites went through the history of God’s wonderful goodness to His people: to Abraham, in Egypt, in the wilderness, and in the land of Canaan. Everywhere and at all times He had been good to them; again and again He had delivered them. But they—what had they done?
“Thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly. Neither have our kings, our princes, our priests, nor our fathers, kept Thy law, nor hearkened unto Thy commandments.... For they have not served Thee.” Therefore, as a natural consequence and result, “Behold, we are servants this day.”
They would not serve God. They would not be His servants, so they had been made to serve someone else; they had, as a punishment for their sin, been made servants to the King of Persia. And what was the result? “The land that Thou gavest unto our fathers to eat the fruit thereof and the good thereof, behold, we are servants in it: and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings whom Thou hast set over us because of our sins.”
The amount of tribute paid by Judea to Persia is not known, but the province of Syria, in which Judea was included, paid £90,000 a year. “Also they have dominion over our bodies.” They can force us against our will to be either soldiers or sailors, and can make us fight their battles for them. They have dominion “over our cattle.” They can seize our cattle at their pleasure, for their own use or the use of their armies.
“And we are in great distress.” Yes, our sins have indeed brought punishment, and feeling this, realizing this very deeply, we have gathered together to make a solemn agreement, a covenant with God. We intend to promise to have done with sin, and for the future to serve and glorify God.
Then a long roll of parchment was brought out, on which the covenant was written, and one by one all the leading men in Jerusalem came forward and put their seals to it, as a sign that they intended to keep it.
In the East it is always the seal that authenticates a document. In Babylon, the documents were often sealed with half-a-dozen seals or more. These were impressed on moist clay, and then the clay was baked, and the seals were each fastened to the parchment by a separate string. In this way any number of seals could be attached.
We are given (in Neh. 10) the names of those who sealed the document. They are honored names, for they made a brave and noble stand. First of all comes the name of Nehemiah, the governor, setting a good example to the rest. He is followed by Zidkijah, or Zadok, the secretary. Then come the names of 82 others, heads of families, all well-known men in Jerusalem. Each one fastened his seal to the roll of parchment containing the solemn covenant. No less than 84 seals were attached to it.
What then were the articles of the covenant? What did those who scaled promise? First of all, they bound themselves (Neh. 10:2929They clave to their brethren, their nobles, and entered into a curse, and into an oath, to walk in God's law, which was given by Moses the servant of God, and to observe and do all the commandments of the Lord our Lord, and his judgments and his statutes; (Nehemiah 10:29)) to walk in God’s law, and to observe and to do all the commandments. What need was there after that to enter a single other article in the covenant? If a man walks in God’s law he cannot go wrong. If he keeps all God’s commandments, what more can be required?
But they were wise men who drew up that solemn covenant. They knew and understood the human heart. Is it not a fact, that while we are all ready to own that we are sinners in a general sense, we are slow to own that we are guilty of any particular sin? We do not mind confessing that we are miserable sinners, but we should indignantly deny being selfish or lazy or unforgiving or proud or bad-tempered.
So those who wrote the parchment felt it best to go more into detail, and to put down certain things in which they felt they had done wrong in the past, but in which they meant to do better in the time to come.
They promised that, in the future, they would not marry heathen people; they would not give their daughters to heathen men, or let their sons choose heathen wives.
They agreed to keep the Sabbath, and not to buy and sell on the holy day. They promised that if the heathen people came to the city gates with baskets of fruit or vegetables or fish on the Sabbath, they would refuse to buy.
They stated that for the future they would keep every seventh year as a year of Sabbath. The Sabbath year had in times past been a great blessing to the land. The main occupation of the Jews was agriculture: farming of all kinds. Every seventh year God commanded that all work was to stop. There was to be a year’s universal holiday, that the nation might have rest and leisure to think of higher things. Yet they did not starve in the Sabbath year, for God gave them double crops in the sixth year, enough to cover all their wants until the crops of the eighth year were ripe. All that grew of itself during the seventh year, all the self-sown grain that sprang up, all the fruit that came on the olive trees, the vines and the fig trees, was left for the poor people to gather. They went out and helped themselves, and comfort was brought to many a sad home, and cupboards which were often empty during the six ordinary years were kept well filled in the Sabbath year. But this command of God had been neglected by the Jews; it needed more faith and trust than they had possessed, and they had let it slip. Now, however, they promised once more to observe the Sabbath year.
The rest of the covenant concerned the amount to be contributed for the service of God. They agreed to pay one-third of a shekel each year towards the temple service, and to take turns in bringing the wood required for the sacrifices, beside giving God, regularly and conscientiously, the firstfruits of all they had.
This was the solemn covenant to which were fastened so many seals. This was the agreement by which they bound themselves to the service of God. As they went home and shook the dust off their heads and took off their sacks, they went home pledged to obey and to love their God.
Which of us will follow their example? Who will acknowledge his place before God as a bondslave of Jesus Christ? Who will put his seal to the document and promise to serve and to obey the Lord Jesus Christ who died for him, who purchased him with His precious blood? Will you?
Is it not right, is it not wise to stop at times and to look at our life, at what it has been, and at what it might have been? What about prayer? Has it always been earnest, heartfelt, true? What about our Bible reading? Has it been as regular, as profitable as it might have been? Do we not feel we have come short in the past, and that we should like to do better in the time to come?
What about sin, that besetting sin of ours, so often indulged in, so little fought against? Are we going on like this forever, beaten by sin, overcome and defeated? Should we not like to leave the old careless days behind, and, for the future, in the strength of the Lord, to fight prayerfully against the world, the flesh and the devil?
What about work for God? Have we done all that we could for His service? Have we recognized that everything we have belongs to Him? Have we consecrated to Him our time and our talents? Do we not feel we should like to do more for the Master in time to come?
It is a good plan to get alone and quiet for a time, and taking a piece of paper, to write down all we feel has been wrong in the past, all we would desire to do, by His grace and strength, in the future. Then let us sign our name to it, put the date at the bottom, carefully fold it up and put it away. Let no one see it but God; it is between us and Him alone. He will give us grace to keep it if we only ask Him and depend on Him rather than on ourselves.
Will you try this plan this very night? Then you will open your eyes tomorrow morning with the recollection, “I am the Lord’s; I am His, for He has purchased me by His precious blood; I am His to use in His service.”
Lord, make me faithful, keep me humble, keep me prayerful, give me grace and courage and strength, for “better is it that thou shouldest not vow, than that thou shouldest vow and not pay.”