Leadership and Renewal (Part Two)

Yesterday we saw that spiritual renewal involved a starting point—God’s Word. Now we see that a part of that renewal is rooted in the wisdom and understanding the Word brings…

Renewal and Spiritual Understanding (Neh. 8:7-8)

The 13 readers on the platform with Ezra helped him with the challenging task of reading the entire scroll of the Torah.

A different ministry was given to the 13 leaders mentioned in Nehemiah 8:7. They joined the Levites in mingling among the thousands of listeners. In a sense, they could be considered the forerunners of small-group leaders of our 21st century. Today small-group booklets are plentiful. Some churches are taking a different route. Following the pastor’s Sunday message, discussion questions are made available to pursue the teaching further. Groups of 10 or 12 people meet in the following week and go further with the help of the discussion questions. In other places, groups meet during the Sunday school hour with those questions.

What is happening in Nehemiah 8 is a combination of reading and explanation—reading distinctly and providing spiritual understanding. I like what John White writes about this combination in Excellence and Leadership: “We are told twice in the next few verses that the crowd was made up of people who were able to understand (8:2-3). Then we are told the arrangements for reading were designed ‘so that the people could understand what was being read’ (8:8). This is important. It is important because following the reading there was a dramatic emotional reaction. Spontaneously the crowd broke into lamentation and weeping. ‘The Levites . . . read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was being read’ ” (pp.109-10).

This is, first of all, a fresh call for the public preaching of the Word. It is, second, an indication that this repentance and renewal came out of books that are sadly neglected in today’s preaching plan. Who would expect renewal to come out of the book of Numbers! But it happened. And this led to a third result. We’ll see that tomorrow…